Today has been a ... well, challenging day. I won't go into details (except to say it's associated with moving), but it's been challenging. I'll leave it at that.
So, needing a little pick-me-up, I remembered one of my favorite church songs and dug it up on YouTube:
Yeah, a pick-me-up. It helped.
Yesterday, an interesting post came across a regional preparedness website as follows: "Order garden seeds NOW. Today, I went to my favorite garden seed sites to find out that many are not printing catalogues this year AND they are out of some of my favorite varieties, forcing me to try different ones. If you have saved some seeds you are way ahead. If not, a seed exchange may be considered in the early spring to share extras."
Curious, I did a little poking around online and came across a post called "Top 12 Garden Seed Catalogs 2020" which mentioned: "Update: Some companies, in order to save on waste and money, no longer print paper catalogs… Their catalogs are online only. While I do love curling up with a cup a tea and a stack of catalogs, consider doing the same with a tablet. I encourage companies to save all the trees they can, and besides… you get faster service with online ordering anyway!"
While this cheery note hardly bespeaks dire predictions, it is certainly a break with tradition for seed companies not to send those seductive and colorful paper catalogs in the mail each January.
I logged onto my favorite seed company's website, Victory Seeds, and all seems normal (or as normal as can be in 2020). They have catalogs available upon request. However ...
When I clicked on a random vegetable – corn – many many varieties are already sold out for 2020. Not everything, but a lot more than I expected.
Same with beans.
Other veggies (broccoli, carrots) seem well-stocked. Yet other veggies (peas, lettuce) have mixed results – some seeds are in stock, others are sold out.
Now granted, I haven't gone through every seed company or even every vegetable within a particular seed company. However certain news articles are confirming the trend of ordering early (here and here).
Remember, older seeds are still viable. They may not have as complete a germination rate as fresh seeds, but who cares?
So I think the person who posted that comment is correct. You may want to beat the rush and order garden seeds NOW for your 2021 garden. We don't know what next year will bring, and garden seeds are a relatively cheap investment.
If I neglected to say it earlier, allow me to thank everyone for their outstanding show of support for my inaugural romance novel, The Amish Newcomer.
I don't know what the final sales numbers are, but I took some interesting screenshots on its release day.
Here is my Amazon ranking at the beginning of the day:
SurvivalBlog also kindly gave me a shout-out, too.
As a result, the book got on Publisher's Weekly top seller list!
I was also asked to write a piece called "New to Amish Romance?" on Harlequin's blog.
And then -- this made me squeal -- on Tuesday I was offered a three-book contract! What's nice is two out of those three books are already written!
So I'm well on my way with this new career. I'm just so tickled to be able to take all of you along for the ride.
In response to my last post, "Hell is Bureaucracy" – in which I had something of a temper tantrum about obstacles we've experienced – a number of alarmed readers expressed concern at the timing of our homestead sale. They urged us to renege on our agreement with the buyers and stay where we are – safe and secure, away from the potentially explosive results of the election.
Don wrote the following post in response to these concerns.
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There have been a few people – not just here on Patrice's blog, but also among our family and friends – who have questioned our decision to leave our established homestead of 17 years … especially in these "consequential" times. Some have said we should call it off, that we should simply hunker down and not sell.
So let me try to explain our reasons.
First and foremost, for those who suggest we call off the sale of our homestead: We won't. We've already given our word to the buyers. I wish I didn't have to explain any more than that, but in these days of more "liberal" interpretations of what we consider to be fundamental truths, that might not be enough. For us, our word is our bond.
While we have no legal reason we can't pull out of the sale at the 11th hour, we certainly have a moral reason. The party buying our place has placed their faith in the value of our word. They have already left their home in a far-off state – leaving their own place behind them – and arrived here in Idaho with all of their belongings.
In Patrice's last post, she related how we attempted to buy an inexpensive mobile home as temporary housing, and at the last minute – the 11th hour – the seller withdrew. We were understandably upset when the seller reneged on the mobile home sale, since he broke both his promise and a contract. And that was only an inexpensive mobile home.
Now imagine how our buyers would feel – coming to a strange place with everything they own in a cramped trailer, with no family or friends nearby, hoping for safety and security of the new home they were promised – if we suddenly and capriciously changed our minds and made a bad-faith decision at the last minute not to sell?
And imagine how WE would feel if we broke our word in that manner?
But putting that aside, there are a number of other reasons why we don't regret our decision to sell our homestead, even during this awkward time.
One of the most important is economic. Despite the relative difficulty of finding a new place, it's not impossible. Just today, I did a quick Zillow scan and found at least four properties that look interesting. When we finally have cash in hand from the sale of our homestead, we'll be in an unbeatable position to jump quickly.
We still have the remnants of a mortgage on this place, but when the sale is finalized, we'll be in a position to buy (or build) our next place mortgage-free. We'll have a homestead without debt. I can't even begin to tell you how important this is to us.
Another reason for our decision to move is more visceral. We've learned many skills over the years we've lived here, and we've figured out how to do things faster, better, and cheaper. Our current homestead has been a 17-year practical master's-degree program in self-reliance, prepping, construction, farming and country living.
In other words, we've done about as much as we can on this homestead … but we believe we can do even more and even better with a cleaner slate. And while we're both 17 years older than we were, we feel perfectly confident on our abilities to raise one more barn and set up one more homestead. However, that happy fact comes with a deadline – so if we want to do it again, and better, we have to jump now.
Finally, we've "been hearing the wild geese honking in the sky and wondering where they go." Both Patrice and I come from foot-loose families, and the past 17 years here were as much about giving our kids a stable place to thrive and grow as they were about building the homestead. Now that our kids are out making their own way, we're itching to see what's on the other side of the mountain. We aim to find out.
I agree these are consequential times. But I recently wrote a couple of articles for Backwoods Home and Self-Reliance Magazines about the pioneers. These were whole families who also lived in consequential times, but headed west anyway, often against the advice of family and friends. These folks often left behind snug, secure farms to chase the wild geese. My ancestors were among them.
For these reasons and many more, we're not afraid of making the attempt. We're looking forward to it. Despite the relatively minor hiccups we've experienced so far, we're eager to move forward. As we keep saying to each other, "It's an adventure!"
We don't know what lies around the curve in the road. But we promise to keep all of you in the loop every step of the way.
See you on the road.
My goodness, we've had a chaotic couple of weeks.
To let readers know, we've sold our homestead. We close on November 20, but until our property closes, we don't have the cash in hand to purchase another home. The timing of this closing is awkward. Why? Because every rural and suburban property in the Inland Northwest has been snapped up by urban refugees desperate to get out of the cities.
We can't blame these people -- we'd do the same thing in their shoes -- but because we don't yet have cash in hand from the sale of our homestead, we've been unable to find a place to live.
As the weeks went by, this became an increasingly urgent matter. We have a household, a woodcraft business, and a farm to move -- but nowhere to move to. And winter is coming.
A couple weeks ago, Don and I took an overnight trip and looked at a few properties. We had it in our minds to purchase a little suburban fixer-upper in a small town, a place we could live in over the winter, fix up, then sell in the spring.
However we discovered two problems with this idea.
One, even fixer-uppers are being snapped up rapidly, and we still don't have the funds from the sale of our homestead to make an immediate purchase unless it was based on a contingency (closing after our home closes). Banks have made it clear they're not making loans, even temporary ones. Sellers realize they don't have to bother with something as absurd as a contingent offer when they know someone with a full-cash offer will be right behind.
And two, such a plan would tie up our money if and when an interesting homestead should suddenly come available.
On this exploratory trip, we actually viewed a home on acreage that at first didn't much interest us -- until we viewed it in person. Yowza, it was lovely. The house was "meh," but the property was beautiful. We made an immediate offer...contingent upon the closure of our home.
Sure enough, another buyer outbid us within hours (with a full-cash offer), and that was that.
Frustrated, and increasingly desperate, we had a "Screw it!" moment and made a full-cash immediate offer on a really really cheap 1970 mobile home in an RV park. The outside looked like ca-ca, but the inside was in fairly decent shape. We could be satisfied there for the winter -- especially since we could fix it up and probably sell it later for a small profit. And it would give us a base to live in while we searched for property in the spring.
This was a terrific decision, and it brought us great peace of mind. We worked with the realtor, signing paperwork and getting all the i's dotted and t's crossed. We worked with the property management company to transfer the lot rental to us. We called and reserved a storage unit in a nearby facility. In short, everything was falling into place.
Until yesterday morning.
The realtor, a very nice young man, called to tell us the seller -- who had been cagey during the entire sales process -- suddenly and capriciously withdrew his offer to sell the trailer. The realtor was very apologetic and frankly sounded weary. I gather the seller has pulled this stunt before.
This suspicion was confirmed when Don called the property management company and explained the situation. "Let me guess, it's Lot X," said the woman. When Don affirmed it was, she let loose a very frustrated four-letter expletive. She immediately apologized for her language, but Don laughed grimly and said he felt the same way.
Back to square one. We were going to be homeless in three weeks unless we could line up a place to live. We embarked on a frantic online search for a short-term rental and finally located a Craig's List posting for a pet-friendly apartment by a student who wanted to sublet his lease. I called the young man and he explained his lease was in student housing. We said we didn't mind, so he gave us the contact information for the property managers. However when I spoke to that organization, I was informed the sublet was for one bedroom in a three-bedroom apartment. In other words, Don and I would be sharing a three-bedroom apartment with two other students. Um, no.
(Though we later joked this could have a profound influence on the other students renting the apartment to suddenly have two old fuddy-duddies living with them. Can't you see it? "Young man, does your mother have any idea what you're doing?")
At last, Don got wind of a rental house in a nice neighborhood with a lease that only lasted until July, which is all we needed. We called and talked to the property manager and explained our circumstances. She promised to expedite the paperwork. We filled in the application form, then took a trip to deliver the application in person. She said everything was acceptable except we needed to verify our monthly income, which had to exceed two-and-a-half times the monthly rental amount.
No problem. We're self-employed and so our income varies, but we have documentation up the whazoo. The property management rep said the first page of our tax form should be sufficient. We came home and pulled together tax forms, affidavits from freelance sources, and other necessary proof of our monthly income.
Not good enough. The tax forms showed our net income, not our total gross income, and we were told that "Word documents" (with affidavits from our freelance sources) "can be forged" -- even though we provided contact information from these freelance sources (editors, etc.) for verification.
"Oh for Pete's sake," Don exploded. "After November 20th, we'll have enough money to buy the house outright if they were selling it." But we scrambled and found the Schedule C forms for last year's taxes, which showed our gross income. We offered a massive, massive security deposit. We even offered -- and this is really jumping the shark -- to have my elderly parents co-sign for us. C'mon, folks, throw us a bone!
"Hell is bureaucracy," Don growled at one point. But we got the additional paperwork submitted and finally -- at last -- signed the contract to rent the house.
In short, it's been a roller coaster over the last couple of weeks.
So that's our status. Now that we have a place to live temporarily, we'll start moving things into it so the new owners can take possession of our homestead by closing.
It's an adventure, we keep telling ourselves with gritted teeth. That's it, an adventure.
Well, the winter weather that was predicted for Friday certainly materialized.
Thursday evening, the sun lit up trees against thickening clouds...
Our barn cat took advantage of the last warm rays.
The willows in the yard, still in the process of losing their autumn leaves, didn't know what to think of this.
By evening, branches were laden with heavy wet snow. They looked like something out of a Hallmark card.
Darcy, however, thought it was about time snow fell for his personal amusement.
It snowed all day Friday, and Saturday morning revealed a landscape more like January than October. A bitterly cold north wind blew all day.
We're calling it our October Surprise with, I'm guessing, six or seven inches of snow.
Saturday was a good day to stay home and, er, admire the scenery.
Here's the view from the spare bedroom, located under the steep roof with low windows. Sun is shining through icicles.
But the poor bushes, still sporting their colorful autumn plumage, didn't know what hit them.
We also saw lots of downed tree branches.
This morning the temperature was 11F, considerably warmer than the 1F they were predicting a few days ago.
And this is pretty much the end of the cold snap. From here on we're warming up in line with typical October weather.
Why, you may ask, did we have such a bizarre cold snap this early in the autumn? Why, it's 2020. Nuff said.
