Weather Ups and Downs, Next Book Nearly Complete
Snow is gone, another pasture opened for the cows' grazing. Meanwhile, the tight work of revising to get a last almost-ready book published...
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Farming News - To enter news pastures, I have to check and repair perimeter fences.
Writing News - One more book pushing through finer editing to get out.
Fiction News - The Hooman Saga continues its serial. And it’s popularity grows. Long enough for a TOC page, I figure.
Expectancy Factor - Vision creates actuality - but requires attitude discipline.
Farming News
Remember this day after Thanksgiving?
And now we’re at this…
All the snow gone, and now we’ve gone through low 50’s two days ago down to low 30’s today. In a couple more days, we’ll be back into the 40’s for around a week — according to the predictors.
But I’ve found it useful to refer to that bunch as “whether forecasters”, as they will change their forecast mid-day, often several times.
I still want to get another round of bales set out, just to hedge my bets. And that will take warmer weather.
And I went ahead to change out the batteries in our old diesel tractor - they were seven years old (which explains why they wouldn’t hold a charge overnight…)
I’ve opened up yet another pasture for the cows. Since our first hard freeze has come and gone, that ground won’t be growing much until it’s routinely above 60 or so — meaning, about March 15 or so. Whatever I still have around to graze is what they’ll get until I start the hay bales in February. (Again, why I want an extra round of bales at the ready.)
Little Orphan Andy is doing well. He’s got me in his sight from the moment I come around. And I’d like to have him out with the herd. I’d like to keep everything open so he doesn’t have to be in the barn, even though it has all that feed. I only locked him in to keep him fed and fatten him up a bit. Now that he’s tubby looking, I’ll open up all the gates and see what he wants to do.
The trick is having the herd show up at the barn again and start getting into his rations…
Tiny Home News
Finances are still the hangup. It seems that unless you want to take out a mortgage, then no one wants to risk much of a loan on your own good name. Not enough to even build a cabin.
With our land in the middle of the family farm, that’s not a real option - not in this economy. And since we’re both retired, that doesn’t give us much equity for them to draw on. A problem with “skin in the game”.
Yes, I built my tiny home on wheels for under $10K, but a cabin only twice that size — needing to be on concrete with it’s own electrical and water (and fiber-optic Internet) costs nearly three times that. And yes, I can’t get that much from lenders right now. So I’m looking for a benefactor who will front me a personal loan (and yes, I’ve got something on a backburner...)
And that concept brings us back to starting a newsletter just about tiny home/tiny farm living, and linking out to a GoFundMe page. More on that later as it develops.
Writing News
As I said last week, one last book to produce of the original four, then 3 more coming out in the next few months. Found more errors in it than I thought, but hope to get it out in the next couple of days.
Meanwhile, I’ve been wrestling those last three books around in my mind - and distracting myself. Yesterday morning I found that the original Campbell text on Writing Non-Fiction was missing something like half or more of it’s pages from what I originally OCR’d. But I have that first PDF and have started the process of extracting each of those pages as images, then scanning and converting those in sequence. Drop that text into Libreoffice and format. Easy-peazy.
At that point, I’ll be able to adjust those three books into their internal sequence and length, then revamp them each into reviews/study guides of the originals. Hopefully, in a couple months or so, we’ll have those three more books published and that series will be complete.
Which would tie nicely into having time to be starting that book/newsletter on Tiny Living.
WriterpreneurOS Posts
This third lesson continues an 8-part mini-course now tells how to improve your attitude and expectations in order to succeed as a writer. It now has a TOS at its end, in case you missed any earlier lessons.
Fiction Posts
Defeating the feral wolves, Sue and Tig are now surrounded by his hunting pack. They now face the uneasy growling from wolves who consider humans to be their enemy…
This also has a TOS of all the earlier episodes. Soon, I’ll have to move those off to their own page…
If you can’t wait to see how this comes out, Here’s the book link to get your copy.
Expectancy Tips
There’s a funny thing that happens when you have real faith in your own vision. The world around you starts conforming to your persistent idea of how you’d like things to be.
This is well documented in Claude M. Bristol’s Magic of Believing.
And Nap Hill’s concept that every shut door opens a new opportunity is certainly useful. But you have to be looking for it.
Again, when you have a clear idea of what you want, and persist toward it, you’ll find inspiration at your beck and call.
But that does take a calm, cheerful, and expectant attitude. If you let life get you down, then all sorts of potentialities pass you right by while you’re sitting there and moping.
After all, it only takes pasting a smile on your face to make you have something to smile about. And I’ve found that cheering other people up tends to bring more cheerfulness into your own life.
Just an idea to consider.
Thanks for being there, opening this.
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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
PS. Again, you can always email me about anything.
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My books are found under: Robert C. Worstell, S. H. Marpel, C. C. Brower, J. R. Kruze, R. L. Saunders
Robert- I’ll have to remember to use the term “whether forecaster” next time I think of curious projections. By the way, curious when you got into farming? Some of my farmer friends have shared that it’s a lot of hard work. But meaningful.
I grew up on this family farm and movex back to take over running it about two decades ago.
Yes, there's physical labor involved, in all sorts of weather, but the rewards of daily exercise and wholesome food keeps you fit and healthy.
Like anything, it's only stress when you go about it the wrong way.