five acres in florida

there go two more hens. within the span of ONE WEEK.

i caught them chasing the rooster like mad through the yard yesterday and managed to intervene before he was either caught or exhausted to death, but just barely. we are now down to two hens, one of whom cannot escape the coop (so is probably safe), and the rooster. i guess i'll be buying some more chicks here shortly, unless my uncle has any spare hens.

oh and i got stung by a 4in scorpion on my kitchen floor last night--that shit hurt for like 10 minutes, but then the pain was gone. felt like a sustained cigarette burn with a little tingly numbness thrown in. very unpleasant! i'm not sure how he got in the house but i'm going to have to be more paranoid now that rowan is running around.

my sourdough starter molded, to my great sadness, and i am not sure why or how... but i've started a new one so i should be ok in a few days or so. the warm temp (81deg) in our house seems to speed the fermentation a bit. i'm itching to try sourdough pretzels...

and finally, our previous abode is to be auctioned on sept 2. the foreclosure is final. it's a weird feeling, we'll actually need to say goodbye soon. our first home, where rowan first lived... but we are a lot happier here. i don't miss the neverending interior construction, the musty old-house smell, or the non-functioning a/c! but i do miss the prairie and our nice neighbors with their little toddler rowan's age. and, on some days, the proximity to gainesville. bittersweet.

well, we got our first egg about a week and a half ago! check it out:


it's smaller than a "large" store-bought, but not a mini-egg like my mom's bantams lay. thank you big mama hen :). the others should start laying over the next month or so.

in other chicken-related news, the bloody bleeding dogs got another hen today!! they escaped their pasture (during the day, which is very rare) and managed to nab one of the barred rocks who refuses to be penned up. really crappy. i still don't know what to do about that... but we are down to 3 hens and a rooster. i guess i need to go ahead and let big mama roost, though i'm not sure the rooster is doing his job yet, if you know what i mean.

i just hope matt doesn't shoot the dogs. only half-kidding.

in other unrelated news, the court officially awarded judgment to the bank on the old house, so it will be up for auction on 9/2. it's oddly sickening to think about, even though 99% of the time i don't care at all. it's weird to feel a sense of comfort/relief in my suspicion that things--by which i mean everything--are going to start falling apart for everyone very soon... i've been noticing the sun doing very strange things, like staying in one spot for 4 hours at a time between about 1215-430pm. then speeding up to set on time. i'm just waiting for the day that venus and the other planet show up as big as the moon and make us all vomit our lunches.

but i'm rambling, so that's enough of that.

so what led to our sudden change of fortune, allowing us to move to the country? in an effort to give the whole story (and to help others in similar situations) i'm going to go ahead and expose some less-than-attractive details of our financial situation. humility is a good thing...

we bought our nicely-sized concrete block house on the edge of paynes prairie in 2005. it needed a bit of work, and we happily jumped in with the plan to make it our own. buying it was a bit of a fiasco, as matt had good credit and low income, and i had terrible credit with good income; in the end our "mortgage broker" (read: scam artist) essentially fabricated matt's self-employment income to allow him to get the house in his name only. she got us an 80/20 loan that was also a disaster: 20% of the balance was fixed at a 12% interest rate, and the other 80% was fixed for 2 years and then became an ARM. she assured us we could refinance before the 2 years were up, but that didn't happen. so now, several years later, we found ourselves with a half-finished house full of remodeling projects, an interest rate that evens out to about 10.5%, with backtaxes we could never afford and insurance costs through the roof. and our bank won't talk to us about refinancing, especially now that my income is so drastically reduced from working only 2 days a week.

so... we were drowning and the bank didn't care. fine. both of our credit scores are now so bad that foreclosure, bankruptcy, whatever won't even affect us. and we can't afford to pay the $1800/month that the bank is demanding.

at our most desperate moment, while trying to decide whether to sacrifice being at home with my daughter or scraping by financially, my parents swooped in an offered us a loan at a miniscule 3% to live on land they own outright. it wasn't a hard decision. we are going to purchase our new home a week from today, and have stopped paying our current mortgage. what happens next will be up to the bank--i am working on the paperwork to request a deed-in-lieu, but i don't expect that to work out so i'm also pursuing a short sale option with an investor who is interested. if we have to, we will allow the bank to foreclose. (fyi, if anyone else is "allowing" foreclosure to happen, remember your assets may be at risk. lucky for us the new home and land are to remain technically owned by my parents...)

i am not proud of this situation, but at the same time, f*ck it. we made unwise decisions, yes, but were also screwed by liars and thieves and a massively-merged corporate parasite. at this point in our lives and with the state of the world, nothing is more important than securing some land, animals, gardens, and a safe community. where we are moving one might classify us as a "clan," haha. seriously though. an extended family commune on multiple plots of land. with many guns.

i will post updates on the foreclosure/short sale/whatever situation in order to share the experience and possibly advice for others like us, in addition to the process of building a mobile home (which i am sure will be an experience in itself).

first things first, i have to pull some permits and get a well dug! thank god/dess for the florida aquifer...