A few weeks ago, my neighbors had their sidewalk edged. The person edging did quick work using a gas-powered edger. When he was finished, the neighborhood sidewalk looked very neat.

That is, until it reached our yard.

It had been awhile so I figured I better edge our sidewalk, too. I went to the shed and took out the non-gas-powered, duct-taped-together, hand edger left to us by the previous owners of our house. With the edger and a hoe, I trimmed up about 175 feet of sidewalk, increasing the width of the sidewalk by 6-8 inches (I said it had been awhile).

It was a good workout. Thankfully, my 7-year-old son helped out, too. He offered to pick up the grass chunks I had just cut from the sidewalk. With a wheelbarrow (or should I call it a wheelborrow since I always use my neighbor’s) and the Discovery Toys® Big Red Shovel, my son proceeded to move up and down the sidewalk, scooping up all the pieces of sod. Over an hour later, when he had finished, he had a wheelbarrow heaping full, as full as it could be filled without sod falling out of it.

I wish I had taken a picture because I was in awe of what my son had done. The sidewalk was clean and he had scooped up the sod with no help from me, not even moving the wheelbarrow for him.

I should not have been surprised because he is my worker. He is the one who gets excited for snowstorms because of the opportunity to shovel snow (again using the Big Red Shovel). He is the one who usually asks to help out if he sees me working in the garden or yard. He is also the one who, along with a few of the neighbors, likes to dig holes in the yard (yep, Big Red Shovel).

His feat of child power truly impressed me.

It also pleased me. Living where we live, it is not always easy to find opportunities for kids to display their work ethic. Oftentimes, a parent needs to be very creative to come up with chores that actually test a child’s mettle.

Growing up on the edge of the small town of Staples, my seven siblings and I had plenty of chores to do to keep us busy (at least it seemed that way to me). My mom was the oldest of three girls on a Wisconsin dairy farm so she knew how to work. She also knew how to put us to work. For most of my growing up years we heated with wood so there was always woodcutting to do, in addition to wood stacking, wood splitting, and carrying wood into the house. We also pulled our share of weeds from the garden.

One of the more unique chores was nail pulling. A family friend was a contractor and when his company remodeled a home, the debris from the remodeling was often dropped off in our yard. We dug through the refuse for building materials we could use for projects around the house, usually wood and the nails, which needed to be pulled and straightened. I am not sure how many ice cream buckets of nails we filled but it was probably more than the buckets of ice cream we ate.

Though I am not sure nail pulling was a favorite chore for any of us, it was a valuable experience in many ways. First, the experience embedded in me the value of reusing and repurposing things and not just always throwing them away.

More importantly, the nail pulling and the other chores we were assigned instilled in us the value of working hard and getting our hands dirty.

Our neighbors growing up, the Petersons, had a snowmobile. I remember once saying to my mom “Why can’t we have a snowmobile? The Petersons have one.” My mom responded, “We’re not the Petersons.”

We also had family friends who lived on a farm, the Olanders. I remember one time complaining about all the work we had to do. Mom responded with something in the line of “you don’t do as much work as the Olanders.” I remember wanting to say back, “We’re not the Olanders.”

I am glad I didn’t.

In addition to not wanting to taste soap or have my behind swatted, I can look back now and be grateful for all the chores we got to do.

And also be thankful we weren’t the Olanders.