Two People, Two Lives, Two Farms . . . .
United Into ONE Healthier, Happy, Self-Sustaining, Homesteading, Recycling, Re-purposing, Natural, Self Reliant, Self Sufficient, Off-Grid Lifestyle. Come follow our journey.
Hello, all!
We certainly hope life is treating all of you well.
I just had to stop a moment and share with you about one of the new little pullets we got this spring. She is so amazing already and we just absolutely adore her! We had been looking for some Welsummer chickens to add to our flock. We only wanted a few so we were hoping to find them locally and not have to order them. We kept close watch on the local farm stores, just missed them a time or two (sold out just before we got there), then one day Dave finally walked into the farm store at just the right moment and got us a few!
The catch was, though, that that store will only sell you a minimum of 6 chicks. You can't purchase just 2 or 3. . . . you have to buy at least 6 or more. You also can't look them over to try and "sex" them yourself or look them over up close for the best quality chicks, it is just luck of the draw (more on my opinions of that in a future post). The biggest problem with all of this that day was that they only had 5 Welsummer chicks! In order to get those 5 Welsummer chicks, Dave had to add in one more chick of some kind because the minimum purchase was 6 chicks. David told them to toss in one of the white ones and back home he came with the little box of cheepers.
Now, here we are about 4 months later, and that little white chick that we had to get so that we could get the ones that we actually wanted, has turned out to be a MONSTER pullet! She is now bigger than our 1-year old Black Jersey Giant rooster! Even better . . . . she is already LAYING EGGS! ! ! ! Her eggs are still pretty small, but they are quickly increasing in size and she is already laying EVERY day! Several times she has even laid two eggs in a day. Just amazing! She is just a bit ornery, follows Dave around like a little puppy dog, but is just as gentle and sweet as she can be.
She and that Black Jersey Giant are totally in love and already breeding. We can hardly wait to incubate some of the eggs when they get a bit bigger and see what the chicks turn out to be like. This could get very interesting.
Well, I just wanted to share this with you. She is still growing so stay tuned for future updates and pictures. Thanks for reading and have a fantastic and safe weekend!
Finding Balance . . . . . this is something David and I are having great difficulty with right now. I finally moved to David's property . . . . there are still some loose ends to tie up over at my old place (some of those ends are kind of big and really frayed, too) . . . . . we are starting from scratch to build up our home together (At the moment, we are still in the tent. It is pretty nice, but does come with its challenges). . . . . . we are trying to get all of the animals smoothly incorporated together and all new pens, housing, etc built, plus bigger ones for the ones that we combined. . . . . . . setting things up to live with absolutely no electricity (it is a bit harder and more time consuming than you would think, but very doable) . . . . . . getting garden planted . . . . . fruit trees/bushes planted . . . . . trying to earn a self-employed income and build up our business (long way to go, there) while fighting against all of those trying to stop us from having our own business, getting the daily chores done (in an off grid way) . . . . . blogging . . . . . facebooking .. . . youtubing . . . . . and the list goes on and on and on. Whew! It's exhausting! ! ! !
We want (and plan to) be on here each and every day blogging away. Right now is when we actually have more than we have ever had to write about.... we could easily, each, be making 3 interesting posts a day and still not cover it all, but finding balance and getting the time to get it all done in a day is the issue at hand. I don't see how some people do it. Oh, yes, and of course we are doing all of this through the pain (sometimes extreme pain) of arthritis and a couple of other pained issues, and I am battling increased COPD and mold poisoning.
No, I am not complaining. I am just trying to do an update post and show a clear picture of what it is like right now at Two Farms One . . . . . why we are not so active on here right now, but truly want to be. We sure are missing having the time to interact with all of you fellow bloggers and followers on here! We often wonder how some of you are doing.
We will get there, though. We have many days where we get so frustrated and feel like we are not only getting no where, but going backwards. Then we get so tired we just can't go any more and have to take a good, long sit down break . . . . look all around us and are amazed at some progress we actually have made!
One HUGE battle right now is the Johnson grass in the garden. That stuff is horrible! I grew up battling it in the garden, but was blessed not to have it where I lived the last nearly 20 years. Now I am residing with the stuff once again. You pull one sprig out and 3 more grow up in its place! You spend a day fighting it, desperate to try and save your crop, then you look around and other things around the farm got behind while you were fighting the blasted grass! Even gardening brings on the question of where to find the balance with the rest of the farm. But somehow, we will get there.
Thank you so much for listening (reading) my little vent and update. We hope all is going well with all of you, and would love to hear from you and what you are doing these days... good or bad. Just remember, even when we aren't on here for long stretches, you all are still in our good thoughts. Have a fantastic day! ! ! !
The Fence Roses are bursting into bloom this week, here at Two Farms One, and filling the air with the intoxicatingly scrumptious aroma of Old Fashioned Roses!
Sometimes being a tightwad and saving money isn't just about saving yourself money, but helping to save other people money, too. How? by sharing your coupons.
I was in the grocery store last week and ran across some cake mixes that were an unbelievable deal. (No, I don't usually ever purchase cake mixes, but these were an exceptional deal and I thought I would take advantage of the quick, sweet treat). Not only was it a great price, but if you purchased 4 of them, then you got even more of a savings, making them come out to only 50 cents each!
I got up to the register with them and asked the clerk if I had read it right, "Are these really 50 cents each if I buy 4 of them?" She said, "Yes, but you have to have a coupon to get that deal." My excitement sunk as I said, "Oh, I don't have a coupon." and instantly decided that I would just get one mix. BUT, the woman ahead of me that was still trying to organize everything back into her purse before she left excitedly said, "I have an extra coupon for them and I don't need it. Here, you can have it!" WOW! Thank you! What a sweet and wonderful gesture! So last night, thanks to this generous woman, we enjoyed some yummy strawberry pancakes made from a strawberry cake mix. Our total cost was about 70 cents!
Over the years I have shared many coupons to help other people save money. I have taken extra coupons that I didn't need and laid them on their matching product in the store. I have also found some like that that other people have done the same with, and it was a great help that was greatly appreciated. For our hobby store, I have printed off full sheets of their %off coupons, used what I needed, then passed the rest out randomly to people in the store. To see the excitement and grateful smiles on so many of them is so warming and makes the time taken for the effort more than worth it. It was when I had once forgotten to bring a coupon in with me to the hobby store and someone gave me one of theirs that I thought to do this. That one little thoughtful gesture not only saved me several dollars, but enabled me to get the other item I had come to get but didn't have quite enough to get both. Once I gave one to a young girl in the line behind me and she got super excited for the same reason, she was spending her birthday money and she could then afford both items she was wanting to get!
Just a small gesture of sharing your coupons could make a huge difference in a person's day, or maybe even their life. So the next time you are clipping/printing off coupons and you start to leave the ones you don't need, consider clipping/printing them, also, and pass them out to someone else that might benefit from them.
Thank you for reading our post.... Have a fantastic day!
NOTE: Yes, it is actually Wednesday that I am making this post. During the time I had allotted to write this post, a bad storm came up and I could not get to the computer, but wanted to get it posted this week anyway. Sorry for the delay.
After much thought, discussion and pondering, Dave and I have decided to change the name of our Pharmacy Friday segment to Farm-acy Friday. We hope this doesn't confuse anyone.
Why are we doing this? Our biggest reason is our own safety. It absolutely burns us up that we, as American's, are losing one freedom right after another, and we certainly don't want to succumb to it. We also: however, want to keep us and our blog 'safe'. Even if you have done nothing wrong, are completely within your rights and freedom of speech, to have to battle the "powers that be" if/when you get hit with 'trouble' for wording 'they' don't approve of, would take far more time, money and energy than we would care to put out. So . . . . we have decided to change the name of this segment to Farm-acy Friday.
Not only will this ensure a little more safety for us (you would not believe what that key word "pharmacy" has been drawing in to our site every time we make a post in this segment of our blog), but it will also expand this segment into a broader topic for us to talk about. We have been wanting to talk about natural and home remedies for farm life as well, but it just didn't quite fit into this segment. By changing the name to Farm-acy Friday, it will greatly broaden our abilities to talk about all aspects of and around the farm on this topic.
If you disagree at all with this or have any feedback, positive or negative, we would love to hear from you in the comments. For now, we will leave the ones we have already written as they stand, but from here forward, we will be calling this segment, Farm-acy Friday. We hope this isn't confusing to anyone. But if it is, please let us know.
Thank you for reading and have a terrific weekend!
So many people are turning to composting toilets these days, us included. It's all part of that getting back closer to Nature living and reducing our footprint on the Earth, movement. You took it out of Nature, used it/consumed it, then put it back into Nature for that natural cycle of life style of living.
For those of us that are composters, be it just an average compost pile for our garden, or to also include the composting toilet, we are very careful as to what goes into our compost pile. We would never purposely pour a bottle of chemicals into the compost, nor dump in a bottle of pills, insecticides, hormones, or any other hazardous material. How horrifying! We don't want that stuff in our soil. It would leach out into our garden veggies, into the ground and into the ground water, etc. So why eat foods with all that stuff in it?
Think about it, you just got up and took some pills this morning, you use the composting toilet all through the day, then dump the 'compost' into your compost facility. All that medication passes right through you and into the composting toilet! Well, maybe not all of it, but quite a bit of it, and some medications and vitamins have been proven to pass all the way on through without ever dissolving. Just ask someone that cleans out those port-a-potties for a living. NO, I am NOT suggesting that you stop taking your medications if you are using a composting toilet, but I am asking you to give some thought to what you are doing and possibly look into seeing if there is a natural alternative to what you are taking if you are going to compost your waste.
Then there are the foods you eat. Are you dining out at all? Are you eating pre-packaged foods? What is in that stuff?! Do you read the labels before you eat it? Are their hidden pesticides on those fruits and veggies you are eating? Would you pour pesticides into your compost pile? Then why are you eating all that stuff that has been sprayed with them? It's going to go into your composting toilet and then on into your compost pile. What is all that stuff on that label that you can't pronounce? If it goes into your body, it is then going to go into your composting toilet and then on into your compost pile. Think about it . . . . really think about it.
Changing over to a composting toilet system has truly made us look much more closely at what we eat and put into our bodies. Even though we thought we were eating a lot more healthy (and we are) when we look at our diets more closely in relation to the fact that it might be going into our compost, we realize we still have a long way to go in making our diet more healthy. We want to eat as healthy as possible, and we are striving every day to eat a much more healthy diet, but this thought has made us realize that we just aren't there yet and need to continue to make healthier choices at the store, and further reduce what we are purchasing at the store while we increase what we grow on our own to eat.
Just thought I would give you something to ponder this week. It does give you food for thought, literally. Thanks for reading my post and have a fantastic day!
We just love these Wood Ear Mushrooms! For one thing, they are so fun! They look just like a person's ear, and feel like thick jelly. As the weather begins to warm up and the spring rains begin to fall (although we are still on the dry side right now), these beautiful little jewels are beginning to pop out. Dave found these on a limb hanging out over the chicken house. He saw the dead limb and was thinking that he needed to cut it off before it fell off on top of the chicken house or pen, then saw the mushrooms. Needless to say, cutting that limb off became a much more tedious chore as we tried to make sure we saved all the mushrooms from harm.
The Ear Mushrooms you see in this picture (plus a few more from another limb) have now been dehydrated and are carefully stored away for future use. They dry very well and very tiny, yet rehydrate to nearly their original state.
Boiled up, these mushrooms make a great flavored broth for anything you need broth for. They are loaded with nutrition but are a bit tough to chew. Some people love the texture, but most just use the broth. If you dehydrate them, then process them to a powder, they can be easily sprinkled into soups and other dishes to give your food a wonderful flavor and a burst of great nutrients. Since we learned that these funny looking things growing on our trees are not only edible, but healthy as well, they have quickly become a basic staple in our diet. When we use them to boil down and make broth, we never have to worry about tossing the boiled mushrooms out. There is always a dog around, excitedly waiting to be handed one for a treat. They absolutely love them! We don't give them more than a bite, though, because I don't think mushrooms are something you are supposed to give dogs much of. But our dogs rank them right up there with steak!
Thanks for reading our post and have a fantastic day!
This is Tater, our new Barn Yard cat. Yes, I know, I already have several "pet" cats, but they have been house cats most of their lives and are not "wild wise" so cannot have the full run of the farm. But more on them in a future post.
It is interesting how, when you truly need something, it just pops up out of nowhere sometimes. David and I were sitting by the heater, taking a break with our coffee one day and started talking about how we needed a good, rodent catching cat to keep the rodents out of the feed barrels. It seems that no matter how tightly we try and keep the feed closed (critters and ours), that those varmints just keep getting into it all. We agreed that none of the cats we have could do the job because they just don't have enough fear of dogs nor the wilds. They have pretty much always lived inside and most of them are used to sleeping and playing with large dogs. Just turning any of them loose to have the run of the farm just woudn't be wise. They would never survive.
As we sat there, talking and dreaming, we said that, ideally, we need a cat that wants to hunt his/her own food, is scared of dogs and wild animals, won't bother the chickens, goats, etc. and is friendly and gentle with us .... a pretty tall order for a cat! Amazingly, about two days later, Tater showed up! We have no idea where she came from, she just showed up and started calling/meowing to us. She would come up somewhat close to us, but not close enough for us to touch her. I gave her a bit to eat and she thanked me by catching a rodent next to the feed barrel! Within a few days, we could pet her, hold her, and she now wraps herself around our legs loving on us and purring contentedly. She likes to have just a dab of "crunch" each day (a bit of dry cat food), but she much prefers to catch her own food! She spends her days hanging out at the feed barrels, in the garden, and next to the chicken pens in anticipation of catching anything rodent that tries to get near them. She eats what she catches and doesn't catch more than she can eat. She has now saved us much more $$$ in feed than what it costs to give her that dab of "crunch" she likes each day. What a true blessing, gift, and answer to a problem she is!
There are lots of things that annoy me, but one of the things that annoys me the most in life, is buying something for the sole purpose ofthrowing it away! Yep, I am talking about trash bags. It just doesn't make sense.
I have pondered ways of solving this problem for a very long time, now. One way of course, is to drastically reduce the amount of trash that you generate. Personally, I think that that is the best way. We, ourselves, are striving every day to reduce the amount of trash that we generate, but, unfortunately, we do still have a little that we have to dispose of. That brings us back to needing to acquire trash bags to dispose of that trash.
About a year ago I discovered a way to get many of those trash bags for FREE! How? I go to furniture stores and ask them for the plastic bags that are wrapped around the furniture cushions during shipping. When the furniture arrives (such as sofas and easy chairs) and is put out on the showroom floor, those bags that were wrapped around the cushions during shipping are then taken off and tossed out into the trash. When I discovered this I thought, "It just doesn't make sense for these plastic bags to be tossed out into the dumpster, empty, while I am purchasing empty plastic bags to put my trash into!"
So .... I stop into the nearest, local furniture store every chance I get and ask for the plastic bags that were wrapped around the furniture cushions during shipping. So far, they have always been glad to let me have them. Not only does using these bags save me money, but it also gives those bags one more purpose before they hit the landfill.
Have any of you ever used these bags for trash bags? Or for any other purpose, for that matter? Have any of you ever found any other types of "free" bags to use as trash bags and if so, what were they? I would love to know!
Thank you for stopping in and reading this post. Have a FANTASTIC day!
What a difference this Spring already is as compared to last Spring! Last spring we had rain ..... after rain ...... after rain. Yes, we usually do get a lot of rain in the Spring, but last year was a record breaker. If you set aside all the damaging flooding, it was great for many gardens. You ran out, planted a few things (especially for people like me that had been using the no-till method of gardening), then it rained and watered it in. What didn't flood or wash away (I think my okra ended up in the next county), grew like crazy! It was such a great year for those crops that need lots of water and it is usually too dry for them.
All that rain also greatly interfered with getting my farm (Granny Annie's Farm) moved. My driveway (and the road going to my house) stayed so wet and muddy that there was one long stretch after another (sometimes weeks) that we could not get a vehicle/trailer in to move my stuff out with. Although all that rain was great for growing stuff, it really cost us in personal possessions.
Now I am here at David's, we are starting our first garden totally together but ..... where is the rain? Even today it was supposed to rain but has now been pulled out of the forecast. The lack of rain is great in the sense that we still have mountains of my belongings outside, covered over with plastic and tarps (which the wind keeps blowing off) until we can get enough storage space to organize it all, but the garden and fruiting trees and bushes badly needs rain to produce food for us. A good balance would be fantastic right now!
I think this has been the most yo-yo weather I have seen this early in the season. Our last possible freeze date has always been about April 1st, but we had a really hard freeze just a couple of nights ago, followed by another light freeze the next night, then hot during the day. As I type this post, it is in the mid 80s! Yet another problem all of this creates is that, although some of the trees are beginning to leaf out, not all of them are and the ones that are are just starting to leaf out. This means that in the hot, dry sunshine, there is no shade for anything to escape the heat in the middle of the day! So I am finding myself dragging out every old sheet (and some not so old) and large pieces of lightweight cloth I can find to try and create some shade for all of our critters (and us). I have to wonder how much of this odd weather is created by Mother Nature going through changes . . . . and how much of it is created by man's stupidity. I have read that, even though El Nino is pretty much through, it is supposed to get worse in our area before it gets better, but then I also have to wonder how much is blamed on that to shift the blame away from man's stupidity. We may never know. I think we need to just make sure, now, that we are always prepared for ANY kind of weather, any time of the year.
Thanks for stopping by and reading our post. Have a FANTASTIC day!
Howdy, Everybody! As you have seen this week, we are back and trying extra hard to get back on track with our blog. I absolutely love doing this Pharmacy Friday segment, but lots of things can change and happen when you are away for even a short time, not to mention a long time.
There seems to be a lot of crack downs all over the net and in person (here in the USA) as to what we can and can't say .... talk about .... claim .... etc, when it comes to discussing anything in the way of natural and/or self healing. Personally, I think that is a HUGE violation of our Freedom of Speech, but there just aren't enough people fighting it, so until then, they are getting away with it.
It angers us (to put it mildly) that this is happening, yet at the same time, we do not want to end up in jail, lose what farm we have, etc, so before we continue this segment of our blog, we need to research and catch up with how we can/can't word our posts on this subject (grrrrr.....!!!!), what we can and can't discuss, etc. UNBELIEVABLE!
Basically, it looks like it is all in how you word it. (yep, another freedom lost) But I will continue this segment of our blog .... continue to bring you great posts filled with ideas and information that you can use for yourself. For crying out loud .... last week I was told by a friend that I can't even reference sites that have done scientific studies on an item and say that it was scientifically proven to have "the following" benefits. Anyone know more about that? I am not liking all of this. It is just wrong!
Once Upon a Time, people called them Handkerchiefs. Now people call them the Un-tissue, or the Reusable tissue, or the Washable tissue...... you get the idea. However you want to look at it, or whatever you want to call it, it is a tissue that will save you money, not to mention it probably contains much less chemicals than the paper type, which is much more gentle on our skin.
I found an old, white sheet at the flea market. It had some wear and a small hole on one end so it was only 50 cents! It was soft and perfect for making the homemade tissues I had been wanting to make.
I laid a purchased, paper tissue down on a large piece of paper and traced it off, adding about a half inch seam allowance on each side (all four sides - how much you add depends on how large or small you like to make your rolled hems). I then used this pattern to cut out many tissues from the old white flannel sheet. I can't remember how many I got from this one little sheet, but it was at least a couple of dozen!
With needle and thread in hand and a good crime show episode pulled up on my computer, I sat and hand stitched a rolled hem on all four sides of each tissue. (I packed my electric sewing machine away when I moved and I am going to try just hand sewing for a year). The one on the left is the paper tissue.... the one on the right is the cloth tissue.
That's it! It is finished and ready for a good, old-fashioned tear jerker movie. And oh, so soft! These cloth tissues (especially from old, softly worn sheets) don't make my nose nearly so sore as the paper ones do, like when you have a cold and are constantly wiping and blowing your nose. They also don't contain the irritating chemicals and perfumes that the paper ones do.
What about washing them? The flannel seems to wash very well. I have never had a problem with them coming clean, but I have had a little problem, now and then, with getting other types of cotton fabric completely clean, but very rarely and if you stick to light fabrics, they bleach out nicely.
These handmade, reusable tissues also fold nicely and can be put into the same dispensers as their paper look-alikes. They even fit into the travel packs just like the paper travel ones do. It is simply all in how you fold them.
May your tissues turn out beautifully, but may you also seldom need them. Happy sewing and thanks for reading this post!
Howdy, everybody! ! ! ! It has been a very long time since we have been able to make posts on this blog and interact with everyone here in Blogger land. We have missed you all soooooo much!
For a long time my computers were down..... and/or I was packing, moving ... or just in a deep depression because I was illegally losing my house and property and everyone involved were total, hateful, spiteful idiots. I also had some long periods of sick spells and exhaustion.
Dave, too, had some seriously long sick spells, has been exhausted from trying to keep up with work, his farm, moving my farm, and helping me fight all the stupid battles that came with it. Then along the way, part of his computer died, also, which made being on here more than a few minutes pretty much impossible.
We finally have one good running computer, now ... AND .... I am finally HERE! I am FINALLY, permanently, here at Dave's Farm, with most of my farm (Granny Annie's Farm) so we are finally, FINALLY, officially ... Two Farms One!
Things are pretty crazy here as we begin to sort through everything that was moved in such a hurry and build new housing/pens for any animals that may still be in temporary pens and/or have outgrown theirs, along with planting the garden, planting fruit trees and bushes, adding new varieties of livestock, and trying to get to building our little house (we are in a tent until then but it hasn't been bad at all) but we have so many things we want to share with you .... SO MANY blog posts dancing around in our heads .... that we will absolutely have to make some time to get back to posting on this blog and catching up on many of yours, now that this computer and Internet are finally working.
Again .... we are sooooo glad and excited to be back! And we truly look forward to catching up with everyone! Have a FANTASTIC DAY! ! ! ! ! !
Not sure where to even start on this one. A few months back, an elderly relative got a letter from the city stating that she had to tear her storage building down or be heavily fined. Another family member had been supposed to do some repairs on it, kept putting it off, and it finally started looking bad and the city took action. I took some time off from packing/moving, along with a cousin, and got everything in the building gone through, sorted and out of it. Cousin spent a lot more time on it than I did, even, but I was able to get quite a few days in.
For helping, I was given several boxes of things out of the building, including several boxes of some very old, unique, vintage canning jars. I had never even seen that kind before. Most of them were tall and skinny . . . some 1 1/2 pints and I think some were 3/4 pints. Some were square and some had a very pretty cut glass design in them. I was so excited and eager to can things in them this next spring and summer after Dave and I finally get to plant and work a garden together.
Since I have been in a messy move, everything has been topsy turvy, scattered, and the flooding in my house has grown drastically worse, I was told I could leave them there in her shop building (along with the other odds and ends items she gave me) until I finished moving from my house, then I could come pick them up. Sounded good to me.
Fast forward to December. She called me one day, asking if I had picked up the jars and stuff. I said no, I haven't had the time, and I don't have a key to it so I couldn't have if I had wanted to. She said that the jars and stuff were all missing, every last one of them! Someone had stolen them! Cousin, who had put the stuff in the shop building, came by to look and verify that nothing was any longer setting where she had put them. Everything else in the building seemed to be fine, but all of my stuff was gone. Well.... DANG IT!
It didn't look like the door nor lock had been tampered with, so someone had to have used a key to get in. She got someone that knew a lot about locks to check and no, no one had tampered with the lock. No sign of forced entry. At first there were two possibilities, then it was narrowed down to just one, with no doubt. This is so very heart breaking . . even more so because the likely thief is a close family member. He is strong and fully able bodied . . . could have been giving me a hand with some of this moving, or at least Dave a hand with the heavy stuff . . . but instead, while I was tied up moving, slipped over to where some of my unique valuables were temporarily stored, most of which were vintage and some even antique, tools, too. This brings up so many emotions and can't even describe the all.
Yesterday, opportunity arose to confront the thief and ask him about it. Of course he denied it, and even gave a very childish, 2-year old style story that further proved that he had been the one that did it. He just made it even more obvious that he was the one. There is zero doubt. Plus, other stuff in the shop building that belonged to his buddy . . . stuff that was worth much more (many, many times over) what my stuff was worth, was all still there, totally untouched. So, the very person that could have given us a very, helpful hand, robbed me blind while I was busy packing and moving. This hurts to my very core! This person has stolen many things from me in the past and I have been staying away from him, but I guess that wasn't enough.
So, what would someone like that do with all of those jars? We were coming up on Christmas time, he is an alcoholic and for Christmas gifts, sometimes makes up some kind of special alcoholic drink that is poured up into pretty mason jars and given for gifts. That is what I am guessing my jars were used for. Did I get any kind of a gift from this person? Nope . . . I just got robbed, by an able bodied family member, instead.
Thank you for reading my post. Have a great day! .
As some of you know, over at Anna's Farm, I tried to do a Home Loan Modification, followed all of their advice and steps, but was foreclosed on, instead. Last Tuesday morning was supposed to be the "lockout".
Besides Dave and I are having major issues with arthritis and a few other things that have slowed moving down drastically, it has also been an extremely wet year and rain and flooding has often made it impossible for long periods of time to get a trailer in to my property to load. The days leading up to last Tuesday was no exception. Fairly recently, Dave had had another hospital stay which nearly ended in having his foot amputated, meds finally somewhat cleared it up, but left him with an extremely tender, painful foot. After he has been on it for just a little while, the pain gets very extreme. Then we had a record breaking rain just before the lockout date - somewhere around 15 inches of rain in just a couple of days.
I frantically tried to get one more time extension. I begged, pleaded, reasoned, etc. but no such luck. I had requested a new date of February 1st. Everything under the sun has gotten in our way and we still have mountains of my belongings and business supplies to move. I was having no such luck. Then, 30 minutes before the close of the business day, the day before the scheduled lockout, I got a call saying that they would give me one more week. Not enough, especially since it would take more than half of that time to be able to get back into my yard from all of the flooding, but definitely a blessing because I could get a little more out. Oh, how we wish we could have gotten some help we needed with all of this! I never knew that getting people to help you while you were in crisis mode would be so hard, so impossible. We are very grateful, though, for the help we have received.
So, the next day (the day the lockout had been scheduled), I get up and get back to packing. As I often have these last days, I packed on through the night. Naturally, as night and the cold set in, I brought all of the dogs in to warm up (and to warm me up with their added body heat since I am out of firewood). Somewhere in the still and quiet of the middle of the night, someone came up to my gate and started making a whooping, hollering noise, no doubt that someone was checking to see if the dogs were still on the property. The dogs were inside with me, heard the noise and went nuts barking. It isn't likely, though, that they could have heard them inside of the house, all the way down at the front gate.
I continued to pack on until just before daylight. I finally laid down for a bit on my mattress in the front room where it was warmest (I managed to get a bit of heat going from burning some old, worn out cardboard boxes) and the dogs all snuggled in around me to take a brief nap before I got back to packing. But just as I was about to drift off to sleep, yet was still fully awake, there was a "tap, tap, tap" at the window above my head! I sat up, looked out the window and they disappeared. I looked around and the dogs were all still soundly asleep all around me. They had not heard it. I had toyed with the idea of opening up the door and letting all of them out, but we were all just too tired to get up. If there is a next time, I be will sure and do just that, though.
Obviously, someone had been watching closely for my lockout date, didn't realize I had gotten a last minute extension, and the night of what they thought was my final day, they were swooping in to pilfer through the remainder of my belongings! Yep, the vultures were already moving in! They were just checking first to see if anyone might still be here. Good grief, what heartless, immoral idiots! How do people like this live with themselves?!?!!
So, that final day is almost here, I have much, much left to move that isn't going to make it out by that date, which is breaking my heart, and you see what is going to happen. I am supposed to be able to set something up with the realtor that will be handling the sale of this house, to come back in (by appointment) to get the rest of my stuff (supposedly - she has already lied to me on this issue), but the scum bag vultures (neighbors) are planning on swooping in and stealing what they want before I can finish moving it. Ugh!
Today, I will be doing a full video of the entire contents left in the house so that if anything is missing before I can get it out, I will have proof of what was left. What a nightmare this has been!
Thank you for stopping in and thank you for your continued support! Have a nice day!
Oh, my, we have really gotten slack on our blog writing! As many of you know, we have been trying to work through all the hurdles to get my farm (Anna's) moved. We are in our last 3 days of moving and after we get settled in a bit, we hope to get back to keeping up with this blog on a much more regular basis. It will be much easier when we are finally on the same property.
For anyone that wants to catch up a little bit with what we have been up to with the moving, you can visit my Facebook page, here.
Over there, someone asked, "What will happen to your belongings that you can't get moved out before the deadline?" That is a good question!
I was told by several different entities involved that I could work something out with the realtor so that I could come back in (by appointment) to come get the rest of my belongings. I told them that nothing would be left, that the moment I pull out of here, the neighbors will break in and steal everything of value. I got anywhere from, "No they won't because we will lock it up tight." to "Oh, well." I don't believe any of it because I have already caught them in lies on the topic, and someone tried to break into my house a few days ago. What usually happens is it is all either trashed and/or auctioned off. No, not legal, but they do it and you are screwed. But the following is what I expect will happen. Please be patient a moment while I give you a bit of background.
When I first moved to this property, I thought it was odd that one neighbor was constantly coming home with trailer loads filled with what looked like someone moving in . . . entire house contents. Everyone in the area constantly commented on how many people he was moving onto his property. We never saw anyone move out. All we ever saw leave was trailer loads of scrap metal. Even more oddly, it was almost always in the middle of the night that the household content loads came in!
One day I also saw a Sheriff's car pull up to his house... not just a regular deputy, but a more official one. Then I got to noticing that this official came to the neighbor's house often in the mornings. Turns out, they are good friends and that sheriff department official was just taking his coffee breaks at the guy's house.
I also got to noticing strange smelling fires often came from that house, often after dark (burning is not allowed here after dark). I and the critters often got sick from being downwind of the fumes, especially the ones that smelled like paint or burning tires. Eventually, I finally put things together and figured out that the guy wasn't moving people in (as I was told), but bringing in entire household contents to burn off so he could sell the metal out of it. I also often wondered how he came home with so many entire house contents, sometimes several a week!
Time went on, this nasty routine continued, and I spent a lot of money on meds and a lot of sick days. But one night, really late at night, his fire got way too out of hand, started burning over into my yard and I called the fire department. Funny thing . . . two of my friends at the time, drove one of the fire trucks and they were told to stay down at the road (these people have a very long driveway) and they would call them to come up if they were needed. My friends thought that was very odd because that hadn't happened before.
The fires temporarily stopped but eventually, they started back up, stinkier than ever! I called over and told them that if they didn't put the fire out, I would call the fire department again, along with the sheriff, because what they were doing was illegal and I was tired of getting sick. We went a few rounds of this and I finally told them that the next time I was calling the EPA instead. The fires stopped, for the most part, but the neighbor, needless to say, was furious with me! And THAT, is a small part of my being constantly harassed by that neighbor. He wants me out of here so he can go back to his illegal burning and scrapping.
As I said, I often wondered how the guy got ahold of so many entire household contents. I think I finally have this figured out. Make note, this is just my thoughts and opinions from putting all the pieces together. This is not an accusation, but what I think is going on. I think that the neighbor - friends with someone high up in the Muskogee County Sheriff's department - is getting a tip every time a lockout is served on a foreclosure, a tip from someone in the Muskogee Sheriff Department. I think that as soon as that final lock out date arrives, this guy swoops in, loads it all up, unloads it in the secret dump yard behind his home, then burns it off to sell the scrap metal. I think an investigation needs to be opened up on this. Here is a brief video clip of the hidden junk yard, hidden deep in the woods. (sorry, I can't get the video dragged down to this spot, for some reason)
So, to answer the question, I think that this secret junk yard is where the plan is for my belongings to end up. I also think that this is why 2 weeks of my moving time were robbed from me, the less time I have to move, the more of my belongings will be left behind. (The court records show that the order for the lockout was granted and sent over to the Sheriff's department on November 25th, yet it was held onto and not served me until December 10th). I will be watching to see if my belongings end up here. If so, I will jump on opening up an investigation.
