Almost over.

Posted by The Inspector on August 22nd, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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At the end of the week our children both officially start the new school year. This really drives home the point that summer is about over. We spent a couple of weekends camping but for the most part we stayed home. I really would have like to get away and take one of those Branson vacations but it didn’t happen. We are scheduled for a couple of weekend trips in the next month but that is about it. This summer we decided to spend less on than we normally do on travel and focus on living within our means. This isn’t to say that we didn’t have a fun summer by any stretch. We took a number of day trips and spent time as a family working on projects. I do hope that next summer we will be able to take a nice vacation if everything works out as we have planned. I don’t mind forgoing a trip every other year if it means we can take a great trip occasionally. Convincing the children about this plan hasn’t been too hard since we have been too busy to get bored. My older son actually commented that next summer we should take thing a bit slower and relax a little more.


I really get it now.

Posted by The Inspector on August 22nd, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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Okay, I am going to admit here and now that I don’t always understand some of the things my wife wants. It took me a while to understand how rain barrels would lower our water bill. I had to actually see her canning food before I could believe she would fill our pantry and all of the jars she kept buying. For months she has been hinting that she wanted a couple of chickens which I thought was crazy since we live within city limits. Once she found out is was legal to have chickens her hints became all out requests. We now have 3 chicks ordered and I will at last admit that I understand her reasoning. After watching a video about factory farming and the news reports about the latest egg recall I am fully supportive of her getting a couple of chicks. She really wants to do the things that she believes will be the best choices for our family in terms of health and happiness. I am starting to question less and just trust that she isn’t throwing out ideas on a whim.


There are days…

Posted by The Inspector on August 17th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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I try very hard not to state specifically what my job entails and that is hard. I work in a public servant job in a government agency. Most of the time I enjoy what I do but there are days where I smack myself for not having gone to medical assistant school or a similar field. Dealing with people in the role that I deal with them can be very disheartening. As much as I want to believe people are all decent and trying to live good lives there are days where it is just impossible to think this way. Some days I come home and wonder if there is anyone left in country that is has good moral judgment? I wonder sometimes how people stay in a job like mine for 20-30 years and have any compassion left for people? Thankfully, this is not how I feel each and every day but today was an especially tough one. It took every once of patience I had not to scream at a couple of the people that I had to deal with. They are the type of people who accept absolutely no responsibility for their own well being and see it as the role of the government to provide for all of their needs. They could not understand why it was necessary for them to meet certain deadlines for filing paperwork in order to receive the services they were seeking. Somehow it was my fault that they elected not to turn the paperwork in on a timely manner.


Hooked.

Posted by The Inspector on August 17th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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A couple of months ago we canceled our subscription to satellite television. Honestly we have not missed it one single bit. For the majority of the summer we were so busy that sitting in front of the television didn’t occur to us. On a whim we decided to try Netflix for a month. Several years ago we had tried it but just weren’t that impressed. I have to say that things have really changed in the last 5-6 years at Netflix. We are absolutely hooked on it. There is something for all of us to watch and we have yet to run out of shows we like or want to watch. The kids can watch cartoons galore without all of the advertisements telling them what they should want or need to have. I have to say I love not listening to all of the whining about needing this or that. Less whining and decent entertainment is well worth the price of subscribing to this service. I am especially impressed with the fact that it costs about 1/5 what we were spending for satellite.


Should we care?

Posted by The Inspector on August 10th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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The area where we now live is a nice neighborhood and we are really happy here. Our neighbors are normal everyday people who leads pretty average lives. This is a very nice change from our old neighborhood where we quite literally installed security cameras on the house because the neighbors were so awful. Between the police raids and the loud parties there was rarely a quiet moment. We are now contemplating getting 4 female chickens for our backyard. They would live in an enclosed space. Our family thinks we should ask for the neighbors blessing prior to getting them. I am not convinced this is necessary since we are within the scope of the law. At our prior house our lives were very controlled by the antics of our neighbors and I hate the thought of once again being controlled by the will our a neighbor. My belief is that if the hens are clean and quiet and within the law it should not be a matter of asking permission or not. What do you think?


I am a farmer.

Posted by The Inspector on August 10th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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Over the last year we have developed a number of new interests. Individually they are very different but when looked at collectively they form a much bigger picture of our lives. The realization hit us that the lifestyle that we are striving towards very closely mimics that of a large scale farmer albeit on a much much smaller level. This week I stumbled across the term “biointensive micro-farm” and realized that this very adequately describes our daily life and the direction to which it is headed. As much as we would like to live on a farm in the country it isn’t going to happen any time soon. Therefore we are making the best life possible right where we are and that is slowly turning into a teeny tiny little farm.


Don’t get me wrong…

Posted by The Inspector on August 4th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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I realize after my last post that I might have come off sounding a bit disrespectful to my wife. You might get the impression that my wife spends her day whining about the things she wants and waiting for me to get them for her. The truth is that she is really a low needs type of woman. If you asked her right now what she wanted most aside from chickens she would likely request a couple of fruit trees or an additional raised garden bed. My wife doesn’t care about having a closet full of clothes or the newest fashions. She is typically more interesting in tracking down heirloom vegetable seeds than seeking out the newest trend in ugg boots. I wouldn’t change this about her for a second. Having a wife who wants a simple life makes my life simple and I love it. It just cracks me up sometimes that we have endless conversations about how vastly improved the quality of our compost would be if only we had fresh chicken manure to add to the compost tumbler. This is one of those topics that I just have to have a little laugh over every now and then.


I knew it was coming…

Posted by The Inspector on August 4th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized
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For several months my wife has been talking about how nice it would be to have some chickens. She currently buys our eggs from a local farmer for a hefty price. I really didn’t think much of the idea of having a few chickens because I imagined that it probably wouldn’t be legal in our town. We live within city limits and it just seemed like someone somewhere would have at some point raised a stink and made it illegal. As it turns out after a couple of calls to city hall that keeping chickens is most definitely legal. I called city hall thinking that getting the final word would put the talk of chickens to rest but it has not. Now that we know they are legal it makes the idea seem not quite so crazy. Apparently people all over the country are catching onto the idea that having chickens in the backyard means healthy fresh eggs whenever you want. It seems that I will now be listening to how much we need some chickens of our own for the time being. I am on the fence about the idea right now and might be convinced of the idea once I know a bit more about the cost versus the benefit for our family.