Well, I have already exhausted my resources as far as well-meaning advice from the indoctrinated, ignorant, and ill-informed. Bless their hearts.
How do we secure our future on the wee homestead where we intend to retire and eventually die when weather terrorism masked as global climate change is wrecking havoc on our livelihood and general disposition and ability to constantly adapt?
Well-meaning advice: More insurance.
So we pay for more insurance so that business in the skies and in the criminal cartels we’ve named governments can continue as usual? But that’s not racketeering?
How do we protect the land and our personal commitment and calling as individuals when the states and communities are taking guidance from compromised institutions attending to steering committees of agendas far, far away from where we call our home? And, by idiots, no less.
Agenda 21/2030 aims to abolish private property under the guise of ‘sustainable development’ and EVERY Administration in this country for decades has been on board with this U.N. program. Including the CURRENT ONE!
Typical reply: That’s a conspiracy theory.
Really? Because, they have a f-ing website, moron! Pardon my f-ing French. Just a bit testy these days. Don’t mind me, I’ll just pour me another sherry.
Apparently the economy is brilliant, according to the Trump-Train.
Well, I believe that, believe it or not.It’s elementary to me by looking at our own expenditures of the Crazy-Train Spring 2019.
Because health care costs are ridiculous:
$3,700 for emergency room visit, 5 stitches to Handy Hubby’s hand.His first on-the-homestead accident/injury. Ridiculous health care costs thanks to insane policies of multiple administrations. Thanks, Corporatocracy! Great job at outrageous cost.
$4,000 new roof, thanks to increased weather modification/manipulation in our area, Geoengineering being ramped up thanks to widespread approval by the Trump-train.
$200 and counting for acupuncture treatments thanks to electricity surge on new electric meter that fried my shoulder something awful over 6 months ago. The garden is neglected, the household, too, my bad. The Trump-train loves 5G tech, bring it on! Yay!
4 days lost paid work for Handy Hubby, who had to take vacation time to normalize the homestead after manufactured ‘tornado’ dropped at least 2 dozen mature trees on our property, a half-dozen right around our house. Oh, but we are so blessed, none hit me or the house or the critters. Silver lining, brilliant!
Two weeks before that was baseball-sized hail, that meant $300 on a new windshield, that had just been replaced.
And all kinds of folks and communities around our area of East Texas are spending loads of $$ on damages of their own.Markets are thriving!Thank you, sir, may we have another?!Houston is promising to be a well-spring of endless catastrophe revenues, brilliant. I bet Trump did that! Or, fairies?
That’s including exciting and constant weather whiplash all year, like a weather rollercoaster at Disney Land, resulting in no pear crop this year and a complete lost effort with many other crops in the garden that go straight to seed from the constant fluctuating temperatures. Hurray!
Common sense alert: no crops thrive in weather whiplash! (Don’t rain on my parade, bitch!)
We can no longer afford the delusions of this economy. We are downsizing. Most of our meager holdings will meet freezer camp, unfortunately, as we come to grips with survival mode.
Let’s all enjoy our eternal non-inflation in the fantasmagorical Trump economy!
We have all kinds of sayings to ward off all kinds of issues, mostly with the intention of bypassing, minimizing, and moving on. Shit happens, right? Don’t let the bastards get ya down, eh? There’s always a silver lining. Don’t sweat the small stuff. The sun will come out tomorrow. Look at the bright side. Don’t cry over spilled milk. Buck up, buttercup!
The falling trees missed the roses, and the deck and house, and all the critters, and me, PRAISE BE!
I know, I know, I’ve heard it all and I’ve probably said half of it myself. Really though, when someone’s truly feeling down, no one wants to hear another ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ slogan. A friend to cry in your tea or beer with would be loads more helpful, but sometimes that doesn’t help either.
Thanks to more experienced friends at Melody Acres Ranch the overturned nuc has been righted and it’s doing just swell.
I count my blessings, really, I do. I’m very good at that.
It’s just that, sometimes, nothing helps, at least not right away. Sometimes there’s a ‘something’s gotta give’ feeling that lodges itself for a while after a big, bad event, even if everything mostly turning out fine in the end.
The triumphs still feel too short-lived and the setbacks too many.
I remember to remember my favorite things, but the joy in them seems less renewing. This in itself is solemnifying.
Visitors are welcome, yet distracting.
I know nature is resilient and life goes on. The very morning after the ‘tornado,’ as I was assessing the damages, the birds were chirping, the critters begging for their meals, and Handy Hubby headed back home from work out-of-state to get us back into gear.
Still, despite my usual mood-shifting tricks, my gears still feel a bit stuck.
The snake getting fat on our eggs in the coop, a rabbit devouring the garden.
Oh, just let them be, I think, which is not really like me.
Sometimes that’s just the way it is.
And, this too shall pass.
The most famous place in East Texas to be demolished in the spring of weather chaos in our region is Caddo Mounds, also known as the George C. Davis site, a state historic site, at the intersection of Texas Highway 21 and U.S Route 69. Said to be Native American burial, ceremonial and residential mounds of the Caddoean Mississippi culture, it is a major archaeological discovery with what was once a popular museum and ‘living history’ gathering place for community and well beyond.
The date was 4/13/2019 during a Caddo cultural festival in the middle of the afternoon. There was one death and many injured taken to hospital by helicopter and bus.
The location is not Alto, as all sources report, it is Weeping Mary, population fewer than 50 people. The original story of the town’s founding is one of deceit, hardly uncommon, and I expect at play in this more recent sad story somewhere as well.
It goes the town was founded by freedmen after the Civil War. It ended up in the hands of a former slave named Mary, who needed to sell but did not want to sell to a white man. So the white man hired a black man to buy it for him, and when Mary discovered this she was left eternally weeping.
“Tornado”? Unnamed, undocumented by local news, Rural East Texas April 2019
Another ‘severe storm’ expected tonight. A month of ‘tornadoes’ through our region, which we chose precisely because it was: ‘North of hurricane zone and south of tornado alley’. Not anymore.
I’m still at a loss for words. But don’t worry, not for long. Let’s let the photos speak for themselves, for now. East Texas is being weather bombed, while the local news sugar coats and bypasses. Consider me PISSED OFF.
No deaths, but considerable fear, chaos, lies and destruction. Just what the perfect non-lethal globalist warfare mongers strive for the most.
Big storms here in East Texas this weekend, so much for our BBQ plans!
Hail! Mother Nature’s bombs or manufactured weather warfare?
It is mind-boggling to me that ‘climate change’ is such a contentious social/science/news issue keeping individuals polarized with mostly excessively emotional arguments and twisted statistics that further exacerbate the continued black and white thinking. We are being played!
”You can’t have an honest discussion about the climate without discussing Geoengineering.” Dane Wigington https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org
Weather modification and weather warfare are facts and there are global industries catering to those in want of these services. It’s been facts for over 70 years. Few folks alive today know truly natural weather.
Weather Modification Corporations, Universities, and Derivative Traders
These organizations may not “control” the weather yet, but they sure are trying hard, and experimenting in your skies daily.
Is there a rainbow at the end of this scary story?
I think that’s most likely a ‘number’s game’. How many will realize modern warfare is not what you were taught by TV? How many will come to recognize the ‘psychopaths next door’? What will the masses do to protect themselves, or even, to fight back?
Little is finer than a country meandering to wake your spring wellspring!
Playing in the creek is still GOOD TIMES around here!
And to celebrate spring you just might have delicious, unadulterated, natural spring water closer than you think.
A public natural spring near Frankston, East Texas
Www.findaspring.com
As I recently wrote, ‘taking the waters’ was considered a health and leisure pursuit in this area, and many others around the region. Taking the Waters
The dogwoods are particularly showy this year
The grapevines already coming in, this could be a good year for our locals wines!
The ‘flare’ is part of the trunk, not the root, and should be exposed to air, which is a very common modern myth, according to Malcolm Beck. The old adage rings true it seems: “Plant too low, it won’t grow, plant to high, it won’t die.”
I learn so much everyday just by traveling in tandem from nature to cyberspace! What miraculous times we have here to explore!
Spring foraging is lovely here, just made a huge batch of chickweed chimi-churri, YUM!
The Girl Scouts was as close as this suburban girl ever got to learning any kind of traditional skills growing up.I quit it early on, considering ‘badge earning’ to be well beneath my expanding “cool kid” facade.
But if there’s a badge worth earning, midwifery would be up there with the loftiest of them. I’m humbled and proud to say I got to experience it last night for the first time.
I bit of critical background:I’m squeamish.Considering we didn’t have children of our own and I didn’t have my own dog to take care of, let alone any pet previously to our dear Papi, at about age 42, it seems to me squeamishness pretty much comes with that territory.
It’s because I was well aware of this personal limitation that I NEVER imagined we’d have so many animals.
Chickens, for us and many other clueless homesteaders, are the Gateway Livestock.Then came ducks, turkeys, sheep, pigs, and more dogs.But we both swear we’ll never get cows or horses.(Ahem)
Considering my penchant for ‘Too Much Information’ I’ve now been acclimated to loads of poop, vomit, blood and morbid sounds of all sorts.It also got me scared, very scared, about all that can go wrong with pets and livestock.And how painful that is, and knowing this truth in advance is useless.It does not help the pain by expecting it.It does help though to be prepared.So far I give us a C+ on that when it comes to the critters.
My TMI penchant leads also to so much online and in books about serious diseases and awful complications and the myriad very dirty deeds endemic in the farm life.Talking to others more experienced will also always bring sad stories and sometimes tragic ones.
Maybe I don’t quite deserve my badge just yet, but I’m fairly certain I saved our ewe and her young lamb last night by being at the right place at the right time and doing my usual C-level work.🙂
When our ewes have lambed in the past I was not there to witness the actual event, only woke up to find the lambs delivered, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.On one occasion I found one mutilated by our young puppy and I had to kill it.I cannot speak about this moment still today a year later without tears.It was the most confusing, stressful, tragic, sorrowful day of my life.Like most in the so-called advanced economies, we grew up very sheltered from death and from the act of killing.Hubby would’ve handled it far better had he been home.I was alone and a basket case.
I was alone again this time when Buttercup gave an unusual and very loud bark audible from inside the house that clued me in that something was going down.I went to the stalls and saw mama was in labor.I was determined to watch it all and learn.
I was hoping and intending to remain a bystander to nature’s miracle.
Take a bow, Buttercup!
As it happened I could tell something was wrong right away.Then I doubted myself. Then I went back and forth a dozen times, yes, no, yes, no.
Then I concluded, no, something’s really wrong here, get help.Help?Like from who?I called two friends with more experience and they didn’t answer.I looked through our book on sheep, panicky by that time.I call Hubby.He calls his folks and searches online while I pace waiting for the bread in the oven to finish so I can go back to the stalls.
I muse, even in this stressed state: “Oh, we’re both waiting on buns in the oven.”Yes, that’s how I cope with stress, and most things really, goofy humor.
It doesn’t occur to me again that the fetus that the ewe cannot seem to push out is in fact dead until hours later.Yet, I felt it, even considered it immediately, instinctually at the very first moment I saw it. I just tried to over-ride that feeling with too much doubt and reasoning and wishful thinking.
On the phone with Hubby we decide there’s really nothing I can do alone in the dark with no experience and no equipment and no nearby vet.Then he calls back and has changed his mind.He urges me to go back out, put on some rubber gloves, and see if I can help her.
And he was right!As soon as I touched the fetus it was obviously dead and my foolishness at waiting hours to “realize” this washed over me.I strained, along with mama to get it out, knowing if not she would surely die as well.
At last it came free, followed by another smaller, but wonderfully alive little treasure!
We did it!
I’m happy to report as of this writing about 16 hours later, mama and babe are doing well, eating and drinking and getting to know each other.
Yes, I was alone, but really, it was very much a team effort. Thanks y’all!
A short break from the heavy subject of addiction to share some homestead updates lately as well as highlights and misfortunes from the last year.
Naughty, naughty!
Starting with the good news, we have two new happy thriving lambs!
They are the first of the year with two more mamas looking full and ready to follow with some of their own any day now. Or more likely, since today it is beautiful and sunny, it will be the next time it’s pouring rain and freezing cold.
Their first day roaming the land with the herd.Last winter’s model looking great
Almost there, so close, but not close enough
That was the weather once again for this rough start. Unfortunately, our permanent corral space is not yet finished.
I had to cancel a holiday trip at the very last minute and I spent a lot of time stressed and worrying. I couldn’t handle a repeat of last year, which is such a tragic story for me I haven’t yet been able to tell it publicly.
It was nearly a repeat. Hubby was at work again, and to keep it short and simple, I found one of our not-so-well-trained LGD (Livestock Guard Dog) had jumped the fence, grabbed one just after birth, jumped the fence back and was ‘guarding’ it until I found it barely breathing and injured.
Luckily there was a completely unplanned, last minute visit that cheered me up after my canceled trip.
Pappa Chop getting friendly!It’s hard to think of anything sweeter than kids and animals!
And it’s hard to think of anything worse in the garden than poison ivy and wasps!
Poison ivy in the same spot 3 times, many weeks of torture.And wasp stings 3 different times, miserable.
And my bee colonies didn’t even last the summer. This is an enormous disappointment. But I don’t give up easily and have next spring’s bees on order, locally sourced this time.
Last spring’s packages brought home from Arkansas
Additional misfortunes include the duck that was mysteriously fried by our electric pole in the front yard. And another incident that shot an electric impulse through my hand, up my arm, and landed in now nearly 2 months of stabbing shoulder pain. Then there’s the ram that’s butted me 3 times and therefore will meet his demise prematurely ASAP.
I don’t think Hubby shares this sentiment, but in my case, I’ve definitely had better years.
Here’s to better fortune in the coming year, for me, and for all y’all!
