Back in the Moby days, I often would just do a post that sort of rounded up the week’s activities and things going on at our little urban homestead. I got to thinking that I might do that this week and see how it feels with the rural homestead, now.
I am happy to report that I feel we are moving in the right direction with our ongoing battle with our internet provider, Hughes.net. I took two days off from the whole very annoying situation to think about what to do and how to do it. (I had a big bluegrass festival show to play on one day and I really didn’t want it to taint my enjoyment of that special event.) And today, I calmly called and managed to finally get somewhere that I feel comfortable with. It took me quite a while and many levels of representatives, but finally I was transfered to a high level manager and got somewhere. They will not release us from our contract without a cancellation fee of $300. I figured that would be their final answer. And I am not about to pay that when I only have 3 months left and it would only be $180 to let it run out. However, that did not set well with me, since we have no service and they didn’t want to send anyone out to get us back online without paying a tech fee for $135! (Which, mind you, is after we have been paying the last 20 months a monthly insurance fee against repairs/tech service of the equipment, etc.) Well, I finally got them to.. a.) send a tech for free, b.) not extend our service contract at ALL, c.) keep the older modem until the contract expires and d.) a month free service for this whole offline experience and e.) $20 a month fee reduction for 3 months (the remainder of our contract) due to the fact that they did not upgrade our obsolete modem for 18 months all the while charging us for the premium service.
I’m comfortable with those terms, and I hope that the tech will be out here within the week. I pray that all will go easily, and that we will finally have internet here back at the farm soon. It feels so tawdry to be getting my net fix at strange restaurants, hotels and parking lots. Sure, in the big city there are plenty of free wifi spots, but out here, it’s a little more of a challenge.
A few have suggested to just go ahead and get the new service, a local provider, however, it would be $170 for installation, equipment and the first month’s fees and frankly, I just can’t see spending that AND having to pay for Hughes.net at the same time! We’re a little tight right now and that just would be a bitter experience for me. I really don’t see why Hughes.net can not provide us with the same mediocre service they have provided these last 20 months for just a few more months longer if we have to pay for it. I hated their actual service, but it was tolerable. It’s been their handling and customer service that was so bad. When it works, it’s relatively tolerable. I will be very happy to change over in April. VERY HAPPY. And If we start to do a little better, we will probably get the service sooner, with some overlap. But I can’t do it right now.
We’ll let you know if all goes well…. cross your fingers and think goooooooood thoughts!!! We really miss the dang net thing. It’s been 4 weeks now.
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On Friday, I had the opportunity to perform at the Bluegrass in Super Class Festival in Perrysburg, Ohio, with my band. This is a very nice indoor festival held at the Holiday Inn’s French Quarters, a beautiful hotel. We were so pleased to be the only local band to play at the festival for the last three years running! A very nice honor indeed. And we are booked to play the next two years as well!!! We look forward to this gig with excitement and I was so ready to have a fantastic day there. It’s so nice to be able to play, and also to hang out with my band members, the fans, friends and other awesome musicians. We had a great two sets, really felt good about them. I hope they were well received and from the many folks afterwards that came and purchased CDs and did a little shake and howdy with us, they enjoyed it. It was nice to sort of forget about some of the trials of the week and just get immersed in this awesome music that I love. My buddy Bill, who is also my farrier, he came out as my guest and that was so fun to hang out with him too, during the day. He’s an awesome mandolin player and Jeff and I used to play in a band with him. We dedicated a song to him and probably embarrassed him a bit, but it was fun, we love Bill!!!
My daughters tolerate bluegrass and do like SOME of it… but that is an event they would rather pass on. Haha…. all day and evening of bluegrass is a bit much for them. Instead they got to stay home, sleep in, hang out and do whatever they wanted without MOM around. I think they enjoyed themselves! One of these years I’d love to get a hotel room there and spend the night, and I’m pretty sure they would like to come if I did that. This hotel has a really cool pool that is both inside and outside… it’s very fun to be able to swim out and touch the snow and and swim back in the wonderful heated water. They would like just hanging out in the hotel, watching movies, swimming and probably running up a food tab! It would be nice to be able to hang with them between sets and be able to stay up really late jamming with friends and not have to drive home so far!!! Maybe next year!!!
We recorded both sets and if I can make it work right, I’ll see about getting the mp3 recording up here on the blog so you all might be able to listen if you’d like! Might take me a few days but I will see what I can do! It will almost be like being there!
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I have finished my seventh rug on the loom and it looks like I am just about out of warp. I might be able to get a little sampler weaving of some various odds and ends of fabrics I have, but then, I might not get too far. I’m actually looking forward to getting them off the loom and see how they actually look! They wind up on the storage reel, under the weaving, so you really don’t get to see them until they are all done. I can’t wait to see how they look as real rugs!
I also made a BUNCH of candles, all from my garage sale rejects that I have collected over the year. I still have to add the wicks but once I do I think I will have plenty of nice big pillar candles for the year. At one point I thought about selling them, but to be honest, its too much work and not enough return to do something like that. And being that the wax is all reclaimed, it’s hard to scent it properly or to have a semi-consistant product. And I had three large totes full of junky candles and I was really surprised at how few candles it all made. I think that is something I’ll just do for our own personal use and enjoyment.
I’ll be working on feed bag totes this week and hope to have them ready for the website soon. Jessy is going to be taking some nice photographs of our various Windhaven products and I hope to be finishing up the farm website! Wouldn’t that be neat… to have the photography done, the web design finished and be able to upload all the files from OUR OWN HOME… haha…. hoping that tech gets out here soon!!! The weather is supposed to be a tad on the cold side the next week or ten days, so it will be a good time to get a lot of crafting and computing done! Don’t really have much on the social agenda this week, thank goodness, just our regular town visit on Tuesday.
Bill said he was going to try and come out and do Cody’s trim and pedicure this week if it’s not too cold. Cody could use a little toe work, he’s had a bit of a growth spurt for some reason and he’s getting a little long in the toe! I really need to get him a cart and working, wearing down those little hooves of his a bit instead of standing around with the sheep mommas getting fat off good grass hay and sweet feed. He’s such a funny pony, I swear he thinks he’s expecting too, he has figured out that the sheep mommas are getting extra rations and attention and he usually gets right in the middle of it all when we’re out there!
We had a couple days of really unseasonable weather and in fact we hit 60 degrees!!! In January! You should have seen all the farm animals! It was so fun. They were all out and frolicking, running about, jumping and rolling. The chickens were all out in the yards, scratching and sunbathing like it was June. Our friend Danny brought over 10 bales of straw from his farmer friend and we spread that around in the yards, coops and paddocks to help get the mud under control a bit. It was a nice wheat straw and it was funny to see ALL the animals nibbling and pecking at the left over wheat bits throughout the bales! The chickens really love wheat straw!
Our other new friend, Tom, he came over to see the farm and brought 5 bales of hay and 5 bales of straw with him earlier in the week. His hay is $3 a bale CHEAPER than we’ve been getting and he doesn’t mind bringing it over in his truck! How cool is that? Did I mention that we really are happy to have met Tom? He says that Gideon is doing fine, hasn’t escaped or wrecked anything and loves his new girls. He’s very happy with his new ram. That is awesome! And we should be able to pick up our little new girl in another week or two! Part of me just wants to bring her home now, but hey, we might as well give her time to cycle and see if she and Gideon might be able to do a little hokey pokey and bring us another chance at a lamb or two in the spring! Ewes cycle in 19 day periods, so she’s been there now with him seven days. By the end of the month, it will be closer to 25 or 28 days and that will hopefully be enough time. If not, that’s fine, but if so, that’s good too! Tom doesn’t mind at all, so it works for everyone. Still, I keep looking at her little cute pictures and can’t wait for her to join our flock.
The goaties have reclaimed Gideon’s old shack as their own fort and that is fine. They really like it and the sheep would rather use the sheep barn as their hangout. We spread out three big bales of straw in the sheep barn and it was so deep and comfy looking, I wanted to lay down and take a nap out there! Nice deep straw beds really do make those barns nice and comfy and they smell so good. I love the smell of straw and hay, it’s just so, so, country good. I love it. We put some in the chicken coops as well, just to try and keep everyone warm and cuddly.
Each coop has a heat lamp to help give the hens a place they can warm up in and it’s pretty funny to watch them come in after being out in the cold run for awhile. They dash over to the heat lamp to stretch and warm up for a while, then, grab a bite to eat, a sip of water and go back outside! They have pretty comfy lives here I think. They are laying pretty well, we are getting about 3 to 4 dozen eggs a day now. Most of our young pullets are still not laying, but the mature hens finally are. Everyone seems to be done with their molt and the heat lamps are giving them enough incentive to keep laying, though I don’t think they are in full production yet at all. We have 100 birds… 10 are roosters, 40 are young pullets and 50 are mature hens. I would say the hens are laying about every other day or so. Slowly building up production a bit.
We decided to wait to order our broiler chicks for another month or so, maybe six weeks. It’s still pretty cold out in the poultry barn and our brooders and we don’t want the added expense of having to run too many heat lamps just to keep the baby chicks alive. And I really don’t want them in the house too long. They are fine for a week or two, but then 50+ chicks just really makes a dusty mess. We still have about 6 or 7 birds in the freezer, so we’re doing fine. We’ll probably run out before our next batch is done, but it won’t be too long to wait. They reach maturity in about 8 to 10 weeks easily. For awhile, we were eating two birds a week, but then when everyone got sick and all, we barely ate much at all, just mostly broth and soups, simple dinners. Everyone was so sick and not really wanting big meals at all. And we still have a lot of pork left from our hog! I wouldn’t say our pantry/freezer was overflowing but we’ve got at least 2 months of meals in there easily. That feels good.
We want to do another pair of hogs soon, but I think we are going to try and just save up for feeder pigs that are already weaned. We had a good time with the little bitty piggies, but three feedings a day and the big bags of milk replacer required sort of canceled out the savings of a free piglet. The milk replacer is $45 a bag! And we had to go through 2 bags of it last time. And the feedings take time for certain. Around here, weaned feeder pigs are about $30 to $50 each. And it saves about a month off your growing time, too. We are learning, that is for sure. It was fun to feed the piglets, yes, but not for a month and three times a day, it became a bit of a chore. We laugh and say we are lazy homesteaders! We like certain chores and then there are others that we learn are a bit more of a commitment than we really want. If we can get a pair of weaned piglets for oh, $60 or $70, that will be a big savings for us in milk replacer and feeding time. There’s just no such thing as a free pig, I guess.
I went through our seed stash today, just sort of taking inventory as to what we actually have in stock. I was surprised! We have a lot! I had somewhat forgotten all those great discounted seeds I got in the fall, and when I actually sorted them all out, I really think we are very set in the seed department. That’s great! I usually buy some plants as seedlings, usually my broccoli and peppers, maybe a few tomatoes. I do have a bunch of heirloom tomato seeds, I will probably try and plant a few of them earlier and see what comes of it. I will have to order some onion and potato sets, but that’s about it. I do want to really get some good fruit in this year, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. Perhaps a few grape vines as well. Having a big stash of seeds will really save us a bunch this year. Allows me to plan for more fruit that I thought we would be able to do. That’s awesome!
And I have a ton of herb and flower seeds as well! I hope to really go nuts with flowers all over the place this year. I want to plant a lot of the seeds all over and have some nice big swatches of flowers around the homestead. We didn’t have much last year or before, and I miss that. I have both annual and perennial seeds. I am hoping that we can really dress up the courtyard this year. We have a lot of good compost from the animals and I want to really dress up the beds and add a lot of color and variety in there. This year is going to be the year of gardening here at the homestead! We spent the first two springs fixing and building up our livestock. Since we are pretty much done with that, we are ready to go big in the whole gardening plans this year! Can’t wait… I love gardening.
I don’t think I’m going to spend a whole lot of time planting stuff inside and all. Every year I try to and every year it’s a lot of work and for whatever reason, I don’t see that much yield increase from it. I just don’t think I’m very good at it. I forget to water or they get cold or whatever. Every time. I think what I might do is try starting a few outside in the screen porch, in some big #10 veggie cans and just let them do their thing out there. They will start to grow when it’s warm enough, and I won’t have to try and baby them with those little peat pots and all that jazz. Just do that “winter” gardening I’ve heard about. It’s where folks take like plastic bottles and pop bottles and make little greenhouses from them. You plant them, water, seal it up and set it out in a sunny area. The theory is that the seeds will germinate when it’s time for them. The greenhouses make it sheltered for them, and they are hardy and sturdy because they get good sunshine and all that. We’ll see. I want to do a little more reading about it all, but since we don’t have the internet here, it’s harder to do. Soon! Soon….
Well, that’s about all the news that I know… we’re hanging in there. All just a little bored at the moment, but we’re finding things to do. Lots of good naps though. And book reading! I just finished reading Katharine Hepburn’s autobiography, Me. It was interesting. Always liked her as an actress, she was one spunky chick for sure. I can’t say it was the best book I ever read, because, well, it wasn’t. But it was interesting. I did learn one important thought from it all…. that believing in yourself and sticking to your guns is a good recipe for getting what you want from life. She took a lot of chances and made mistakes, but also achieved some remarkable goals. Pretty neat.
Looking forward to a good week, and hopefully some nice sunshine, even if we have to have the cold. It’s these wet, dark, dreary winter days that really make me want to hibernate! I keep thinking… spring is about 6 or 8 weeks away… at least the beginning refrains of that glorious concert… That just makes me happy! I will be very happy on February 1st… because it means that March is but 28 days away! Around here, it’s more often that you will be seeing nice, warmer days in March than cold and nasty ones. At least you will be able to get out and rake, clean up, pick up sticks, start to clean out the barns and dress the flower and garden beds… nice slow warm ups for the harder work in April! And it’s usually not too frigid, maybe nice 40s and 50s…. I can’t wait!!!!!
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