We rented a few condos in Vail for the Christmas period, in fact, we landed in the US on the 26 of December for 10 days of skiing and fun. The skiing and the fun were all there, which was great, what was less fun was the "political discussions". For some reason, Americans are convinced that the entire world is interested in the bowel movement. I mean, sure Trump won, but he's not taking office for a few weeks yet and the stuff coming out is amazing, I mean invade Canada, Greenland and Panama. My favourite was three nights ago when some guy was trying to convince everyone that it was not Putin who had invaded Ukraine. I mean that's beyond revisionist history. When did America's far-right become pro-Russian? In short Americans are nuts and that's that. I have no idea how successful Trump will be in his second term,. because he did absolutely nothing in the first term, he did cut taxes and built about 10 km of new walls with Mexi...
The year has been good on the farm, about 5% better in terms of revenues and about 14% in terms of profits. If we consider that 2023 was our best year ever, then the scope of our success cannot be understated. In the end, the wheat and corn businesses were "worth it" only when considering that about half our output was sold internally to various affiliate companies. We may plant wheat again next year for that reason alone, but it was very good at soil stabilization. The excess corn was used mostly to feed our forest pigs. We harvested about a dozen pigs this year, and 120 cows too. Our mini slaughterhouse also processed 40 pigs and 200 cows from neighbours, which meant that our plant was operating at 60% of rated capacity, but at 90% for our team in the slaughterhouse. Energy-wise we did well, we only purchased 10,000 gallons of diesel, which is good, but diesel prices have been declining for two years now, ...