Like most homesteaders we know, we struggle with cash this time of the year. Grain prices have been horrible. Hay, which we buy from a neighbor in big round bales, is expensive and we use a lot of it with so many steers (which we hope to be able to sell as sides and quarters of beef). Even mailing homemade Christmas gifts is expensive today. But we make do and try to keep the focus of Christmas on its true meaning, not on money. It helps a lot at this time of the (frantic) year to count our many blessings when the world seems so crazy.<\/p>\n
We have our health. We have each other. We have a wonderful family and lots of great friends. I work with a great bunch at Backwoods Home Magazine. We have made tremendous strides on our homestead. We actually live in a Christmas card! (Our pretty log cabin sitting in the piney woods on a hill overlooking a beaver pond.) Our livestock is fat and happy. We have a gorgeous, decorated tree in our living room. Our pantry is bulging with lots of home-raised food. We have cords and cords of firewood and logs for lumber to saw later on so not only will we be warm but we will be able to build more animal shelter from home-sawn lumber. Our garden and orchard are doing well. I could go on for hours. You see what I mean.<\/p>\n
It’s too easy to get down, being broke, hearing the news of the Newtown school shooting and other horrible happenings worldwide. So when I start to droop, I start counting our blessings and it always gets better right away. I hope it’s the same for you as you prepare for the holiday season. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like most homesteaders we know, we struggle with cash this time of the year. Grain prices have been horrible. Hay, which we buy from a neighbor in big round bales, is expensive and we use a lot of it with so many steers (which we hope to be able to sell as sides and quarters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}