Hard Labor in the Heartland

Today I woke up at an egregious hour to join my dad on our property in Asher for a morning of work. The early hour wasn't so much of a problem as the heat. It was 90 by 9 am and 110 when we left at 1. Oye.

My parents own 300 acres of undeveloped land in Asher, OK. They've owned it most of my life (bought in 1987). My uncle Tom and his boys (and their boys) have used it for hunting property for years. My dad doesn't hunt, but he goes out with them some times to read a book and enjoy the company.

Originally, the land was undeveloped entirely. Now, there's a hunting cabin, shed, and outhouse (recent addition!) in a area that previously was setup with tents. Dad has used the land to drop trees for firewood and we get our Christmas trees from there. Now, he and my brother-in-law have started reworking the land to make parts of it marketable for hay or general grazing land. It's not easy work - dad says the land was used to plant cotton and terraced accordingly, which has now caused deep ravines of erosion. We've got to fill those ravines, which means hauling burned out trees (we had a fire a few years ago from someone dropping a cigarette on the roadside) into them, evening out the slopes to discourage future erosion, and moving the dirt to bury the trees. That's long, hard work in the sun and we're all doing our time.

We took Indy out with us. He did well, despite the heat. He checked in on each of us working, then crawled under the truck. I got to drive the Bobcat awhile and knock an hour off of my needed 15 to get licensed. My biggest challenge is that you need to be able to provide weight on your feet and hands at the same time, which is hard when you're struggling to reach the peddles, but I manage. 






Overall, it was a good, if incredibly hot day. And the shower I got when I came home might have been the most glorious thing ever. I got to break in mom's snake boots (I haven't lived somewhere where they were necessary in a long time) and see my dog survive as a country dog. I also got a reminder of how beautiful it is out there. I couldn't live in it - the isolation would kill me - but it's great to visit. I now need my family to build a proper cabin for staying in so we can go and enjoy it. 


More pictures available at Asher album.