Working the wire

My involvement as a board member on a non-profit organization here in town has led me to some interesting gatherings, introduced me to some interesting folks, and placed me in some interesting fish-out-of-water situations.

The other day I found myself doing a few things that I could never have imagined myself doing.

The 501c(3) group I serve as a board member with is involved in creating a series of walking, historical, and nature trails around our city. In preparation for the grand opening of a major section of concrete walkway across what was until recently a cattle pasture, the Board members came together to do a "workday."

It was during this workday that I found myself both removing and stringing barbed wire fencing, pulling down cattle fences, picking up (and flinging) cow chips along the 3/4 mile concrete walking path, and erecting an oak plank sign using, of all things, a forklift.


My roll of barbed wire was slightly smaller than the one hefted by my fellow Board member pictured here. Apparently they have a mechanism of some sorts that will spool / unspool the vicious metal wire, but we didn't have one.

BTW, this fella is the pastor at the extremely large and well attended First Christian Church in my town. A nicer guy couldn't be found.


Up goes the sign. The owner of the forklift is a fellow Board member and proprietor of the local Do-it-Best hardware store in town. He drove the forklift the 4 miles to the site from his downtown store.

BTW, those three logs that are holding the sign up...earlier in the year we chopped them down, stripped 'em clean, cut 'em up, hauled 'em to this site, dug deep holes for them, and erected them as they stand today. That is a story left for another blog entry as my city-boy emotional state has still not fully recovered from that ordeal