ffj's Early Retirement (round 2)

[ffj]

It's been a very busy week for me with my various projects going full swing. I like to work, but I like to work on fun and meaningful endeavors, and when I hit that sweet spot of staying busy while doing something productive I find that I am fairly happy.

My Amish buddy hasn't called me for work which has been nice as I've had many things to do but I get the impression my days are numbered with him regardless. I am not a particularly religious person and recently he hired another guy that is as religious as him, and I'm pretty sure he's my more acceptable replacement. This last job we did together became a bit uncomfortable for me because every conversation at every break and lunch centered around Jesus, and I just don't have a lot to contribute. I felt a bit excluded to be honest as I just don't believe what they do but we'll see where the situation lands. At one point they were talking about how they wouldn't use the brand Diablo saw blades anymore because diablo means devil. How do you respond to that? I just sat there in silence eating my sandwich.

On a more positive note my bridge is finished. Now I can ride my ATV over the creek and access my woods without having to take a long circuitous route.





My mushroom business continues to show signs of success. The grow room is complete with some minor tweaking needed, I have a pretty solid inventory of stock that I continue to make each day and a plan to continually have product to sell and everything is just working for now. If my fruiting chamber works as designed I'll be looking great coming into the Farmers Market. Fingers crossed. I've already had enquiries about buying my mushrooms so that is a good sign. I just need to make them which will be happening soon.

[ffj]

After several years without them, I decided to get back into the chicken game.



These girls were expensive at $4.53 a piece. I purchased 6 Golden Comets and 6 Wyandotte's. Everything has gotten so much more expensive but fortunately other than having to buy the actual chicks and a bag of feed I already had all of the equipment to raise them. I will have to build them a coop at some point but I have enough materials on hand I won't have to spend any money on that, or at least not much.

I'm going to be planting corn and sunflowers as well as greens to help feed these hens to offset grain costs, as well as looking for alternative feed stock. If one were to just feed them grains then it would become quite expensive to feed just these 12 birds and I'm not so sure it would be worth it.



My girl came to visit once again looking quite healthy. One of my neighbors wants to air tag her and replace the red cord with a blaze orange collar which would be cool to be able to track her movements. But she looks good at the moment.





I've made some serious headway on my fallen oak tree. What a job this has been and quite frankly a depressing one as I want the tree back, not the massive amount of firewood it has produced.



What I have left is the main trunk system and I'll be calling some local sawmills to see if they are interested in buying it. This is a white oak which is very important for the bourbon barrel industry. They can only use white oak for their barrels and because they have used so many trees there is an initiative to grow more white oaks. Maybe this will translate into some money for me and the removal of this huge tree. I reckon I have about $600 worth of firewood cut up already from the crown.





As discussed above, my Amish builder has not called me back to work. Now we've spoken and remain good friends but I've been replaced for the most part. But what is the old saying: When one door closes another will open up?

My electrical inspector after two years showed up for the final inspection on our new home, Ha! In his defense I just never called him back and he's a busy man so it got overlooked. But anyway, while conversing with him we hit it off pretty good and he ended up offering me a job to help maintain his rental properties at a decent hourly rate. I like this guy so I may just dip my toes in the water and see if this is something that will work for me. The important thing he said to me is that I could make my own hours and pick and choose which jobs to complete. And it's close by so limited travel. So we'll see.

[GandK]

Is it weird to say my favorite part of your journal is the deer?

[ffj]

Quite the contrary stranger, good to hear from you.

She has made friends with a lot of the neighbors who love her. One of them feeds her every morning along with his cattle. I just wish my dog would leave her alone and let her visit in peace. I was speaking with one of the neighbors and she said she is old enough to get pregnant so we might have an overload of cuteness soon. We also have these ragamuffins that come to the fence every now and then:



Some would find them adorable too. I haven't decided yet.



My life is dominated by mushrooms at the moment and it's kind of irritating to be frank. I think once this farmers market starts everything should settle into a comfortable routine hopefully. Although I've sold several batches and made some money currently I am producing more than I can sell because I haven't built a customer base yet, and mushrooms don't store for very long. So I've been dehydrating the ones that go unsold and hopefully I can sell them later for such things as soup stock. So many uncertainties it's causing a bit of stress, although none of it ultimately matters really (something I keep telling myself). Two more weeks until the first market day. Oh, and my goldens have come in beautifully; they look like a bouquet of flowers:



My electrician friend never came through on his job offer. Apparently things weren't as he described exactly. I don't really care other than he offered a pretty sweet deal that would have been ideal for me but this isn't the first time someones mouth got ahead of reality. A lot of things change when you have to start writing checks.

My old stand-by though did call and ask me to come back to work on her house. Again, it doesn't matter financially whether I take these jobs but I have found that I need a reason to leave the house to maintain a sense of purpose. Not all of the time, but every now and then it does break the ruts we all fall into at times. It's just so hard to find work that you can perform solely on your terms.

[bottlerocks]

This is my official request for more mule/donkey content. Those goldens look like butter, looking forward to your experience at market.

[ffj]

@bottlerocks

If you like cuteness overload, a buddy of mine down the road is right in the middle of lambing season. Now those little babies are something else. I should try to get some pictures for you. But you like mules, so here you go:





These are working mules. My neighbor regularly uses them to pull wagons and they are way overfed as he feeds them sweetfeed every day in the morning. They are about as fat as I am, haha. My dog tried to intimidate them once until they tried to kick his head off and then ran him all the way back to my house. It was great, my dog learned a valuable lesson that day and I didn't have to worry about him bothering them anymore.

Yeah I am hoping the market thing goes well. I got a notice yesterday that I apparently have to get a business license from the city to operate. It's not much, $25, but I'm ready to start receiving money versus shelling it out. On a more positive note, my lions mane is doing quite well and I'm excited because this is the first time growing these guys:



I'm not quite sure when to pick these to be honest. Soon though.

My little pullets are going through their middle-school years so they aren't as cute as they once were but here in another month they'll be beautiful, especially the Wyandottes. Everybody has their awkward moments.

[ffj]

More Spring babies:







And a good boy out there protecting them:

[theanimal]

I didn't know you had sheep. How big is your flock? Are you getting milk and meat from them? Do you do anything with the wool?

[ffj]

Oh they aren't mine. A friend down the road from me has them and I visited today.

I do know that they are a meat sheep, but the breed escapes my memory. They also don't produce wool and I find their coats pretty coarse which surprised me. I think he's up to 47 babies born already with many twins, a few triplets, and one quadruplet.

They seem pretty easy to raise and breed as they eat grass like a cow and every ewe he had except one is birthing this month. Probably the biggest danger of setback are predators, but he has two dogs and two donkeys to protect the flock.

[ertyu]

Donkeys protect sheep? I did know about dogs but not about donkeys
Cool

[ffj]

They can be fairly aggressive when they need to protect their group. A mule can be meaner than hell too if you wander in their domain.

Really the only things we have to worry about around here as far as predators are dogs and their cousins coyotes. There are no bear or mountain lion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02QGAz2ODyE

[ffj]

That is probably the most vivid rainbow I have ever encountered and it happened right out my back door. Beautiful.

Life is good in other ways too. I have achieved over 1,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel which has enabled me to become monetized. Sort of like that rainbow above, I really didn't think I would be seeing that occur anytime soon, but it happened in 10 months. Considering my lack of hooks or embellishments on these videos it is damn near a miracle really. So what is interesting now is learning how monetization works. They keep a running tab on your studio page on your revenue. Now I know that YouTube takes a cut but I don't know if the stated revenue is before or after they take their share, but I do know they won't send you a check until you've earned at least $100. That may take a few days, haha.



I currently have a job which I am working very hard to eliminate. And I took it out of a sense of obligation really and a little bit of moral outrage. My mother-in-law had a deck that was in desperate need of repair and she asked my opinion on a quote she received from a carpenter on two projects on her house: the deck and installing two skylights as well as some venting of the roof.

I was floored at the prices quoted. I wouldn't have the balls to write up a quote this crazy high on both projects, and the whole thing reeked of taking advantage of people that are helpless to do the work themselves. So I said I would do it. Here is the beginning of the project:






This deck is a mess. Nothing is square, the building method is quite frankly subpar and it all has to be replaced except for the structural members which I have had to beef up considerably. The top deck is literally just sitting on the top rail through gravity alone. I've since fixed that but man what a disaster in the making before I got my hands on it. I'm about half-way done with the remodel and I'll show you guys the finished result when that happens. It's been a challenge as everything is out of whack so I've had to do a lot of extra work. But even with the extra hassle my pricing is going to be under half of what this other guy quoted, and I am charging her market prices.

On the back burner, I have started my treehouse build, if only a way to get up the tree quickly. That's about the extent for now (access) and I designed a ladder that is easy to climb, low profile, and has a way to tie off with a lanyard at any step of the way for safety. My finished height will be about 55 to 60 feet and at the moment I"m up to 30 feet. I have a friend that welded the pieces together after I cut everything out and I need to make about twenty more ladder steps. Fun project.



Lastly, I attended my third Farmer's Market and almost sold out at $95 in sales. Nice improvement from the last two rain events. I am also starting to get to know people better (customers and vendors) and that is leading to a much more pleasant experience. I had some really interesting conversations throughout the event yesterday and I almost recommended this site to one of them because he was right in line with our way of thinking. Monetarily, I'm still not sure if this is a good investment of time just yet, but there are intangibles to consider.

Say hi to Jake

[sky]

Thanks for the dried mushrooms, they arrived today. I shredded some to make soup and felt like I was committing a culinary crime, the mushrooms are large and must be quite beautiful when fully hydrated. Have you tried cooking rehydrated mushrooms?

[ffj]

Good. To be honest I haven't cooked a whole lot with the dehydrated ones as I have constant access to fresh ones. I would be very interested in your experiences with the ones I sent you and if you want to send a couple of recipes my way that would be much appreciated. I get asked all of the time how to prepare the mushrooms so I've created a small one sheet recipe guide which I sent you but I would love to expand that for more options.

Enjoy!

[sky]

This is a standard recipe that makes a soup, or it can be thickened to make spaghetti sauce, or spiced up with added beans to make chili:

viewtopic.php?p=274722&sid=d451238456b8 ... 96#p274722

The mushrooms are not the key ingredient, but add a lot of body and flavor.

[ffj]

Thanks sky.

If anybody else out there has some good mushroom recipes I would love to see them.

[henrik]

You must get along with your wife really well to charge your MiL market prices!
Thanks for all the photo updates (other than the mushrooms). I enjoy your updates and still follow, but haven't had something to say often enough to remember the forum password:)
Great job on the youtube channel!

[ffj]

My wife is the one who insists I do! Although I am doing lots of extra work not in the scope of the project, like fixing toilets and the like. My mother-in-law also is well-off financially and she wants to pay what the job is worth. But she still is getting a discount, especially compared to her previous quote. Even though the materials were about $600 more than anticipated and there was a $700 dumpster fee, she will still be getting the entire job done right at half of the contractors quote, so everybody wins. Finished yesterday:





I wanted to choke the previous builder many times over the course of the remodel as nothing was square or true and the stairs were dangerous. He also under-secured the deck to the house and used a lot of the wrong hardware. I fixed it all, but I still wanted to throttle him for all of the extra work he caused me, haha. It's a lot harder to fix someone else's mistakes rather than building it new correct from the start.

Good hearing from you! And thanks for the encouragement. I'll probably stick with the Youtube thing until it isn't fun anymore but it's still interesting. It gives me a chance to pass on all of the stuff I've learned over the years. And so far I've made $58! Better than zero, right?

[ffj]

You see that little bastard? Tell me that isn't perfect camouflage? I picked him and 12 of his friends off of my tomato plants the other day. This is a tomato hornworm and it is incredible how much they can eat in a day. That is how you find them: you just look for denuded spots and their poop everywhere and they will be close, haha. I just pick them off and throw them into a bucket and give them a ride far away from my garden. I don't like killing them because A. they gross me out as far as squishiness, and B. they turn into this huge moth:



Which I think is pretty cool.



I got to play the hero the other day. This little guy was caught in the fence beside the road I was driving and I thought I would help him out. It's pretty common with these goats and their horns as they stick their neck through the fence to eat and can't get back out. But I managed to get his horns free with a little wrangling.

My life is dominated by work currently and I'm not sure how this all happened other than not being able to say no. I finished the deck and some additional work and immediately was asked to rough-in the electrical system for a new house build. I like this kind of work as it's a bit of a puzzle and the physicality isn't too intense. And the guy didn't blink when I quoted a price. Should have added a thousand, haha. And while working on that I fell into another side hustle:



I've been picking blackberries for the Farmer's Market for the past two weeks. It's not hard work other than the sun beating down on you with very high humidity levels around here this time of year. That sucks but the actual picking isn't too bad. And I have a helper:



At first it was cute watching her eat the berries but I soon realized how many she was eating and how quickly and that is when I called my dog over and he put a stop to the thievery, haha. She would only eat the fattest and ripest berries I noticed, and fat berries make filling up a bucket go by quick. So far I have sold 23 gallons at $20/gallon and I have lots more to go but eventually they will die out. I sold 10 gallons at the market in 52 minutes this past Saturday so they are a hot commodity. This entire table from the week before sold out in 2 hours:



I am probably going to detail the Farmers market situation in depth on my mushroom thread. It's been interesting and I am adapting. I am also meeting some cool people and at least one not too cool person. It's been rewarding so far though and I am glad I took the plunge.



After all of these years I have finally gotten a chance to play with an AR15, this one made by Ruger. Now I am a traditionalist when it comes to firearms as I dislike all of the plastic and "blackness". But I got to shoot this one (it isn't mine) and I learned how to disassemble it and clean it and I can see why it is so popular. No fuss, no muss. I like the older guns though and the feel of wood so no thank you. But this thing is efficient as hell.

And when I am not working on people's homes or picking blackberries, I'm doing this:



I've got a lot of firewood on my property with trees falling over or dying and I've decided to sell the firewood this fall/winter. If for no other reason it is cluttering up my property and it needs to find a home. If I can make some money doing so than that is even better. Even though the splitting is work, I limit myself to 15 minute blocks here and there and it is amazing how much gets accomplished over time. It will all be ready for sale by Fall.

[EdithKeeler]

Love the pics and your journal.

Your chickens would love to eat those tomato hornworms.