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

How can't you be excited when you find your 20 year old copy of Paris Hilton's sex tape (CD actually).  Perversely, I'm listening to Taylor Swift's Reputation - it's not bad. I like her.

And one of the very first, if not the very first subdivisions I did - in Callicoon NY, up on Bayer Road.  I bought 30 acres of big view land from George B, who was an old timer who owned a dilapidated home.  He was a horse trainer at the Monticello race track - old school layered on old school.  When we were renovating the old house that came with the 30 acres, I found his smut stash - literally 60 magazines - Playboy, Oui, Pin-up and a bunch of other classics.  He was a real smut connoisseur.   The comical part of it, in the middle of the the 2 foot stack was a Playgirl - just testing it out I guess.  Good for him.  Eric G, I know you are blushing.

Anyways, my point is, besides my savings bonds and my Paris Hilton tape and few other bits of nostalgia, I came across this.   And you know what, the articles in Playboy are awesome.

I've been inspired by this pandemic.  I don't mean in a happy way, I just mean it's got my thinking juices flowing, and that gets my writing juices going, because at the root of it all, I'm a writer locked in a builder's body!  

That's not really true.  I like building - it's super challenging.  I think my energies are flowing because this pandemic is the real thing, and I think I have a good business mind and it is sparking a constant idea generation of what comes next, what come now, what comes longer term - I like the added risk element.  I'll tell you the least interesting time to be in business - boom times, when even the dumb prosper.  Give me some challenges to navigate.  I'm being facetious of course, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Let Construction Ignite the Rebound - lohud.com

What's Next for the Catskills : Boom or Bust- River Reporter

I can't decide how to feel about the future.  I'm getting such mixed signals.  We are busy as hell and people are calling and writing all day long.  And the stock market is stupid - I sold everything I had left today, after liquidating quite a bit at the beginning of the year, and then switching the remaining portfolio weight to a more conservative mix.  Now I'm out, except for my 529.  There just is zero reasons this market isn't going down.

The whole thing just feels like a little bit of denial, that the hope for a quick rebound is clouding decisions and people who haven't been harmed too much are searching for the buy in price and those who have been harmed/closed are banking on a quick rebound.  From a stock market perspective, all you got to do is study the market twists and turns of 1929 to understand how weird and deceptive it can be.  Up 1000%, drops 50%, up in the perfect dead cat bounce deception luring people back in, then a drop of 85% and 2 decades to return to breakeven.

I guess for me the risk is to be fooled by all the interest currently to ramp up production.  I'm just not sure how deep this goes, and how badly the banks get hit.

It's always fascinating, this lane of ours we operate in.  It's so narrow, but we mine it, harvest it, tend it, and it always produces our 8-16 homes a year from our resilient NYC buyers.  And in times like this, why not go with the guy whose been doing it for 20 years?  Why would you get involved with a company on their 3rd home, betting they won't be there when you need them in 2 years?  Tougher the times, the better we look.

Gotta get going - the oven timer is going off, and that means my 3 beers in the freezer are ready to come out.  But who am I kidding, I'm going to have a rye.

The real question is - how many people are, right now, cooling it with a drink, in a home from Catskill Farms, feeling safe and cozy?

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.