I love my blog and am always thinking of ways to improve it, it is the centerpiece of my creative life. I want to tell you that the blog received more than 350,000 unique visitors last year, about four million page views in 2013. I appreciate your support very much, I want to tell you about three projects for the blog that are underway.

The first is a Times Square style news ticker, a moving stream in color and lights at the top of the blog homepage that will permit me to make announcements and sent messages. I can announce upcoming photos and posts, the sale of notecards, reading dates for book appearances, new of the life of the farm. I want it to be moving and colorful, I want the blog to retain its emphasis on photos and text, but also look lively, we lived in an image driven world, I am an image driven man. I want the blog to be beautiful, colorful, lively and alive.

The second is a new Timeline page, a feature that will enable readers to easily scroll back through all of the photos and posts on the blog in chronological order.  You can find your favorite photos and review stories or comments that interest you, people have been asking for this for a long time, but we are just beginning to figure out how to do it.

In addition, I’m going to commission a video that will explain the farm, the animals on it, and bring newcomers up to date on what is happening here. New people are coming into the blog all of the time, it’s hard for them to figure out who’s who and what’s what. I’m putting that off a bit until I can pay for it, the first two are enough for right now. The blog is important to me, and expensive to maintain and write for. I appreciate your subscriptions, they truly make a difference.

Paypal has been a very secure and efficient service for me, the credit card systems are secure and  heavily protected – I hired a private tech security system months ago, they have an iron ring about my system. There have been no problems or difficulties of any kind. For those of you resisting computing, I do accept checks at my post office box: P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. People can contribute $60 a year, which is the subscription price, or a smaller amount, or nothing. The blog will remain free to those who cannot afford to subscribe, you stuck with me, I will stick with you.

I decided about a year ago that it is both all right and important for me to be paid for my work, and I work on the blog all of the time, every day. Thanks to all of you for understanding that and supporting it.