What do you do when everything gets put on hold? Now that the greenhouse is on its side and secured to the post, we need to repair it and secure it back in place. I need to step back and take a deep breath, not becoming discouraged by the slowing of progress on the homestead.
I’m sure in the future there will be many more setbacks to make us gasp, cringe and feel demoralized, but I believe the most important thing is to keep moving forward. Letting go of what has happened and making way for new plans helps build momentum in our lives and keeps us from becoming stagnant.
Dom went to get all the supplies this weekend needed to secure the greenhouse as well purchasing the shelves needed inside.
I’ve been laid up in bed since Thursday, first with horrible aches and pains in my joints and muscles from holding the greenhouse from flying over the fence for about 20 minutes, and then on Saturday, my lungs started to get heavy and give me problems. It sucks when I need to be on the nebulizer gasping for air, or if I get up to walk its like I have bricks in my lungs.
I know that my lungs and our sinus problems (which seem like having a cold) are due to sand and dirt being forced in during the wind storm. Yesterday I thought I was coming down with a cold (Dom too) but I know now its our bodies trying to get all the dirt out. I’m coughing up sand and dirt from my lungs and each time I blow my nose, a little more dirt comes out.
I need to find ways to turn our mini disaster into an opportunity for growth.
So, what would be a good solution to our greenhouse dilemma? Well, while I was laid up in bed, I realized that we could put all the shelves together and start a good amount of our seeds out in the unfinished utility kitchen. A few things need to be rearranged and poof! we could start our peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, artichokes and some other seeds that really should be started indoors.
Back up systems are essential to any good working plan. Three is usually the magic number in any situation, but it couldn’t hurt to have more back up plans right? I Didn’t come up with alternate plans in case a disaster struck like 65 mph winds ripping our greenhouse out of the ground because I didn’t think the winds would kick up this soon…I thought we had a little more time to finish.
I did, however, go out and check on all our fruit trees. The apricot trees and our baby peach tree have blossomed and the nectarine trees are about to blossom as well.
The other thing that was accomplished this weekend in spite of the greenhouse was to begin moving forward with our 
commercial kitchen.
So far we’ve estimated our start up costs to be around $5,000 for equipment, permits, licenses, plumbing, electrical work, construction costs, and materials.
That’s just an estimate and of course a low ball figure, but I think its pretty close to what the figure will be. It’s an amount we feel we could handle if we needed to take out a small loan. They say that what ever estimate a person comes up with to double it, and still $10,000 would be acceptable to us. Not more than that though.
The photo to the right is of the very easy to read book on how to start a licensed home-based baking business. For anyone interested in starting their own commercial kitchen at home, I would definitely recommend this book. The author Quincella C. Geiger gives great tips, suggestions, and the step by step process on getting the ball rolling. She even provides check lists, talks about how to price products, and if you don’t want to bake anything, how to be in the food business anyway. It will only take a few hours to read it from cover to cover, and even though its simple to understand, its filled with very useful information.
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