I have got some Moosages lately, so I thought I would just address them here so that everyone can see what I have been up too.
The biggest reason for my absence on here has been because I am not doing much farm-wise. We still have sheep, and thus had some lambs this Spring, but not many. We still have the farm of
course, and still have long term plans, but until we get into a better position, I cannot do much right now.
I did build the ultimate Duck Coop this week, and was pretty proud of myself for how fast it went together, how well it works, and how modular it is. Then we left the door open overnight and a fox killed our ducks! Drat!
I did spend the winter writing a memoir about the last two years so it was really nice to write “THE END” on what is my second completed book. In a synopsis, is does not sound like much of a struggle, but going through it, it sure did. For those that did not know, a logging accident caused me to be in the hospital for four days which was wonderful because they found Thyroid Cancer, but after the removal of that from surgery, it showed I still had cancer. To this day I still have a tumor on my Pituitary Gland that is rather debilitating. Because of that, I could no longer log and farm, so to pay our property taxes, I had a friend come in and log my
land last year. I did not know it, but he had a gambling addiction, and ended up stealing all of my
wood, and not paying me the $12,000 he owed me for the wood that he cut.
Now in a bind financially, in order to pay for my property taxes, it took selling almost all of my sheep. To pay bills beyond property taxes, we also started selling off a lot of farming equipment. About this time, we were asked about renting our home out, so we decided to save money, as well as maybe make some, so we opted to move into my Late-Grandmother’s Tiny House, and rent our other house out. It took money to fix up just
enough to live in, but figured the rental income would help offset the cost. But just after moving in to the Tiny House, the renters changed their mind, leaving us with two houses to maintain all winter; money we did not have.
So, by this point I had lost my health, lost our finances, lost our livestock, moved out of our home, and sold our equipment…and then, when we were sure we could not endure anymore, Katie got pregnant to which she ultimately lost the baby. To make matters worse, her best friend got pregnant at the same time, and to this day, we are reminded through the child we lost by seeing our friends baby grow and reach all those child mile stones. Not that we are upset…not at all, we love children, but it is just a reminder of our loss, that is all I am saying. Then the day after finding out we lost the baby, we found out my cancer had returned. That kind of sucked.
Katie no longer works at the bank, as she really struggled with her morals there. As people know, we use cash for everything, and so for Katie to try and “sell” credit
cards and car loans to people really went against our life-long philosophy. But all that was ironic as one day her boss asked her for an email explaining if she really wanted to work there, so Katie and I talked, and then she sent him a reply. Ironically without debt, our income requirements are small, and so by NOT falling into the bank-loan-trap, she could just walk away from the bank as a job too. The look on her boss’s face was amazing; his ploy back-fired, and why Katie and I are adamant about people getting out of debt.
Instead we are starting a new Day Care Center. This
should work well for me. After exhausting all medical avenues, the only thing left is disability. But I do not want to look over my shoulder every time I need to get a task done, so we refused, and I will be the handyman about the Day Care Center. When Katie needs more help, I can help out, and when not, I can farm. Either way, she can have the adult supervision for the kids when needed, and not have to pay an employee, so it should work out well. We tried to rent, then
sell our other house, but it did not work out, so we just turned it into a really nice Day Care Center instead.
A few times this year the
local school canceled because they had a lack of bus drivers so I am considering doing that as a part-time job. I love kids, and with clean living comes a clean background, so I can be a foster parent, day care worker, or bus driver, but that is just a thought at this time. I have all summer to consider it.
One EXCITING
Permie thing that is happening though is Rock the Flock 2019. I have managed to become friends with Tim and Deanna Treadway, who were on Pioneer Quest. For those that do not know, it was a year long experiment to see if couples today could live like pioneers on the Canadian Prairie for a year, doing everything as if they were 1875 settlers. Building cabins, growing food,
cutting wood, digging
wells, and using horses. For those that have never seen it, it is on Amazon Prime for free. Anyway, they are coming to Rock the Flock this year to tell about their year of living like real pioneers.
I was really looking for something to help draw in the area Permiculurists as I have said for years that this is the Permie and Organic Capital of the World, so I wanted Rock the Flock to provide something for them. So that is super exciting. Sadly, their son, Dave Treadway was a skier and just died from a fall in British Columbia, but they have said they still want to come out to Rock the Flock on August 10th 2019. That is when we open up our farm to the community for a free concert featuring 6 bands, and raising money for Drug Rehabilitation and including Homelessness this year, as the benefit concert is really growing!
As a fun hobby, I love geology and found some significant quantities of mineralization on our farm. In fact, about 75% of the places I checked, I have found it. The really amazing part was finding Palladium!! The interesting thing was I found it on March 20th 2019, THE day Palladium peaked at $1560.40 a troy ounce! That was about $280 more than the price of gold. So, its been fun exploring, and gave me something to do this winter.
So that has been what I have been up to these last four months anyway. So nothing super exciting, but I have not been doing nothing either.
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