Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

Our simple homes put to classical music.  They are turning out great.

Videos -

Eldred is no metropolis, and Wurtsboro isn't either.  But Wurtsboro is so much more centrally located for the radius of our work, and as a bonus is 30 minutes closer to Amanda, our Queen of design and administration and coordination.

Wurtsboro and the Rt 209 corridor is cool for a history buff like me because it runs parallel to the old D&H Canal system that moved product from Honesdale PA to Kingston NY and off to the Hudson River.  An insane man over nature, commerce at all costs effort of the 1820-1850's.  And by the time it was built and served a few years, it was outdated and being phased out by the train, a much quicker mode.  

I've kept a box - one I'm always concerned about where it is and what is in it - that I find on occasion as I clean out a closet and/or move.  I've lived a zig zaggy life so it's interesting to see what I have kept over the years.  It's not much, when you come down to it, but it's a good snapshot.

First, I have these US Bonds from the 80's and 90's that I'm most impressed I still have considering it's just a little envelope.   Mostly from my Mom, but one from my baseball coach back in 1982 when I played on an awesome little league baseball team.  I guess the idea is you buy them for half the face value, hold them for 30 years, and get face value plus.  Serious dough.  I'm going to give them to Lucas for his savings and chores account.

Take the time to turn your head for this one.  A note from a neighbor of property I owned in Lancaster PA.   He's complaining about the loud sex of my tenants.  Funny he didn't identify himself since it was clear who it was.  I think there was a followup letter to0.

Not great pictures, but a snap shot of the new digs.  There's 4 of us in the office and the dog.  The move went pretty well - big items on Monday, comps and printers tuesday, phones on Wednesday.

A shocking thing was discovered as we transferred our computers.  Through some oversight on the tech company's part, we hadn't been backing up our info since 2018, and when they went to transfer the data of the hard-drive, it failed.  The tech spent the night trying to remove the data, a lot of data, our entire business on one little hard-drive, that wasn't backed up and was now failing; I spent the night worried.

But they got it working and transferred.  I think what shook me up the most was the idea that this tech company failed to do it's most basic job - protect our data - while otherwise doing a great job keeping us up and running on a daily basis.  Because they did such a great job, we never would have considered they were failing to back up our data.

The Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, and how to prevent it from ever happening again is easy to engineer - but the idea that a trusted vendor couldn't be trusted to do their fundamental job without our oversight reminded me how there is only one person who really cares about thinking all these risks thru, and that is me, the Owner.  How many people have been put out of business or set back many years by a careless or dishonest vendor, employee or resource?

I do a walk with my dog most nights and recently I've been meeting up with a neighbor - A Father at the local Episcopal Church - and he noted losing your life's work like that is very much how someone feels after a fire.  I think that was a good analogy.

Writing is hard and easy at the same time.  You can't rush it, and that's what makes it hard.  You can't rush it, that's what makes it easy.  You can't phone in good writing - you have to be present.   Turn on the pandora station Americana Radio.

Breanna, Amanda, lulu, Me and Lucas last day at the office.

Which reminds me of my quick witted son, while I was running a business, cooking some meals and juggling a half a dozen other things while home schooling him (I'm a single dad), and by week 3 I pulled back a little from the helicopter parenting as he transitioned into his online schooling.  But he wouldn't leave me alone, reporting back every victory, failure, problem, success, fart, tech problem, etc...  Eventually I reminded (kind way of putting it) him that it takes 10 minutes to do 2 minutes of work when I get interrupted every 2 minutes, and without a beat he says 'I just thought you'd be more present'.

I'm moving offices from Eldred NY, located in Southern Sullivan County on the border of Pennsylvania (just across the Delaware River) to Wurtsboro NY, which is more center to our projects, which include a lot of Ulster and Dutchess work.  The building I'm moving out of is historic in its own podunk way, and the building I'm moving in has the same podunk historical profile.

I'm moving out of what was a ramshackle garage that passed through several families and was best known as the garage and properties where the local school buses were housed and serviced.   And moving into what I guess is the former Elks Lodge in Wurtsboro where everyone I talk to got both drunk and lucky at.

We took that ramshackle garage over the last decade plus and grew it into a pretty fast office, warehouse, multi-building complex, with state of the art security, receiving and offices.  it's pretty comfy and it's pretty well-designed - organically, as we grew, truck by truck person by person.   Just kept adding on.  Grew from a little operation that barely could to a market leader, firmly entrenched, unmoved by imitators, copycats and competitors, global calamities and personal misfortunes.

Lucas used to spend a fair amount of time there, catching the bus, dropped off from school, midway point for his Mom to pick him up.

I spent a fair amount time there too.  For a guy who is rarely seen in the office before 9:30 and after 2pm these days, it's hard to imagine when I was there at 5am and well past dinner time, for years that turned into decades plus.  Every day of every week.  I definitely put in the time, if nothing else - it's hard to beat a guy who won't quit and isn't afraid to work.

Being from Lancaster County Pennsylvania, I had a baseball coach who told me well before I understood what he meant, - he told me I have a competitive advantage I hardly am aware of - I'm from Lancaster, which intrinsically means I'm honest (which is really just an under-rated quality) and I know how to work harder than most.  He was right.  Without a doubt.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense for the news to be positioning this as a conservative v. liberal effort.  We all want/need the economy to open back up.  It is literally impossible to envision this Pause sustained for a much longer period for many reasons - financial as well as mental health.  I can't imagine - actually I can - some of the small urban spaces some of these families are quarantined in and the distress they are in.

Here's the funny upper middle class white persons version below from the New Yorker.  I love how it's titled "Day Two".  For those with less cushion or ability to work, it's less funny, and the impacts don't go away right away.

And then this -

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/nyregion/coronavirus-quarantine-nyc-bronx-diary.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Truth of the matter is, for whatever show Cuomo is putting on, there is little to no enforcement of the stay at home order, and anyone out this past sunny Sunday - with packed parks, takeouts, motorcycle convoys, etc..., it's clear people are getting restless.  We are social animals.

It's super annoying, because as soon as you say 'lets get this show back on the road', any thinking person soon realizes it can't be done without widespread testing, and for some reason, this country that was made great again can't mobilize and produce tests, even though we are 6 weeks into this.

I'm a big WWII history fan, and I'm listening to a big sympathetic biography of W. Churchill, and I'm just covering the part when American comes into the war.  Literally, through a national mobilization, the US was producing more planes than Germany and England combined.  It's that ability to produce, to lead, to nudge or bully the world in a generally-accepted positive direction that is just missing.   I mean seriously, anyone who thinks we are 'winning' (to borrow from the executive office), or 'winning very much', is unfamiliar with what winning looks like or feels like, because, having won many times and often throughout my life, this whole thing feels a lot like losing, from my experience.  I don't even think you should get a 'participation' trophy for this effort.

Thing is, I live in a poor county (Sullivan) and am transitioning into a mixed social-economic community, NE Pennsylvania, and I've now participated in enough youth sports and seen the antics of these parents and league members to know firsthand that a lot of people have no idea what winning looks like. and mistake it for something entirely different.

But really, there are a lot of ways to open.  If McDonalds can be open, residential construction can be open.  That's not even hard to explain.  If a pizza shop where no one is wearing protective gear, and is fully staffed and crowded behind the service desk - if they can serve 1200 customers a day and the virus isn't spreading, then clearly a tile company and their little crew can be working.

It won't be long till the inconsistency of the State picking winners and losers without real thought will be a problem, and it should be.  And it's up to Us to push them in the right direction.  The idea we all hide out and wait for the all-clear from Cuomo, well, that's not something I'm in favor of, having watched this political animal who loves the 'pay to play' game of Albany play constituencies off of each other for the last 10+years.

I've been noticing things more, as I pick around the house.  I tried the 'delicate' cycle on my dryer for the first time, now that I'm washing my bedsheets twice as much - just thought I'd give it a try.  The filter on my water dispenser on my fridge, alerting me for at least a year that it needs to be changed, is low-hanging fruit.  I've taken a keen interest in the daily progress of a patch of grass I replaced, as well as the feeding habits of some birds outside (a little disappointed at the variety of birds visiting my bird feeders, but since neither squirrels or bears have yet successfully destroyed them, and they haven't pulled out of the wood fastener and are still hanging) I'll live with the success I've achieved here.

Dog watching the squirrel, who is set on reaching the bird feeders.  It's been sad lately, he's not coming around as much, and I feel bad that he gave up on what I'm sure looked liked the lottery at first.

I'm outsizedly annoyed my Iphone doesn't recognize me with my mask on, and typically I'm wearing gloves when this happens so whatever precautions I have taken get muddled with phone screen UFC match. I've gotten really interested in my pillow arrangement after I make my bed - artistically arranging the 6 pillows each day.  I'm on a first name basis with my Romba Irobot RonJames, and truly feel bad when he runs into problems when i'm not home and is prevented from finishing his job - I know he feels bad, and I feel bad for him.

I think the true tragedy here, the ironic nature of the damage this virus is doing - is, conceptually, we have the right person in the White House for a business emergency.  I mean, literally, we have a guy who has spent his entire life in business, so it's really a situation men of history wait for - a time to lead.   How many great leaders never get that moment to flex the full measure of their ability?  But here we are, with a business guy leading the nation in a moment of business crisis, and can anyone really make a long list of measures being discussed that get to the heart of the problem?

Sure, the SBA stuff is great - but he didn't craft it - ad now instead of digging into policy debates about how to structure it and how to help the business community, Trump is sniping at organizations that maybe should be self-policing and self-denying funds legally available to them. He literally just wastes our time.  My dad - he died in 2014, had a saying, and it was biting in its modesty - 'he's just a disappointment that don't quit'.  It's got impact because it recognizes promise that is self-impeded, and it recognizes the general sadness of its impact on others.

Truly, if there is any good that comes from this, it will be in book form, and it will be 'how not to fight a war'.  It's instructional.