I am immensely excited to say that I will be at home with my family this Christmas!
This might seem like the norm to some, but I promise you in my case, it is the exact opposite that has proved to be true the last few years.

During the past nine years I have been able to spend only two Christmas weekends at home with my nearest and dearest. While the rest of the holiday season was comprised of mostly 16 - 18 hour shifts for 7 days of the week.
But not this year, the sad truth is; the reason that I will be able to spend my Christmas with my Mother, Father and my absolutely amazing daughter Meggan, is that I lost my job a few months ago due to circumstances that was beyond my control.
And those of you whom has been following my work should know that I am a single parent that has been raising Meggan alone for the past 14 superb years of her angelic life - hence the extensive hours worked to be eligible for such a blessed privilege.

I am currently trying to build up my STEEMIT account in an attempt to sustain Meggan and myself better and hopefully have a dime to pay towards my currently accumulating debt. If you get to the bottom section of this article you will see that I have included my rankings in the different fields of STEEMIT engagement.

The help that I am asking of my STEEMIT community, is merely to have a look at the different rankings below ( you will note that there is ample room for improvement)

Then should you be able and/or willing to, give me ant advice, tips hints suggestions or whatever you might think could be helpful to me in my pursuit to better my STEEMIT blog and my daughters bright future!

That is my only request.

In order for you to have a bit better understanding of where I am currently standing in my life;

From the point where I have lost my job till now:

In South-Africa we are entitled to an unemployment fund that should by law pay a portion of the previously earned salary for a few months. Then again, did I mention that this is AFRICA and that time is kept on an "AFRICAN WATCH"?

(The saying African watch is a commonly used term in South Africa, and merely points to the fact that there is more often than not an almost non existent sense of urgency in any form of Governmental Administration)

just in case you were wondering just how stupid this process feels

I have filled out my application just over two month ago, still nothing has been finalized meaning that no money will be paid over until sometime next year. *this means I am absolutely flat broke, and it breaks my heart to even think of conveying this message to Meggan.

Moving Along!~
Being forced out of my comfort zone has so far been one of the best and worst experiences of my life. It has granted me the opportunity to explore my creative side, that has been suppressed due to a constant lack of time and the ever draining survival mode way of life that I have been living, More Importantly it leaves me with flexi-time that I am able to spend with my beautiful daughter whom has been nothing less than my pillar of hope, strength, love and motivation over the past few years. The down side of course being the insecurity and lack of financial stability hacking away at the stress levels.
At least Meggan was never a spoilt child, and she would always be grateful for what she had. didn't matter how little it was ~ and this in itself is an incredible blessing in my life.

# MAGIC

I have started up with a few projects on the farm, and that has catered for our basic needs, such as bread and butter up until now. I am hoping that I will be able to expand them once I have access to my liquid capital, in order to buy the supplies needed to do so.

Here is what I have put in place so far:
I have kicked off quite a few great passive income generating projects on the farm already such as erecting two mushroom houses, I have already put up the water supply to the grow points and have purchased the growing bags. As a growing medium; Organic vegetation will be used to grow. I should have my first spores in early in January. I will be growing two types of mushrooms namely Shiitake- and Oyster Mushrooms.
(I am doing some research on growing the mushrooms in a medium solely comprised of processed water hyacinth, an intruder plant that is currently threatening the ecological balance of our rivers and dams. I am hoping that this substitute medium could be harvested as a part of a much needed local community project, that will not only serve well to our natural water supplies and the delicate eco-system that stems from it, but this could also aid in decreasing poverty and unemployment of the direct local community ` HOLD THUMBS)

In between, I have been making some hand made Creative Art Furniture & Garden art. (I will share some pictures of these with my Steemit Family at a later stage). Although this has not quite started generating the above mentioned passive income yet, it has been the sole contributor of readying my fungus grow houses, the minute remainder of that income was used for basic food items which has pulled us through till now. I already have a few small orders such as a wine rack, bookshelf as well as a clothing rack to fill out. Right now it is frustrating in the sense of handcrafting and selling one item, in order to buy the supplies for the next, but, I have great faith that this little gem of an enterprise might also flourish once I am able to get material in stock, thus decreasing the production time as well as the current delivery costs as I will then be able to deliver more than a single item at a time.

Also digging my Aqua-phonics fish dams is scheduled for the upcoming week. this is planned on a six dam cycle.
The dams will be sunken into the ground 50% and the other 50% will be built up from ground level using sand bag building. These dams will host to Tilapia fish (locally known as the Kurper Fish )
The growing trays ted above the dams will be used to grow salad greens and or peppers depending on the indicative market price at the time that we intend to start planting.

There are also a few other possible promising ventures that I am considering.

These projects are at a freshly conceived stage, and I am still dipping into market research and also drawing up the basic business plans in order to see if they will be feasible and or profitable. These might also need a much greater start up capital investment. That being said, they are quite some time from becoming a realization should I choose to peruse them.

Here are some of those little mind embryos:

• Contained Ginger & Lettuce farming.
• Putting up a small production plant for organic pet food.
• Constructing a bush-veld events & functions venue that will be able to cater for small to medium groups with a few wooden cabins erected close-by around our quaint farm dam should accommodation be required.
  This one is on my "one day" list. and will only come into play at a much much later stage! (earlier than that if possible!)

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