WEEK 2
Phew. Polar Vortex officially gone, but now I hear that it’s going to ‘come back’, that it’s just lurking up above Hudson’s Bay like a giant bird-of-prey…waiting until we all get satisfied with the winter weather before it strikes again, with more malice and wrath.
Anyways, that’s the word. For now, I’mma enjoy these milder temperatures, though the wind still blows cold and strong. We had a wind warning the other night, and many of the roads in the province we closed, of course on the same day that we had booked to go into Winnipeg to see the legendary Neil Young, one of Troy’s musical heroes and my Christmas present to him. Alas, we waited it out and the roads were fine. What an amazing concert. Glad we got to experience it. Sometimes, you just have to make the extra effort to get away, especially in this time of year when the farm (and my helpful parents) allows us. This weekend, we head into Winnipeg once more, for meetings related to the Harvest Moon Society and Harvest Moon Local Food Initiative. I am looking forward to seeing many good folks and ‘hashing out’ some long-overdue discussions.
This is the time of year when it’s also more possible for us to put more energy into marketing, and one of the major ways we do this is through our website. Unfortunately, we’ve been going through a nightmare that followed the expiration of our website domain name, battling with a sub-contractor of Google, and the threat of losing our name [FOREVAH] if we don’t pay them the high fee of $250+. I feel actually really angry and violated, that we have worked so hard to do all of this marketing and branding, and plastered our website all over our labels (currently it features on our raw honey labels that Troy is distributing all over Manitoba)…and all of this only to have it appropriated by some company doing a money-grab. I am getting very impatient to re-develop our website for the coming season, and am unhappy with our website being in some kind of vague purgatory, held hostage. Troy has had no success re-negotiating this situation, and today he suggested that I call the sub-contractor company and use my ‘female influence’ to try and bring the price down. This is maybe the first I’ve heard him admit my possession of any such ‘female influence’, and I’m pleased, though when he adds, “You could always cry…” I am slightly offended, as if I have the ability to just turn on the taps at will. (Though let’s be honest, I do.) So, I gave it a try, and while being put on hold for 10 minutes, I worked myself up into a semi-genuine lather, thinking about the unfairness of our virtual situation. By the time I had the dude on the phone, I am pretty sure I had real tears in my eyes, and told him our sob story about how we are simply poor young farmers, wanting to make a business for ourselves, and can’t afford such a wild figure to free our all-important domain name. (This was all true, in my opinion, so it wasn’t hard.) In the end, it looks like we made progress, and may get the opportunity to ‘buy back’ our domain name through some website ‘auction’ site, or snatch it up for free once it becomes a ‘free agent’ once more. I can’t believe this is what it has come to, but it looks like our best shot at getting our ‘baby’ back, hopefully without spending copious amounts of money to those idiots. All in a day’s [farm] work. Workin’ the lady magic. You’re welcome.
We’re bringing one of our cows to butcher this week. We will have it almost all processed as ground beef as she’s been in this world for some time. I’m looking forward to finally having some of our own beef in the freezer! The beef will be government-inspected, and much of it sold through the Harvest Moon Local Food Initiative.