And I mean really expensive.  The next time you are driving down a country road and you see one of those cheap barbed-wire fences, remember that cheap is relative.  

Sure, you can pick up a roll of regular barbed-wire for around 60 cents a foot.  But then you have to multiply whatever length you need by 4 or 5 depending on how many strands you are going to be using on the fence.  Pretty quickly you can find yourself shelling out $3.00 per linear foot.  Chances are, you won't be pulling barbed-wire for anything less than 100 feet at a time per side.

Add in the cost of those beautiful wooden posts for corner and center braces at between $10 and $15 each and pick up some unsightly t-posts (just under $5 each) to drive in every 8 feet or so and you've got yourself an investment.

Full disclosure: This is not at all something I learned today.  I figured out the expensive part just a few months into our small farming adventure.  However, it is something fresh on my mind today because Emily brought the above photo evidence of downed-fence to me a few minutes ago.

To be fair, this particular stretch of fence was supposed to be temporary anyway.  But it turns out that a lot of our temporary fixes end up in service a lot longer than planned.  And, unfortunately, it simply is not time for a big fence project - the ticks are still alive and well, the temperatures are still in the 90s in the shade, and I have this totally rational​ fear of copperheads keeping me out of the woods right now.

Besides, we have floor tile to finish.

For now we will throw up some sort of emergency something to keep the donkeys from exploring all of Mayes County while we sleep at night.  And we will be praying that Oklahoma storms get all of the fence-destroying business out of the way over the next few weeks and before​ we make repairs.

As I sit here at the laptop this afternoon, there are far too many tabs open in my browser at the moment.  Email, Facebook, this blog, articles to read, t-shirt designs, photo albums, homeschool planners... It's all over the place.  I have just as many lists of things to do and paperwork to go through and books to read scattered on the table next to the laptop.

It does not seem possible that we will ever complete the various tasks before us... There is not enough time.  There is not enough energy.  There is not enough determination or concentration or motivation.  Impossible.  Yeah. I'm a little overwhelmed today.

When things get overwhelming, I have to step back and look at what we HAVE accomplished rather than melting down over what still lies ahead.  For my sanity.

So what have we done this year so far?  Here's a list of major accomplishments for 2019 in no particular order. 

We started out 2019 with new doors as the priority.  At the time, we thought this would be an easy and quick thing to check off the larger to-do list.  We were very wrong.  It took months to get the proper doors ordered... and that was after having to choose different doors more than once... and then even longer to get them installed.  The end result is well worth it and we have finally all adapted to not having to put hang the door handle back on the door after having opened it.  Bonus - our house is much more energy efficient without the daylight-leaking gaps around the doors. Imagine that.  Also, this was the first big step toward making the place really feel like ours for the first time in five years.

Emily's gosling production this year turned out to be much better than we had anticipated.  For a while there we were knee-deep in adorable goslings.  Although I do not have the exact number before me at the moment, I know that we sold over 30 of the little fluffballs before we finally decided to keep those we had left for our own flock.  We currently have 28 geese and ganders of varying ages running free around the place and wreaking havoc.  Never a dull moment.

When we opened up the website and the blog a couple of months ago, I reactivated my old Google Adsense account as a matter of course.  I have never and will never generate enough traffic to make a living off of internet ads, but it was nice back in the day to pick up enough money to buy popsicles for the kids or something out of basically nowhere.

I thought it was pretty cool that everything at Adsense is automated now.  No more fiddling around with scripts for ad placement - Google promised to just insert ads in suitable places on the website automatically.  I signed up with the new website, clicked the 'auto ads' button, and.... nothing happened.​  

Hmmm...  I assumed I missed a step in the setup process and decided to just leave it all as is because the extra work wasn't worth a couple of popsicles per year.

A few days later I noticed a couple little ads showing up in the sidebar of the blog. Okay.  There was a delay, I see.  Cool.​  And then I forgot about it all for real.

Having been busy with putting the new online store together, it has been quite a while since I have personally taken a look at the content pages of the rest of the website.  I mean, I have seen it all before... It would be really weird to look at our own website every day.  Maybe.  As a matter of fact, my husband does not even read my blog posts.  I am talking to you, Dave.

On a complete whim (and also because I was procrastinating about going to bed), I started clicking through the navigation menu on the website tonight.  And that's when I saw them:  IRRITATING BLINKING GAUDY IRRELEVANT ADS EVERYWHERE.  Everywhere.  They were crammed between pictures... between paragraphs... at the top of the pages... at the bottom...  There were five or six of them per page.  

And I have no idea how long it has been like that.  Apparently, once our website traffic started to go up a little bit, the Google bots went into full berserker mode and populated every blank space which I had wanted to remain blank with some annoying ad.  

I am pretty old-school and remember a time when the internet was more than click-bait and pop-up ads.  I remember actual content and actual people and actual information.  It is a shame that it seems to have gone the way of the print magazine -- 50 pages of glossy full-page ads to get to a ten paragraph article.

If you had been subjected to any of this before tonight on our website, please accept my sincerest apologies.  I have disabled auto ads.  Or.. I think I have... In the same way that turning auto ads on did nothing for a few days, turning auto ads off does not seem to do much either.  Soon... hopefully very soon... they should go back to wherever they came from.

Now to actually go to bed... 

A while back I made this banner for a social media page.  I was following one of those guided design templates which offered inspiration for a company slogan by way of asking the question: "What does your organization have to offer?"  I answered honestly.

This week we finally opened our online store  and have added a few items to get things started.  You may not have known that we were ever planning on starting an online store.  You may have suspected that, if we ever did, we would be selling goat milk soap and homemade bath bombs like other respectable small farms online.  And that's okay.  Because all of this is pretty surprising to us, too.  It started with that inspirational question from the guided design template - and snowballed from there.

I have always spent a good portion of my time.. or at least a good portion of the time when I am not wrangling animals or being a homeschool mom or repairing fences or building chicken coops... Okay. I said 'a good portion of my time' which is completely relative.  Where was I? Oh yes... I have always spent a good portion of my time being creative.  Making art.  Whatever you want to call it.  Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of my artwork has never been seen by another living soul outside of my family and closest friends. And much of it hasn't even enjoyed that much publicity.  I suppose it was never the point.  Or I'm just a cowardly ninny.  Regardless, it's pretty much been a lifelong secret.

My absolute favorite medium for nearly a decade now has been oil pastel on paper.  I have drawn cute pets and farm animals, but my main inspiration comes from highly stylized ancient religious art - stained glass, icons, et cetera.  I am drawn to the patterns of stylized hair and clothing which contrast with the super simple lines of the faces.  There is something so very peaceful about drawing in this way...  Sometimes I binge-draw and produce dozens of these (which are promptly secreted away into the back of my sketch book) in just a couple of weeks.  Sometimes the pastels gather dust.  

A couple of years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with the crazy idea (I think that's how these things happen.) of combining my religious art drawing with pyrography.  I bought some little wooden plaques and a wood burning kit and created several pieces.  I was pleased with the texture and with the rustic and aged touch the unfinished wood added to my work.  I even gave two of these away as gifts -- which is real progress for me... although I still feel silly every day for having shared them.  It's a curse.  The rest are hidden in the barn office.  The wood burning pen is gathering dust at the moment, but sometimes it calls to me.  Someday.

The one thing that I have always openly shared with people would be the rosaries that I make, although it is a rule of mine that they always only be given away.  I figure that my design or skill do not matter in the crafting of a rosary -- as it is the prayers offered that are beautiful.

Also, and this is not much of a secret: I am a huge geek and have absolutely no fear of technology.  I had to throw this in there... and if it does not make any sense that I have mentioned this at this point - don't worry.. it will all be made clear momentarily.

And all of these revelations bring me back to today and the opening of our online store and the prospect of offering something of my creativity to the general public for the first time ever.  We will be offering funny t-shirts and coffee mugs and the like because we can be pretty funny, we wear t-shirts, and we drink a lot of coffee... and who doesn't need those things?  Really.  But we will also be offering some pieces from my latest artistic endeavor. Which makes me really nervous.

Combining my love for the bold and stylized lines of the artwork that has always inspired me and a nearly limitless amount of subject matter here on the farm - I have taken up the digital pen (actually it is just a mouse at this point) to create fun little pieces that are both easy to share and affordable.  But mostly we are having a lot of fun as a family coming up with subjects or titles and snapping tons of great photographs to work with.  Fun. Family. Fur. Feathers.  It's all in there. 

We hope to someday be able to set up a booth full of our t-shirts, prints, and canvases right next to the goat milk soap lady at the swap or trade or fair.  For now we are working on finding the perfect print medium for our art and navigating the complexities of e-commerce.

We are nervous and excited. I think that is a good sign.  Wish us luck.  Buy a coffee mug.  Let us know what you would like to see in our store.  And please do send us a message if you have any kind of problem with an order.