Year Seven Of Farm Life

This week begins year seven of farm life for us out in the country. We have completed six years out of the city! Isn't that amazing? Before this, I have always lived in the city or the suburbs but I do like farm life with chickens and goats.

For this week, we will revert back to the old way of doing a week because there is no specific article subject. Starting next week, we will go back to the newer format with the article at the top of the page and the daily journal at the bottom.

Remember that if you need seeds for your fall garden, David's Garden Seeds® has all you need.

Year Seven Of Farm Life - 7/28-8/3/25

Monday, July 28, 2025

Good morning. The highlights of today will be the pest control man coming by for his monthly visit. We need to go to our bank because our savings account has just disappeared. I could not get into my online bank account on Friday. Then on Saturday, along with yesterday and again this morning, I can get in but our savings account is gone. How is this possible? Is it an update error? Can they just take away an account along with the money you have in there? It is truly ridiculous. I have had bank accounts for many years and I have never had this problem before.

It is pay day and I have to pay both business and household bills.

I need to get ready for the day and see all of the fun that this day holds.

I called the bank this morning and I spoke with three women. The third one handles online banking. She told me it was no big deal that I could not see my savings account. She said it went dormant and when that happens they take it away (hoping you will forget about it--I added this part myself.) I assured her it was a big deal because I no longer have access to my money. She said she would have it reinstated so I could have access to it but I would either have to start adding to or taking away from the account.

After about an hour, the savings account appeared and I added to it from the checking account. I also added to the Money Market just in case they decide to take that one away. I guess I will have to play the silly game of moving money round and round so they don't take the accounts away. I am a busy woman. I don't have time to play with bank accounts. Too bad on me.

I fed the kitten and touched her a few times and then I fed the fish. I closed a few orders and then started a new loaf of sourdough.

While I was doing that, Matt came in the house with groceries. We had a grocery delivery that I did not know about. We got those put away and then the pest men showed up. One of them bought some zinnia seeds.

Then Nacho and his son showed up and I was not expecting them. They are out back taking out part of our fence, some water hookups and electrical hook ups so that the feed shed can be moved easily tomorrow. They will also be installing vents and window A/C units in the Farm Store. It gets mighty hot in that place now.

Both contractors are here at once...

It is now 2:10pm and a man from church is here to possibly fix a leak in our backyard tank. This is why I had no water pressure yesterday when trying to get water to my chickens and goats. Hopefully, he can get that taken care of.

Meanwhile, I keep closing orders that I pulled yesterday and the count of orders keeps going up instead of down. I cannot seem to get ahead here!

Nacho is cutting a hole for a vent in the Farm Store. He put one on each of 2 sides so it won't be so blessed hot in there.

The man from church fixed the tank and Nacho left sometime after 6pm. I stopped working at 8pm. The kitten was outside the door wanting food so before I came home, I had to feed her. She got really close to me while I had the bag of food. As she stood there with her tail straight up, I finally saw that she is a girl. Her name is Samantha.

It's a girl! I have named her Samantha.

I was exhausted and went in to find that David had made dinner. I baked the sourdough in two small loaf pans this time instead of the Dutch oven because David said that he could not make a sandwich with the sourdough bread. It is all in how you cut it.

There is nothing like a slice of warm buttered bread fresh from the oven!

The bread is absolutely delicious, very crusty and soft on the inside, probably my best ever.

Below is the sunset as it appeared as I was feeding Samantha.

Here is the sunset from the porch between my office and the Farm Store.

Year Seven Of Farm Life

This was our first view of the property we would purchase, in June of 2019, fenced and full of weeds and wildflowers that were waist high. See the oak tree at the top of the property.

Six years ago, we were packing up our beautiful home in San Antonio that we built and moved into back in 2001. We had a buyer at this point but it is a big job to pack up 18 and a half years of living. One tends to acquire a whole lot of possessions when raising a family and living in one home for that long. Plus, it was a big home with lots of storage. I thought we would spend the rest of our lives there and just like that, we were leaving.

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Good morning. We had eggs, sausage, and delicious homemade sourdough toast this morning.

Nacho will be coming here again today to do some things for David. I have no idea what those things are. Also, the white feed shed is supposed to be moved off of the property today.

Well, the white shed never got moved. It is now almost 7pm and we are all still working.

Nacho and his team moved a lot of things from the buildings that we are selling. They also took out a water heater from the kitchen building. They did a whole lot of work. They left somewhere after 4pm.

We had no in person customers today. The high was 99° and I think it is still close to it.

Year Seven Of Farm Life

This is what our new home on the farm looked like from the road. We had to put up a gate in the front.

Before we closed on the farm, we had already paid to have our electricity turned on which took four months. We also paid to have our water turned on. We paid to have the property mowed so we could get on it. Then, after we closed, we had people come out to create a driveway and a solid pad for our home to sit on.

We purchased a new double wide manufactured home because we did not have time to build since someone bought our home in San Antonio right away. Unfortunately, the manufactured folk took their sweet time so we had to buy a shed to live in for three and a half weeks before they would put it together. Then, it took over a week for it to be put together once the guy started working on it. What a miserable time we had because they couldn't get their act together.

Wednesday, July 30, 2025 - Year Seven Of Farm Life Begins

Here it is the middle of the week already. I woke up super early and Alexa would not tell me the time so I had to get up and turn my phone on. I dreamed about the tsunami that was supposed to hit the west coast and Hawaii in the night. After I got up and checked the news, apparently, the tsunami was no big deal. People were down on the beaches waiting for it to hit.

Anyway, it is time to go pull orders and see how many I can close today. I am drowning in orders. Yesterday, I had to count seeds and pack them over several hours, taking away the time I needed to pull and close orders. But because of the sale, seeds are flying out of the bins...

Maybe today the white shed will be moved. Now what about the green one? I wonder if they will be able to find a crane to move it.

Three vehicles got here a little after 11am today to move the small white shed by the chicken coop. Matt had already moved part of the fence but apparently it was not enough.

It took them over two hours to finally get the shed out of here and on the road. Our landscape timbers got dug up by the dumpster as well. He even moved our dumpster so now it does not line up with the driveway. I bet on Friday that our trash man will not be happy about that.

Also, the guy with the little tractor says he is buying our yellow shed but I have not seen any cash yet.

We had a few temporary helpers when we started moving back in May, I think. Today, one of those helpers finally came by to pick up her pay. She leaves the area on Monday for a new job so it is a good thing. David has been texting and calling different people to tell her to come get her money as texting her did not work. Finally, he called her pastor yesterday. He said he would come by but she showed up.

I am making a nice meatball dinner for Gordon Ramsay night. The meatballs and pasta were delicious.

Early this morning, it was 65° and the high was 101°.

The white shed was hooked up to electric so those are electric cables in the photo that are now in the dirt.

Year Seven Of Farm Life

This is our original 4 acres after we had it mowed. Notice that nothing was on the land next to us yet. It was a hot, dry summer so everything is brown back in 2019.

Today begins our official year seven of farm life! Six years ago today, we closed on our farm paying in full with cash on the original four acres. Back then, just these four acres were available for purchase. The land owners around us said that they would not sell us any land. Then back in January of 2024, one changed his mind and we bought an additional four acres which we are now in the process of selling because the land values have gone up according to Atascosa County.

Now, in year seven of farm life, we are hoping to sell this same four acres of land. If we can get what it is worth now, it will have been a good investment.

We wanted 12 acres so we could have a small shooting area to practice shooting because you have to have a minimum of ten acres to shoot in this county according to the sheriff. Before that could happen, someone else bought the other four acres.

We are hoping to sell two of our large buildings during year seven of farm life. We are currently in the process of emptying them. They are on the market but the guy in charge has not scheduled one showing and it has already been two months. David is going to have to sell them himself. This guy apparently has no clue. We have already sold three of our sheds on our own. So far, one has been removed.

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Hard to believe it is Thursday. It is also the last day of July. It feels cool again this morning but it is 73°. The high will once again be 101°.

David has some people doing work outside again. I was in the store pulling orders this morning and the Devine Hospice Store driver came in wanting to pick up more stuff. I knew nothing about it so I had to call David who was still in the house. The man loaded up a water heater from the kitchen building that was removed the other day, as well as other things and left.

A few hours later, he was back. He went into the closet where the water heater was and messed around in there for several minutes while I sat here at my desk. I have no idea what he was doing and I did not get an answer when I asked.

The door to Fulfillment has been propped open like this for hours.

It is now 12:15pm and the people David hired are still here, emptying sheds in the back and bringing all of the stuff to Fulfillment, loading it up, leaving the door wide open the entire time because I love to pay to cool down the outside. I closed it several times so they put weights at the bottom of the door to keep it wide open. I can't afford to be paying to cool Atascosa County.

When I was a little girl, it appeared to me that my grandmother Elvina had lots of money. Compared to us, she did. Whenever I would ask her for something, she always used to say "I don't BEEP money." As a child, I thought it was so funny and I would laugh.

Now I understand that she worked hard for her money after my grandfather died when I was six. She began sewing clothes for customers and became the best seamstress in the county. She used to make my clothes when I was little and they were works of art.

She worked hard just like we do and we don't have extra money to throw away.

This is my grandmother Elvina. Here she is saying, "Hurry up and take the picture." I remember this day well. She had little patience and was a no-nonsense person.

I get a lot of my charm from my grandmother Elvina. No wonder I don't have friends. LOL!

This evening, I found a nasty snake in the pond but I did not have my phone with me. It was about 18 inches long and was swimming around in there harrassing my fish.

Year Seven Of Farm Life

I hope year seven of farm life turns out better all of the previous years. We will be harvesting honey soon, our first time and now we have new female goats so we can start making things with goat milk in them.

Friday, August 1, 2025

The building on the right is the Production building. It is large enough to become a small home or a cabin. Built by Derksen, these are quality buildings.

Well, I blinked and just like that, it's August. How on earth? The Production building is all cleared out and ready to be purchased. Fulfillment now has a ton of stuff in it from the other sheds. There are still two more sheds that need to be cleaned out. So currently, we have three sheds and one very large building for sale.

I am planning to make another loaf of sourdough bread today. I have a ton of orders to pull and fill. I pulled a bunch of them last night until 7:30pm and then went in for dinner. David came in around 8pm last night.

This is the yellow shed after it arrived.It is for sale now.

The man who was here two days ago said he wanted to buy this yellow shed but I haven't seen any money so it is still for sale as well as the two sheds behind Production. One is gray and one is cream. They are both air conditioned using a mini split unit. That unit was not cheap.

These 2 sheds share a mini split unit for temperature controlled storage or living. Buy them both and have 2 offices, storage units, or 2 cabins.

If you are interested, contact David at davidsgardenseeds@outlook.com

Now the latest is that the wife of the shed mover from two days ago is going to come with a check this afternoon. I prefer cash.

I caught a big black and orange cat eating the kitten's food before lunch. I saw this same cat a few weeks ago. It ran off before I even opened the door.

The yellow shed is now officially sold. We still have the red barn shed to sell as well. I forgot about that one earlier today.

We now have four beehives. We will need to buy two more to get an agricultural exemption on our property taxes.

This evening, the three of us watched YouTube videos on our TV about harvesting honey from beehives. If you are new here, we got our first honeybees last October and they have been busy making lots of honey. The last time we were in there, they had made a lot of honey so we will have to harvest it soon so the bees have room to make more honey.

We have never harvested honey before. We asked some people in the area who have bees if they would like to come over and help us since it will be our first time. Of course, they all said no so we are on our own. Fortunately for us, many of the YouTubers have made good videos for us to follow.

We have ordered a bunch of tools and a spinner that we have to open and get ready. It is all sitting in boxes, just waiting for us to figure out how to use it all.

Sometime soon, we will don our bee suits and try our best to harvest honey. We are excited about it. Honey is so expensive and half the time when you buy it, it is either crystallized or watered down.

Year Seven Of Farm Life

Six years ago today, David picked up his first John Deere riding lawn mower. Since then, people coming on the property and some of our employees have broken it over and over. I keep telling David to lock it up and make people use their own equipment. We always have to pay for repairs on it.

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Good morning. I made eggs and sausage for breakfast. I never got to make the sourdough bread yesterday so I will be making it today.

I am watching a video right now of someone melting down their beeswax after harvesting honey. I am excited to do this. My grandmother always had beeswax to use with sewing but she bought hers. You can do so many things with it.

I need to get ready for work plus I need to get some cleaning in today. The den is a mess because Pamela killed a new toy duck and the stuffing is everywhere.

I finally picked up all of that mess and I will have to vacuum in there this afternoon, once the gate closes.

I baked 1 large loaf this evening. It is amazing! Crackly crust and soft with large holes inside. This is my best loaf yet.

My sourdough loaf is doing amazingly. The dough is bouncy and I can tell it will be wonderful. In between stretching it, I have filled the pond, pulled and closed a bunch of orders, started laundry, filled the dishwasher and started it, pulled down the lettuce growing in the store grow tower because its time had come, and helped an in person customer.

David is still working in the house and he has Matthew putting up a temporary fence to keep the dogs in the backyard when the yellow shed is taken over the next few days and possibly the green one as well. Matt also fixed the pond pump and got the pool vacuum going.

It is now noon and I am hungry. The heat is unbearable.

Sam is coming out of one of her hiding places on the deck to get me.

Samantha, the kitten, is rubbing herself all over my legs now when I feed her. She no longer runs off but looks forward to me walking outside.

We had two in person customers. One bought seeds for fall. The other bought all of my eggs. I am so glad when someone buys my eggs. Soon it will be fall and I will have none. That is always when folks want them and ask for them.

Someone we don't know contacted David about picking our okra and taking it this afternoon. This same person is supposed to come by and help us with the honey. Several others say they will be here to watch. I did not want an audience. The sooner we do it, the better it will be. I do not want any help in processing the honey or in sharing it. If we sell any, I intend to make a profit. We have invested thousands of dollars into the bees, hives, and equipment.

If you would like to be our neighbor, here is the for sale sign on the property.

David just noticed that we have a For Sale sign up in front of our property. The real estate folks came by and did not even tell us.

Just a few weeks ago, this was green and lush. We need rain...This is just how our farm looked six years ago when we bought it.

This is the vacant property for sale. No one has ever lived on it.

It is now 2:40pm. I need to go in and set my loaf in a pan for another rise and then vacuum up the den for movie night. David picked up some zombie movie. He really enjoys them.

Around 4:30pm, I went over to feed the fish and the kitten. When I came back out of the Farm Store, we had a dust storm. The wind picked up and dust blew hard everywhere. You could barely see. It went on for well over an hour.

Our 3 sheds in the back and a big dust storm. See how dusty the big tree at the top of the hill looks.

Facing the cell tower, look at all of that nasty dust. I feel like I am in El Paso again. I went through so many El Paso dust storms.

I dusted and vacuumed the den and area close by the den. I also vacuumed the living room but did not have time to dust it. We got lazy this evening and had some frozen pizza for Matt and me and a chicken pot pie for David. We also had some warm sourdough when it came out of the oven.

David changed his mind about the zombie movie and rented the wrong dinosaur movie. He has been wanting to see the new Jurassic Park movie, Jurassic World Rebirth that just came out this year. It is still in theaters. He saw Jurassic Reborn and got that. As it started, I could tell it was not at all what we wanted to see. The dialogue was stupid and repetitive, the actors were nobodies, and it was just awful.

We watched and rooted for the dinosaurs. They pretty much won!Hopefully, we can see the real one soon.

Year Seven Of Farm Life

You are not allowed to put your own mailbox up out here. Folks can drive by and beat your mailbox with a bat as they have done ours on several occasions.

You're not allowed to put your own mailbox up out here. TXDot had to put this one up for us after we drove it out to Hondo.

Six years ago today, we had to take our new mailbox to Hondo, Texas to have TXDot place it when and where they decided on our property. Is that not ridiculous? Most of the time, it doesn't even get used. Once in a while, the mailman will put mail in it if he comes after our gate is closed but most of the time, he comes onto the property to give us our mail and take outgoing mail.

Year seven of farm life may see a second mailbox go up here in front of our property that is for sale. TXDot decides where the mailboxes go and they told us we could not have our own mailbox in front of our property because the next property has mailboxes. Farm life is not like city living.

Sunday, August 3, 2025

David & Matt look on as the yellow shed is dragged out. They had to do some shoveling to get everything loose.

We hadn't planned on going to church because we did not know how long it would be. Once they left, David said we would go so I got ready. Funny that we were running late yet we still got there with 15 minutes to spare.

It took quite a while. They dragged it all through our property and had to take our back gate off to get it out. They did not put it back up. They left a trail of destruction all the way through. They ripped up a bench by the chicken coop that I use everyday. It is just laying there now. Then they zipped off through the new property and out onto the street.

Here is where they are tearing up the bench that was cemented into the ground.

They just took the back gate off and left it in this photo. Now they will drag it to the end of the fence, swing over to the new property and zoom through it to the road.

This guy said he would move the green shed for the lady who bought it last week so our understanding was that it would also go today. David asked him about it and the guy said the lady did not want to pay him to move the green shed so it is still here.

Once all of these sheds are gone, we can put our back fences back together. Meanwhile, Matt had to rig up a temporary fenced area for our dogs to go out on the other side of the backyard. I hope we don't forget because the dogs will take off. There is no fence to hold them and no gate way in the back.

At 6pm, I let the dogs out in the temporary fencing over by my plant area. About 15 minutes later, I opened the backdoor. There was only one dog--Trump. I went to the usual side door where they go out and called. Sue Ellen was back there and came running in but no Pamela.

I opened the front door to go look for her and she was walking up the front staircase so we are grateful that they didn't hit the road. I went out to see how they got out. There was a small piece of metal fencing under the back porch that they pushed down. Only Trump was a good doggie and stayed behind.

This evening when I went to put everyone away for the night, I saw firsthand all of the destruction done to the back of the property so I thought I would share a few photos with you. I am not happy in the beginning of year seven of farm life.

What a freaking mess plus no fence to keep the dogs in.

The shed was dragged toward the chicken coop. You can see parts of it were broken off. Everything is a mess.

The ground is torn up here as well as all the way up and out and the bench was taken out of the ground. Note my long shadow for that time of day. I am short...

Year Seven Of Farm Life

Six years ago today, we had someone come in and mow down all of the waist high weeds. Year seven of farm life has already seen four sheds sold and three moved. Hopefully, the rest will be sold and pulled away off of our farm so our property taxes will go down.

I wish year seven of farm life would include a lot more rain cooler temperatures. Yesterday it got up to 104° and today it will be 101°. I hate this heat. It is like living in a hot oven.

Our Seventh Year Continues

8/4/2025-8/10/2025 - Texas Superstar Seeds

8/11/2025-8/17/2025 - Repel Rodents Naturally

8/18/2025-8/24/2025 - Best Garden Seeds

8/25/2025-8/31/2025 - Naturalistic Planting

9/1/2025-9/7/2025 - September Planting

9/8/2025-9/14/2025 - Planting Fall Beans

9/15/2025-9/21/2025 - Depression Era Plants

9/22/2025-9/28/2025 - Urban Gardening

9/29/2025-10/5/2025 - Horticulture As Therapy

10/6/2025-10/12/2025 -

10/13/2025-10/19/2025 -

10/20/2025-10/26/2025 -

10/27/2025-11/2/2025 -

11/3/2025-11/9/2025 -

11/10/2025-11/16/2025 -

Our Farm Journal Year By Year
Looking Back

Year One Of Life On The Farm

Year Two Of Life On The Farm

Year Three Of Life On The Farm

Year Four Of Life On The Farm

Year Five Of Life On The Farm

Year Six Of Life On The Farm

Return from Year Seven Of Farm Life to Year Six On The Farm

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