Winter Solstice

Up here in the cold, dark north, this is a major turning point. We know that from today on, days will slowly get longer, the dark won't be so dark, the sun will change its arc in the sky. We still have long, cold rainy days ahead, but in less than two months, we can start planting seeds for spring and summer veges. We can start looking at seed catalogs and remember the wonderful sunny summer days and plentiful harvests. And days that start at 3:30 am and end after 10 pm. Heaven!

But for now, it is still hunker down time, and I am so grateful that I am soooo busy I don't have time to look outside and see the sleet and rain. But I do enjoy the sound of the rain on the metal roof at night, when I go to bed. I imagine myself in the tropics, in a little house with a red tin roof, beside the sea. I can see myself there, so I know it will happen.

The business is up and running. We missed the Christmas rush - and though it would have been wonderful to get all the orders, I am glad we were late launching so that we have been able to work through some of the glitches of a launch. The site is working well now although there is a lot of fine-tuning to do. Hopefully we will have a PR company come on board at the beginning of the year to assist with that. I sure have learned a lot - it's the nut university :)

I found that the stress of the last couple of weeks took quite a toll on my health - I looked like death warmed over for a few days. But now that things have slowed down and working better, I am doing better. But it is just a reminder that I have to really be cognizant of what I am doing and put my health ahead of everything - and everyone - else. Time to be selfish!

Almost there

I figure if I can put this business together, I can do anything!


It definitely is a steep learning curve, starting off with what I thought was a reasonable amount of internet and web 2.0 knowledge. Now I have a much wider understanding of it, and am just glad it's not me building the site - way too much scripting and algorithms for me! I am so grateful I found the group in India who are building the site as they "got" what we are trying to do, right from the beginning.


So that has been going along very well, now we are waiting for the nutritional calculator to be incorporated and then once that is done, I can move the site to our hosting people, upload all the images and copy and go live. Then I have to be ready for the flood of orders, because I know Annie is going to tweet the heck out of it and so are her friends. This is the ultimate viral marketing site. 


But besides the site, there has been all the other stuff, like ordering and pricing! The pricing was not easy and thank goodness for Ryan and his excel spreadsheets and formulas! But I think we have it nailed down now. And then it's all the ancillary stuff for the gift baskets, packaging, shipping - I had no idea what went into all this. And then came what I thought would be the fun stuff -- ordering, but I have been agonizing over it. I thought spending someone else's money would be great, but it is scary - what if I make mistakes etc? And then there's the book keeping - quickbooks online - another program to learn.


And chasing down things that are still needed from the attorneys - but Annie is on that and hopefully we will have the legal stuff from them soon. If not, the site can't go live as our merchant account couldn't be active.


So it has been one step forward, two steps back but now it seems that we are making steady progress. The main BIG order arrives tomorrow morning between 6-7 in a 57-foot (17m) big rig that is going to have to turn around in the field down the road and then back up to the house, unload the pallet of 1000 lbs nuts with his fork lift and hopefully not get stuck in any mud! It will still be dark but I plan on taking pictures!

Since I put up my weather station a month ago, we have had 11 inches of freezing rain! We are not impressed!