My Pictureless Update With Big News!

Hey guys and gals, Sorry for the prolonged delay in between posts, I even got a lil' friendly jab in my comment section! :P    Well here is the deal! Just the other day I had a bunch of photos ready to download from my phone and was going to put up a post. Unfortunately, as luck would have it I dropped my phone on the ground and somehow that "wiped out" my SD card.... actually "fried it" seems like the better way to describe it. It felt like it was about to burst into flames when I took it out of my phone! So now, my phone currently doesn't have an SD card, and I am thinking my phones SD reader may be fried too, Ill find out when I get a new SD card to put back in and try it out.

Worst part about it is that my phone was screwing up every time I tried backing it up to my computer via USB months before this happened. I couldn't download all my pictures and put them into a file on my computer. So I just started Bluetoothing most of my pictures to my computer, unfortunately I did not bluetooth them all, nor any from my last set of pics. I lost a lot of pictures to PC based software! Bummer man, like 500 pics and vids gone...That is it! I am getting an iPhone 5! I already have the Apple computer, might as well switch my phone to Apple too, then everything will work better! :)

But of course that takes money, so for now Ill just get it fixed... I am going into Jonesboro tomorrow morning and going to try to find a place that will look at it, since there is no Sprint store within 100 miles from my house... Apparently Sprint doesn't care too much about my friends around here in the sparsely populated areas of Arkansas. But Verizon cares, and they capitalize on it. I do believe I am the only one in town with a Sprint cell phone contract! HA! But there is a reason why I do not jump ship and switch to Verizon, and that is... drum roll please...........

I plan on moving back to Virginia Beach!

My roomies know, my loved ones know, now my friends and the rest of the world gets to know. Albeit not is the grandest of announcements, with such a horrible introduction, and not with the explosions of fireworks and awesome pictures, and montage videos set to cheesy background music reflecting back on the summer of 2012 and seeing what I have done with the time I had, and look back over on what I learned, and well... no worries, all of that is totally coming... and your so going to watch it, and I will too! But that isn't coming today (let me get my camera fixed first!)

Alright, lets pump the brakes a bit, slow down and say WHAT?!?!

I will be pushing the seven month mark when I head out of here. I have decided to cut my time here a few months short for a multitude of reasons. All of which are in good spirits, nothing bad has happened, I haven't gotten in any fights with the locals or my roomies, I'm very happy with the area, the temperature has settled down, feels like the earliest days of Fall are starting to show up. Although rain is still a huge issue- Farmers are culling their cattle herds due to feeding costs, Hay is going up in price every week, its pretty bad to be a farmer here right now.  But none of those are reasons why im leaving a little early.

I gave myself a year to start from scratch a working homestead... and by golly... I did it in seven months! Granted, the garden needs a lot of work, but even right now it is being pooped on all over by the chickens and goats that spend the majority of their day in there eating and fertilizing the garden. Next early spring my buddy will till it and add more manure, and utilize my 11 raised garden beds I made into what he would like the garden to be. I kinda got to a stopping point at the garden this fall mostly due to finances getting a little tight at the homestead due to some personal issues the Farmers were going through a little while back. But by next spring, if they make a very small investment in dirt and manure, I believe they can have a fantastic growing garden all year next growing season. So right now, the farm is slowing down. There is always work to do, but nothing major until next year. With it being a little slow, with the projects slowing down, it gives you much time to reflect.

This Fall, nothing much will be going on here. I could sit here in the basement and hang out with my friends and neighbors, and watch the snow fall, or I could come back to Viginia Beach and spend time with Family, friends and loved ones and also have the opportunity to "have a hobby that pays" in massage. I probably won't restart McNeeley Wellness as a Business right off the back, but will remain liscenced and certified and will be doing massages out of my house. :) Because lets face it, I have been without an income for almost 7 months now... I am not broke (believe it or not... testament to my Frugality!!!!), but if I don't start getting a bit of an income soon, I will be. So that is another reason why.  Believe it or not, Massage is a hard sell in the Bibles belt... of the Bibles belt! "You are not touching me sir... and you sure as hell ain't touching my wife!" That is pretty much the common response when talking to people around here about massage..lol. People don't like to be touched here... it is tragic, they don't know what they are missing!

Now for the ones of you who are living vicariously through me, no worries there is a plan...

Yes there will be a little time where I temporarily will "take a break" from the farming Journey, it might be shorter though! But in no way is my journey even close to being over. It has only begun. The farm that I just started is my bunker, if things start going down hill in America.. well, this is a good place for me to be. I know the locals, we are a tight, well armed, small community, and we will band together if things ever go downhill, and I know they will "let me in" if times are bad. But the economy around here sucks, even if people wanted the massage, they really can't afford one (I can only do so many trades for goods, but goods don't pay the college loans and put gas in the truck)

So my next journey is still "in the works" but there is a great possibility that another friend will need a hand in starting up another homestead, and this one he is trying to keep around 2 hours away from Virginia Beach or shorter in distance since he would still be working in Hampton Roads. That means, I could work on the farm and also do massage at the same time a few days a week in Virginia Beach. Also, if he and his wife are up for it, might try to start a real small C.S.A. Veggie Grow-op.... but, I do not want to get ahead of myself, so unfortunately this part of the story has to be paused, but it will be revisited as soon as more information is available. Hey, I gotta keep you on your toes right?

So what now? Well, I am not going to be home in Virginia Beach until late September, so I still have a while on the farm, I plan on starting to schedule up massage clients starting early October, and hope to be helping out on the new homestead as soon as possible. I am already packing a little bit day by day as I am trying to be more methodical this time around in my packing. The trip out here with the trailer last time was harrowing, though I feel I grew from it, we shall see what happens this time around. Give me a few more days and I hope to get the pictures rolling again, sorry for the delay in posts... that is not cool Big Dave... and I'm truly sorry to my audience for that. And Ill get a regular non-life changing post put up in the next day or two. :)

Real quick mini regular update though... My neighbors chickens laid their first two eggs yesterday and today! The race is on for my chickens to start popping them out! (my neighbors chickens are about five weeks older than mine... but MY Chickens are filled with love!) My chickens will start early, and produce often... I just know it!

This probably wasn't the update most of you were expecting, to be honest, I didn't know I was going to write it tonight, I knew this one was coming, just didn't know when to fill ya in! Consider yourselves filled! Guess tonight was as good as any!