December 15th, 2022 Our Christmas Letter

 

December 3rd, 2022 Winter Sets In

A bit of snow on Tuesday morning.

 Winter in northwestern Oregon is a weather grab bag. In the past few weeks we have had torrential rains, sunny days, ice, snow, hail, and everything in between. The one thing we don't get it plant growth. So, as in years past, we work projects and plan for the future. This year seems different because the potential for impending doom. But so far nothing has changed and our future, though not settled, may well turn out much as we had planned it. So we are working projects.

We began remodeling the tiny home a while back. It was fairly worn out from living too long in something that was only built to last a year or so. Our son Jack is living in it and helping out, so we are having to work around him just a bit as we re-do what was a difficult job in the first place. 

Part of our Thanksgiving decor.

I built half of our tiny home Cabin in the driveway of our home in town. When we built it there was plenty of time and the space was empty. We built the walls from 2x3 lumber, not the 2x4 or 2x6 one would expect, so we had to find work arounds to put in electricity and plumbing and this is still the case. When we built the thing we intended to build a second half of the Cabin as needed, but hoped not to find the need if we could get away with living in 220 square feet of house. We built the bathroom at one end, a living space at the other, and a kitchen in the middle. But the remodeled Cabin is not going to be used for the same purpose in the end. So the remodel moves the bathroom to the middle of the thing and puts two 8x8 rooms at either ends. We are also separating the bathroom into two separate rooms, one for showering, the other for the water closet. Eventually we will separate the two sides of the Cabin behind the Farmhouse and into one two bedroom, shared bath, side and a dog kennel. When Jack moves off the Farm we will use the two bedroom as a guest house or even put it up on AirBnB. The remodel is taking up much of my time, but we are doing quite a bit more.

Leaf mountains.

Part of next year's farm planning is to use the knowledge we found last year and go BIG on planting in the Spring. We found a great thing in a relatively new farm practice called No-till, and I have described this quite a bit in the last year. So we have been bringing in about a forty yards of mixed landscape debris in every few days.

We have to move the leaves physically to clear the driveway before more can come in. Right now we have about 240 yards of leaf piled behind the Farmhouse, most of it sorted to get woody debris out.  Some of the "sticky stuff", which has some small sticks and branches in it, is piled separately in a few smaller piles. The big clean piles will compost and be used to prepare new planting beds in early Spring. The "sticky" piles will will be left along until next Summer before we screen the results and use it to top dress the beds. We have another eighty yards in the driveway right now which will be spread very think on the raw ground we will till in late Winter, Composting this raw leaf in place will protect the soils and feed the worms. We will cover every foot of farming space we can before  they run out of leaves to bring us. 

Our Tin Tree

Christmas is coming. This year we'll have four people living on the Farm, so Christmas will be a bit bigger deal than before the Farmhouse was finished. We put up some of our house lights today. There's a bigger plan for holiday lighting, but this year there's no time or money for it. Ann has decorated the house and stuffed every available space with as many little Santas, reindeers, Christmas bears, and snow-folk she has saved up for the thirty plus years we have been married. Snow villages and nutcrackers are everywhere. We also have a special little tin tree which we bought the first Christmas on the Farm when we had no space for a real Christmas tree.  The tin tree has become something of a tradition. We light it the day after Thanksgiving and let the batteries run out. It takes until New Years to run the batteries out. 

We'll go out and find a real Christmas tree next weekend. Last year we were lucky to find one because we moved into the Farmhouse late. We took what we could find on Christmas Eve last year. This year will be different.

Farming experiment update: We put thirty-six pepper plants from last season under individual covers in later September to see if we can Winter-over them into next Spring. Pepper plants are supposed to be perennial, but above the forty-fifth parallel this is debatable. Some uproot their plants and bring them inside their homes or into heated greenhouses and then put them back into their gardens. We tried such a thing last Winter but that experiment failed for a few good reasons. We might have heated the space, it got pretty cold in the greenhouse when it snowed; we might have been a bit more regular in watering, in the cold of Winter getting out to the greenhouse seems a bit of a slog. These failings of ours prompted me to thinking about the thing and, as always, I spent entirely too much time on it. We decided to try over-Wintering the plants in the ground. The soils temperatures never go below fifty-two degrees, water is always available, the soils don't get disturbed, etcetera.  So I decided to steal an idea, something I read about in a book about French market gardens, so we cut the plants down to one leaf, we cut the bottom off of some two-liter plastic bottles, and we covered the plants with the bottles before burying the whole thing in a foot or so of compost. The upshot of this is that, as far into Winter as we have come, including the snows and freezing rains, we find the plants still seem to be alive, though dormant.  We found this out by accident. Never wanting to disturb the process in place we didn't plan to open anything up. But one of our hounds (Abba Zabba) decided the bottle looked like fun and pulled one of them off. But so far the plant we did see was in pretty good shape. We put the bottle back and hope for the best.

Legal stuff update: We're still waiting out the probate stuff and hoping for the best. We talked to their lawyer the other day and she was rude, combative, and generally horrible. So we're talking to lawyers again. We don't intend to do anything differently than we have been, but we do want to exercise a bit of care so we'll spend a few dollars against the possibility of an unforeseen circumstance.  This is our home after all.  Post script: We talked to a few other lawyers in the past few days. This morning we met with one very good lawyer, who we did not hire outright because he didn't need assurances. This was the right guy. So we will sleep better knowing he is there if needed. 

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.