{"id":336,"date":"2005-12-25T16:25:44","date_gmt":"2005-12-25T16:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zuschlag.us\/?p=336"},"modified":"2024-08-31T02:01:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T02:01:14","slug":"2005-christmas-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zuschlag.us\/?p=336","title":{"rendered":"2005 Christmas Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas 2005<\/span><\/p>\n

Dear Friends and Family –<\/p>\n

2005 started out on a subdued note and for some reason the somber strain continued throughout the year.\u00a0 There were the usual ups and downs, and business-wise I was more successful than I ever imagined I’d be, but on the whole, I think, 2005 was not the best of years.\u00a0 Tsunamis, war, hurricanes, earthquakes, illness and death remind me how fragile our good fortune can be.<\/p>\n

Like most people, my Januarys<\/span><\/b> are filled with good intentions.\u00a0\u00a0This year, I vowed I would lose weight and get back in shape.\u00a0 Of course Costco <\/a>very cleverly preys upon people’s new years resolutions and they had a great price on a well-designed home gym<\/a> system.\u00a0 So, I took the plunge and had some young Costco guys help me load it into my truck.\u00a0 Once home I called my neighbor and co-worker Howie Swaim<\/a> to come over and help me unload things.\u00a0 Howie’s my age and has his own home gym.\u00a0\u00a0 So, of course, I wasn’t about to be out-machoed by Howie and to prove it I picked up a whole box of weights myself.\u00a0 Now most people confronted with a 150 lb box of weight plates would be smart enough to open the box and take the plates out 25 lbs at a time.\u00a0\u00a0 Not me!\u00a0\u00a0 I done bust a gut! (literally – I pinched a nerve in my spinal column and tore an abdominal muscle).\u00a0 Needless to the say the home gym sat in boxes in my garage for several months. I was going to show you ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of my fab physique, but I guess those will have to wait until next year’s letter.\u00a0 I went to the doctor<\/a> who told me that the only way for my back and stomach to heal was for me to “take it easy and not lift anything over 10 lbs for the next several months.”\u00a0 “Okaaay, ” I said, “and just who’s going to lift all those 50 lb feed sacks for me or toss those 60 lb hay bales to feed my sheep for the next few months?”\u00a0\u00a0 The good doctor didn’t have any answer for that.\u00a0 A week later, despite being in pain, I still was able to speak once more on internet marketing of farm products at the Future Harvest Conference<\/a> in Hagerstown, MD<\/a> and enjoyed meeting lots of farmers from up and down the East Coast.<\/p>\n

February<\/span><\/b> was a surprisingly busy month in my real estate business.\u00a0 Lots of new listings and a fair amount of sales.\u00a0Toward the end of the month I was a bit nervous about taking time off for lambing season, but this year’s lambing had me more nervous than usual.\u00a0\u00a0 As I know that each of you memorizes my annual missives with a passion, you’ll remember from last year my description<\/a> of artificial insemination<\/a> of 30 of my ewes with semen from the top rams in the UK.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the best things about AI is that you know pretty much to the day, if not the hour, when the lambs will be born.\u00a0 One of the worst things about AI is that all the ewes go in to labor all at once!\u00a0 It was pretty dicey there for a while when several ewes were giving birth at once and some were in need of assistance and some lambs were confused as to who exactly was their mother.\u00a0 52 lambs were born within three days.\u00a0 Eventually everyone was sorted, penned, and happy, but it was basically four days without sleep.\u00a0 In the end, however, it was a terrific lambing season and I’m hugely pleased with the way the lambs have turned out. \u00a0 February 28th brought a nice major snow storm, so I convened an historic first meeting of the South Poes Sledding Society (SPSS).\u00a0 Neighbors gathered on my hammock hill for an afternoon of sledding, hot chocolate,\u00a0and a big bonfire.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone enjoyed it so much that we agreed that in the future the SPSS should meet as often as weather permits.<\/p>\n

February Photos – Click on Photo to Enlarge<\/b><\/p>\n