God Hates a Coward
Keeping the Farm in Difficult Times & My Plan for It's Future
This substack launched back in November because I’d just started antidepressants for the first time. I think that initial serotonin boost kicked my depression aside far enough to try and make my life better. I hadn’t felt that since I bought the farm.
Without the substack, I would’ve already have lost this place this year. It’s already become a saving grace, covering the cost of feed and hay, which is why I believe it can grow into something bigger. It’s already doing magical things. And women in my position have to believe in magic.
…Or, if magic fails, long-term planning.
The long game is to build this substack into something amazing. A place where you watch someone turn their life around completely. A place where other people come for advice, encouragement, and hope when times are hard. To encourage people to be brave and change their own lives for the better. Because that is what it has done for me. This farm saved my life. It gave me community and purpose and something I cared about more than myself to focus on when I was at my lowest. It gave me the confidence to come out, to finally be honest about who I am.
I am different person from the girl that started this dream and wrote her first book at 25. I have Cold Antler to thank for that. For everything.
This substack has given me the confidence to make the first plans for the future I’ve allowed in over a decade. The plan is to save myself and this farm by writing my way into the middle class again. Then I want to focus entirely on giving back.
I want to help other people pay their rent and mortgage payments, give them the relief I know saves dreams and lives. I don’t want or need to travel, go on vacations, redo my kitchen, or buy a new car. None of that is ever going to be a part of my life, but if I can hold onto this magical place while helping other farmers keep theirs, it’s enough. It’s enough for twenty lifetimes.
Everything this farm has for sale, is on offer here. It’s a post from April, but the urgency and products are the same. I can’t turn down any job at any bid, so if there’s something you could use, or want, please reach out. I would much rather you take advantage of my situation and buy a logo for half the asking price now than pay full price in a month. My heart-rate is happening now.
Today the farm is 10 days from possible foreclosure. I know because I just had to sign for the certified letter from the bank telling me. I will always be a month from foreclosure until I can earn enough in four weeks time to manage two payments. Soon as houses fall three months behind, they get slammed on the chopping block. Hedge funds and investors are buying single homes like mine as fast as possible, flipping them while the market is so high. Every month is a terrifying, embarrassing, scrambling, undignified countdown of doing whatever I have to to catch up. But peace, pride, and dignity are too rich for my blood and God hates a coward.
Everything this farm has for sale, is on offer here. It’s a post from April, but the urgency and products are the same. I can’t turn down any job at any bid, so if there’s something you could use, or want, please reach out.
Someday I am not going to write posts like this. Someday you guys will forward me posts like this from other farmers and I can’t wait to be what I desperately needed for someone else. I think that would be a perfect third act for Cold Antler. As beautiful as finding love, as healing as cauterizing a wound, and as karmically correct as possible. I think doing anything else with any success I might find, would be a worse story, and I’m in this for the best story possible.
But I can’t do it alone. I never have.
I am still here. I hope you take some comfort in that.
I hope next time you check I’m still here, too.
To encourage subscriptions, which is the fastest and best way to help this farm because it means I’m getting paid for work I am already doing without adding more to my plate; I sent out an email offering 50% off the first year’s subscription of this blog. It works out to $3.33 a month with that deal. It works for upgrading. It works for gifts, if you want to give someone else the substack for a year. Note: this sale only works for the annual subscription plan.
Give me a spin, and if it’s worth it, keep supporting. If it’s not, then you made a very informed decision and played a part in helping someone in a scary time.
I think people assume with a readership of almost a thousand people, that dozens message me when I post about the realities of losing my home, that sales come pouring in. They don’t. I’m only asking people that can both afford to support the farm and find value in what I do, to pay for it. I have to trust if that’s you, you’ll do so.
And as always, if you love this blog and been following along for years and can’t afford it - just ask and I will comp your subscription. Anyone who needs this or misses their friend but can’t afford $8 monthly, I happily comp. I believe that when things are better for you, you’ll start supporting when you can. That’s what has been happening so far.