Winter's not far off now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

Beautiful morning; lots of sun around the clouds. Now, midday, mostly clouds. Theres apparently a heavy storm moving through the burn scars, but nothing has reached us yet. We'll get something later in the day, probably a few waves of intermittent storms, but nothing like the flooding they'll see on the other side of the ridgeline.

It's cold now, especially at night, and the leaves are turning fast. There'll be "summer" again next week, but winter's not far off now.

[Cue unscheduled interlude to help retrieve the ATV from where it fell headlong into the pond. No, there's no water in the pond, which in this limited instance is a good thing. He hooked up the harrow to the ATV and has been dragging it all over the land to aerate it, so that whatever rain we get the rest of this week can soak in as much as possible. He was dragging the far berm that forms the edge of the pond, and . . . everything slipped. It's got a plough blade on the front for moving earth and snow, and that, of course, dug all the way into the downward slope of the pond (and the cable on the winch broke, natch), so we had to shove an 8' iron bar underneath it (him lifting, me shoving) to raise it out of the mud enough for him to drive it out. The winch cable mess will have to wait until tomorrow, because rain is imminent. And now you understand what it takes to keep this place alive in apocalyptic times, and you also will understand why that fence up there, felled by tornadic winds? Is a much lower priority.]

Anyway. Now we have a lot more to do, although it least we were able to get it out ourselves and it apparently didn't do any damage except to the winch cable. But the costs of everything keep skyrocketing, and I'm not bringing in enough even to begin to meet them (hell, I'm not bringing in anything at all right now, no matter how hard I try), never mind anything extra. I have to bring in sales, and it just gets more urgent by the day, and I can't even get time to work on it. But we still have to keep pushing, because this is a society that doesn't allow for tragedy, or catastrophe, or destruction and death, even when it causes them all. There are bills to pay, expenses to cover, supplies to be stocked for winter, people to help (we've had to do that more than once this past week), and an endless parade of other demands. All in our worst sales year in a long, long time. And winter brings a lot more expense.

I've posted plenty of new work on the site in recent weeks, and there was already a big selection of incredible existing inventory. I'm stretching myself too thin, trying to update numerous platforms daily, and none of it's working; our Web site hits are still at record lows (save for the hack attempts, natch), and sales, of course, are abysmal. And this, going into our supposed busy season of the year. We have to make up a LOT of ground financially over the next four months. A LOT. All the links are listed below, so please share:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (apparently the sponges are unavailable, but the other two things I need that I can't get here are the Bar Keeper's Friend coffeemaker cleaner and descaler; we're entirely out of both [or Amazon cards, and I can order them myself]); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, and things are grim here, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.