As the World Turns

Ever feel like you are living in a soap opera? Every day is kind of similar to the last. There might be a couple new characters on stage but nothing too jolting. Welcome to winter farming when there is not much farming to do. We occupy ourselves with daily jaunts to the Spit with our dogs. We hit a few shops every day. We’re even seeing the same group of moose on the streets as we head down the ridge to the Spit. How can we possibly know it is the same group of moose? That’s how frequently we keep seeing them! Like I said, as the world turns…

The upcoming excitement for us is that we will soon be heading for the bright lights big city (Anchorage). Although we far prefer to stay here in Homer, one of our cards with cash back rewards has just under $700 to be collected. Unfortunately we can only cash it out at a Costco (Citi/Costco rewards card).

They won’t even put the rewards back onto the card for future use. As you can guess, we are going to cancel the card and the Costco membership when we are up there. There is not much point holding onto Costco now that we are 4 to 5 hours away. It will give us a good opportunity to stock up on some supplies. It is however worth mentioning this card since it turned out to generate some decent cash back after about 8 months of use. We used it for a good chunk of the farm supply and equipment costs last year.

We don’t use credit (meaning we pay down any monthly debt as we incur it). That led us to the next replacement card which is the Citi Double Cash credit card. You get a flat 1% on all purchases and then another 1% when you pay them. Pretty attractive 2% on all purchases each month. Every little bit helps when you are bootstrapping a new business!

Final Musings

Our final thoughts are that we are looking forward to spring so we can get busy again. We have two older structures on our property. One is a good sized work shed and the other is a small cabin that was likely used when the main house was being built.

We’re going to refinish them and make any repairs that we come across. The small cabin is insulated which could come in handy as a small cold storage building for vegetables when and if our production warrants it. We also have a 100′ high tunnel in the cargo trailer to erect. And the field footprint for that tunnel will have to be plowed and prepped.

The chicken habitat (our last minute small greenhouse) has worked out incredibly well. We have had multiple feet of snow (6′ to 8′ across our property). Numerous storms with 40 to 50 mph winds. It not only protected the birds, it didn’t collapse or rip apart. The only issue is that it is out back by our experimental garden. That entails a decent trek on a trail that has to be constantly maintained. We’re thinking about building something close to the house for easier access next winter. The birds will be free ranging the rest of the time which worked out well last year.

So maybe we should just sit back and enjoy our momentary soap opera. It will all change soon enough.

Stay safe and be well!