Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 22 December 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good morning and happy Fast-Jet Friday!! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle. The forecasted rain arrived overnight and will continue off and on for the next 4-5 days. The top pic is Shelley and I in our rain gear doing the morning rounds. The next pics are the pigs, having a much-needed drink after about 15 minutes of pig-mayhem as they played with a big square bale of straw. They were so happy! They flipped and flopped, wagged their tails, grunted, oinked, threw straw into the air, climbed and slid, etc. They had fun! Oh, and I moved some into their hut so it will help them stay warm on these upcoming cool damp nights—the reason I put it in their paddock. We also moved our sheep shelters from the edge of the pasture to the middle, so maybe they will get inside for protection if the wind gets too chilly. The layer poultry celebrated the shortest day of the year by giving us a few more eggs than they have recently. We’ll be overrun with eggs again in no time…I’m sure. Over the past week, we’ve averaged probably 1 duck egg per day and maybe 6 chicken eggs per day. At their peak, we get about 18 duck and 36 chicken eggs per day. This spring, when the new layer pullets start laying, we’ll add another 4 dozen to that daily total. We hope the Farmers Market folks are ready for some amazing GMO-free eggs come the beginning of April! We’ve spent quite a bit of time this week focusing on our YouTube venture…
As you know, we record and post videos and a podcast to YouTube. We dipped our toes in with the videos over the spring and then transitioned to a podcast in July. We’ve been focusing on the podcast for the past few months and I wanted to share with you how that is going and our plans for the future. We’ve posted 24 podcasts, plus a 1-minute trailer. Not counting the trailer, the shortest one was 14 minutes on the 3-Steps to Start Keto. The longest one was 1 hour 49 minutes where we chatted with our friends that grew up in the Soviet Union and experienced its collapse…and their insights on the similarities they see in the USA Today. The Podcast with the least views has 68 and is about our pasture-raised chicken operation. The one with the most views has 2,709 about the health benefits of a ketogenic lifestyle. Yesterday we learned that 90% of podcasters quit by episode 3. Of those that continue, 90% have quit by episode 20. Quick math will show that we are within the top 1% of all podcasts! Overall, the Dust’er Mud Podcast has over 10,200 views! We are encouraged by the comments we receive from folks that discuss life-changing decisions they have made due to some tidbit they picked up from our conversations. That brings me to the question we are often asked…Why are you guys doing this? I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear we’ve spent a lot of time discussing this. I think Shelley’s words from Thursday’s podcast is probably a good place to start. We chose an “instead” lifestyle where we don’t live the standard life, don’t have the standard job, didn’t make the standard post-Air Force-retirement job choice, we don’t eat the standard American diet, we don’t…you get the picture. When you find yourself in a place where you are going outside what is “standard,” it can feel lonely. We decided that we wanted to share our experiences so that if there is even 1 person out there that finds themselves outside “standard” they might be encouraged or inspired to keep going, they’re not alone. We set a goal that we hoped to achieve by the end of 2023 of 100 views per podcast. Of the 24 podcast episodes, only 2 have less than 100 views. So what are our plans? We are committing to the YouTube community that is growing. We’re doing at least a podcast every Monday and Thursday. Mondays we will focus on a question we received in comments from a previous podcast and Thursdays we will focus on Food. Freedom. Farming. On Fridays we are going to post a farm video to show the growing community what and how we farm. We may add a Wednesday chat about a current event…still debating that one…and probably some Shorts thrown in here and there. Added to the Tuesday/Friday Colonel’s Blog, that’s a lot of community engagement but we believe it is vitally important and are committed to continue. Thank you for purchasing this blog, with your time, it means so much to me that you do. Merry Christmas! I hope you have an amazing holiday season!
Thursday’s Dust’er Mud Podcast: FARMstead or HOMEstead? Or maybe it’s an INstead! (We laughed so hard at ourselves during the beginning of the recording session, that part that is supposed to be cut and trashed, that we put it at the end of the podcast for your comedic relief.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ4-tkxBJV0&t=1s
Today’s Farm Video about loading lambs for delivery to the processor:
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
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