Skip to main content

One step closer!

Well, we are getting closer and closer!  Today the house in Texas went back up for sale after a bunch of repairs.  My last property manager (Bill Dunker with Nita Selby Properties) really sucked, there was damage to the house from the last renters he did not tell me about or charge them for and when I sent him the pics he sent me showing the damage I was basically ignored so anyone in Corpus Christi selling or renting a house I would really recommend against using him!  After all is said and done cost me a few grand to get it properly ready to be sold.  So once that sells that is one step closer to retirement!

Today I ordered about 150 trees and hedges for the retirement property, mostly different fruit and nut trees but also got some maple and willow trees.  About a three thousand dollar investment but it did make me pretty excited and just makes it all seem closer, we should be back in Mn in about 6 weeks to start the planting of them, have a pretty good idea in my head how I want to do it but need to actually put it on paper now!

This past couple weeks of work have made me more and more ready for retirement.  While I meet Army Standards for weight I have been told I do not "look" the part and present enough of a military appearance and have been catching alot of slack over it.  It has gotten to the point I am pist off and that is never a good thing, the stress has contributed so some health issues and making me think it is about time to hang it up.  Still about 2 years from being where I want to be financially however, plus to hit my 20 years, so guess I will have to put up with it for now.  Of course I could just lose the weight but it is the principle that I meet measurable standards and every day I want to fight it more and more.  And that is why I need to retire to the homestead, this  makes me more and more sure this is the right call at the right time.

Will end this weeks post with a rolling pin I turned last week, I was thinking how hard could turning a rolling pin be?  Well to make it symmetrical, it is a little harder then I thought!  Still pretty happy with the way it came out, I really do love the way olive wood looks when you turn it.  As always let me know any questions!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chickens and Chicken Coop, May Leave post 2

OK at this point we needed to switch gears, so far we had lost 3 of our 50 chickens from what I understand that is not a terrible amount considering they were mail order, what we quickly evident is that the small starter brooder we made was not going to last long they were growing so fast, as we did not have coop yet and meant another intermediate brooder.  Part of the scrap wood that was left with the house when we bought it was 2 boards about 10 feet long and roughly 18 inches or so high.  The chicks very much seems to like all the extra space, and they seemed to thank us by increasing their rate of growth!  It was very quickly evident that we would need to come up with a normal coop very quickly. Out intermediate brooder when we first moved them! about 23 March The previous owners did have a small coup but it would not fit our needs at all, they only had a couple chickens (4-5) compared to our 50 (well 47 now).  Their coup also had an overabundance of nesting boxes but no r
Post a Comment
Read more

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been.  It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter.  The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter.  We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have  or purchase until this year.  That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move.  I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they could not help me for the 2 AM p
Post a Comment
Read more

Cattle

I have to admit this is the part of Homesteading I am most looking forward to but also the part that has me the most nervous.  I have wanted to do something with raising cattle since probably about 2000.  At that time we were in Texas and various car salesmen I worked with had acreage and a few head so it was enough to pique my interest.  Of course in Texas you did not have to worry about sub-0 temperatures when you thought about what kind of cattle to raise so when trying to put my plan together for Minnesota, well I did not have a lot of people I could turn to for advice so it has been a lot of research!  On of the reasons I want to raise cattle is to put it bluntly, I like beef, but I do not like paying almost $5 a pound for hamburger, especially when I am not even sure what I am getting anymore! From all the research I have done I have pretty much decided to primarily raise Galloway cattle.  Galloway's are a heritage breed originally from Scotland .  I decided on this breed f
Post a Comment
Read more