The Tax Man Cometh..

This winter has seemed so long and cold. I know it hasn't been as bad for us as some others, but it isn't supposed to be this cold ,this long . It has zapped any motivation I might have for anything ,particularly being outside. On top of it all it is TAX season.

Farms are great for taxs as long as you continue to buy equipment and spend that money. We hit the end of depreciation in 2009 on most of our big equipment and in an effort to become debt free didn't buy more. We also had a good flock of chickens and made quite a bit more than usual (didn't feel like it). Well.... for what we owe the Guberment this year we could have bought that piece of equipment that my husbands want/needs out right. Now we will pay that money to the govt. and get nothing tangible in return.Hmmm....

Well "debt free" lasted a short few months. It is a good idea but not really practical as long as you are making money. I am not ready to give up making that money yet. So I guess it is back in debt we go. I knew we would have to pay a bit ,but dang I could have hired help for a year and not had to work. So for this year I am letting the husband buy his square baler, accumulator, and grapple.(Not to mention I ran out of hay this year and I just paid $5a bale for crap hay). He is a happy man!

On a happier note (for me) I am leaving for an all girls vacation to Cancun in a couple of days. I fully expect a hay baler to be at the barn when I get home.

LIVE and LEARN

Rain and Planting

We managed to finally get the corn in the ground along with the melons and winter squash.I helped my granddaughter learn the step 5 (she has short legs) drop three method of planting the melons and squash.She did a good job, talking non-stop while she planted.We are going to plant the tomato plants and pepper plants today.We need to come up with some sort of trellis system for the tomato plants.We bought them at Lowe's. YIKES! Expensive. I will be starting my own next year!Then it will be weeding and watering.

We had a nice rain last night to water in the new seeds. It should really make the seedlings that are up jump out. It looks like the grass grew an inch overnight. Probably the weeds too.

We finally got a check yesterday. Yahoo! I can pay the bills and then try to budget for a month. I still am not really good at that. I ,unfortunately ,am not very list oriented. I make lists and then never pick them up again . I am a seat of the pants kind of gal. This doesn't work well when trying to budget money for feed,food,fuel,and supplies for a month. We came up about a week short last month.I need to come up with a system but it is hard. The checks are never the same from flock to flock, or month to month, and there is no predicting how well or bad the chickens will do.Any suggestions?? Most of the expenses are fixed ,except the power bill which depends on the weather. I think they should teach budgeting in school. The only thing I learned about money growing up was how to con my daddy out of it.I was pretty good at that.Then of course I was good at spending it too.

Planting the Garden

It sure has been hot for April. I hope we don't have another record hot dry summer.That might not be good for the first year of the Market Garden. We have most of the larger garden planted.We decided to stick with traditional crops this year.Tomatoes,beans,okra,assorted peppers,cucumbers,melons,and squash.We are only using natural fertilizer and pesticide .We bought an "In Line Seeder" boy that sure made seeding a breeze.Fill the hopper and seed the row. It has plates for different size seeds. It cuts the row,drops the seed , and covers it up. Worked like a charm.Now we have to work on a system to water the whole thing.

Taking control

Our first step in taking control is to figure out where we are going.We both decided we would like to keep the farm ,but hate being broke.We need a way of bringing in some more money with the tools we have.What do we have? Land,garden tools,lots of manure(literally).Hmmmm what can we do with that?

This year we are putting in a small market garden. People are wanting to buy food closer to home and would like to know how it was handled.We decided on a smaller garden. We did the finish tilling yesterday and plan on doing some of the planting today.I still have my small raised bed garden, already planted. If the Market Garden works out I will change my kitchen garden to small fruit production,strawberries and blueberries for subsequent years.We are sticking with the traditional crops this year. This will give us a feel for the market in our area and hopefully some input from the people who will be buying from us.

We got most of the planting finished today .We still need to put in the tomato plants and pepper plants.The garden has nice soil as it was a small horse pasture.Weeds will most likely be a problem the first year.

How I got to where I am

When we bought this farm 6 years ago I was looking for an escape from my working life. We had a small place ,15 acres and a house. It was on my husbands family farm. After his stepdad died we moved his mom on the back 5 acres. I love his mom but this was too close for me. We also had his cousin next door and his brother within rock throwing distance.
We found a hen farm about 3miles down the road for a steal. It already had a contract on it but we went ahead and put in a backup contract .It was 29 acres and 2 hen houses .There was a small double wide trailer on the farm. The other contract fell through at closing so we got the farm.The plan was to move someone into the trailer to help take care of the farm. We would continue living at the house untill we could build on the farm. How did that go? Not too well...

3 years into the "plan" we decided we had to sell the small farm . Our help didn't work out and I was spending more time at the hen farm than at home . The house sold and what little we made we sunk into fixing things at the hen houses. One month after we spent several thousands of dollars my husband lost his job. He was at the top of his profession and there are not many job openings for Fire Chief. He decided to go into business with his brother(mistake) mowing grass.They basically went broke in the second season when the fuel prices went through the roof.So here we are 6 years into the "plan" barely making ends meet and living in a broken down double wide. The biggest problem we have is we lived the "American" way. We spent what we made.When the job loss/pay decrease hit it put us in a downward spiral.We make good money with the hens, but the banks will only finance farms for a short period .That's alot of money to pay back in a short time so our payments on the farm are huge. We also only get a check monthly for 9 months.We have not yet had time to adjust for this since the job loss. We keep having to play catch up, not to mention with the bad economy we were without chickens for 3 months instead of 6weeks ,so this year we have been without a pay check since Oct. Here we are broke, living in an old trailer with a leaky roof on 29 of the most beautiful acres in the county.

Time to take hold and stop this snowball. We are happy but I can't say there is less stress. Until I get control of the finances again there is stress! We have decided to try and simplify our lives and live on less to keep the life style that makes us happy.