A general update

  I’ve spent the month of May moving out of my apartment back to the family home. I’ve been living in an apartment for quite awhile now due to my jobs; one being for a hospital where I was on call 24/7. It was advantageous both career-wise and convenience to live near-by, but I haven’t worked for the hospital for many years now and my present employer isn’t as demanding with on-call.

Since I've grown sour by the direction of the tech-field in general, I’d much rather gracefully leave it all behind sooner than later and return to a more modest life raising goats and growing my own food.

The commute to work is some considerable millage, and while the recent jump in gas price isn’t very helpful, in all it will cost less for me to commute rather than to afford the rising cost of rent in the city. Additionally, I only have to commute some days out of the week while for the rest I can work remote. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to accept.

So far everything has been going well here. The chickens are near fully grown and getting ready to be moved into their final run, lost one old goat to age that was nine years old, had an alright turn out for the smaller garden of red potatoes, squash, peas, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes. I haven’t yet planted anything in the larger stretch of garden space you may have seen in previous blog posts where I cleared out some land; I’m still working on the soil, clearing it of seasonal weeds that have lain dormant and applying manure, mulch, and wood ash in a few areas.

I’m working on a list of what I’m presently calling, “A list of resources and items for alternative living” which will cover a wide range of things from books, to grain mills, phones, and educational materials for children. Some of it I’ve already known and some of it I’m just now learning about or re-learning, so I figured that it would be a good idea to compile a list that I can share with other people that are looking for recommendations. I’ll be posting it as a blog here, hopefully soon.

I found a bee swarm hanging from a tree branch the day before bee day! They hung around for a few days before a rain storm chased them away over night. I don’t know where they flew off too, but they did leave behind a few wax pieces that I found on the ground.

Since winter wheat is being harvested right now, I’ve been keeping my eye out for spillage along the road. It’s easier to spot corn or sorghum than it is to spot wheat berries, but eventually I found a pile and scooped up a bucket full. I sifted out large pieces of gravel between some chicken wire, but the finer pieces will be alright when mixed with the chicken scratch.