• Dene's Blog
  • About Dene
  • Contact Dene
  • Dene's Recipes
  • Dene's Books
  • Dene's Classbooks
  • Gallery
  • Recommended Sites
  • FAQ & Tutorial
  Flight Paths

LESSONS FROM THE COUNTRY LANE   ONE – BUILDING THE LANE

9/29/2017

0 Comments

 
Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

Dene's latest book, Down A Country Lane, inspired a couple of thoughts about our country lane for me, too.  (Photos of our real country lane by Katie Whipple Photography.)

Through circumstances too complex to explain here, when we bought our five acres, it was the only piece in about 200 acres with a clear title. This had the great advantage of providing a lot of elbow room for us and play room for the boys. The downside was that I was solely responsible for our 4/10 mile access lane. It was created by driving through what had been open pasture and woods down the right-of-way created by a surveyors plat map.
 
Florida is sandy. It rains 4" today and you have to water your plants the day after tomorrow. Except, in our area, there is a subsoil strata of clay about 2 feet down. Thus, in a 50 yard long depression between two rises in the lane, the rain collected into a one to two foot deep puddle that took days to percolate through the soil. It had no outlet to run downhill and away. About the time it dried out, it rained again. The car had to be parked outside the puddle. Elsewhere, Dene has written about wading through, drying our legs and going to church and reversing the process to get home. Don't come to us with frivolous excuses for missing church (read that: all excuses are frivolous).

Obviously, I had to do something. Just as obviously, I could not afford equipment rentals. An insurance customer had several dump truck loads of roofing rock from a demolished building. He asked me to take all I wanted. Every night after I finished selling, I stopped and shoveled a load onto my Isuzu pickup and drove home with my nose in the air, front wheels pretending to touch the pavement. Every morning, I shoveled the rock until I had covered that 50 yard area of the drive about 3-4 inches deep. The rains came again and the rock beat into the mud and we had to get the neighbor to pull us out again. And, start wading again.

So, I dug a ditch over 100 yards long to the highway with a shovel. I threw the dirt up into that same Isuzu pickup and hauled it down to the house to landscape to divert the water from running under our DWMH. I shoveled, Dene raked it out. The ditch was 2 shovels wide and was hip deep to cut through the rise but tapered to less than a foot deep at the road.  Finally, we had reliable access to our home 22 months after we moved here.

Much of my "training up the boys in the way they should go" came from necessities like this. Of course, the first lesson to them was how important church was to us. You cannot teach your children to love God if every obstacle prevents you from assembling to worship. They follow your example, not your words. Did I mention that we killed about a dozen rattlesnakes and cottonmouths in this same period? During this time, we followed a weak flashlight beam ¼ mile from the puddle to the house. We never missed services due to this inconvenience.
 
This was roof rock, so it came with nails and pieces of glass. I paid the boys (age 9 and 7) a nickel for each nail they found in the road and a penny for each piece of glass. I stressed how important it was to find them all as we could not afford to buy new tires if one caused a flat. Thus, they learned about working and earning but also with a sense of responsibility toward the family and making a contribution to our survival.

They saw persistence and saw it pay off. More than one person said the ditch could not be done without equipment. The boys learned to never give up by seeing the results. When one thing did not work (the rock) we started another. We never quit.

They saw a father in action caring for his family with all he had. I had no money, limited income, no equipment. But, I did all I could because my family needed me to do so. None of it was heroic. There are no medals, no monuments except those that live on in my two sons.
 
Keith Ward

[This photo shows how much the original road has been built up over the years and the ditch graded out.]
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Author
    Dene Ward has taught the Bible for more than  forty years, spoken at women’s retreats and lectureships, and has written both devotional books and class materials. She lives in Lake Butler, Florida, with her husband Keith.


    Categories

    All
    A Wives Series
    Bible People
    Bible Study
    Birds & Animals
    Book Reviews
    Camping
    Children
    Cooking Kitchen
    Country Life
    Discipleship
    Everyday Living
    Faith
    Family
    Gardening
    Grace
    Guest Writer
    History
    Holiness
    Humility Unity
    Materialism
    Medical
    Music
    Prayer
    Psalms
    Salvation
    Trials

    Archives

    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly