The opposite of "progressive" is progress

3 calves, 3 hogs, 30 rabbits, 47 chickens, 6 sheep, 8 geese and, so many tomatoes and eggs that we supplement the hog's feed with leftovers and blemished stuff from the garden...which includes apples and pears by the wheelbarrow full. I picked up an old 1948 Ford 8N tractor for under 2 grand that has been rebuilt and repainted and, looks like it just came off a showroom floor. With the sale of my house in Toledo, this place will have 60% knocked off the principle of my loan and result in my farm being paid for in ten years instead of twenty. With the sale of my wife's home in P-burg, the proceeds will be going toward a 1 acre pond stocked with bass, bluegill and crapie. Since my stepmother is an Arab, my income is now padded with the network of Arabs from Toledo who used to drive all the way to Dearborn to be fleeced for lamb meat at inflated prices. Now, they can drive 15 minutes as opposed to an hour + and, be able to choose their lamb where it stands, see the conditions it's been raised in and, do what Arabs do best...haggle the price in person. My goal to retire from my regular job by age 55 with a viable income and, 401k padding is now more realistic than ever since working the farm is almost generating enough income to eat for free and, my day job is making the house note and, the utilities with enough left over to sock away for misc stuff that pops up or, catches my fancy. I have to openly admit that without my wife and kids jumping in and sharing a stake in all this, it would have failed from day one. I work 50+ hours a week on a night shift with a 55 minute drive to work and back...and mucking the pens, feeding the critters, caring for the garden, mowing the lawn and all the other stuff would be a bitch without a dedicated bunch standing behind me and pushing me when I need to be. It isn't easy getting off work at 6 am, driving for an hour and, taking care of a farm for a few hours, then, sleeping until 3 pm, out the door by 4 and, rinse and repeat without the support of my wife and kids helping with the legwork. In other news, my neighbors that each live a half mile away, are damned fine people of a caliber that don't exist within city limits. I'm storing my neighbor's fleet of gravity wagons in one of my barns...he offered to pay rent but, instead of cash, he's now my "go to guy" for farming questions since he's 81 years old and has more passable knowledge than I'd ever get for mere money...and, my youngest son will be learning how to operate his harvester in the fall. Besides that, my neighbor is also our first egg cusomer...who has also advertised to our other neighbors where to get eggs from free-ranged chickens at half the cost of buying organic eggs from a store. Indeed, I am fortunate that things are working well for me...and NOTHING the government has done has been able to wreck it.