Good afternoon from the mountain, I hope you holidays were excellent no matter which ones they were. We have been busy doing the last minute winter fixes to our farm house. Our primary bedroom is an endless source of cold right now, and we have a very hard time keeping it at 64 degrees. So far, I have thermal curtains up; I have put bubble wrap on most of the windows, but I fear the real problem may be the concrete block its self.
In the summer time, this room is an oven and the winter a cold box. We even talked about putting up construction wrap around this part of the house until winter passes and trying to reseal the outer walls and then paint them. I am going to see if I can purchase some online and have it deliver up here to the mountain. I am also planning on using a space heater along with the wood heat on the colder nights.
All this extra prep is a real drain on my expenses that are already stretched much too tight. It just can not be helped. As an example just a day before I was to go to a dinner, the water heater went out. It took more than a day of course to find what the cause of the problem. We had a replacement kit, so we were good there. For those of you who may not know what that is, it is the two coils for the water heater and the temperature control box. We used the whole kit, plus Mike drained the tank and got rid of 6 months of crud.
Now I must again make plans to go to the big city nearly an hour from here to get another kit for the wall. So there is a lot of costs involved there. Everything from the gas to get up there and back, the cost of parts and maybe other things that are needed but we have not bought. I try hard never to be without parts for everything we use on the farm and if you walked the grounds you would see many spare parts.
The other day we had a nice man come up looking for some animals to purchase and walked by a pile of cages that we no longer use, he asked about one and I gave him a price. Yesterday he picked it up and now I have half the money I need to buy the new hot water heater parts. Our junk was someone's treasure; I could not be happier about it.
There is a term for what he did, and it is called picking. We have been officially picked, what a great moment of fun, now our stuff is no longer junk, but things others need to make their farms work. Live is great like that. I do still need to scrap some of our stuff, but it will wait till spring when the price of metals comes back up.
We collect cans all year long, and when we have enough, we cash them in and buy a year worth of toilet paper, which for us is seventy-two rolls. I buy them from the store across the street that is owned by the people who own the scrap yard. It is an excellent way to deal with a need and use what you have to cover it.
In other news, I am done with a new short story and can not wait till its launch on Kindle later this week. It is called, "The Gift." I think it will go over well as it is inexpensive for the quality of the story; it is short which means you do not have to read for days and days to find out what happened.
I am still selling my Hydroponics book and plan to go in and fix a few issues and add a little bit of data to it. Don't worry if you have already bought my book you will get a free update.
Well, dear ones that is all for now, I must go and clean some dishes, write a little and do science with my boys.
May the day bring you peace and joy.
Shekhinah
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OPJXMN4
In the summer time, this room is an oven and the winter a cold box. We even talked about putting up construction wrap around this part of the house until winter passes and trying to reseal the outer walls and then paint them. I am going to see if I can purchase some online and have it deliver up here to the mountain. I am also planning on using a space heater along with the wood heat on the colder nights.
All this extra prep is a real drain on my expenses that are already stretched much too tight. It just can not be helped. As an example just a day before I was to go to a dinner, the water heater went out. It took more than a day of course to find what the cause of the problem. We had a replacement kit, so we were good there. For those of you who may not know what that is, it is the two coils for the water heater and the temperature control box. We used the whole kit, plus Mike drained the tank and got rid of 6 months of crud.
Now I must again make plans to go to the big city nearly an hour from here to get another kit for the wall. So there is a lot of costs involved there. Everything from the gas to get up there and back, the cost of parts and maybe other things that are needed but we have not bought. I try hard never to be without parts for everything we use on the farm and if you walked the grounds you would see many spare parts.
The other day we had a nice man come up looking for some animals to purchase and walked by a pile of cages that we no longer use, he asked about one and I gave him a price. Yesterday he picked it up and now I have half the money I need to buy the new hot water heater parts. Our junk was someone's treasure; I could not be happier about it.
There is a term for what he did, and it is called picking. We have been officially picked, what a great moment of fun, now our stuff is no longer junk, but things others need to make their farms work. Live is great like that. I do still need to scrap some of our stuff, but it will wait till spring when the price of metals comes back up.
We collect cans all year long, and when we have enough, we cash them in and buy a year worth of toilet paper, which for us is seventy-two rolls. I buy them from the store across the street that is owned by the people who own the scrap yard. It is an excellent way to deal with a need and use what you have to cover it.
In other news, I am done with a new short story and can not wait till its launch on Kindle later this week. It is called, "The Gift." I think it will go over well as it is inexpensive for the quality of the story; it is short which means you do not have to read for days and days to find out what happened.
I am still selling my Hydroponics book and plan to go in and fix a few issues and add a little bit of data to it. Don't worry if you have already bought my book you will get a free update.
Well, dear ones that is all for now, I must go and clean some dishes, write a little and do science with my boys.
May the day bring you peace and joy.
Shekhinah
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OPJXMN4
