I can not believe how long it has been since I have blogged. I also can hardly remember what has happened in the last year.

Over the last 2.5 years that I have been back in the USA in Colorado working on trying to do our homestead, there has been an unbelievable amount of snags that have hit. 4 court cases with our supposed builder. 3 directly with him that we won and one that was against us because of him which we lost. We have finally recovered that money which pays us back for the one law suit that we lost that was against our land because of him, and paid us back for the car we never got from him and the other two cases effectively paid for our legal fees to do all this. So we are essentially still in the hole the $30,000 that he stole originally and all the damage to our land.

I wanted to sell the land and move to a different part of Colorado, a different county entirely. OR I wanted to sell and move back to Scotland. I had begun to hate our land, hate Colorado, and hate the HOA and everything around me. Well I don’t want to be like that and have made a decision to stay here, make peace with the land and hopefully the HOA and myself as well.

To that end, we had our HOA meeting yesterday and there are 2 of the 3 board members are new. I had an opportunity to speak with the 2 new ones, as well as listen to them in the meeting and was pleasantly surprised that they seem like reasonable REAL people. I thought everyone that was on the board of a HOA had to be a bit crackers!! 😉 So to that end, we shared our protest site to them and if they like it, we plan on taking the protest info off and maybe being the web master and mistress of the HOA site. at least that was what I was proposing and volunteering hubby and self for. Since that time, I did actually tell hubby about it and he has agreed. Good thing I know my husband’s mind and can make it up for him before he knows about it 😆 I do hope that they like it and that we can host the site and render the protest site obsolete as I do believe that the only way to make an HOA work is for folks to be involved and work together. The new board seems to want to work with the people in the HOA rather than control them, patronize them, and talk down to them. This sincerely warms my heart. I feel that part of my road to recovering from the lost of our original dream is to heal this riff and create a new dream and to that end, I think this website could be a great part of the package. I am actually excited about the prospect of being able to contribute to the HOA in this manner when previously all I thought of them was good target practice with my new gun ❗

We have also decided to completely throw out or old house designs, and dream up new ones that work with the site the way that it is as that was another thing that the builder did. He destroyed our house site, did it his way where he wanted it and even with that only half ass did it so there was a large amount of remedial work to be done. We have had a new excavator in that has been a life saver to our property and has fixed it as best as it can ever be done. So we have come up with a new house design that I just love, as it incorporates solar passive heat design, high thermal mass and can be done by one or two inexperienced folks like hubby and myself. so that is on the board to finish those new drawings which are half done and turn them in for approval with the HOA and than get busy in the spring. The next few years with this building might mean only a blog or two again. haha kidding, going to try to be here more. I have decided to cut back from my one career which is my massage to only one day a week effective the first of September. I am going to give it until the end of the year at the one day a week before deciding if I want to come back more or not. at the moment I am too tired to really be able to decide and after a few weeks of deliberation, have decided that the reason that I can’t decide is that I am NOT supposed to decide right and can’t because I am still too tired. In reality, the only thing that has changed in the last two weeks is that I have had a different mind set. I have however still been at the office at least three days per week. so my partner and I have decided that other than ONE day literally a week, where we trade massages for each other and I do other clients that I will not go to work. I will stop my synergy treatments for the next month and restart in October. I am stuck on a plateau with the treatments anyways, and need a break so that my body can reset and that will stop me going to work two more days a week.

What will I do with this time? I think I may go to the mountains. I have so much work that needs to be done on the ranch before winter with securing pens, finishing the water lines for winter and insulating things, and securing more panels and gates and sorting out all the fleece and getting it ready to send off to the mill and using the bad fleece for insulation and order my new loom and start weaving again….that I can more than fill ONE month. 😯 I am going to go on an herb walk in Guffey at the beginning of September. I have always wanted to get into herbs and such much more and this might be a good introduction for me to get my feet wet and see what I think of it. Also I get to meet a local herbalist that will be conducting the tour. I have started to get into herding with the border collies, another of the things on my list for years and have met numerous people with that. There is supposed to be a herding seminar locally done by Carol Lucero in September that I am looking forward to as well so that I may also learn more and meet more local herding folks. I have just picked up a bunch of sheep with a different type of wool so that will be great to work with and I managed to get my sheep lady to sell me her old merino gals that I buy their fleece from her each year. Now I will just care for them their least 3-4 years here, and raise a few of their daughters for my future fleece growing. I got my first batch of kid mohair yarn back from the mill last month and it is to die for. so I am going to add another one or two angoras as I had always planned on keeping about 3-4 of them. I had 3, but one was recently killed so that only leaves me one old gal and her wether grandson. I have added in some wonderfully new Nubian does for milk and have been playing with making some soft cheeses. That has been a total great time, and now I want to start to progress into more hard cheeses, and maybe some butter and yogurts. I still want to make goat milk soap but still a bit scared of the lye. Have to work through that.

I have recently found out also that the Natural Animal Centre in the UK has started to do their Bach Flower Remedy animal courses in the USA. They held them last year in Boston. I am waiting to hear from them the dates and times and location, to see if I might be able to do the three courses this next year. I also saw that they have been busy writing some more books specifically for animals, dogs and cats, as all their books originally were aimed at horses and ponies. I had ordered the books and am awaiting their arrival. I plan on still finishing my intuitive crystal healing diploma, and doing the animal BFR courses. I want to continue with my therapies but be more herbal, and more animal focuses so that it can be done from the ranch and not require going to town with an office ect. I know that many BFR do phone consults for both animals and people. I am hoping to do some advertising and go that way a bit. It will not grow fast as there will be resistance to this locally, but the adverts are to reach the folks that would be interested that may be a few hours from me, more like Denver and Boulder. There is nothing to say that I can not be a travelling BFR animal person 1 or 2 times per month, with the rest of the time doing things via phone or they come to me.

I stopped in last week to my belly dancing group and confirmed they were still there and the times. I want to go back to that and can probalby start in September as this next week I am in the office all day that day as my partner is on vacation. so belly dancing, sheep and goat herding, herbal work, Bach Flower Remedies for animals, sorting and processing fleece, starting to weave again, crocheting again, felting again, making hard and soft cheeses, and maybe even getting around to making some goat milk soap…along with winterizing the ranch, finishing pens, reinforcing fences, finishing the water lines, insulating, and general ranch work…I think that I can stay busy without being in an office. 😯 In Fact, I am very much looking forward to this all. And to think that I have done all this research and starting of things just in the last two weeks. 😆