A strong work ethic has been at the forefront of my life, impacting my past and future in a way that helped me survive tough times. Survival is a strong word, and it is not used lightly in my case. I had the task of raising children in a less-than-ideal situation and thriving in the process.
In 1997, I was eighteen and married a young man lacking a work ethic. For myself, raised in a home where I was the oldest of eleven children, working hard became a way of life. I woke up at 5 a.m., worked hard on my schoolwork for two hours, and then, by 7 a.m., I would wake up my siblings to prepare them for the day. It was a rare day when I sat down before the evening other than to listen to my dad spout family devotions.
When I was seventeen, I bought a milk cow, Bessie. Bessie was a little brown Jersey cow with soulful eyes and long lashes. Every morning before the house was awake, I would hike out to the little milking shed, wearing a protective jumper over my clothing to milk. Often, I had to carry hay to the barn to feed the cow over ice, snow, and other obstacles. First, I would clean the manure from the barn space, then sit down to clean the cow’s udders. Each step was essential to make sure the milk was clean and uncontaminated. I would talk to the cow and sing to her, and she was my best first life coach. She would look at you with those big eyes, and you knew what she had to say. It should have been a sign when she was apparent in her affection or hatred of certain people. It would take about an hour to complete milking, straining, and all the procedures to keep the milk fresh and valuable for the household. After the milk was chilled, the work of keeping up with using the milk began. On a good day, when the cow was fresh, she would produce 6-8 gallons of milk daily. It was about four gallons on a day when she was not fresh. If you did not take care of the milk for a couple of days, it was common to have twelve to thirty gallons of milk to take care of. For that reason, my strong work ethic came into play. I learned to make several cheeses; mozzarella, and ricotta were favorites, yogurt by the gallon, and baked goods like cereal cakes that used substantial amounts of milk. In this way, I was able to help feed the family, providing butter, cream, cheese, whey cheeses, yogurt, and baked goods to provide meals with protein when meat was in short supply. Money was tight, so to give the cow greens in the winter when grass was unavailable, I would go to the local grocery store to ask for the produce trimmings to put in with her hay. With these treats, she provided us with rich, creamy milk, sometimes where half the gallon was thick cream.
I carried on my strong work ethic into the next phase of my life, where I lived with my spouse, who did not care for working, and yet we lived without running water, electricity, or other modern conveniences. Water had to be carried from a nearby well and hauled out since there were no drains. Laundry was done at a laundry mat, or in the summer, we heated the water with a wood water heater by lighting a fire in it and used the boiling water to wash the clothing in a wringer washer after scrubbing the red clay stains out by hand. Any meat that we wanted to preserve had to be canned, so I would save to get propane for the gas stove so I could can cooked ground meat or chicken into jars for later use. To reach our cabin, which was rustic in the most excellent light, we had to walk over a mile. I would have given up if I had not had a strong work ethic. My strong character and drive to work hard enabled me to keep striving for survival and focus on making food, cleaning, and caring for my four sons.
From life lessons of milking a cow, rising early to do schoolwork, and hauling water for daily life, I learned that you can pull something to push yourself a little more when you think you do not have it in you. A strong work ethic has been something that helps me to survive in college now in my forties, working on my very first college degree. I use it daily, working on classwork while maintaining a job and taking care of daily life obligations. My hard work ethic has allowed me to achieve not just survival but also thriving. I will take my work ethic and put my all into any task.
