Podcast Episode 15 - Big News on the Farm!

Hey folks!  Sorry it has been so long since we have shared a podcast episode with you all!  A LOT has been happening with Fiberton Acres.  We thought what better way to let you know what is happening than to tell you in a new podcast episode!

The spoiler...we are moving!  To learn all the details, click here to listen on Soundcloud or listen on your podcast play of choice!

A few of the other things we reference in this week's podcast:

Fiberton Acres and New Products

Our Instagram (to see Ric dancing while tilling)

Our Patreon Page! (To get exclusives on our travels and more!)

Our Email List!

All the Apparatus, our intro and outro music!

5 Small Things to Start Today...Cuz life is hard, but the only way we fail is to not try.

You'll get strange looks of obvious disapproval and disbelief. Telling people your goals and dreams may seem scary at first but it is how you make it a reality. When we decided to leave our day jobs and risk everything to start a small farm in another state, we heard more than our share of “Why?” and “Can you make any money doing that?” And the best responses we have are usually, “Because it makes me happy.” and “Maybe not.” That first answer is the most important.

The world is not against you, the world simply is. You can make your world, make your farm, write your book, choose your friends, record your album. If you have to be a barista, get a retail job or rely on the kindness of strangers and friends to get it done then do it.

When we moved across the country so I could attend school (taking our farm with us) we got even stranger looks than the first time. It was the roughest trip we could have imagined. We broke down for a week and ran out of money, all while driving directly away from everyone we’d ever known. But we knew we could survive, and you can too.

Life sure does throw some curveballs.

This isn’t about how hard we had or have it, this is about you. This is about you doing it. What do you want to do? How can we help you do it?

Time is a limited resource, I know it sucks to think about, but you have only so much time to be happy and every second spent not being happy is a second lost to the winds. If you fear the possible failure, let me tell you something.

Not trying is failure.

I’m not saying to drop everything and do whatever you want, I’m saying we are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, and we need to chase it. You can pursue happiness relentlessly -be that cop who gets suspended from a case for “Being too close” and keeps searching for the facts until he brings down that suspect. You are that cop searching for your happiness.

Making the best of an inconvenient and stressful situation.

Honestly though, here is a short list of things you can do to pursue your thing. Because as George Watsky says “It’s gotta be somebody. So why not you?”

Podcast.

We started ours last year, we have over 200 plays already and it makes us feel good every time someone listens. I takes us about 5 hours a week to do, and we record on the mic built in to Ashley’s computer. If you have questions, we'd love to help you get started.

Write something.

Write a blog, write a short story to share with your friends, write a poem. I write every time I need to create something. I’m writing a book of poems, a fantasy book, a blog post, and a romance book if i ever get past the opening line. Maybe someone other than Ashley will read one of these, maybe nobody will, but I made them and that makes me proud.

Farm/Plant Something.

Plant some things and watch them grow, care for them and if you have excess share with others and enjoy the bounty of a harvest like man has been doing for generations. Food is at the core of humanity.

Sing.

As cheesy as it sounds, sing. I can’t hold a note or carry a tune, but I sing. Try it out, miss all the notes and give it your all.

Above all of this, practice compassion and love.

It’s hard to be kind and compassionate toward those you see as opposing you, but just remember the concepts of John Green in a speech written for an ALAN Conference, He tells us to imagine others complexly. No person is entirely what you think they are, you can’t fully understand your own thought processes let alone those of another. I try to assume the best in others as much as I can, and I’ll be the first to admit it is the hardest thing I have ever done (And I’ve moved an entire a farm across the country in a broken down Winnebago.)

In closing. You have time to express yourself and pursue your happiness, in fact the only thing you don’t have time for is to not.

- Ric

We've moved!

I know, I know....we have not blogged in waaaay too long.  But good news!  We have moved!  Not only are we are now in our new home/location in Eastern Ohio, and we are integrating our blog with our new website!  So, if you were reading/following us here, we will soon be moving all our content over to our new blog here.  

We are also working on some exciting new posts, new content, and of course, new products!  Stay tuned!

- Ashley and the Fiberton gang

Settling into our new place in OR before we leave for WV

Once set up at our new spot in Eugene, we headed to the farm store to get supplies to make our temporary space feel more like home for our 3 months of Oregon living.

We discovered the poly-wire electric fence, a small white polyester cording with metal strands running through it. We were able to run the fence using 4 T-posts and about 10 plastic fence line holders (only $2.99 each).

Little Pauly nursing.  No wonder she is growing so quick!
(Portable electric fencing in background.)

We let the sheep out in to their new pasture and watched them go crazy eating all the new grass. (Which here in Eugene there is no lack of grass and other greens to eat for the sheep.) However, they began escaping almost immediately, and Rocky was the first walking around the yard.

“Rocky! Go home.” We yelled at him (he’s not a good listener) as we walked toward him he ran back under a high spot in the fence. So we turned off the fence, lowered the high spot, turned the fence back on, and went back inside to keep setting the place up.

Good job herding Rocky back, JB. 

“BBllllaaaaaattttt.” we heard from outside and we saw Pauly walking around outside the fence and eating weeds right outside the door. We walked toward Pauly and she snuck under a different spot in the fence. This would go on the rest of the day as the sheep pointed out all the weak spots in the fence for us.

Look at that cute lil face!

After a nice day of running fence and setting up rabbit hutches, we packed it in at around 8PM and slept for about 13 hours.

The next couple of months would prove to be a similar experience to our first day. Days seem to consist of at least one animal escaping (cats bolting out of the RV, dog figuring out how to escape his first lead setup, Pauly in the driveway yelling at 4am, etc.) To be fair, the rabbits did not escape once.

However, during our first month, we experienced our first loss of an adult animal. One of the younger rabbits, little Edward, fell ill with mucoid enteritis. It is a tough disease for rabbits to recover from, and the antibiotics that you give can often be as tough on the body as the disease. After trying what we could, we decided it was time to try the antibiotics. We knew that they can wreak havoc on the intestinal system, so we gave her yogurt and enzymes to try and offset the antibiotics. Unfortunately, either the antibiotics or the illness got the better of her, and we had to say goodbye.

Edward and I in the Cali sun before the move. 

It is crazy to think that we have already spent almost 4 months here in Eugene.  We have been working, taking care of our crazy critters, and preparing for the big move in the beginning of August to our new home on the border of Ohio and WV!

More on that move soon...

-Ric and Ash

Part two of Big BIG changes for Fiberton...

A baby lamb is a tiny bundle of cute that is constantly trying to escape or run around like a crazy person leaping off everything in sight as well as trying to climb on Adrian, our ewe.

Pauly was born on Easter some time late at night. We didn't notice until around noon on Monday. We saw a fluffball running around the field when we were coming home from buying moving supplies.

Little Pauly, our Easter baby

“Uuum, what is that?” Asked Ashley. “Is that a baby?”

“No, not everything is a baby.” I said snarkily, mostly because this was the 5th “Is that a baby?” in the past 3 months.

“Then why is it running around?” she continued.

“Balls! That’s a baby!” I exclaimed while jumping out of the slowly moving car.

Normally a successful baby lamb would be just another day on the ranch, but being that we were embarking on a three-day move up to Oregon the next day, it was causing a little stress (understatement).

“Should we call Christy?” Ashley asked, only slightly panicked. Before I could even say “Yes,” she was already on the phone. Christy and Mike were there within an hour, with oats, vitamins, and inoculations in hand.

After they gave us the ok to move her we went back to packing, we were leaving in less than 24 hours after all.

So little and cute! 

Our Friendlord came over to help us finish cleaning and packing for the move so it would look good when she came over to inspect it later (she’s cool like that.)

Pulling out of that driveway was hard, not only because we had a horse trailer being pulled by 26 foot Winnebago, but because we were already missing all the amazing people that we knew there.

JB loaded in the car watching Ash in the Winnebago in front of us

Leaving the driveway of our awesome little farm in San Miguel.
We were super lucky to have such a great place, with such wonderful Friendlords and
friends in the area.  Thank you all for everything!  

Part three with the road trip will come along soon....

Big BIG changes for Fiberton...Part 1

“Well, I guess we’re moving to West Virginia,” I said to Ashley after receiving the news, “I got accepted to Wheeling Jesuit University’s Respiratory Therapy Program!”

I should introduce myself, I’m Ric! Ashley has probably mentioned me before, but now she’s working like crazy (I’ll explain on what later) so I’m picking up the slack with my superior talents :-)

I am the hubby that Ashley keeps talking about. (On the right.)

As I mentioned above, I got accepted to Uni halfway across the country in a place I’d never heard of, let alone been to. I needed a change of career, or a career at all really. I have asthma and have been in hospitals quite often my entire life (I find them comforting… I know, weird, right?) and I have always wanted to be in a medical field, but didn’t want to be a doctor or a nurse. I honestly had forgotten that respiratory therapists existed until I had a bad day at work and was looking for something better to do with my work life.

I decided to get the full BA degree, so I looked at schools that offered it, there were about 48. And the top five were Ivy League and/or prohibitively expensive. But WJU looked right up my alley, so I applied. Not only did they accept me, but they gave me scholarships!

After we had decided to move there at the end of summer one of Ashley’s old friends called from Oregon and offered her a job on a campaign, it was a city council race that was highly contested and the candidate needed the best campaign manager that Eugene has ever known (I’m tooting her horn for her) and they asked her to come back to the Eug for “One more race.”

“.......... Should we?” Ashley asked me.

“Why the hell not? I love adventure, and excitement.” (That’s why I’d be a bad Jedi.)

After about two days of me convincing her that we could pack up 6 rabbits, 2 sheep, 2 cats, and an incredibly old black lab into Oliver (the cool name we’ve given to our 1986 Winnebago) she caved.

Oliver, our trusty Winnebago

It was official, we had less than a month to pack up and get to Oregon. We discussed it with Ashley’s parents and after they helped us decide it wasn’t a ridiculous idea, we began telling people with “The Friendlords” (our friends who also happened to be our landlords) and then Mike, Christy, and their friendtern (their intern who also happened to be their friend) Tiffany, and lastly our jobs. We began frantically packing and doing dump runs in between our last shifts at work. 

We pulled Oliver around near the house and bought a 2-horse trailer made sometime in the ‘60’s to haul the sheep (Ashley’s dad Dean drove her, like, 4 hours north just to pick it up because it was SUPER CUTE and also half the price of any other ones we saw online). We started overhauling Oliver and converting the pullout bed into a full time bed and putting in the new entertainment center and bookshelf that I had built. (I just learned how to build stuff recently, so I’m bragging.) Once I had hooked up my Playstation, NES, Atari, Genesis, Super Nintendo, Wii, and my computer I was ready to go. (Unfortunately, we still had a whole house to move out of, hehe.)

The adventure will continue...