Yesterday

It is once again bedtime and the children are wide awake. Why? Because it is pouring out and there is thunder. So? Think of the sound of the rain and the rumble of the thunder as music. The rain is singing you to sleep. Now, go to SLEEP!


We got the mortgage paid today and got the vehicles plated. Husband has his license. I don’t have mine. Driver’s license from Indiana and marriage license are not enough. I have to prove citizenship. A social security card does not count. But, a passport does. I don’t have a passport. Why would I need a passport? My spouse DOD ID expired so we will have to go to Fort Hood. We’ll check out the commissary while there.

We also got our insurance transferred to the state of Arkansas. Talking with the agent, she mentioned me dropping the umbrella. I had made mention of picking it up next year when we get our soap business going again. She said to have umbrella, I need homeowners. I asked her how I would go about getting homeowners given where we live. She said that Allstate does not cover homeowners who live more than five miles from a fire department. I looked at her and said “I am two miles from pavement. There isn’t even gravel except what trucks kick up from the dirt. I am thirteen miles from town. There isn’t even a town where I live. How am I supposed to get homeowners even if I felt we needed it if I don’t qualify for it?” Then I mentioned our policy we have. If you are on our property and get hurt, chances are one of two things. We know you very well and know you won’t try to sue us or you are trespassing at which point you will be explaining yourself while looking at the business end of a shot gun. She got a chuckle out of that and understood. To get to us, you have to cross someone else’s property (the definition of “land locked) and have a definite invitation. In other words, we know you are coming and we meet you somewhere and you follow us in. You wouldn’t be able to find us otherwise until you’ve been in and out a few times.

So, it looks like umbrella might be a problem next year. That’s ok for now. Once we are done with this claim, we will be looking into insurance companies that don’t discriminate against “hill folk.” I’ll ask the Ps who they have. I’ll also get input from T and M. They have to have insurance of some kind being dairy cattle farmers and living out here like we do.

We took our time coming back home since we did not have a pending deadline. We took the opportunity to look at different places that we’ve been wanting to look at. Including this one place that has woodstoves. We have a woodstove, but it is a monstrosity. It will work, but we wanted to see what newer ones looked like and what they went for. They are nice!

We also went to this other store that sells gas stoves and antique stuff. He converts gas to propane. We can get a brand new stove completely converted for less than $400. There is nothing fancy about it. There will be no electric start or fancy clock or anything. But it will be regular size and perfect for our needs.

We also discussed our future finances and with our calculations, we should be completely debt free (including having this property paid off) in about eight years. We are going to roll payments. Once we have the windmills and batteries we need (which will be in a couple of months) we will start making double payments to the van. There are about ten payments left. We make two more “regular” payments which brings us to eight then we start double payments. After four months of that, we have the van free and clear. Then we take that double payment and apply it to the truck. There are currently two years on the truck. Once as that is paid off, we roll all of that into the cabins if we still owe money on them by that point. Then, we look at the mortgage. We would go from paying $606 per month to about $2700 per month on the mortgage. With the extra $2100 or so, do you know how fast the principle would get paid down on this at that point? This is of course barring anything major happening at this point.

We’ve also discussed winter and some of our concerns. My concern is water freezing in the water tanks. His concern is being able to get out in an emergency. Neither one of us is worried about food or warmth. We got that covered. Water freezing is not a huge concern, but it is a concern. The temps rarely fall below 30* out here so while the tanks themselves might not freeze, I am worried about the drain lines freezing. There was that ice storm that came through a few years ago that people still talk about. It caused a lot of damage (quite a bit still evident on this property with broken and downed trees laying dead everywhere) and people had no power for (in some cases) weeks. With alternative energy sources, I am not concerned about a lack of power. I am just concerned about water freezing. But all this will be taken care of. Talking about these concerns now in the month of July allows us to plan for them as we are building and build in things we can do to help alleviate some of these concerns. For the getting out issue, stumps and rocks are going to be gotten rid of. Major ruts from trucks coming in and timbering the land in years past are going to be filled in with some of the broken rocks. That will smooth out the half mile long driveway and hopefully make it easier to get in and out. Both now and when winter comes.

I am really wishing for the rain catchment system right now. Do you know how much water we would have? We need to get water in the morning. Someone (one of the children) left the hose trickling this morning. It was trickling all day long. So we lost about 100 gallons today. Yeah, I’m annoyed. We needed water anyway, but it could have been an afternoon relaxing during the heat of the day thing rather than an early morning “must do now” thing.

In husband news, he is still dealing with very elevated pain levels. I think some of this is still rebound/recovery from doing all that chain sawing. He, in no way, should have even been able to do it. But he did with His help. Now, his body is saying “By the way, idiot. Remember me? You can’t do stuff like that and not suffer the consequences.” The rain is not helping either. Once he has the chance to heal and recover, he will be fine. But waiting for that is going to take a while. In the meantime, he will still do what he can when he can, but it will be at a more relaxed pace as his body is able. Not having the pressure and having to push himself like he had to will make a difference.