Books

 

And the keeping of them.

I have for the past mebbe 20 years or so done the books on an old Windows 95 computer. Our late bookkeeper (and beloved friend) set me up with Quick Books, taught me how to use the program, checked my work and did my reports for me for years.

When we lost her I did the best I could by myself. It wasn't great, but it was done. At first we took the result to a local accountant who worked with my late friend. He was terrific, as were his employees. Then he retired, they left the company, and I was on my own.

For the past two years we have taken what I came up with to another friend who is a tax wizard. She has made some sort of sense of my fumbling efforts and got 'er done.

However, each year that poor old computer has failed a little worse. Last year it ate a lot of stuff and I had to do it over, and with 20 some years of work on it, a lot of it done without my friend's oversight, there were some terrible, unfixable, mistakes on it.

This year with much trepidation I turned it on again. Found out that some of the trouble I had with it was because the old wired mouse was half dead.

Alas, though, when I opened QB three months of debit transactions were gone. The deposits were still there, as were the transfers, but nothing else.

And it wouldn't restore from backup.

So I found a free bookkeeping program online and am trying to get ready to do taxes with that. It doesn't understand that a lot of farmers use the same checking account for business and family, but I am breaking it out the best I can.

Meanwhile, yet another of Liz's ewes has lambed in a HellStorm. Twins are in the house and the dog is going nuts, while the wind screams around the rafters and drafts snake all around the rooms.

I am giving up for today, having gotten backwards to September with one of four accounts.

Better days are coming it says here in fine print. Not sure I believe it though. At least I got a good FOY bird today, a Brown Creeper at Yankee Hill, as well as refinding our neighborhood Great Scaup for the Hudson Mohawk winter species count.

It's the little things....