Yesterday’s post kind of drained my writing energy, so to paraphrase Mike and the Bots, today’s entry will be an anthology of short, plotless posts.

I’m going to give Twitter another try.  I’m still not convinced it’s that useful, but bigger and badder bloggers keep saying it’s great.  I was reading a blog today that has less than half the content of mine, has only existed for a month, and has the boring default theme, but he claims to be getting at least twice the visitors.  The only thing he’s doing that I haven’t is promoting himself on Twitter.  So I’ll take another stab at it.  If you’d like to “follow” me on Twitter (or get me to follow you), check here: twitter.com/Lord_Mhoram.  If nothing else, it should be amusing to watch me try to say something useful in 140 characters (Twitter’s per-post limit).  140 words is hard enough; 140 characters seems impossible.

Angel and I are looking for some land to start our farm.  Something southeast of Quincy, say within 15 miles of so of Payson.  Five or more acres and probably no more than 40, at least to start.  Preferably with a mix of timber and some pasture or grass, and year-round flowing water.  A spring would be ideal.  We want to raise various sorts of animals: grass-fed beef, outdoor pork, chickens, ducks, rabbits, the whole shebang.  Maybe even some sheep or goats.  It doesn’t have to have a house, but something run-down that we can live in while we build wouldn’t hurt.  We’re willing to cash rent, if that helps us get started somewhere, and buy later.  If anyone knows of a place, please let me know.

Speaking of livestock, my folks have extra pork to sell over the next few months.  It’s not organic, because the grain they eat isn’t certified organic, but they aren’t shot up with hormones or any of that nonsense.  The hogs are raised humanely outside (with shelter), where they get to root in the dirt, lie in the sun or shade, drink from a creek, escape through holes in the fences now and then, and basically make pigs of themselves.  As a result, the pork is excellent.  We were given some pork chops from Omaha Steaks recently, and they didn’t compare to our normal fare.  We’re having one done at Kabricks’ right now, so when we get the ticket on it, I’ll write a longer post describing what’s available and how that works.

I’d be advertising raw Jersey milk too, but the idiotic Illinois regulations make that impossible.  Many states allow the sale of raw milk in one way or another, and there are plenty of studies showing that people who buy raw milk from someone they know are at least as safe as people who get their food from big stores which get it from huge processors overseen by nameless government inspectors.  Yet Illinois, according to the last information I’ve seen, requires that anyone buying raw milk go to the dairy and get it out of the tank themselves, with their own containers.  As you can imagine, that’s quite a hassle, and having every customer dip into the tank only increases the chance of contamination!  I’m trying to find out what the regulations actually are right now, and what can be done to free us from this stupidity.  At a time when we’re working on sending yet another governor to jail, it’s about time we stop letting his ilk tell us what we can eat and drink.

Hmm, -7° tonight, huh?  (For any Europeans reading this, I think that’s like -342 Celsius.)  Back in the days when I was burning wood, this would have been a three-trip day: going out to the furnace morning, noon, and night to load wood into it.  Maybe even once more late at night if it was really windy.  That was a big, leaky, uninsulated house, though.  Heating it with gas or electric would have been impossibly expensive.

Guess I’d better put on an extra blanket tonight.  Even when it’s the same temperature inside as any other day, nights this cold outside make it seem colder.