Ending the week on a high note

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No, New York did not legalize marijuana. You still have to make the trip to Great Barrington or so I've heard, I wouldn't personally know. But sometimes, the accumulated victories of the week just outshine and outweigh anybody anyone anything that could possibly attempt to detract from the achievement. This is one of those weeks where even on a Friday beaten, tested, tired, agitated, I can still smell and taste the sweet vintage of victory.

First, the iPhone picture upload issue I was having seems to have been resolved, though it is untested, it appears to be resolved. I am a guilt free Tic-Toc aficionado and end up sending out an assorted variety of TicTocs to a small band of friends who appreciate the TicTocs if not the hour I send them, I found a series of quick videos that are named 'iPhone hacks that will change your life' and to be honest they say that accurately without hyperbole. This one shows you how to change your iPhone settings so that the new proprietary formatting which allows more photos to be saved with less space (HEIC) but less able to be used on foreign platforms, how you can change that setting so you may be taking up a bit more space on your phone but you're able to use the pictures more widely. I have not checked but I have changed the setting and I believe that I will be able to now post pictures from my picture roll to my blog and other assorted platforms that have been blocked frustratingly as I've mentioned.

We sold a house today, Barn 36. This is one of the first homes we sold past pandemic of 2020 since our homes have a 9 to 10 month build out timeframe. So for all the money that has been made in pandemic real estate ours has only yet been booked but not cashed in with 24 contracts on the books that we are busy building and selling. This is the first one meaning this homeowner got a deal of a lifetime because prices during the build have gone up 20% at a minimum. That's a lot of money to leave on the table, or to accumulate while you're building a home. Month by month house by house starting in June of last year we began to come closer to the market rate prices of what our homes go for but we never could have imagined even in our most boastful monologues that our homes would be as valued in the marketplace as they have demonstrated to be over the past 10 months. It is simply remarkable and validating to be valued like we are being valued in the marketplace by a wide ranging variety of home buyers. A Catskill Farms' home comes to market - A Catskill Farms' home quickly gets snatched up at a great price.

Also we were finally able to make Lemonade out of lemons with a drilled well at lot 67 in Saugerties which we would love to close but we're not able to because for the only the second time in 20 years we had trouble finding water on the site. Which is frightening for everyone involved considering most people don't drill wells till you are well into the project. Meaning you can have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested when you realize that you may have trouble getting water to the site. This has many ramifications including but not limited to instilling a complete paranoia in any other projects you may have going. Clearly this doesn't happen very often because otherwise there would be a law that says you need to drill your well first before you build a home and everybody would drill wells before they buy land so it is a rare occasion to struggle to find water 200, 300, 500, 700 feet into the earth. But sometimes it happens, and the amount of effort it takes to pivot, adjust, decide is immense. Well drilling is one of the most expensive least nimble aspects of building home. It's a big industrial rig with a big drill on it that drills into the ground a foot at a time searching for water in small crevices that can be expanded and drawn from. We finally hit water, after a 3 month ordeal. Not cheap, not easy, very distracting from other things, but had to achieved.

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So, right when we are acknowledging the 1st anniversary of the biggest disruption most of have and will see in our lifetimes - Catskill Farms will be selling off the deals it made post pandemic over the next 9 months, as well as bringing a few more to market that no-one has heard of yet.

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So I take a moment to recognize the achievement knowing full well it's just a matter or minute, hours or days till something big happens that needs to be fixed, solved, resolved or remedied - taken the shine off of and posing a tripping hazard to any victory lap.

Presenting, Barn 36 -