October 22, 2008

I suppose I'm not always a big fan of hard work. Given the choice, I would rather do something less strenuous, such as watching TV. Or reading a book. Or most anything else other than what needs to be done.

Back when we first built our horse pasture fence, we cut down cedar trees and used them as the wooden posts at the corners and such. Those cedars will last forever, we were told. As it turns out, we had received some bad advice. The cedar posts are beginning to rot, and some of them are even breaking off at the ground.

A few years later when we put up a new fence to expand the pasture, we had already figured out that cedar trees weren't the way to go. We could tell that they might not last forever. And besides that, it was a good bit of work to go find trees that were the right size, cut them down, cut all the branches off, and then get them to where we needed them. It had saved us a little money the first time around, but we decided to just go and buy treated posts and save some time. And hopefully to avoid having to replace them in the near future.

Those newer posts have held up pretty well, but we have been slowly going through and replacing the original cedar posts with more new treated posts. Putting in one or two posts at the time isn't quite as bad as trying to do several in one day. But we still have to dig up the old posts and pull them out of the ground, which is a bit of work. If we can, we take a shortcut and just cut some of them off at the ground and dig new holes next to them. But that doesn't always work, as was the case of the ones we replaced not long ago.

We finally got a Saturday where we could get out and work. The weather was nice, the sun was out. Warm, but not too hot. And an occasional breeze to cool things off. Overall, a good day to be outside doing something.

I'm not sure exactly what it is about hard work that makes me want to do something else. Because once we get out and start doing something, it really isn't that bad. Sure, we sweat and get tired from all the physical activity. And on the warmer days we have to stop and take a break every now and then. Maybe it is having to plan ahead that I don't care for. Making sure we have everything we need, making sure we have time to do it.

But then once we get out and start working, it feels good to be doing something. It feels good to accomplish something. And it is fun to look at it after we are finished and think, "Wow, that looks pretty good!"

And one good thing about hard work is that you usually don't have trouble sleeping at night.

All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. - Proverbs 14:23

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