Rock & Roll Farm

Saturday! Dec 03 2005 // 9:20 am //

Big winter crew

This week was full of big projects and big visitors. And without getting into a full essay on sexism, I’ll outline some of the subtleties of what’s been happening around here lately.

We’ve had a nebulous crew of four to seven men, and two women. Almost immediately I noticed a difference in mood. Tracy and I have been frustrated at times as it is much harder to feel part of the crew, and in a few instances we’ve been ignored completely. After hours, for the most part, they have tried to be inclusive. She and I have had several conversations about the new atmosphere, trying to narrow down what is or is not sexist behavior and what may be just attention-hungry personalities. This is one of the issues of my job that I end up ignoring more than I confront. I’ve always tried to work harder and fit in to a situation as opposed to calling someone out on questionable behavior. And then I wonder why I’m so physically and emotionally drained at the end of the day. Working with someone who is perhaps more tuned into recognizing a sketchy situation has been welcome. Not that we’ve been able to do much about it.

The week’s work:

-A cinder block building on the new property has been rebuilt, nearly from the ground up. New walls, new roof, etc. I’ll post photos sometime next week.

-Thursday and Friday we dug a trench from the well head to the basement of the cow barn to install a hydrant. Almost a hundred feet long, four feet deep, and about a foot and a half wide. It goes down a hill and around a corner into the barn.

-After the trench was filled in, we started the stone staircase that will go down the same hill. Building a stone staircase involves a lot of digging, and moving of giant rocks.

-For a little while yesterday, Reid and I split and stacked firewood, one of my favorite winter jobs.