Down the Rabbit Hole

 Last week's blog... yuck.

The part I think I should feel penitent about, well, I don't. The part I feel bad about is confessing my sins. Not the sins themselves. I don't know. That's not quite accurate either. It's complicated? Living with the ADHD mind.  

I am in a place where I know I need help learning to navigate my finances. I don't make enough on SSDI alone to live. But with my supplemental incomes I do. I can live. And we should be able to pay our bills and eat food without strife or worry. But there's not enough to be spendy or to pursue the American dream.  And certainly not enough to "farm." Any kind of farming involves risk. If you are an agricultural farmer you have to take a giant risk that your investment and hard work will yield you enough to balance not only your initial expenditures but the disasters that come along in the mean time (hail, tornadoes, drought, flooding, freeze, etc.). With livestock, in our case goats and poultry, you risk that your does will get pregnant and produce, which we're experiencing the "oh crap she didn't take" side of that right now. You're believing that you are capable and will be successful at keeping your does from your bucks when you don't want them to produce. Chickens won't get sour crop or egg bound. Or any other horrible things you get to gamble on when you read those social media pages about all the terrible things that will befall your fowl. Fowlpox. Coccidia. Marek's. To name a few. Lice and mites. ewwww. Anyway, it's a risk. No matter what. But to be a farmer is a risk that is heavy on the "it takes money to make money" side of business. I need to invest in this high dollar billy in order to create a line of goats that is worthy of the prices we are asking for when we have kids. We need to keep chickens that lay the eggs we want for our rainbow flock. We need to keep buying outgoing, social animals that engage with people if we want to pursue the dream we have of a petting zoo type of experience. 

Feeling remorseful... or not. So having jumped in and admitting that yes, I do need help learning to reign in my spending or more accurately to learn to be financially responsible, I have instant feelings of hopelessness and failure. I often refer to someone I love and say, "she's &$ years old and not getting any younger, she's always done it this way, and I know better than to think that she is going to change now." So what makes me think that I am going to be able to drum up some sort of backbone/will power and some kind of ability to learn, retain and put into practice new ways of thinking in regard to money?! It seems kind of audacious in the sense that it seems rash and reckless and maybe even an tad insolent. Is there any real chance I can change and retain the change and still be a relatively happy human? Because this human is happiest when she's acquiring animals. 

So it's crazy to think I can go on living like I do. Less than paycheck to paycheck. Hoping and waiting for things to work out. But it seems crazy to think that I can change my frame of mind in regard to spending and to be able to see long term costs involved with say... acquiring animals. It's not just an $8 pig. It's an ongoing expense of food pellets. And someone said that potbellies don't need to be given grain pellets because they can free range.  But nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, makes Cupcake happier than her daily ration of grain. She gets very happy. There's the cost of maintaining a pen for her and creating and maintaining a pen for other critters since she occupies that "extra" pen now. There could be vet costs. And I do not know about pig feet. Do they need their feet trimmed? 

On another note.... Cupcake is quite the addition. She is vocal, and she is hilarious. I really enjoy her. She talks to me a lot. Yesterday she lay her head on my foot because she was happy to see me. When I come out the door she comes running from wherever she is. Well, in the short day and a half since I started letting her free-range during the day. She's happy to go into her pen at night, that is where her feed is. Oh yeah.... 

 

Cupcake with Charlotte. Don't be surprised if we have a web that says "Some Pig"

And a bag of chips (or should I say a Cupcake for dessert?)

 My life really is all that.... and a bag of chips. Somedays those chips are cow chips. Somedays they are rabbit raisins. Somedays they are Tomato basil Sun Chips, a fave. But my life is a spectrum of joy and mundane-ness, and sorrow, and crisis. And I'm the one who built it, and I'm the one who "gets" to live it. 

Currently I'm grieving my inability to handle money well. Some of the things I am wondering.... is it too late to make a permanent/positive change? Have I reached a level of misery that will get me to a place of willingness? Because in order for change to happen, I have to have more than a mouthful of willingness. I have to have a willingness in my heart. And dare I say it, even in my soul. I have come to the realization that I like the way I spend money. I don't like being broke and facing endless financial crisis, but I like the moments when the auctioneer says... "you want a pig? $5...." And for $8 we bring home a pig. A pig that I was none too sure of. She screamed a lot. and she was LOUD. And she was larger than what I really wanted to start out with. A pig. A pig named Cupcake that in a short 10 days has won our hearts. She talks a lot. She doesn't scream anymore. She is tamer (more tame?) than she appeared to be that first night. She likes belly scratches and butt scratches and someone to have a conversation with. She likes watermelon and cantaloup and maybe bell peppers. But she LOVES her grain. She talks about it. She talks to it. She wags her tail when she eats it. She likes it when I change her water. She loves her clean water. 

So here's the rub. She didn't cost us much at all. And right now she gets one scoop of pig food a night. And the bag was $16 for 25 pounds. How can anyone hate on that?! That's reasonable, right?! But ongoing, yes. And who knews how much it will cost in the long run, right? And let's be honest, we don't really need an additional $16-20 a month on our Tractor Supply order. So maybe the pig should go back to auction. Really?! We are now emotionally invested in her. We have a plan to have a free range pig that follows us around and does her own thing and lives her little potbelly life doing piggy things. So I'm a little heartbroken thinking about reselling her.

We do have a dream and a vision. To grow this into an interactive farm experience for kids. We will offer bottle goat feeding when we have kids. And you can give treats to the goats and the chickens and the rabbits and the pig. 

But does it align with becoming fiscally responsible? This is as of yet undetermined. I can kind of guarantee that keeping the rabbits, though they are not expensive, will not become a money maker. or a break even-er. 

So last night in talking with my kiddo, we decided to sell the pig and the rabbits. Kind of breaks my heart. But currently they (rabbits) are all in cages down low to the ground and I would call it temporary housing at best, or the equivilance of living in government housing the ghetto at the worst. Well not Star. She has a pretty nice set up. I don't think she appreciates it much, but it's good. But thinking about the investment of making or buying a rabbit hutch with four apartments or more is a bit daunting. But they need better. Both Wally and Mochi are in need of having their basements cleaned out (all the poo under the cages). I dread this. For reasons that are glaring and obvious... like ewww. But also like... time. Who has time? And work in the what? The heat? or the dark? Well, maybe both at this particular time.

All this drama to really say.... Hippie Chick Farm needs donations. I am in need of an immediate cash payment to the county to keep our house from being auctioned for taxes. (What kind of dumbass lets this happen... well, I know one). We need some supplies. We need more food/water dishes that are larger and not easily dumped over. Both the giant dog and the boy goats like to drag water bowls around and slosh them and spill them. We need old towels and blankets. From your garage or basement, from Goodwill or garage sales. Thread bare is just fine. Old t-shirts also work. But there's too much bathing and transporting and house in cages and mopping up of the spills and accidents. These are the immediate needs that would improve our lives or the lives of the animals we love. 

I need educated in an empathetic way. And if your going to say the envelope thing, please explain to me how you made this work for you because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to live on a cash system in an electronic bill-pay world when I live 15 miles from my "bank" to put money in the places it needs to be for electronic withdrawals. Mostly I need prayer. Because I need to be willing to try whatever system will help me and a system without dopamine rushes via animal acquisition doesn't sound like something I'll be able to do. I'm on the edge of the cliff, the willingness is right there, just out of reach, but almost. so close. 

I don't know how to put a qr code on here, but my cashapp is: $carriehippiechick. And my mailing address is: 4411 S Woodberry Road, Burrton, KS 67020. That's also my physical address if you want to drop off blankets and such. 

Meet Cupcake!

Click on the photo to go to TSC website