Itty Bitty Hooves

Spread The Word

One way we use to advertise our farm is with pens that have our farm name and number on them. Giving away pens is easy, and they aren’t discarded as often as business cards, although we use those too. Everyone seems to love the pens, and the bonus is, they see our name everytime they use it. You can find discount pens at really reasonable prices and it’s a fantastic way to spread the word about your farm, or business.

Refreshing Waters

I’m on the run a lot. No matter where I’m going I usually have my bottle of water with me, especially during the warmer months. I love water. I don’t love the prices of bottled water though, and don’t much buy into the ‘purity of spring water’ etc… I love the water at home. My problem is I don’t like OTHER water, so if I run out when I’m not at home I’d be out of luck except for one ingenious invention.

Portable water filters are simply wonderful. They remove any impurities, and the water tastes just as crystal clear as your last bottle. I can refill my bottle anywhere and don’t have to worry about not liking the taste. I don’t even like restaurant water. That’s how picky I am about my water. With portable water filters it’s just like any other sports bottle you’d normally carry, only it has it’s own little filter in it. They cost about as much as one case of ’spring water’, and treat about 40 gallons! They’re lifesavers when you’re on the move.

Hot Spot

A booming tourist spot now for vacationing is the Outer Banks. Beautiful scenery, and southern hospitality are amongst the top reasons for renting vacation homes on the beaches of North Carolina.

Check out that view! 

Is it any wonder folks want to spend their vacations swimming, biking, and hiking along such beautiful beaches?  If you tire of spending your days at the beach (as if) you can always take in a local show, visit the stores, see the Write brothers national memorial, or… how about seeing the wild horses in Corolla. Whatever you choose, you’re sure to have fun.

I’m glad my husband brought me to my senses. A few days ago I set up an appointment for a job interview that was supposed to take place on the 10th of this month. Bob’s job kind of took a nose dive. (It does every spring, so it’s not really unexpected, it just always feels like a blow. It recovers around mid-summer usually.) Anyway, I felt like I needed to help out. How exactly I was going to find the time to do that I don’t know. That’s what he wanted to know too.

He also wanted to know why I felt I wasn’t ‘helping out’? Why is it that if we don’t have an income (and that’s not exactly true in this case, but just not as much of an income as I would have if I worked outside the home.) we don’t feel like we’re contributing?

I know that what I do is valuable. Just the milking alone that I’m doing now brings in eight dollars worth of milk a day, not to mention the meat we get from some of the animals at various times of the year, and the dozen or so eggs a day, plus the occassional sale of a horse or goat helps bring in money. Besides all that I do work on line as well and make several hundred dollars a month even in the ‘bad’ months. In a good month it can be as much as a grand.

I think if the ‘good’ months were more a regularity I wouldn’t worry so much about not contributing enough. At least my husband doesn’t feel I don’t contribute, and although he didn’t ‘forbid’ me to take a job–ha, like forbidding me to do anything would ever do any good anyway, lol. He did make it clear he felt it would be way too much for me and the trade offs we’d have to make (as in drying off milk goats because there’s no way I could manage to milk and work), animals not getting as much direct attention, and the fact that the job in question would be hard on my already over-taxed hands (carpel tunnel) weren’t worth a couple hundred dollars a month more, and we’d make it just like we always do.

We will. I know that. And I do love him so.

I coulda had a fence

This last weekend was sure a busy one around here. Hubby was home on vacation which means NO vacation for me. LOL Besides all the regular chores I was often pulled into his projects out of necessity. Most of it was fencing related and that’s hard to do by yourself even when you’re a big strong man like Bob. Sooo, we put up a lot of fencing. Yesterday he did get left to do most of what he was hoping to do by himself. I had lots of chores, and errands to run, and then I got home and found I had a possible assignment to make a one-minute video for a company so I left him to pound fence by himself while I worked on the video.

For the record, a typical, quick, not-too-complicated one minute video takes about two hours to produce. Taking the video shots, cutting, splicing, and adding audio, and then uploading and posting is very time consuming… sooo I was very disappointed this morning to find out the video had been rejected. After a brief defense of my choices, they still decided not to use it. I’d made lots of videos in the past and never had any problems with companies liking them. Goes to say I won’t be wasting my time making another for this particular company. I could have been making fences. LOL