I call Maria “my Willa  Cather Girl,” be cause I loved Willa Cather’s honest and touching portrayals of the prairie women who helped settle America (the hill country women of Texas also), and because Maria often reminds me of them.

She embraces hard and physical tasks with enthusiasm and drive and with little complaint. I understand that I could no longer live on the farm by myself, as I once did, without hiring some people to do the hard work. Like wood stacking.

We order about seven cords a season, and we use almost all of them. I usually hire somebody to help us stack all this wood, especially in the hot sun. Maria was insistent on wanting to do it herself.

She worked so hard and furiously and steadily that I worried about her, very few people I know could do such hard physical lifting – she had to move the wood first into the wood shed and then stack it – all by herself with little or no rest. And she was exhausted, and her back hurt, but also exhilarated at the idea that she had done this by herself and contributed greatly to the farm.

She says she loves stacking, there is an art to it, and she doesn’t want to hire all of that stacking work out to other people.

I told her something was wrong, and she needed to slow down a bit, spread it out. I doubt if she will. Some help is arriving tomorrow, I’m glad for that.

Today, Greg Burch, our firewood person, came by with two more cords. He looked at the job Maria had done with the first two, and said “wow, I’ve been doing this for nearly 40 years and this is just about the best stacking I’ve ever seen.”

Coming from Greg, who has seen it all, that was a tremendous compliment. I told Maria about it right away. “See,” she said, eyeing the pile, “I told you.” She’s my Willa  Cather girl, she would have survived the prairie and help keep some other farm alive.