Homesteaders Guide

Garden Update

2010-06-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

The garden is doing great! I have already taken advantage of radishes. Note to oneself: Eat radishes in moderation or pay the price the next morning:) I had a whole bowl full, oops:)

Anyway, I wish I had a camera so I could show you my peppers. I'm so excited. I've got three on one plant getting ready to eat. I have already taken one off. I washed it, cleaned the seeds out, sliced it up, and froze it.

It's amazing how things are taking off in the garden this year. I have blooms on just about everything. The peas, green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash are going to bountiful this year.

I cannot explain to you how it feels to play in the dirt and watch something grow that you know you nurtured. It makes the veggies taste so much better when you know you created it, kind of....I don't want to take credit away from God and Mother Nature:)

My neighbors are happy about my gardening success as well. They have been given radishes already and are soon to get some of the rest:) My husband swears that he hates gardening, but he is out there looking at it every day and when he sees a new bloom or the start of a veggie, his face lights up like a little boy on Christmas morning. It's funny to watch and makes me love him all the more.

I really think we would be further ahead if we had our own property. I have read everything you can possibly imagine on gardening and raising animals. All I need now is the land. It's going to take forever though. The store that I was working at closed down and so now I am out of a job again. I'm getting frustrated with my lack of progress:(

Garden and worm update

2010-05-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

I took two old plastic bins I had and drilled some holes in them. I put some newspaper in for bedding. I ordered and received one pound of worms. I put the worms in the tubs. The first night I practically drowned them because I put the tubs on my deck and it stormed out. The holes I drilled in the plastic wasn't big enough to allow the water to drain. I fixed that problem in the morning. I drilled bigger holes and covered them with screen. Unfortunately, I left home without checking the weather and the temperature soared to over ninety degree and my worms died. I am going to try this again, but it is going to have to wait for a while. I do not want the worms in my house so I have to come up with a better way to house them.

The garden is going really well. I have planted peas, green beans, squash, carrots, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and more strawberry plants. I planted two strawberry plants last year and six came up this year. With the two that I bought this year, I now have eight strawberry plants. Almost everything I planted this year has already started coming up. I'm so excited!

Worm Farm

2010-05-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while. I have finally been able to get a job. Not much to say about it. I work in retail and it's not my dream job, but it is a job. I have also started school; criminal justice.

I have begun writing again because now that I have a little money coming in, I am going to be starting a worm farm. I have several reasons for doing this. The biggest reason is for my garden. By letting these little wriggling masses eat my food waste, I can get some really good soil for the garden. Worms don't require that much care, I can use their waste for the garden, I can use the worms themselves for fishing, and I can sell both, if I want to. Worms don't take up that much space either. I currently live in a trailer park. I have a small deck on the back side of the trailer that I can utilize for worm farming. I will write more later on how this project is coming along.

It is May and I haven't even begun to work with the garden yet. The strawberry plants from last year have survived and are growing nicely. I need to get started working with the rest of the garden though. I have purchased seeds and a few tools like a rake and hoe. This year I won't have to borrow from the neighbors:) On my planting list this year are: squash, broccoli, head lettuce, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, celery, green beans, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, sunflowers, peas, tomatoes, and dill. This year is going to be a little trickier with me working and trying to find the time to get the work done. I'm sure I will manage though:)

Speaking of work, it is time for me to get ready for that:)

New Book

2009-12-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

I got an early Christmas present from a good friend of mine. It's called gardening when it counts by Steve Solomon. My friend works at a bookstore and she went to collect her paycheck. I rode along just for the ride. While she was getting her pay, I was checking out the books in the gardening section and I came across this book. I picked it up just because I seen "Mother Earth News" printed at the bottom. I am an avid Mother fan so this caught my eye. I started thumbing through it and while I was engrossing myself in the pages my friend found me. She asked me if I wanted the book and I told her I couldn't afford it. She must have seen the look of longing that I'm sure was gracing my face at that point and she said, "who cares; it will be an early Christmas gift. I was very excited and late last night while I couldn't sleep I started reading my new book. I learned a lot in the forty-five pages that I read. I can already say that I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a beginner gardener. I'll write more about it after I finish it.

Dire Straights

2009-12-04T05:16:00.000-08:00

I am a big fan of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow human's have a hierarchy of needs. Every human has basic needs that need to be met in order to survive. These needs are the first step of the hierarchy. These needs have to be met in order for humans to move up the steps of the hierarchy. Self actualization is at the top of the hierarchy and the people who reach this level are suppose to have reached their mastery.

The steps of hierarchy are as follows:

Physiological needs which are the most basic level of human survival...the need to eat, breath, sleep ect.

Safety needs are the next level of human survival. In other words nobody is standing over you with a knife and there is no dinosaur lurking around to tare off your head and you are relatively safe from mother nature.

Love and Belonging is the next level. This is pretty self explanatory; every human needs to feel love and a sense of belonging weather it be to family or community.

Esteem is the next step and it involves how you feel about your self and how others feel about you.

Self actualization is the last step in the hierarchy and allows humans to have complex thoughts such as problem solving and morals. This is the step where the individual person becomes all they can be.

This may sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but if you take the time to think about it, you will see the common sense in it.

A person who is starving cares little for their safety when they need to find food. Once you have the basic fuel to live then you become more concerned with protecting yourself. Once your basic needs of survival are met, you can concentrate on other things. Then you start reaching out socially to family and community and we cannot forget about sex! You are fed and safe and now it's time for fun:) Esteem builds directly off of your sense of being loved and belonging. Confidence increases and allows you to move on to the last level of self actualization. Now you can concentrate on everything else. Problem solving, being creative, learning, exploring, thinking ect.

How does this all tie in with Homesteading? It's very simple really. The ability to provide for ourselves has been taken out of our hands. Food is a great example of this. For instance, we buy our food at the store. Most people would disagree with me here and contend that while we don't raise our own food, we still provide for our food by getting a job and paying for the food we need. Under normal circumstances this is quite true, but bare with me while I explain my point. Buying food from a store is probably not usually a big deal. You run around and find a job working for someone else just like most people. You bust your ass in the most undignified way for a mere fraction of what you are worth and your boss gets paid more than you and the company you work for even more. You come home after eight or nine hours, tired out and irritable. You haven't seen your spouse or kids all day. You throw some frozen contraption into the nuker, help your kid with homework, and if you are lucky slid a few comments to your spouse just so they know you know they are alive. Your spouse at this time may be doing dishes or laundry or feeding the cats and dogs. They slide a few comments back to you and get done in time to eat a dinner. The food which really tastes like crap and is filled with all kinds of things that can make you ill, tastes delicious just because it's hot and filling. You repeat this for five days, then if you are lucky you get a couple days off. You spend this time in a frenzy of activity to catch up on all the chores you couldn't get done during the week. You still don't get time to spend with your kid because they are out having fun being a kid and spending their time with like minded kids. You still don't spend any quality time with your spouse because they are doing chores. Even after the chores are done you turn the box on and sit in front of it in mind numbing exhaustion until the clock lets you go to bed with a clear conscience without being labelled lazy. When payday comes, you stare at your meager paycheck and wonder why governments need that much money and why insurance costs that much. Then you sit down for hours trying to figure out how you can eat and pay bills at the same time.

This is all pretty much standard up to this point. At this point we are on the bottom rung of the hierarchy and we are barely hanging on to it. At this time we are relying on whomever we are working for to keep us working so that we can maintain that bottom rung. What happens though when that company decides for whatever reason that they can no longer employ you? Most of you would say that's easy; just find another job! But what happens if a country wide pandemic of economic instability happens and everyone starts laying people off and not hiring? Then you are stuck without a job to provide money for the food you need. At this point the two bottom steps of the ladder are in danger. You don't know how to grow your own food because you never took the time to learn believing that you were safe in your job and life.

What most people don't realize or pay attention to is that companies are in business for the money. Even if you worked, bled, and breathed just for them for twenty years, you are expendable and if they can save a dollar by getting rid of you, they will do it and they don't really need a reason. If they are worried about you claiming unemployment benefits, they will make your life miserable until you quit and then it will be up to you to prove that they were being butt heads. Good luck with that.

With homesteading you are relying on yourself to provide your basic needs. You don't have to worry about pissing off the corporation and getting canned. If the corporation makes a mistake and collapses, you don't have to worry about it because you are relying on yourself and not a measly paycheck. You can come up with ways to make money from your homestead to buy those things you can't make or barter for, but the point is, you are the one who is in charge. Of course there are going to be times that mother nature throws a wrench into your well laid plans and believe me, it will happen sooner or later. I'd rather trust in Mother Nature though, she isn't as deceitful as the corporate man!

The whole point I am trying to make here is that you can't get anywhere in life, if you have to spend all your time just taking care of the basic needs and you have a better chance of fulfilling those needs if you rely on yourself instead of relying a job that could be lost at any moment.

The Tip Jar

2009-12-01T08:16:00.001-08:00

I'm starting what I like to refer to as my tip jar. The idea behind this is to save money. I saved a big old jar from peanuts we bought. I found a great hiding spot where no one can find it. All the change I find laying around the house while I clean is confiscated as a tip and it goes into my tip jar. It's not a very fast way to save money, but the point is; it's a start. The money goes in and it doesn't come back out.

My husband leaves change laying around on his dresser. He also seems to loose quite a bit on the floor next to his side of the bed. Anything that comes out in the wash is automatically mine. Even my daughter dumps change all over the house. Now you may think it's pretty pathetic, me picking up the discarded change and it probably is, but they all know that if it's laying around; it's mine!

I already said that it isn't a fast way to save money, but within the last couple of days, I have scrounged 1.29. Not a lot of money, but the point is, It's more than I had before. I'll keep you updated on how this project is going.

Plan of Action: Step 2

2009-12-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

After groceries, the next place to trim is utilities. There are several ways in which to cut down on utilities. A great place to start is to turn down the thermostat by a few degrees. Instead of turning the heat up, layer up with clothes. I like my home a little on the cool side anyway, but my husband likes to crank up the heat. I am trying to make up for his love of heat by turning the temp down during the day while everyone else is gone. I can stand the cold!

Electricity:
Turn off lights when not in use.
Use the new light bulbs...I can't ever remember what they are called.
Use power strips to plug in all electronic devices that have lights or clocks on them. Then turn off the power strip when not in use.
Open curtains during the day to make use of natural light. I do this a lot. I love sunshine. Plus you can gain heat from the sun through your windows and natural light makes you feel good.

Cable:
Do you really need it? I don't, but my husband can't seem to live without it. We compromise with basic service.

Internet:
Gotta have it! I don't care about tv, but I have to have internet. The internet provides me with entertainment and a social outlet. I also use it to learn and research. Everyone is different but to me I cannot do without the internet. I try to go with the cheapest option though.

Phone:
If you have a cell phone, you may want to think about having your landline turned off and just use the cell. It's cheaper than paying two bills.

Black Friday

2009-11-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

Another area that is more philosophical than anything else, but it is a major reason i want to go back to the simple life.

I worked in retail for about twenty years. At first, stores closed on holidays. Then they were open for a half day, and now some stores don't close at all. Black Friday popped up in there somewhere along the line, so quietly that we didn't notice it. Companies finally figured out that most folk traditionally started their holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving and they ran with the idea until it became the monster we know it as today. From my personal experience, I can tell you that black friday is not a day that any sane person should be in a store! It's pure craziness, and can be frightfully dangerous. It was only last year when someone got trampled at a Walmart, wasn't it? There is nothing in the world that I want to buy so bad that I would be willing to run over another human being to get it! There is no deal that is that good, I don't care how much money I can save. And these people who camp out at the store have a few bats in their belfry as well. Holidays aren't what they used to be, that's for sure. I just don't understand.

I remember quite a few Christmas's where my mom had to set us down and explain to us why we were not getting any presents. It sucked, but we never told mom that because we could tell as she explained things to us that she was really hurt by the circumstances. It was crappy that we didn't get anything for Christmas, but it was made up for with food. My mom would start baking a week before Christmas. There was Ham, potatoes, gravy, deviled eggs, salads, and corn. That was the main dish. We also had Old fashioned hard rock candy, peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, a cake made out of pudding, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and usually no bake cookies too. Then after dinner we would all take a nap. When we got back up the neighbors would come and everyone would play games and socialize until late at night....it was awesome and something I miss very much. I couldn't tell you about any of the gifts that I ever got for Christmas as a kid, but I can tell you everything else we did! So what matters more; the toys or the memories of family and friends?

Sorry, I guess I went off on a tangent there, but the holidays irritate me anymore because it seems now days it's all about what we can buy and not about the people we love and the real reasons we celebrate these days to begin with. Our culture has been bought out by the almighty dollar and it's a horrible thing. Christmas is no longer about the birth of our Lord, but about how much we can buy. Thanksgiving was never about gluttony, but it was about celebrating friendship, generosity, and cooperation. We always had an over full house on the holidays, and it breaks my heart to be down to a celebration of three, although I am glad for the two who are here.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving was ok, but I miss the days when there was a big family around to share the holiday. I look forward to having holidays like that again in the future. Hopefully by then I will have my life where I want it and I will be able to make a Thanksgiving dinner with stock from my home instead of the supermarket.

I am thankful that my husband and one of my kids, at least, was there for the feast!

A Plan of Action- Step 1

2009-11-22T22:46:00.000-08:00

To get to where we can afford to purchase a place in the country we first must pay off the debts that we have. There are numerous ones and I honestly think it would take us the rest of our lives to clear the debt, not unlike most Americans. At this point, we simply cannot afford to pay any debts because after they take taxes, insurance, child support and a garnishment out of my husbands check, he is bringing home less than half of his paycheck. We are barely maintaining the every day expenses let alone anything else.

With this in mind, bankruptcy seems like our only way out. I truly hate to do that, but I don't think we have much of a choice. We will get some income taxes back this year and would have to use that money to file for bankruptcy.

The next step would be to figure out ways in which we can cut our every day expenses. This should be done slowly to avoid shock and an overwhelming sense of despair! We don't have to worry about going to restaurants or the theaters because we only do that kind of thing on special occasions and we haven't been able to do that at all since I haven't been working. So that's the first thing to go. We don't have entertainment outside the home unless it's free.

Next thing on the chopping block is our grocery list. We need to take it down a notch so that we are not spending as much on groceries. There are several ways to do this. First is to make a shopping list when we go to the store and stick to it. If I create menus for the week, I will know exactly what I need to get. I will not go to the grocery store when I am hungry either, because when I am hungry everything looks good. I will start buying in bulk and using any coupons I can find for stuff that I would be purchasing anyway. When I find things on sale I will stock up as well. These are all things that I should have been doing all along, but I got lazy. Besides, this type of shopping really is an art and it takes time to learn and perfect the art. I will keep you updated on how these changes are going.

I will have more ways to save money next time.

Introduction

2009-11-22T03:20:00.000-08:00

I find myself enamored with the idea of a simpler lifestyle. Why has this idea taken up sudden residence in my head? It is really a culmination of things.

First I am quite familiar with this way of life as this was the way my mother tried to raise us. I come from a family of farmers, but I have no experience in this area myself. I was too busy to pay attention to my mom when she was trying to teach me. I had ideas of a better life, but now days I wonder how I could ever thought there was a better life than that one? We were dirt poor, but we always seemed to have what we needed and enough to share with those who had less.

Second, the country life was more a way of life. We had an actual community although we were spread out. I find a terrible lack of this in the city. I have trouble associating with people who do not have the same morals and characteristics I was raised with, loyalty, generosity, nonjudgmental (for the most part), and confidentiality. Sure there was gossip, but it usually wasn't malicious. We talked to and were friendly with our neighbors too. In the city, people have a tendency of not looking at each other, and not socializing with each other.

The third reason I find myself pursuing this type of lifestyle has to do with the state of the country in general. Take the H1N1 flu pandemic for example; out in the country, your chances of running into someone with this flu is drastically reduced. I am not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying that there are far less people traveling through to bring it in, and there are far less people around to catch it from. On top of the flu going around, if you don't grow your own food now days, you have no idea where it came from, what is in it, and how it will affect you and your family. The FDA cannot be trusted! Then of course there is the state of the economy. I lost my job and have not worked in over a year. We live in a rented lot; in debt up to our eyebrows. Every day there is stress and worry about money. At least if I were able to have a place where I could grow our own food, I would be contributing to our household and my husband wouldn't have to kill himself delivering pop to whacked out stores for an ungrateful company! I'm so tired of us having to rely on businesses to give us our daily bread; I'd much rather rely on God and nature for that!

I have researched and dreamed until I could pull my hair out. It is time to figure out a plan and stick to it. The major problem right now is that our credit is shot, only one of us is working, and we are barely making it at this point. So the question is how can we get from where we are at to where I want to go and where exactly do I want to go? I got the last part pretty much figured out. I want some acreage in the country where I can have a house, garden, and some livestock...to begin with anyway. So how do I get there from here?

Stay tuned for my next post to find out what some of my plans are for beginning my journey to modern Homesteading.