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45 Degrees North: Many Hands, Rural Style [1]
['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2024-08-09
An old fashioned barn raising or threshing is something many of us know about from books and TV shows, not from personal experience. But in rural areas, it’s still pretty common for folks to turn a big job into a work party. It may just look like a handful of friends and relatives getting together on a weekend to put up a garage. But it’s also a way to build community.
Work parties are pretty common where I live. For example, in spring my husband and I help neighbors gather sap for making maple syrup. In summer we help another neighbor butcher homegrown chickens. This fall, another is planning to turn the task of peeling and prepping ingredients for a neighborhood booyah party into a party-before-the-party. Many seasonal tasks have party potential, including canning, cider pressings and river clean-ups. I dearly hope that winter make-do-and-mend parties can become as common as quilting bees once were.
Events like this are a great way for people to share labor and resources, learn new skills, and discover things about people in our communities. But if you haven’t participated in a work party, let alone organized one, you may have questions about what to expect or how to contribute. So here are some things to keep in mind.
Planning and preparation. When you couldn’t just run to a store for supplies, people had to plan further ahead. Our great-grandmothers probably kept a mental calculation of how many chickens and hills of potatoes to raise just for a threshing, and how many days they would need to prepare for serving a hearty meal to a work crew that large. But they knew that time is precious, daylight is limited, and a large group of unpaid volunteer laborers would want to eat quickly and get on with the job.
It’s still a good practice to plan ahead and prepare before workers arrive. For example, when we arrive to help butcher chickens our host already has set up a sheet of plywood covered with butcher paper on sawhorses for a cutting table. The hose is set up and the water is on. Extension cords are run for the vacuum sealers and the electric feather plucker. He has water for scalding already heating on a propane turkey fryer and a digital thermometer for checking the temperature. Ax, chopping block, buckets, sharpened knives, vacuum sealers and bags are all in place. There are text chains and conversations ahead of time about who else is bringing extra sealers, ice, chilling tubs, dish pans for draining, towels and coolers. I’ve learned to pre-cut and seal the bottoms of my share of bags to speed the packaging process.
Be flexible. I do so love it when everything goes according to plan – but that is rare. There are still details to sort out as we go, once we know exactly who could make it that day, what the weather is, and whatever other variables are at play. Planning and preparation make it easier to pivot when stuff gets in the way of your expectations. When people are volunteering their time and labor, you want to have some work-arounds in mind while kinks get sorted out. Maybe some things won’t be done the way you would prefer, but they’re getting done. A group effort is a great place to learn other ways to do things and to gain insight into other people by the way they approach tasks and problems. Above all, it’s a great reminder for us super-planners to value flexibility.
Expectations. People have different reasons for taking part in work parties. For some, it’s the process (i.e. learning), for others it’s the product (i.e. taking home a share of canned goods). For many people, not understanding expectations produces considerable anxiety. If these are your volunteers, try to ease their minds ahead of time with as much information as you can give them before you start having to repeat, “I don’t really know yet, my guess is XYZ but I’m confident we will figure it out.” It never hurts for a host or team leader to ask, “Are you comfortable doing this?” As a volunteer, if you do not feel up to a job, be honest about it. Some tasks don’t have to be perfect but improve with practice and that’s okay. Other jobs, especially where safety is involved, are best tasked to someone with more experience until, say, you’re nearing the end. That’s a great time to ask, “Does someone else want to try this?”
First aid. If you’re hosting a work party, you may want to check the liability coverage on your homeowners insurance, because sometimes stuff happens. And putting someone in charge of first aid is always a good idea. For example, while removing the backbone from the last chicken on the table, I cut my hand – nothing serious, but bleeding onto the poultry is icky. After washing up, I went to our first aid person, whose hands were cleaner and drier and whose supplies were easier to access than the kit in our truck. She had me bandaged in no time. Your first aid person might also be the one to check on others and call rest and hydration breaks to avoid heat exhaustion. But everyone who participates really should be looking out for each other. That’s what community is about.
Food. Almost any work party will involve at least some snacks, a meal, water, donuts and coffee, maybe a beer when the job is done. After a morning of pulling innards out of recently deceased poultry, homemade cookies sure hit the spot. Since so many in my community belong to our volunteer fire department, we get lots of practice at feeding groups (like at fire scenes), often with little time to plan or prepare. When we do have time to plan, a very efficient text chain takes care of that quickly. Everyone pitches in when they can. When they can’t, someone else maybe pitches in a bit extra.
But it is important to communicate ahead of time about conditions that might affect how food is managed. You don’t want to be the person who shows up with a casserole that needs 45 minutes in the oven and expects there to be room for it – or even that anyone will know when the lunch break is 45 minutes off. With many jobs, it’s simply easier to work another 15 or 20 minutes to a good place to pause, or to eat lunch an hour early while an equipment or supply problem gets sorted.
Clean-up. The job isn’t done until things are cleaned up and put away. The host who spent hours on set-up may appreciate many hands and a quick take-down. Or they may prefer to take a breather then take their time cleaning and putting things away just so. Often, it’s a bit of each. So expect to help as long as it takes until you hear, “Nah, I’ll get that.”
Give some thought ahead of time to particular clean-up concerns. A work party might produce smelly trash that can attract skunks, racoons and bears. In a rural area where folks haul their own garbage to a transfer station that won’t be open again for several days, it’s a kindness to offer to take trash, recyclables and compostables. Helping to return borrowed tables, chairs or equipment is always appreciated. And it never hurts to check back in later with another offer to help haul stored items down basement stairs or up into garage rafters.
Ask. For years we thought collecting sap for maple syrup was a family thing for our neighbors. We were honored when they asked if we would be interested on helping, and jumped at the chance. It truly is one of my favorite spring traditions. When the sap is running well, the collection tank and barrels on the trailer may have to be pumped into a holding tank before we can collect more. While that’s happening, we visit with the rest of the crew. I love that we get maple syrup, too. But being someone who shows up for my neighbors is pretty sweet all by itself. Because those folks are there for us as well.
And when we help butcher chickens raised by another neighbor, we come home with homegrown poultry for the freezer. One person does the work of raising the birds. We split the cost of chicks and feed amongst us. In under three hours we processed 40 birds with six people – four people to catch, kill, scald, pluck, butcher, wash and chill plus two people working vacuum sealers. When I thaw a chicken to roast, I know how it lived, how it died, and how the meat was handled before it ended up in my freezer. We eat well for much less than the cost of poultry from the grocery store. And boy, do we come home with stories.
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.
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