financial crisis...what crisis?

Oig. While the whole world (it seems) is twitching and has put a drastic halt to spending, we would do the opposite.

How else to explain our purchase of a shiny, new (well, 2008) red combine? The machine costs more than my house. And the land that it is sitting on (all 320 acres.)

Are we confident? Sure that our sector is going to make it out of this market dip unscathed? Hardly. Prices are still relatively dismal compared to earlier this year. There are no big rallies expected in Agriculture. What we hope for is a rationalization of input costs. Things like fertilizer jumped exponentially last year in response (partially) to increased end product prices, but they haven't sunk with the diving end product prices. We're hoping that the supply/demand curve catches up before we have to buy our fertilizer and that we can actually afford it.

Nope, we bought the combine because we couldn't be sure that we could get the custom combiners to harvest this coming year. And while we could have purchased two smaller combines for the price of this one, it is virtually impossible to find trained help during harvest season. So we have to make do with what help we have available. Which meant a big combine that one person can manage.

I guess I knew it was coming some time. But it does feel slightly surreal to own a quarter million dollar machine that only works for a month each year.

Needless to say, the view from my kitchen won't be changing this year. The office is already started and as usual, it will be more complicated than expected. The East outer wall is rotten, so what was meant to be a reinsulation and recover operation has now turned into a complete rebuild. It is the bearing wall, so it is kind of important to have it structurally sound.

We'll find out about the north wall of the office after it is pulled apart - I'm hoping that the studs are okay there, but wouldn't be at all surprised if they weren't. We know that the garage was made from the old house. And, if I look it up in the history book, that was circa 1935 with rough sawn lumber from a logging camp somewhere around here. So, really, it doesn't owe anyone anything.

Anyway, life continues here on the farm. We're still hoping to go away for a vacation this year during Spring break. We still plan on working on the cabin in the summer. And in the meantime, I will continue cooking from the freezer and working through the yarn and fabric stash!