As of today, the cabin is just about ready for delivery. It is built, but has to be roofed and inspected so it can be loaded on the truck and delivered to my land. The mailbox has to be put in, and I am so eager in some ways to move. Other ways, I am scared. I do not like moving, and I have enjoyed my time here, but it is time to move. If not now, then by this time next year.
Why, you ask? This is where it gets tricky. In all the time I have been here, the landlords have not paid the property taxes. That means since the 2012 taxes were due, they have not been paid. The certified letter has been received from the Commissioner of State Lands that the place has been certified for tax lien sale next summer. Funny thing, the landlady is the one who legally owns the land ... in her MAIDEN name. She swears that the county won't "let her" change her name on the property, or add her husband, or change the address to which the real estate notices go. This I find incredibly ridiculous, since I know of a number of people over the years who have had their tax notices go to an address other than that of the property. I also know it is not that difficult to change your name on property tax records if you get married, since you simply have to take the marriage license in to the county and have it changed. It is not that difficult.
So it is with a bit of a heavy heart that in a few weeks, I will be packed and moving from this place. My last rent is due next Friday, when the landlords will get their written notice of the move-out.
But you're probably wondering why it is a Friday evening and I am home when I should be at work. I had a bad migraine and upset tummy this morning, so called in and took a long nap to feel better. So now I am working on the stores - both the main website and Etsy, and doing a lot of promoting of all the new things going in. I am hoping to start getting some seriously steady sales from all of this work, especially since my cheap Straight Talk phone died on me (the touch screen will no longer touch when I bring it up from sleep without turning it off and restarting it, and it gives me all kinds of errors about com.google.process.gapps not working any more. Funny thing is, I have tried all that I can find on various websites on how to fix this and restore my phone and nothing works. So I have to get a new phone, and thankfully they are pretty cheap. It will be time-consuming to move all my phone numbers over, though. You could say I am not too thrilled about that. Such is my life!
For now, however, it is back to using my TV shows on Hulu as background racket while I work on the shops. More later, including photos once the cabin is in!
Friday, February 26, 2016
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Busy times and big news
I know. It's been a LONG while since I wrote anything. I have been incredibly busy, incredibly tired, incredibly frustrated, and it all adds up to being incredibly overwhelmed. Publicly, I'm doing just great. Privately, I've been confused and saddened and scared and a whole host of things.
The Kindle Freebies group I started about a year and a half ago is still going strong, though with time constraints and all, I have handed the reins of it over to another lovely homesteading lady. I am staying there as backup admin just in case she needs help, but the majority of it is on her now.
Family deaths ... my grandmother, who many of you remember was quite ill with multiple myeloma, finally passed on January 23rd. She left this world at home, peacefully, as she wanted. Her last words were to the daughter she had spent 37 years living with or extremely near, my Aunt Laurie. Grandma touched my aunt's face, said, "Very beautiful. Very beautiful," and quietly slipped away. She was cremated with her Mrs. Claus outfit and her retirement blanket from Bi-Mart, where she worked for 23 years in the Redmond, OR area store. Those of you in that area may remember my grandmother, Betty Putnam, dressing up every year as Mrs. Claus. It does not seem like it has been three weeks already, and the other day, I got more depressing news.
My granddad, when he married the second time, well, he and Grandma Doris adopted nine kids. Five were boys and four were girls. All but one has passe in the last decade or so, and the other day, Mom texted me to tell me the last one, Harold, my favorite of them all, had suddenly passed. He had always had heart issues, so at 51, it is likely that which took him. His son, Kordell, is only in his late teens, so this is a blow to him. Poor kid. Like the other eight, Harold had issues, but he worked hard to overcome them and was easily the best of the lot.
Work is keeping me extremely busy. Not with overtime, but with that new-ish lead who micromanages and thinks we are all buddy-buddy when we are not. I am exhausted much of the time from dealing with that stress and the hubby stress. I can pretty well guarantee that within a couple of years tops, something will happen and he will bail. We have been on rocky ground for a good while now, and I find myself less and less willing to tolerate his blase attitude towards our marriage. Long story short, the marriage is falling apart and is on a slow descent to a split.
But in good news, while he will be there with me for a while until things all come to a head, I am now the proud owner of approximately 0.03 acres of land and 10 square feet or so of cabin floor space! Signed paperwork over Thursday and Friday for the land contract for 11.35 acres. Twenty-three years at 6% to allow payments to be reasonable for me if I have to go it alone. It fronts onto the main highway, so plenty of drive-by traffic when things get that far, along with a screen of trees between the open lot area and the road. It has been used as a pumpkin patch for several years, so there is plenty of good, cleared land for growing things, and as a bonus, until I get all the pumpkins grubbed out, there will be some volunteer plants and pumpkins to sell. There is a small, year-round creek that runs through the property and cuts it in half, and an extremely steep bluff that goes almost straight up from there to the rest of the property, which is all wooded. If I can figure out how someone could get up there, I would sell the timber for clearcut logging and then sell off the back acreage that is hard to get to. There has to be a way to get to it, I just do not know how at this point.
I also ordered a Derksen cabin. It is 12' x 32', and I opted to eliminate the urethane coating that is on the demo model in the dealer's lot. This brought the price down to where, even with several extra windows added for light and air movement, it is still at least $40 a month less than the demo model. I will have a tiny porch and everything will be cramped for a bit, but at least it will be home and I will own the cabin outright in three years. It will be completely off-grid. I have a generator for power when I am home, candles and oil lamps for indoor lights as needed along with all the windows, a kero heater and a small propane heater for heat, and my computer and the internet for entertainment and connecting to the world. Still will have to haul in water and use a sawdust toilet, but I have been doing that for three years plus now, so no big surprises there.
So the big news is, Bountiful Farm is moving! And with the cleared land, over time I can do all I want to do. Flowering hedges, lilacs next to the house, garden, herbs, lots of perennial flowers, orchard, vineyard, berries of all kinds ... oh, in time it will be so lovely as a home. I really want to move back home to Michigan, but if I have to be stuck here for the rest of my life, I want to live somewhere I will be reasonably happy. Enough babbling for now, as I have to work on the webstore (Homestead Crafter for those interested - jewelry, jewelry and beading supplies, some home/garden decor going up, and eventually other craft supplies. Go me.) and the Etsy store (Homestead Crafter on Etsy if you'd rather shop through there). Hugs and love, all. I think I deserve a short nap before more work.
The Kindle Freebies group I started about a year and a half ago is still going strong, though with time constraints and all, I have handed the reins of it over to another lovely homesteading lady. I am staying there as backup admin just in case she needs help, but the majority of it is on her now.
Family deaths ... my grandmother, who many of you remember was quite ill with multiple myeloma, finally passed on January 23rd. She left this world at home, peacefully, as she wanted. Her last words were to the daughter she had spent 37 years living with or extremely near, my Aunt Laurie. Grandma touched my aunt's face, said, "Very beautiful. Very beautiful," and quietly slipped away. She was cremated with her Mrs. Claus outfit and her retirement blanket from Bi-Mart, where she worked for 23 years in the Redmond, OR area store. Those of you in that area may remember my grandmother, Betty Putnam, dressing up every year as Mrs. Claus. It does not seem like it has been three weeks already, and the other day, I got more depressing news.
My granddad, when he married the second time, well, he and Grandma Doris adopted nine kids. Five were boys and four were girls. All but one has passe in the last decade or so, and the other day, Mom texted me to tell me the last one, Harold, my favorite of them all, had suddenly passed. He had always had heart issues, so at 51, it is likely that which took him. His son, Kordell, is only in his late teens, so this is a blow to him. Poor kid. Like the other eight, Harold had issues, but he worked hard to overcome them and was easily the best of the lot.
Work is keeping me extremely busy. Not with overtime, but with that new-ish lead who micromanages and thinks we are all buddy-buddy when we are not. I am exhausted much of the time from dealing with that stress and the hubby stress. I can pretty well guarantee that within a couple of years tops, something will happen and he will bail. We have been on rocky ground for a good while now, and I find myself less and less willing to tolerate his blase attitude towards our marriage. Long story short, the marriage is falling apart and is on a slow descent to a split.
But in good news, while he will be there with me for a while until things all come to a head, I am now the proud owner of approximately 0.03 acres of land and 10 square feet or so of cabin floor space! Signed paperwork over Thursday and Friday for the land contract for 11.35 acres. Twenty-three years at 6% to allow payments to be reasonable for me if I have to go it alone. It fronts onto the main highway, so plenty of drive-by traffic when things get that far, along with a screen of trees between the open lot area and the road. It has been used as a pumpkin patch for several years, so there is plenty of good, cleared land for growing things, and as a bonus, until I get all the pumpkins grubbed out, there will be some volunteer plants and pumpkins to sell. There is a small, year-round creek that runs through the property and cuts it in half, and an extremely steep bluff that goes almost straight up from there to the rest of the property, which is all wooded. If I can figure out how someone could get up there, I would sell the timber for clearcut logging and then sell off the back acreage that is hard to get to. There has to be a way to get to it, I just do not know how at this point.
I also ordered a Derksen cabin. It is 12' x 32', and I opted to eliminate the urethane coating that is on the demo model in the dealer's lot. This brought the price down to where, even with several extra windows added for light and air movement, it is still at least $40 a month less than the demo model. I will have a tiny porch and everything will be cramped for a bit, but at least it will be home and I will own the cabin outright in three years. It will be completely off-grid. I have a generator for power when I am home, candles and oil lamps for indoor lights as needed along with all the windows, a kero heater and a small propane heater for heat, and my computer and the internet for entertainment and connecting to the world. Still will have to haul in water and use a sawdust toilet, but I have been doing that for three years plus now, so no big surprises there.
So the big news is, Bountiful Farm is moving! And with the cleared land, over time I can do all I want to do. Flowering hedges, lilacs next to the house, garden, herbs, lots of perennial flowers, orchard, vineyard, berries of all kinds ... oh, in time it will be so lovely as a home. I really want to move back home to Michigan, but if I have to be stuck here for the rest of my life, I want to live somewhere I will be reasonably happy. Enough babbling for now, as I have to work on the webstore (Homestead Crafter for those interested - jewelry, jewelry and beading supplies, some home/garden decor going up, and eventually other craft supplies. Go me.) and the Etsy store (Homestead Crafter on Etsy if you'd rather shop through there). Hugs and love, all. I think I deserve a short nap before more work.
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