I am Woman; Hear my Chainsaw Roar!

I don't think Helen Reddy was singing about the how great it feels to fell a tree with a brand new chainsaw, but I'm telling you, it was empowering. It was loud. It was a bit scary. But it made me feel like "I can do anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman (hear me roar)."

One of the things I've experienced about moving out to the farm is a growing desire to know how to do things; to understand how things work; to not be reliant on other people to fix everything/tend to everything. I want to know how to change the furnace filter, plant my garden, unstop the disposal. The problem: these skills don't come easily to me (and to be honest, I'm not sure they come that easily to Ed either). So, when we bought our chainsaw at the Simponsville Stihl dealer, Bobby Cottrell had to show us how to start it and how to properly use it so as to not cut off a leg instead of a log. The problem was that we then didn't use it for a month and forgot all he told us. So last Saturday, we went back to Cottrell's and admitted to Bobby that we needed another lesson. It was kind of embarrassing.

This morning Ed and I headed out to clear a swath around a huge tree whose beauty was lost among vines, honeysuckle bushes, deadly briars and small locust trees. Ed did most of the chainsawing and I followed along with the garden clippers. When we got toward the end, I took over the chainsawing -- just to prove that I could do it.

In the last month, I've learned to:

• drive our zero-turn mover in a fairly straight line
• can peaches, dilly green beans and beets
• drive a manual transmission pickup truck
• weed whip without going through the whole spool of line in 5 minutes
• operate our Polaris Ranger
• change the furnace filter
• till the garden with the attachment that brother-in-law Steve gave me
• water the Maple trees out front with the rain barrel loaded on the back of the Polaris

For most of these tasks, I've had someone to teach me. For example, Maggie was at my side as we canned the dilly green beans and beets; Friends Karen and Ken provided advice and good company while we cooked up batches of peach preserves and chutney; Jeremy, our contractor, came over one morning and went over all the mechanical doings of the house; and Ed gave me a lesson on the mower. But some of the skills are only learned by trial and error and some of the errors if caught on video might make a strong entry for "Funniest Home Videos" (i.e., Mary and I trying to tilt the rain barrel to get out the last of the water for the trees).

Stay turned. For as Ms. Reddy's sings:

I am woman watch me grow

See me standing toe to toe

As I spread my lovin' arms across the land

But I'm still an embryo

With a long long way to go...