We had our big pork sale – distributed 650# of sausage to various customers, all within 3hrs on Saturday. Getting ready for that event was a heckuva lot of work, but we brought in almost $1200 through pre-sales. That was the Millie moment – dang that felt good. One Murphy moment came when we realized we’d incorrectly calculated the fees paid to the butcher, by over $200. So we had to cover that difference right on the spot. Which we were able to do, but we sweated a bit on that one. This morning I’m tabulating all the projected vs actual costs/income, and the rest of the numbers are really close to our estimates. So that feels pretty good too.
The major Murphy moment still hanging over us is that we don’t yet know how much my truck will cost to repair. The shop has had it for two days and they’ve been able to track down the stalling-at-cold-idle problem. For those of you who know carburetors, that would seem to be falling-off-a-log-simple carb adjustments. But it’s actually got a computer controlled throttle (I’d like to throttle whoever came up with that idea). As various emissions control widgets in the engine fail, the computer has to be reprogrammed to ignore those missing inputs. So there’s a lot of annoying experimentation going on, just to get it running and keep it running. Which is why our next vehicle will be OLDER than this first-generation-of-computer-control 1983 Ranger. Let’s leave computer control on the USS Enterprise and keep our trucks simple, shall we? Anyway, we can’t make any final decisions on how to spend this income until we know how much the Ranger will cost to fix. So we’re on pins and needles for that one. It might be a choice between “expensive to fix vs more expensive to replace”. I know a lot of you have been, or are in, that situation.
We’re also trying to decide whether to fly to Phoenix for Thanksgiving, as I indicated in an email yesterday. We can’t make THAT decision until we get more of these financial numbers put together. Most of the pork sale earnings were already earmarked for farm improvements, which need to be made either way. The real question is if we’ll have enough left after the Ranger’s repairs, to cover the needed improvements. And if we have enough left over after THAT, then we need to figure out if we can also cover the cost of an employee to handle things here while we’re gone. Doesn’t help that Mom and Dad are both bringing it up with every new conversation – “so, do you have airline tickets yet?” No pressure.
Note to Danni: I really felt for your posting this morning. I was laid off from my software engineering job on New Year’s Day, 2011. Most of 2011 was spent spiraling into credit card hell as we tried to figure out what I’d do for income to replace that really good-paying job. After a number of false starts and hopeless “this is never going to improve” moments, and countless resumes which never even resulted in a phone call for an interview, we decided to jump-start our hobby farm into a productive, profitable business It’s been a L-O-N-G road and we’re still not there yet. Technically speaking, I’m still unemployed, and I may never get that salary back again. But I’m doing what I love, we no longer use credit cards and we’re paying off debt. This progress on our little farm has felt like scratching out pieces of granite with our fingernails over these last few years. But we’ve done it. Hang in there, and you’ll start making progress too. That’s what landed most of us on the list. And many of us have figured out ways to first stay afloat, then start to swim back to shore. It’s doable.