Saturday, May 15, 2010
Well yesterday was a day that will not soon be forgotten on the Pioneer Living Homestead. A storm came through here with some serious wind and rain and some even more serious hail. Silver dollar in size and buckets and buckets of it. All the gardens are torn up pretty badly. Much was lost and none of us know what will actually come back from this. To say John and Carrie are heartbroken would be quite an understatement. They had such hope for this years crop. It looks like most of their plans were dashed yesterday. They were counting on being able to sell enough produce this year so that Carrie could give up her job and work here on the homestead full time. Now they are worried about paying the bills. And the tractor they were going to buy will have to be returned to the man who was letting them use it until they could pay for it. To be honest though, I don't see how they thought they were going to make enough money to do all that and continue to pay the bills for an entire year.
Our position here has become compromised as well. Nothing has been said yet but I fear it is only a matter of time before we will be told that we will have to start paying the electric. Not that that is a new thing as they came to us three weeks ago and asked for money for the electric. What really upset me about that is that they wanted $100.00. That's an awful lot of money for having nothing running except the refrigerator, the freezer(which has their meat in it), a computer and some DC lighting we use only about 5 hours a day.
When we were in the other trailer we had those things running in addition to a hot water heater, microwave, washer and dryer, two tvs, DVD player, cable box, outdoor lighting &air conditioner and fans running 24/7. Our bill there at .10 kwh ran around $65.00 a month. The highest it ever ran was $135.00 during the heat wave last August.
Oh and that meat that we thought was to be shared? The beef the neighbors gave John? Well Carrie came a couple of days ago and got it all and took it to her house. Mars said don't worry about it ... It was theirs anyway. So if you look at it that way we did pretty good. We ate 2 T-bones, a couple of pounds of hamburger, and she left us 2 roasts. Not bad for babysitting meat! But part of the deal here was that they would share that meat. So you tell me.....
