a follow up on money

some days i spend more time setting up my writing space than i do in the literal act of writing. cleaning it. cleaning the room around it. and the house around that. determining the desk has all sorts of bad juju (read, clutter) and abandoning it for something more simple. more sunny. then i have to make myself the perfect writing snack. and eat it. and clean it's dishes. and then the kitchen. finally a perfect cuppa. and when i finally sit down i admit to myself i have nothing to write. 

i was all by myself this weekend on the farm. without human intervention. just me and the cows. the pigs. the donkeys. the horse. the chickens (minus six now, thanks to the Fox) an array of loudly barking,  non-working farm dogs and the same number of equally useless cats. it was a rare treat and so i decided to give myself the afternoon off, it being sunday and i being tired.  

i thought i would write with this free afternoon. in my underwear after a pond dip for those are the liberties you can take when you are alone on the mountain. the only thing i could think of writing about was the act of not writing. which, thankfully, lead me to an actual topic of worth; a follow up to a post i wrote this past april on money. there i had asked your opinions and concerns on blog sponsorship. i got such a surprising amount of feedback by comment and email and i feel very guilty having only responded to them here, now. BUT i hadn't been able to come to a real conclusion about it until now as i fought myself to write. 

all of you were resoundingly understanding and supportive of the notion of sponsorships and i thank you for your kind thoughtfulness but among this support were two conclusions that gave me pause. 

1. sponsors should be relevant to the content you post

2. getting sponsors will make the blog paid work which will inevitably change the way you look at it (JOB!) which could change the way you write for it.

the former makes total sense but something i honestly hadn't considered. of course the ads i have on my blog should be relevant to farming, eating, canning, gardening. most monetized blogs i have seen, and those you have sent me to look at do so well. if their blog focus is on Babies and Vintage and Handmade the ads should and do reflect that trifecta. likewise design blogs beget design ads. and so on. but there doesn't appear to be a glut of small-farm businesses that have extra cash for advertising. and i would feel slimy asking any of them for money when i know how tight farm money is. 

even if i could find a good solution to the former,  the latter is where i conclude this is not for me. i love my blog. i don't mean that in the sickly self aggrandizing way in which it sounds. i don't doubt my blog could stand for many changes to make it lovable by others. but i love what it does for Me. i love that it fosters an inexplicable regime of photography and writing and house cleaning and cooking. i love that it has magically given me a medium through which i've met other farmers, other gardeners, other writers. 

so your comments helped me see that i don't want anything to change about this space. i want to keep it as my own. perhaps there will be a day when we buy our own land and the barn collapses from a heavy winter and we need help rebuilding it. or the day when all of our milk guzzling customers drop us like the hot potatoes we are. or the day when i decide i really do want some form of income that doesn't rely directly on winnie or the chickens or the rain or the sun (which is certainly possible). 

but today i have (finally) come to the Lofty Conclusion that longest acres shouldn't have sponsors. this isn't an editorial on sponsorship in general. more power to the women (and men) in this blog world that make their living from their writing and photography. they are living the dream. but it's not for me. not for this space. 

so, thank you to all of you that wrote in with your thoughts on the manner. i am so very glad i had asked as i had clearly not thought the whole thing through.