Checking In!!!

Dear Rebels,
Hello, from your long lost Author, Judy Jeute, :)!!  I am so sorry this going to be a quick little post to let you all know that we, The Jeute/Prentiss clan are "Keepin On, Keepin On" so to speak.  Actually, we are doing quite well.  My poults are growing like weeds; and as you can see by the photo, they have some company.

 (Aren't they adorable?  The brown one looking at the camera is a poult and the black and yellow ones are chicks!!  Too sweet for words, really.)

I have learned that what is an instinct behavior in chicks, oh you know silly little things like eating and drinking properly, are learned behaviors in poults.  So one day when I was at my local Big R store (man do I love that place) to get the babies some vitamins to help perk them up, I heard some peeping and thought the sound had followed me from home in my head or something and lo and behold they had their own brooder full of chicks so I took a couple home to teach my turk babies how to eat and drink and within five minutes of me putting those chicks in there my poults were all standing around the waterer!!!  It was amazing. 

So, although my hatch rate has totally sucked, and I lost my favorite poult; we have figured out exactly what we are doing wrong so far.  And that is all a person can do, right?  Learn from their mistakes and go forward from there.  And that is exactly what I intend to do.  So we have more eggs going in the incubator today since we know what went wrong; poor air flow.  That just means more excitement in another month!  And even more exciting some of these will be sold for profit, what's that, actual money????  But I believe this is where the saying might apply.  Don't count your chickens before their hatched.  LOL!!!

Okay, so yesterday I think I might have had one of the craziest days.  I started it out with negotiating our new property single-handedly.  Thank goodness Tom is working overtime again, and we really need to get this property business taken care of.  As soon as the snow melts...we need to be moving our livestock up there.  Period.  We have fencing to do, barns to build, water to acquire, electricity to figure out, did I mention we will be off grid???  Oh yea, and a minor little thing like shelter for four?!?!?!

Oh wait, got a bit side tracked with my panic attack, JK! No, I talked with our friend who owns our dream property and yesterday I made sure... it is The Double J!!!!  I do believe that he, Tom and I will be sitting down this afternoon to finalize everything.  Whew.

And then....The High Timber Times arrived.  No kidding.  Yes, I knew they were coming, but I don't think it all really hit me til the guy with the monstrous cameras got out of his car and told me and Bella to act normal while doing our daily chores.  She joked that she wanted to go inside and hop on the couch-ha!  Anywho, the reason they were here is that they are doing a story on the Mountain Resource Center; and as I mentioned in The American Tragedy, I went to MRC for help with my electric bills.

I really have no idea how this story will turn out and to be honest, we were really nervous about doing it.  Could they make us out like the poor kids on the block???  This is a local paper, all of our family and friends are going to see it... they are ALL going to know now that we are in FORECLOSURE and that we have had all of these issues.  But you know what else they are going to know?  They are going to SEE me and Bella.  And I hope they hear the pride that we have in our ranch and our area.  But mostly in ourselves and our family.

Yeah, we have been put through the wringer, and yes, we have made some mistakes.  But we are being responsible for them now and moving right along.  Yesterday when I was being the pied piper and the turkeys were following me across the road as Bella gently herded them and the photographer snapped away I couldn't have been more proud.  I don't care about our mistakes or my pain or whatever, it was the smile on that girls face.... I could see the pride in her heart.

I also learned yesterday that Judy means praiseworthy.  And for some reason that really came at a nice time; when I'm negotiating deals and being a public figure and a proud mom.  So maybe this post was not as short as I intended, as I am behind in my schoolwork, but I needed to let my dear Rebels know....We are here, we are good, and we are doing what needs to be done.

JJ~

PS "Our" edition of The High Timber Times should come out Wednesday March 14, 2012 barring a local news emergency.