Well, it happened again.  I ruined a perfectly lazy year by successfully applying for a grant.  (for actual grant: look under The Hen Hoes).   I was halfway looking forward to a rejection notice (reverse psychology) so I could  focus on making a hammock, but noooo... just what the doctor ordered:  more chickens.  Luckily it is very close to easter because the chickens that I have are on steroids it seems.  They lay so much that I had to order 250 egg cartons, and them things aint cheap *40 cents a piece*.  I am afraid to open the coup, because, well, because HEEEEELPPPP!  Maybe they just do it to piss me off and lay 3 eggs a day a piece.   But anyway, I don't know what to do with the eggs right now, and this grant is for 150 more chickens.
I will officially start in the movable chicken coup research business.  Ah, it will be great! So right now I do have a small trailer which functions as a prototype movable coup.  It has a movable electric fence that encloses the coup and which you can easily move.   However, the coup on wheels is not very movable, actually.  I already had Karen's 4 wheel drive truck stuck, trying to move it.  Then I got the tractor, got the truck out, and then tried to move the coup.   Long story short, I went to the neighbor today and he helped me get my tractor out after it had been stuck in the mud for 4 days.  The movable fence was great, I just put it around the coup and the tractor for a couple of days.  The chickens loved sitting up high and shat the whole tractor under. 
So that is what the grant will be good for too:  make something that you can actually move in wet conditions.   The electric fence works great: it keeps the chickens in, the dogs out and me nervous.
Oh, and why do I want chickens?  Laying hens, a hundred of them,  make about 20 pound of manure per day.      The nitrogen content is between 1 and 1.8%.     So how long do I need to have 100 chickens on a one tenth of an acre to increase the nitrogen content of the soil by 43.2%? 
Really I learned this last year: good shit doesn't come cheap and it doesn't spread itself.   But maybe chickens and a grant would.

There are those days when it is such a pleasure to be me!    I call it LFS: lucky fucker syndrome.   To the casual bystander it looks as if you are just the luckiest guy around, and those days, I do cherish them. 
However, the general public does not understand that people with LFS have aqcuired this survival mechanism because they need it.   People with LFS are generally so stupid that they need the luck to make up for the hardship that they have caused  themselves in the first place.
Let's say (just hypothetically ofcourse) that Pablo puts his passport in a bank safe and will pick it up on the way to the airport but  forgets that banks are closed on Monday after X-mas, when his is flying..  Let's just say that he then talks to the KLM and they are able to change his flight at no cost to him.   LFS, which, by the way has a genetic component,  at work.  Hypothecial of course.   We celebrate this of course as invincible good luck and a distinct motivator to open a bottle of forgotten wine. (Now that is an oxymoron if I ever heard of one: a forgotten bottle).
Suppose you get a grant for a greenhouse, you forget to pay taxes over it and one day you get a nastygram from the IRS stating that  you owe 1400 dollars.  It could happen of course.  Well, people with LFS then call the county office and ask if they could cleanout the road ditch at the south side of the farm.  And next thing you know there is a dozer, a truck, a laser level, two shovels to lean on and major earthmoving for a couple of days, probably about 1400 bucks worth. 
Again, to the casual visitor it appears as if I pooped in the same bucket as the pig: nope, just darwinisting my way out of it, and let's call it even.

What happened?  Or rather what did not happen?   Where to start, who is kissing who, who is conniving who?

Well, Dylan and I didn't fit in the same wheel barrow after all.  Susan left, Susan came back, Susan moved to town and will be moving into a new life with her beloved.    Gail is taking gardening and chickens to the next dimension at her own place.  Joey still rents a weldingshed from me for which I eventually will have to seek reimbursement through art theft or commission work.   Blek and Dekker are still in love with eachother and are almost done with the physical growth, mentally they remained dwarfs.  Karen is still hoping to get some wage money from me for working on Fridays, and to thicken the plot  there are chickens again, including attempts at hatching in Berger and at Wil farm.   Pablo  has become a working stiff and is enjoying the gumbo in Louisiana and is living a relationship through Skype.   Ma and Math are coming beginning of May, living in the Mobile homo or in town, or maybe they'll go on vacation living apart together.  Marjel and Hans are apparently on the up and up again because Marjel hasn't called me recently.

I am excited about this new year!  There is a lot going on and to share and I'll make it at least a weekly note from now on.