I l received a lot of expensive lessons from our parents, both fantastic and bad.
For a single thing, they taught myself and others the value of taxing work.
My Mom had myself and others outside helping him haul firewood for a few hours before I was sent inside to help our mother clean and cook breakfast for the entire family. My siblings and I were all told that we would be expected to help out with all chores, regardless of our genders. There was no such thing as “woman’s work” or “man’s work” in our parents’ household. And I’m ecstatic for that. I cook our own meals, clean our house, and take out the garbage when necessary. I also mow our grass and cut our own wood. Since I live in a rural city, I had a ploy of land with numerous acres on it and plenty of woodlands to extract firewood from over the years. It’s nice utilizing trees that have already fallen and have died because you’re not killing healthy trees just to get your fuel for indoor heat. Our region gets entirely freezing in the Wintertide season so it’s important to have lots of heat on hand. With just the central gas oil furnace, I would spend too much money every year on heating if I didn’t regularly have our wood stove which provides supplemental heat to the entire house. I have special fans that push the heat from the wood stove around the interior to make it nice and toasty inside. It’s a lot easier to survive the Wintertide onslaught with a fantastic wood stove for supplemental heat.