Our First Work Week

here at Big Branch started out bad...but ended up good!!!

Each week, we all meet with the project leader, Ken, for assignments.  

Monday, we had our first meeting.  Our assignments:

We were to organize this shed where the life jackets are stored. What a mess!!!  They were just thrown in after use. Some of them had been stored in cardboard boxes that had disinte- grated and the jackets that were on the bottom were ruined.  The room smelled of mold and mildew.  We had to throw some of the jackets away.  Now it is organized and stored by sizes.

Then we were to take all the 6' paddles out of the canoe boxes and replace them with 54" new paddles.  Each canoe trailer is color coded and so are the paddles.  We then needed to put colored duct tape around the handle of each paddle. Guess what...there was no duct tape to be found anywhere.  We could not finish the job.

Then there was the trailer light that did not work.  A quick trip to buy one, and Wallace was on the next job.

Oh, did I mention how hot it has been here?  We were both drenched.

On Tuesday, we were asked to assemble these benches.  The planks had not been pre-drilled. The other planks had been chewed up and now needed to be replaced.  Sounds pretty simple, right?  Wrong!!!

You can see our work space, but at least we were under some shade for this project.  First we rounded up things we needed to do the job.  Trying to find the right tools is in itself HARD to do.  We finally get started.  We tried using the tools on hand...things are tight with the budget the way it is.  Well, we got totally frustrated and went in to talk with Ken and told him we were dissatisfied with how the benches looked.  He gave us the go ahead to go to Home Depot and purchase what we needed.

So Wednesday morning we go to Home Depot.  We purchase 4 rolls of duct tape to finish the job color coding the canoe paddles. The other stuff we paid for ourselves because we had ruined the screws using the wrong bit.  We needed new bits anyway, it was the right thing to do.  It is so frustrating when you can't get the things you need to do a good job!!!

Now we are pleased with the way the benches look.

We had four of them we assembled and it took both of us to complete this job.

They will be placed in areas of need.

When we finished the benches, Ken asked if we would water the plants he just planted.  There are 12 planters we watered.

He asked if this would be some-thing we could do each week.

Now this finished off our first work week.

The whole team is sprucing up the place for our big event, Wild Things, which will take place October 12th where we expect over 5,000 visitors.  Ken had all the brown shirts out there doing their part!!!  That's Ken in the hat on the right side of this picture.

Until next time...