November 2, 2022 Farm Business

 

Our Mini-Barn Produce Stand.

We closed the Produce Stand last week. The Summer came late, the Spring was a long and wet one. We had little luck with sprouting in our Greenhouse too.  But we somehow got plants in the ground and the Summer heat came on strong, so things went very well in the gardens. So well in fact that we found ourselves building the Produce Stand in August. The Summer went on nice and hot so we put quite a bit of our produce into the Stand and by the end of the season had sold enough to cover all of the costs for building the Produce Stand. All in all we had a very good Summer season. We were able to put Tomatoes, Peppers, Corn, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Pumpkins, Acorn Squash, Gourds, Watermelons, Cantaloups, and even some flowers, in the Stand. Quite a good year considering it all started off a bit rocky at first.  

Our main goal, following the finishing of the Farmhouse (Phase One goal) was to begin to make money on the Farm as a business.  Phase Two is building the Farm business and this is well under way now that we have found a good means for growing things to sell. But there are many parts to the Farming business, some which still need figured out. 

The first way we make money is by raising Basset Hound puppies for sale. This is something we've done for many years now, but once the house was finished we were able to do the job much better than what we could do in the tiny home. Our Pantry converts into nursery quickly and I built some enclosures which go together quickly and are effective in keeping the little monsters penned up. 

In the years since we went into business the business itself has changed. True to economic form we were making good money, so a few others have jumped into the business and customers are a bit harder to come by. We've had another way to sell our fur babies since the beginning so there really isn't any hold up in moving them on to new families, just the profit margin is a bit tighter. Still and all, it is a fun business and we are delivering another litter next week. Another solid addition to an already good year.  

We also have boarding for some of our puppies throughout the year too. We don't put a price on it since we aren't really set up to do proper dog boarding, but the families which trust us with their dogs chip something in and it all adds up. 

Puppies are a happy business.

We delivered a litter earlier in the year too, giving us the money we needed to finish the Farmhouse and buy a few new tools. And about a month ago I found a red and white female to bring into our kennel. Four month old Rocketdog Dulche DeLeche (Lilly) comes from Oklahoma, by way of Blackfoot, Idaho. A friendly breeder there is leaving the business and didn't need her, so we were fortunate to be able to bring her here. She is very pretty and fits right in with our tangle of hounds. We still need one more female to keep things going because we are taking two of our females our of service this coming year and we need three to satisfy our goals. 

We also do a brisk business in eggs from the forty hens we have kept for many years.  Since we no long have to leave the Farm to deliver eggs, because people come visit, we no longer have the high expense of labeling and buying new cartons. This means we can make a small profit on eggs and still get out eggs for free. Not a big add to the bottom line, but no longer a loss either. 

My Dog Coat Design
is simple and robust.

Despite all of the above, most of it good news this year, we are always on the lookout for other opportunities to add to our bottom line.  One thing I did last year, which is looking pretty good, is making coats for our dogs. We spent quite a bit of money on coats for our hounds in past years, most of these things simply never worked out. Most had Velcro straps and materials too light to survive the pounding a Basset Hound gives a coat, so I designed one myself and last year figured out how to build them. Our Rocketdog coat is tough, washable, and looks great. It's not cheap to make, but the way it's made means they should last for years. Our dogs line up to get their coat on once the weather starts to turn cold. So far this year I have sold four, so it is well worth doing in the context of building a Farm business. 

Between eggs, dogs, produce, and coats, we're doing all right. Not going to spend much time spending money frivolously, but we're not spending savings either. All part of our plan to stay here for the rest of our lives, so we're happy with the results.

The Farmhouse is finished.

Phase Two of our plan is to build a Farm business. One where we have people come and visit. A business where people take our goods and produce and are happy about supporting us while receiving good stuff. I'd say we are well under way.  Still to come: a cafe, more produce, and value added stuff -like canning and baked goods. All in its time.

In  other news . . .
My younger brother came to stay with us as he figures out where he wants to be in his retirement. He has a very nice camp trailer which sits next to the tiny home (which we have rented out to our son). So we have quite a bit of family here now. We also have quite a few visitors too. Last week we had nineteen visitors come for one reason or another. We've always meant to have a lot of visitors here in the plans we made. It seems funny to have all of these people here now after being alone together for the most of the past five years. It takes some getting used to, but we like it even if it is complicating.  

October 12, 2022 Produce Stand Update by Ann

Come on down to the produce stand!  It is chock-a-block full of  tomatoes, Anaheim peppers, poblano peppers, jalapenos, Acorn squash, zucchini, cucumbers, decorative gourds, bell peppers and seed potatoes. Ask about picking volumes of tomatoes for canning. 

For those that don't know: Anaheim and poblano peppers are very mild. I use Anaheim's as a substitute for bell peppers in many recipes. Poblanos make the best chili rellenos. Acorn squash are simple to prepare by cutting in half, scooping out the seeds then packing it full of butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. pop it in a 350 oven for 45 minutes to an hour till tender.

The seed potatoes will come 20 per bag for $2. There are 3 varieties available: Kennebec, which are like the russets you buy in the market. German Butter Ball which are golden fleshed and brown skinned. Pontiacs which are red skinned and white fleshed. keep them in a cool dark place till spring then plant them for your own crop next year!

September 31st, 2022 The Perfect Second Act

 I took theater appreciation in College, not all that long ago. Going to live theater wasn't really a thing for me prior to that, though I had seen a bit through all the years of searching out Christmas Plays and Kenneth Branag films. The past few weeks have seemed dramatic, but likely not to anyone who wasn't following what we have been doing here. It occurs to me that those who don't know our story, the marquis reading “A Triumph of Completing the House”, might not understand what is happening now,  in what appears not to be a one act play.

In a one act play, the whole thing usually takes place in one corner of the universe. There's something that happens there which has some of the elements of other plays and the whole conflict and resolution are found by the time the curtain comes down. I love a good black box one act play. Minimalist, it is all about make believe and believing; and I took a class, so maybe I appreciate it a bit more than some. But it appears our triumphal house building and farm getting “play”, if it is such a thing, is a bit more complex than just the one act. Now that we have a cliffhanger at the end of the first act we've got to turn the page to see what happens. But lets appreciate the first act during a short intermission.

In the first act we had a dream of victory. We are celebratory and chose the new path. We found, instead of a bright road lined with flowers, a dark thing, something menacing lurked somewhere undefined. But we were committed, in true heroic form, and we stood against the tide, jumped all obstacles. About a month ago, we emerged from the deep dark forest of fear and into the sunshine of our victory. Mid month last our house was built, permits signed off, land cleared, and crops in harvest. Curtain down, bring up the house lights. . .

It was a good story. And it might have ended right there with everybody feeling like it was fun, but maybe two bucks too expensive for the time spent watching. But wait! In comes something unexpected, something shapeless that appears to feed on those things we grew; something that might just put another end over the happy ending . . . The curtain is down so let's stretch the legs and maybe buy another drink in the lobby. Fifteen minutes later we are deep into the Second Act. If the writer was any good at all.

So here we all are. Ann and I spent years clearing, cleaning, building, and spending cash money. We're the protagonists and the world into which we inserted ourselves, and appeared to prevail over in the first act. . . Didn't. It all would have finally paid off, except it didn't. But this isn't a one act play.

Production Note: I wrote an article claiming that our farm was an “undeniable fact” around the middle of August. It should have been a tip-off that something evil this way comes. Mis- direction is key to good writing.

In the opening of the Second Act of Part One, of a three part serial, we have a nameless, formless, potentially amoral monster, who had been lying dormant, under the surface, just waiting to be found at just the right moment. We found it in the last moments of Act One. So Ann and I, happy and faithful true in our ignorance, scratched at something innocent and boom: a disaster that proposed the possibility of defeat from what was obviously a victorious end. If my thesis is correct, this whole thing is a dramatic form, we already know how it ends even if we don't know how we will get there.

With only a little faith in my premises, the conclusion is that we will win. Our Farm will continue. Our lives will improve. We will bring people what they want and give them what they need. Our original Act One goals will work themselves into being despite the challenges ahead in the Second Act. Act Three will be about looking back and stomping the last fires out. Then we can start producing Act One of Part Two, if there ever will be such a thing.

Every day we get up and work towards some long termed thing we drempt up a decade ago. A lot of this work is as simple as picking a tomato or raking some dirt. All of everything we have done is along the road to somewhere else, perhaps something better. Maybe in the current troubles at the beginning of Act Two we have somehow lost sight of the good we are doing because we are caught up in the dramatic bullshit we mostly wrote for ourselves.

The way we did things here was risky at first. We thought that right would certainly prevail. And we thought we'd get away with it. Then we thought we had gotten away with it, and that didn't prove true at the end of Act One. But we all know where this is headed. You couldn't write it any different. From Cinderella to Diehard the story always takes on a form we seem to know instinctively. Even without taking the class.

Keeping all of the above in mind, for a moment, the questions we will ask as we leave the theater are: What part did I play in this? Was I audience? Sort of the point of the production was to find an audience. Was I a minor player? No lines, but I walked in from Stage Left on cue. Was my part that of a supporting actor? Can't get it done without some real help. And what of the antagonist? Are they evil, or merely supporting a system which in it has challenges? Remember, the bad guys don't see themselves as bad or your writing comic melodrama. We simply have no answers yet.

So we'll all sit in the dark and watch as the curtain rises for the Second Act. Even the actors behind the rising curtain don't know what will happen if they are good at it. But we all know how it will end, the form of the play is undeniable.

I'm thinking you should grab that second drink during this intermission and get back to your places. We will need you and you are a help even if helping is only watching this play out.

September 29th, 2022 Where We Stand Today

 Where things stand today.  If you would like to help with this in any way. Look to the bottom of this post for more information.

I spent the hours since my last posting working on the issues found in bumping into a Medicaid debt owed by woman who died on this place back in 2007. I have read most of the laws, quite a few of the common law cases, and talked to a whole lot of people. I even paid a lawyer to make a few phone calls and discuss finding some way forward. What I found was shocking.

Apparently, and you might want to know this some day: 

• When people die in hospitals, hospice care, and nursing homes, their insurance is supposed to pay for the expenses. 
• Once the insurance hits a cap of some sort the remaining expenses are supposed to be paid from savings of the person under care. 
• And once savings are depleted Medicaid steps in and pays the bills. At this point there is a practical limit to the bills Medicaid pays, so once the limit is hit the amount paid goes negative and a debt is accrued from that point forward. 

This debt will almost certainly be collected following the death of the beneficiary.  So what we have is a situation where a person, knowingly or not, accrues debt for which any remaining value of any thing the beneficiary owns can be used to pay off the debt incurred in the care of whoever went into care and died. 

But the person needn't have died right away.  They might have survived another ten years and died in a plane crash. Any Medicare debt which went uncollected up to the plane augered into the dirt is debt which can be collected from the estate of the deceased. Because of this simple fact there are no time limits on collections, reasonable or not.  


Now any reasonable person might think this is just, and right. People need Medicaid, and in order for Medicaid to continue these outstanding debts ought to be collected if it is possible. SO, this reasonable thing, the way we pay for health care in the United States generally, has some pretty extreme downsides to it which on the surface appear reasonable in the general sense, but in the specific can be very unreasonable.  Here's a short hypothetical:

In 2020 a man is found by his neighbor laying on the floor of his kitchen and unresponsive. The neighbor calls 911 and the ambulance takes the man to the closest hospital for care. The man has COVID virus and is given every opportunity to regain consciousness through heroic effort of the Emergency Room, Intensive Care, and everyone else that might offer some sort of aid. The man has a "do not resuscitate" notice pinned to his refrigerator, but the Emergency Medical Technicians didn't see it.  The man has family who might have given other instructions, but because of the restrictions inherent in COVID care at the time, they are never given an opportunity to make any decisions. In fact, they only learn of the death through a call from someone trying to figure out how to pay for twenty-three days of keeping a respirator tube down the throat of they guy in ICU bed twenty-seven who never did regain consciousness. He left behind half a million in unpaid medical bills, a house, a car, and his lifetime of stuff. He had savings, a retirement account, and life insurance. His Last Will left everything to his only child. 

The child lost his father, sad enough, like so many did in those long dark months. But he also lost the home his parents left to him because it was worth around two-hundred thousand dollars. The savings the child would receive were taken because $200K isn't nearly enough, so another fifty-thousand in cash is gone. As is his mother's jewelry, the retirement account, and the car. In fact, all told the estate of the man could only pay for $450K of the $500K of debt.  And by the time the child found out, while settling the estate of the father through probate, interest had accrued which kept every dime of the $550K estate. If there were any remaining debt, and the child not be hopelessly poor, the child would be held to account for any unpaid arrears. Nobody told anyone, anything, which would have changed any of this. These things are not common knowledge and by the time it all came to completion the damage was done. 

In the way I have just described the entire family fortune, all of the value that might have passed from one generation to the next, which might have lifted that family to a new social level and insured care, feeding, and education of following generations, is lost. 

A million people died of COVID in the first few years, perhaps five times that number were hospitalized and survived. So many families effected, so much cost, most of it uncontrolled by anyone as emergency measures were taken, most of which were completely ineffective. The open question remaining is: how many family fortunes were made due and payable upon demand?  How many family fortunes completely knocked out? And why do we pay for health care in this way?

I can't answer this last question, it is beyond my imagination. And since I receive publicly funded health care I really have no skin in the game. But the fact remains that somehow I am now being effected by this unjust, though perfectly reasonable, system. 

None of the facts in my hypothetical scenario above apply in our individual case. We had no family members whose legacies would be denied to us. We had nobody wresting control of our loved ones from us at our expense.  Except that  those individuals who left behind a debt to Medicaid were associated with the dirt our homestead farm was eventually built we have nothing at all to do with this. We are collateral damage. The injustice, in our case, is that Medicaid came after the value in my Farm only after I had bought it and began making improvements. Medicaid never informed me, or anyone else, of the fact that they had some claim against my land; never told me, or anyone else, that there was interest being accrued on the debt levied against my Farm. In fact: were it not for me attempting to finalize the sale of my Farm we would still be ignorant of the debt or the lien. They made no attempt to collect the debt prior to our buying it, never notified anyone at all of anything at all prior to us investing our entire amount of equity in the land we call home. All in the name of keeping the Medicaid fund restocked with the cash vital to doing the good work that they do. 

Medicaid has been given extraordinary power in this. There are no limitations as to time allowed to collect the debt. While every other area of Law, except perhaps murder,  has some means of saying that the law can no longer be applied because the offending action has lingered too long. Medicaid can sit back and make no efforts at all, then swoop in when a sale of the property be considered and stop the sale and demand payment from any proceeds. The effect of this is that people who would normally enter into probate proceedings to take over Father's or Mother's assets just walk away from their rightful inheritance because they haven't got the three hundred thousand dollars to pay, while the estate isn't worth that amount. In a world of houseless persons, thousand of houses are being left to rot because of this sort of debt.

In our case we bought the land from a woman who did not know anything at all about a Medicaid debt. Through our investment she redeemed her land from tax foreclosure and contracted a sale which relieved her from being homeless. And when she died a few months later she left the valuable Contract behind as her legacy to her own family, not knowing that she would also leave the debt of her own care to them as part of the bargain.

In our case the County Tax Office knew nothing of any lien for repayment of Medicaid debt. They were simply obeying the law by letting the Woman redeem the title to the land and then letting us clear away the sadness we found there before building our home.  The County was never told that there was a lien placed upon the title to our homestead land, nor could they notify us of these facts. All the while the interest was growing, the debt increasing. Nobody told anyone of any thing.  

So we have come, in just a few short weeks, to a place where we can now say that the legally entered into Land Sales Contract is perhaps a moot point. There are two probate issues that now must be worked through which otherwise were pretty straight forward prior to learning about these debts.  The equity in cash, labor, and blood, we put into the Farm and our home may be in serious jeopardy because the means Medicaid uses to collect on these debts. It is all a reasonable injustice. 

The best case scenario for us is that we will participate in the probate proceedings to clear up who owes the money, then pay whatever amount is decided for the land we bought seven years ago for a generous amount and for which we have paid all taxes, maintained as our home, and improved steadily since day one.  Best case, we pay what we said we would on the Land Sales Contract and that will be the entire amount, but we won't be paying to those who would have had their lives improved by the money, we will pay debts which have nothing what-so-ever with us and our lives. 

Since the day we learned of this outstanding and well hidden obligation we will eventually be held to account for. We informed those responsible for the debt and they made contact with DHS to try to work things through. DHS has not called out to us despite our involvement, but I did call them. DHS is continuing to work through the issues they must, but have never made any attempt at contacting us or including our concerns. And since I am the Personal Representative for one of the deceased people involved in this it seems that I ought to be included in all of these things. 

Any money that DHS claims as theirs to collect will eventually be paid by us. You'd think they would wish to talk to us first. 

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If you know us, or even if you don't; if you have been following our story, or even if you merely heard about it and want to help, we want you to get in touch. We don't know what we need, have few resources and fewer remaining ideas as to how to move forward. We think we are defensible by lack any way to know how or do anything about this.  So please let us know about you, even if it is only moral support you can offer. There's a contact form just to the left of this page. Please use it. 

We need an army. 
 
Most helpful notes:

• I have received ask why our title insurance won't be of some help to us. We have no title insurance because of how we became involved in this property. We had no money for it at the time, but there would have been no lien to find at the time either. The first lien DHS levied did not occur until well after we entered into the Contract for purchase and months after the woman who sold me the land died of cancer. Title insurance, had we done a conventional sale, would have not been issued. 
• Other helpful notes usually ask why we weren't informed by the lawyer helping in the purchase. Again, there was no money for lawyers, and there were no levies. We were faced with helping a homeless woman to get off the streets, we had very little money but what we did have went directly into helping her to help us. Any lawyer worth a dime would have just told us to run away. But we could never have run away from a duty to this poor helpless woman as her land was taken from her to pay County property taxes. We worked for six months, six days a week, twelve hours a day, to get the money needed to redeem the land from property tax foreclosure and to get Colette Kramer out of her car and into a house. If I lose everything, getting her off the streets, so that she would not die alone in a car in Winter, is the best thing I ever did and it will have been worth it. 

September 16, 2022 Big Trouble

 

We've faced some pretty steep challenges since beginning the Creekside Project.  We've had to pay off a huge tax bill that wasn't ours, clear away eight hundred yards of debris we didn't make, learn how to build everything that exists here, and surmount all of the obstacles anyone could put in our way. We've bled real blood, shed real tears and sweated enough to fill a swimming pool. And there's been times when the Farm has actually tried to kill us dead, but it couldn't. All of this was done on a shoestring,. We didn't get much help, but took as much as was offered gratefully. 

But we've run into something that might be bigger than we can handle. Something which could kill the dream.

If you've read much of this blog, you know how we did all of this. If you haven't, the story is right there on the right side of this page. So let me dispense with the preliminary story and just get to it.

The land had belonged the woman who died in a house fire, but when she died she left behind a debt to Medicaid which was still outstanding. So when we filed a Small Estates Affidavit for the daughter who had taken control of the property, and without any knowledge of it, the Department of Human Services (DHS) had placed a lien on the Title to the land to collect this debt.

The lien was for around thirty-two thousand dollars for a debt made in 2007. It had been accruing interest since March of 2016 but it was August of 2022 when we found out about it. The new truth here is that the Title had not transferred to the woman we bought our farm from, despite Tax and Probate laws saying it would, because the transfer was held up by a lien we had no way of knowing about. The lien was placed three months after the prospective owner of the land had passed on, so her address was no longer valid and DHS had made no attempt at finding someone new to send the bill to. In fact, they didn't know she was gone.

Picture a taxi sitting a block away with its meter running for fifteen years. 

The potential debt arising in March or 2016 has since ballooned up to nearly four hundred thousand dollars because not only does the family holding the Contract on our farm owe a debt for health services paid for their mother, the woman we bought the Farm from also has a large debt stemming from her care as she slipped away. The amount of money owed far exceeds the value of the Farm, with the house, which we put every dime we had into, which was tied to the land, which we did not own.

But this would be a rotten place to end this story. A bad outcome which nobody would want to read because it would be too sad. We need to find help, though it may already be too late. The laws on paper protect heirs under certain conditions and we don't meet the criteria.