There Will Be Hard Times

A few weeks ago, Bartlett removed a large tulip poplar at the end of our driveway. I asked Kaleb—who I've known for years and who was on the crew that day—to leave the chips on the property so I could use them as mulch around my wife's raised beds and for mushroom cultivation.

Normally, when we move material like that, we dump it as close as possible to where it will be used. But in this case, doing so would have meant driving a fully loaded dump truck over our drainfield—something none of us wanted to risk. So, the crew dumped the load at the bottom of our front yard beside the driveway.

We live on a hill. I decided to move the pile by hand—with a wheelbarrow, shovel, pitchfork, and rake. Which meant the chips were now piled at the bottom, and every wheelbarrow load would have to be hauled up.

Henry thought I was ridiculous. My wife accepted it as something entirely normal for me.

Most people would see a task like that as an exercise in futility. To me, it was an exercise in tenacity.

Choosing the Hard Way

Yes, there were easier methods. I could have used a small tractor—the drainfield would have tolerated that weight just fine. But I wanted to do it by hand.

I like taking on the kind of job that looks impossible to do alone and proving it isn't. The benefits are endless: physical exercise, patience, endurance, independence, and the quiet satisfaction that comes from finishing something difficult without shortcuts.

Hard physical work has always helped me process the hard things in life. The discipline transfers. When you chip away at a mountain of mulch a few wheelbarrow loads at a time, you're training yourself for everything else that feels too big to face.

The Work Itself

It wasn't easy. I had to carve out time in the evenings, often after everything else was done for the day. Some nights I moved chips in the dark with a headlamp. Other days I only managed four or five wheelbarrow loads before the daylight ran out.

There were times I ran the wheelbarrow up the hill, pushing myself to the limit just to feel that physical edge—and other times when it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

It took several afternoons, small chunks of progress at a time.

When I finally moved the last load and raked out the last few chips, I wanted to celebrate.

Lessons Beyond the Hill

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the mulch pile was just a smaller version of life. Most challenges don't collapse all at once—they wear you down one small load at a time. The hardest part isn't the effort itself; it's staying consistent when the work stops being interesting.

It's easy to feel motivated on the first few wheelbarrow loads. It's harder when the pile barely looks smaller and your arms already ache. But that's where endurance grows—where patience and persistence start doing their quiet work.

The truth is, most worthwhile things happen the same way: slowly, steadily, and through moments when no one's watching. The results of consistency rarely appear all at once—they reveal themselves only after a long stretch of ordinary effort.

The Same Principles Apply

That's the same reality in estate management. Not every challenge arrives as a disaster or a storm. More often, it's something quieter—someone on the team quitting unexpectedly, a vendor missing a critical deadline, or a project that refuses to stay on schedule no matter how carefully it's planned.

Sometimes it's an owner changing direction midstream after months of preparation. Sometimes it's trying to coordinate five trades that each insist their part can't wait. Other times, it's balancing endless small details—fuel deliveries, permit renewals, invoices, and maintenance schedules—while still keeping sight of the larger picture.

Those days feel a lot like standing at the bottom of a hill with a full pile of mulch and a single wheelbarrow. The only way through is steady effort—one task, one conversation, one decision at a time.

That's what tenacity looks like in this work. It's not dramatic. It's showing up after a long week to handle one more detail. It's keeping composure when the schedule falls apart. It's holding standards steady when the easier option would be to say, "good enough."

Estate management rewards the same mindset as manual labor: consistency over intensity, calm over frustration, and the understanding that big problems are just small ones stacked together.

Gratitude and Perspective

When I finally finished that mulch pile, what I felt wasn't pride so much as gratitude—gratitude for being healthy enough to do hard work, and grateful for the reminder that every challenge, no matter the scale, eventually yields to persistence.

There will always be hard times—at home, at work, and in the estates we care for. But most of them are moved the same way: one wheelbarrow load at a time.