Helping Hands and it HOT!

Did I mention it's hot?  The next few days are going to be miserable around here, all 100F+!  My deepest thanks to 3 people, Charles, Caryn and Irene for giving me a helping hand.   A little more time to get my ducks in a row and make a serious go of this, beyond anything I've done here before.  Feeding us was the easy part compared to what I need to be doing now that I'm all on my own.  I'm a little worried about the winter months but we'll tackle that bear when he gets here.  I'm out of default danger for the next 30 days and that's a huge relief.  One less this to stress over and more time to focus on hanging on.  Now pray for rain!  Not only do we need it desperately but I have a big fencing job lined up that can't be done with concrete ground!

Okay, as some of you know, I have spent millions of hours over the last 4 years helping to build what is now a huge preppers network.  Something happened to make me seriously disappointed and disgusted with it and I am no longer participating in that whole mess.  The attitude there goes against everything I am and everything I believe in.  I'm not a prepper anyway.  I'm a homesteader.  Self sustainability thru growing and producing my own food is my entire goal.

So, anyway, someone close to me has shown me some things I hadn't noticed before.  I guess it's the old frog in a pot syndrome.  I'd been there so long, worked on it too much and didn't see the forest for the trees.  That's all over now.

So, here I am with a small farm the produces enough food for me.  It's a little late this year to grow a huge excess, but I can do a few things to improve what I've got here for later on.  I still have a few crops I seriously over planted back in the spring that will bring me some mortgage money if I can keep it all watered enough.  Just need to make it to harvest.  As the goat auction prices have bottomed out for the year, it won't take long for them to start going back up and that will be a big help too.  I can avoid the stress of being insulted by people who are trying to take advantage of me for their own profit.  I did get to throw a couple people off the farm, that made me feel a little better.  I've got 10 babies that are growing.  Their sale price will pay a few bills and feed their Mommas thru the winter.

So, let me tell you about my friends and the Thunder 5 Ranch.   met via meetup.com.  A local page set up via the monster preppers organization I worked so long on.  We've now got a pretty good group of people who get together to work on being more self sufficient and better emergency prepared.  As a matter of fact, I really need to be over there right now to help finish up the last minute projects for this weekends meet up. Thunder 5 is hosting this one.   But, after that, we will be working on a LOCAL homesteaders group, an alliance of sorts.  Ideas between the 2 of us will build something pretty unique and something we've never had in this area before.  Our goal is to network homesteaders and provide a one stop healthy food outlet along with a set up trade/barter between local homesteaders/farmers.

Okay, enough procrastinating, it's only going to get hotter the longer I sit here!

Looking Rough

The goat herd is starting to show the effects of the drought now.  The only green out there is the weeds.  Wish I could buy them some mineral, a little corn every day just isn't enough with the lack of good forage.

Well, I'm just $90 short for the farm, talked to the bank, when I miss the payment I'll go into default and have 90 days to make up the missed payment.  I'll still have to make the other payments tho.  With the coal mine coming, they won't have trouble selling the farm if I don't find a way to do this.  The local government and the churches won't help me so I don't have too many choices.  Seems like the farther down you are, the less options  you have.  Can't sell jams, jellies or bread via the farmers markets here, no large critters either.  Fresh herbs but nothing dried or dehydrated.  Need a cottage exemption to sell prepared foods and label everything.  While it's easy enough to get the exemption, just a 2 day sanitation class and a test to prove you understand it, you have to have money to do it all.  Again, hard to get much done with nothing.

My tomato plants are covered in green fruits, wish they'd hurry up and ripe up already.  It's looking like a good crop, even with it being so hot and dry.  I'm doing what I can to keep them going tho, of all the crops to lose, the tomatoes will put a huge hurt on the dinner table.  Plus, tomatoes always sell well.  If I manage to hang on here, next years garden will have produce that market sells.  Never really thought much about that before, always just grew for me to feed us all.

Did I mention it's really hot?  I wasn't looking forward to it being this hot so quick this year.  usually it's just July and part of August for the oven house.  Missing that extra month of cool weather puts a damper on rabbit production and egg production.  This is just a lousy year all around, especially for those of us without a/c.

I'll be out in the blackberries again this evening.  Without rain, the harvest is looking pretty lousy and the berries are small.  Wish the chiggers would be less.  Those nasty little ticks don't seem bothered by the lack of rain either!