Grant and I have been doing some serious pondering lately. About life,
about how the years pass.
About the fragilness of life after an online friend passed too soon. A woman who forever left a mark on our heart after her quiet kindness and generosity.
About finances.
About the farm, we dream of but cannot buy until our business sells.
About sustainability.
Finally unpacked my special things from all our grandparents after being here for a year. My eyes prickled with tears from happy memories as I carefully unwrapped everything and put it in its place. The box to the side is things to donate/sell. De-cluttering and keeping only what we love is a continuing theme here.
As many of my long-time readers possibly know we own a rural General Store and Post Office. We casually put it on the market around the time I started blogging. It remains on the market which is no surprise as businesses are notoriously slow to sell. It is a particularly bad time to sell a business like ours. But in a difficult economy where many small businesses are forced to close their doors, ours had grown and strengthened significantly. It is a good, solid, reliable business to buy. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is being marketed in a poor economy, where banks are highly conservative and are not supporting small businesses.
We have decided to drop the price a little, it's hard. We need it to be worth a certain amount from it as we need to buy our farm cash - Banks don’t like lending for farming either, apparently growing food that we all need to eat to survive is considered too risky of an investment for them too. But you know, it’s not risky to loan for an overpriced, fancy brand new car. Nor is it risky apparently to lend a stack of money to a young couple just starting out for their big fancy, brand new house filled with brand new, shiny things.....Go figure huh.....*eye roll*
Bottling up a batch of nourishing bone broth. The ultimate frugal, simple food. Generations of people have been doing this same task through time....Though I have electricity. ;)
But my point is, we have decided to drop the price on our business. We have a meeting coming up with our sales bloke, I’m not sure that even the price drop we have in mind will stimulate the interest we need in this deadpan economy.
It doesn’t feel good to have your arm twisted by the economy, when you know what your selling is good and strong and traditionally worth what it's listed as. But there is a cost to keeping the focus on what we believe we "should" get in life.
We could hold out for what we know it's worth, but our children will grow older, these precious young years will be forever gone. The lessons we want to teach them about farming, the time we want to spend with them working side by side…..It will all disappear if we make our focus on the financial gains in life. These years we can never get back.
There is a cost for striving for "the best deal". In our relationships, in ourselves, in our dreams being put on hold. Sometimes, we need to settle for "pretty good". Because the cost is not worth the price we would otherwise have to pay.
In this day and age, we are told we "deserve" the best. To aim high! Never give up! You can do whatever you want to do! There is truth in these statements. But not necessarily in the way the media portrays it.
We do deserve the best – But to give our best to our families, to our relationships, to our loved ones.
We do need to aim high - to challenge ourselves to work hard, to aim for a strong marriage, to aim for strong relationships, to aim to live within our means. To aim to leave this world stronger, gentler.
And we do need to never give up. To never give up on our families, to never give up on kindness and empathy and trying to understand the world around us, to never give up on being an advocate for the lost, the weak, the forgotten, the vulnerable. These are what’s important. It should never be about never giving up on obtaining the perfect shoe collection, or curating the perfect Instagram feed, nor the prefect home. These things don’t even exist as the goal posts are always being moved by an external force that tries to decide for us on what "enough" is. Or what the latest fashion is, or the latest trend in housing.
A simple dinner. San Boy Chow. Fresh, tasty and perfect for a hot summers night when no one is overly hungry and cooking a big meal is completly unappealing.
So, with that in mind we are dropping the price on our business. We are not going to get "the best price" for it that we would like. Instead we are looking at how the sale of the business can give us "our best life" together as a young family. It will make things at the other end harder, but that is why we were created with a wonderful an imagination and the ability to think outside the “box”.
There is a cost to every single decision we make. The thing that we need to always keep in mind is, are we willing to pay the price?
Much love,
Emma
xx
About the fragilness of life after an online friend passed too soon. A woman who forever left a mark on our heart after her quiet kindness and generosity.
About finances.
About the farm, we dream of but cannot buy until our business sells.
About sustainability.
As many of my long-time readers possibly know we own a rural General Store and Post Office. We casually put it on the market around the time I started blogging. It remains on the market which is no surprise as businesses are notoriously slow to sell. It is a particularly bad time to sell a business like ours. But in a difficult economy where many small businesses are forced to close their doors, ours had grown and strengthened significantly. It is a good, solid, reliable business to buy. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is being marketed in a poor economy, where banks are highly conservative and are not supporting small businesses.
We have decided to drop the price a little, it's hard. We need it to be worth a certain amount from it as we need to buy our farm cash - Banks don’t like lending for farming either, apparently growing food that we all need to eat to survive is considered too risky of an investment for them too. But you know, it’s not risky to loan for an overpriced, fancy brand new car. Nor is it risky apparently to lend a stack of money to a young couple just starting out for their big fancy, brand new house filled with brand new, shiny things.....Go figure huh.....*eye roll*
But my point is, we have decided to drop the price on our business. We have a meeting coming up with our sales bloke, I’m not sure that even the price drop we have in mind will stimulate the interest we need in this deadpan economy.
It doesn’t feel good to have your arm twisted by the economy, when you know what your selling is good and strong and traditionally worth what it's listed as. But there is a cost to keeping the focus on what we believe we "should" get in life.
We could hold out for what we know it's worth, but our children will grow older, these precious young years will be forever gone. The lessons we want to teach them about farming, the time we want to spend with them working side by side…..It will all disappear if we make our focus on the financial gains in life. These years we can never get back.
There is a cost for striving for "the best deal". In our relationships, in ourselves, in our dreams being put on hold. Sometimes, we need to settle for "pretty good". Because the cost is not worth the price we would otherwise have to pay.
In this day and age, we are told we "deserve" the best. To aim high! Never give up! You can do whatever you want to do! There is truth in these statements. But not necessarily in the way the media portrays it.
We do deserve the best – But to give our best to our families, to our relationships, to our loved ones.
We do need to aim high - to challenge ourselves to work hard, to aim for a strong marriage, to aim for strong relationships, to aim to live within our means. To aim to leave this world stronger, gentler.
And we do need to never give up. To never give up on our families, to never give up on kindness and empathy and trying to understand the world around us, to never give up on being an advocate for the lost, the weak, the forgotten, the vulnerable. These are what’s important. It should never be about never giving up on obtaining the perfect shoe collection, or curating the perfect Instagram feed, nor the prefect home. These things don’t even exist as the goal posts are always being moved by an external force that tries to decide for us on what "enough" is. Or what the latest fashion is, or the latest trend in housing.
So, with that in mind we are dropping the price on our business. We are not going to get "the best price" for it that we would like. Instead we are looking at how the sale of the business can give us "our best life" together as a young family. It will make things at the other end harder, but that is why we were created with a wonderful an imagination and the ability to think outside the “box”.
There is a cost to every single decision we make. The thing that we need to always keep in mind is, are we willing to pay the price?
Much love,
Emma
xx
