Calm Cows Grazing - Editing Kicks My Butt
While cows have lush paddocks to graze, I'm strung between a necessary few hours to work on my book daily. Editing isn't the same type of joy that original writing brings. So, it's discipline...
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Farming News - Lush all-you-can eat grazing for our herd.
Homesteading - Yet more gardening, plus our new driveway.
Writing News - Editing my last four books into better shape - for your benefit.
Fiction News - Current serial still continues.
I have daily updates happening on the Substack app, and you can read these posts there instead of your email if you want - and makes liking, commenting, and sharing very much easier…
(Gotta love it when Internet is iffy as I work to get this newsletter out to you. Delays, delays. Go get breakfast, and come back…)
Farming News
Grazing is great with all this rain this Spring. Cows have lush forage to work with. Seed heads are up to nearly waist height on me, meaning that its up to most cows bellies and calves are only visible when standing. Which makes me happy they have white and high-contrast faces. Of course, new calves (we are still waiting for more new ones) can hide in among all that grass.
I move them regularly now, not waiting for them to finish grazing everything. That would mean short grass for the rest of the summer, since grass will regrow if you let them eat no more than half. After that, the grass will slough off roots and then spend time coming back up that you can’t afford. It’s a slow lesson to learn, but one that pays for itself when you don’t have to feed hay all winter. So I now try to keep them to just a few days in each large paddock, then onto the next.
Grazing is an art based on science. And pays for itself with scenic vistas as well as cows that come up to be scratched and cute calves who can literally kick up their heels as they run together for no known reason other than the vigor of youth.
One of our first year momma’s on the on mend right now, with an unsuccessful delivery. She’s been getting twice daily checks and all the water and supplemental feed she wants. A few more days and she’ll be back with the herd again. Meanwhile, she’s able to watch and hear them from nearby. One of the benefits of small herds is smallish paddocks next to each other.
Tiny Homesteading Progress
Here’s a picture of our new gravel drive and parking pad worked up. In between the rains.
Once it did rain again, we got inches, which let the gravel get loose again. But we stayed off it except with our feet, and now get to walk next to those footprints to smooth it back out a bit before it goes back to completely solid.
Started to get the fencing in around that garden yesterday. It will have a four foot “hardware cloth” mesh that is also vinyl covered. So that should last for awhile. Right now, I only have the steel posts in, so there’s not much to see.
Grass is growing well, and wants cutting. And mowers decide to be contentious. About the time we get them fixed, more rain and more grass growth.
The cooking is doing fine in our homestead, while we still eat in the cottage. Far more to move in. Once the garden is complete for this year (although we’ll still add to it from time to time) we’ll begin on the last remaining electrical, then kitchen and storage ceiling, wall panels.
We did spare the time to take in an actual movie this last week - one of the local theaters had bargain discount prices mid-week, so we took in “The Devil Wears Prada 2”. It was a nice movie, and a good sequel - still not as good as the original, but nice to see all the actors back again, despite aging.
Your Contributions Fund This Progress
All your contributions have been welcome. Yes, we’re scratching to get the rest of this all paid for. And we’ll do this within what we have. The loan is spent, and now being repaid. Meanwhile, we have the walls to build and electrical, plumbing, plus what-not to make this home livable. All these expenses add up. And we’re working to not get into credit-card debt, but pay these as we go.
Right now, we are meeting the small stuff, but we also have to look ahead.
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Writing News
Really just having one revision kicking my but. The last vestiges of roots to my earlier social media research have now disappeared. I found out that the term “writerpreneur” is trademarked in the Philippines. Some soul- and online-searching prompted me to drop this term from the title and any mention in these books. My first book, which I was never really all that happy with, is now in it’s third/fourth pass with fix-ups and polish. It’s new title (bending to the current AI fad and disaster) is settling in to be “Sustainable Self-Publishing for Humans”. (Should be included as a beta-version at the end of this newsletter.)
Since the other books had decent titles of their own, the term “Writerpreneur” has been taken out of their titles.
This will probably be the last I write about self-publishing for quite awhile, as I’ve set the bar higher - to only write about truly evergreen methods, once I’ve tested them.
One of the books (formerly “Lost Books Anthology”) will be delegated out among the other four in this series. Because it wasn’t really needed. On a whole, the idea is to increase the value of these books and go toward higher value works as I now start upgrading the brand of my publishing.
With this last set of editing, I’ll then do a sweep through and upgrade my Substack site itself, following that with a Shopify store to enable direct sales in an upgraded backend. This also allows me to take advantage of the AI agent recommendations which are integrated with Shopify.
I’ll keep you posted here on these.
Fiction.
6th episode of Walkaway Idylls arrived:
Walkaway Idylls: Walkaway Mary 2
Our story thus far: We met John, an aspiring mystery writer, who lives in an efficiency apartment in Los Angeles and has recurring nightmares. Except for a dream about a smiling blonde woman…
And it’s about time for me to pre-schedule another raft of these, which will be more touch-up editing as I go. We’re edging toward the original Ghost Hunter story, which introduces more characters and a new world for our hero John to explore. Stay tuned. I’ll be dropping more lore material for subscribers. Best is to get the Substack app where I drop these tidbits daily.
That’s a wrap for this week. We’ve still got too much more to talk about, but a lot of this comes out on the app through Notes here. And that’s where you can DM or chat with me directly. All to keep up with my farming, writing, and homesteading progress. My journey becomes yours. Hope to see you there…
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I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
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