Haitian Teacher Farmer turned American Lumberjack Builder

I married a “Jack of all trades”. Although I usually just call him Jimmy.

We have been living in the US for 5 months now while the family we teach for in Haiti has been settling their daughter into college.  Since returning to the US we have added a beautiful daughter to our family and Jimmy has spent time working for his brothers in oilfield services. We are really thankful for him to have had an in-between job while we are here, but let’s just say that it was not the favorite trade of this Jack. Jimmy is now finished with oilfield work and embarking on 

The Great Cabin Building Adventure.

A little history on this adventure –

Since he was a young boy one of Jimmy’s favorite things in this world has been wood. He loves to grow it, chop it down, cut it up with a chainsaw, build with it, burn it, touch it, smell it, feel it, talk about it… you get the idea. He really loves wood.

When I married Jimmy I found out that “I” owned a sawmill. At the time I didn’t even know what a sawmill was. Turns out it is this really large machine that you use to cut trees up into boards. During his single days Jimmy had worked hard to get out of debt and then while waiting for God to bring him his wife, had saved up money for a wedding. Well, it was taking longer than he had expected for his wife to come along, so Jimmy decided to “invest” the wedding money he had saved into something that looked more promising, a sawmill. Thus, when I finally came along and we got married, he informed me that the sawmill was really mine and we could sell it if I wanted. Like I would really tell my husband who LOVES wood to sell his, I mean my, sawmill.

When we realized that we would be returning from Haiti for a number of months this year, we planned for Jimmy to build us a cabin (cutting as much of his own wood as possible) at his parent’s RV Park so we would have our own place to live while we were back. Well, plans changed, as plans do, and we will not be living in a cabin before returning to Haiti. However, we are still hoping to get it mostly built and possibly be able to rent it out when we return to Haiti and have here for future use. This is a really big and somewhat scary project for us. (What if we fail?) We are pretty limited on resources, help, experience, and time, BUT it’s something Jimmy has wanted to do for a long time and a chance to learn a lot. So, we’re attempting it anyways and hoping to chronicle a little bit of the adventure here on the blog this next month.