A Story of Family Love and Unity
The Notgrass team gathers each weekday morning to pray together on Zoom. On Monday I asked if anyone did anything special over the weekend. Bonnie, who works remotely from West Virginia, spent Saturday at an annual woodcutting day at her in-laws’ house. I asked her to share the details with me later so that I could pass them on to you.
Bonnie’s husband’s parents have an outdoor wood burning stove as their main heat source. Though they also have a propane furnace, they use the wood burner to keep fuel costs down. This is Bonnie’s description of how her in-laws fill their large woodshed with their annual wood supply.
Every year the family gets together on a weekend to cut wood to replenish their supply ahead of the winter months. We pick a date and whoever can make it travels to my in-laws’ house. Depending on what is going on in each individual family, sometimes there are only a few who can make it, but this year, almost all of us could make it. We had three husband/wife teams, one individual child, and three grandchildren (10 people total).
We run it sort of like an assembly line. We had two wood splitters with the men working those and filling two small trailers with wood. When the trailers were full, they drove the trailers down to the building and the rest of us unloaded and stacked it in the building. This went on from about 9:30 am throughout the day. A few of us quit a little early due to back trouble, but the last wood was stacked about 5:30 p.m.Â
Since I have back trouble and wasn’t able to lift much, I worked the middle part of the stacking assembly line passing the wood along to the person who was stacking it. I also brought food to help out with making lunch for everyone.
We were able to almost fill the wood building and so now, over Thanksgiving when we all visit, we can finish it up with an hour or two of work.
I am impressed with the family love and unity in this beautiful story. I am especially impressed with Bonnie’s newly-married son who is pictured below. He is holding up two fingers to indicate that the family has two more rows left to finish the family woodcutting job on Thanksgiving. What love and warmth these grandparents can look forward to enjoying all winter. What a beautiful way to spend Thanksgiving!
Honor your father and mother
(which is the first commandment with a promise),
so that it may be well with you,
and that you may live long on the earth.
Ephesians 6:2