One of the aspects I love most at Vegetarium is being active all day long and switch from one task to another. This allows to become more flexible and learn new skills.
One new experience I had this week concerns woodcutting: indeed
a new eco-building is being built in wood and clay, so the other volunteers and me had to put some beams on the upper part of a wall. This was the occasion to take measures to have the perfect sized beams and to discover the use of two different types of electronic cutting wood machines (one bigger than the other one). Protective glasses, headphones and gloves have been provided to all of us in order to prevent us from physical damage. I also used the screwdriver for the first time to link one beam to the other.
This allowed me to deal with danger and get out of my comfort zone trying new actions.
Moreover, living surrounded by woods is the proper place to cut wood, which is pretty rare in nowadays society. Especially for a woman, because some works like this one are usually associated to men. So I’m glad for the opportunity of being involved tasks from which women are usually excluded, like fixing objects, painting a building and dealing with insects and dirty materials, such as earth and manure. So, my hope in modern times is to have less “women of manners” and more “women of manure”.