I am not a pioneer. I have been heard to say (often and loudly) that it would pay Mr. Wonderful to remember that he did not marry Ma Walton or any one of those insufferably plucky Ingalls girls. I was raised a city kid. I turned a spigot and water came out. I flipped a switch and lights came on. I turned a thermostat to 80 and my mother had a coronary. This is how I roll.  

Then we moved to the country. Overnight I went from a wholly reliant on public utilities type of person to someone with the equivalent of her own water treatment plant in the basement. This is to treat our well water which is hard as iron and will cut you if left untamed. We run it through our own little answer to a municipal treatment plant just to beat it into potable submission. We also heat with wood in order to stay abreast of heating bills running slightly less than the national debt. While a money saver, the wood stove and all the resultant stacking and chopping (and swearing) does have a distinct air of the pioneer about it.  

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