I'm always on the look out for a good deal and so far over the years I've scored a number of them for things we need/want but can't afford new. Most but not all have been free and a lot of those were side of the road finds.

Some of the things I've found on the side of the road free have been a 60's era Hamilton Beach electric meat grinder that works fantastic, 3 fans for times like this when it's hot but not hot enough for A/C, trash bags full of enough like new & new bedding for…

The Practical Prepper

In a previous Farm Dreams post (Financial preparedness: six tips on reducing debt) and in a number of debt reduction posts on…

Raising your own meat is not something that everyone does.  To a homesteader though, it's as common as growing your own tomatoes.  Funny thing is, I don't remember being so intimidated about growing a garden full of veggies as I was about doing something so huge as butchering a cow.  Putting the vegetarian debate aside, I wanted to talk about the logistics of butchering freezer beef.  When I first thought about raising a cow for beef I had no idea what to expect in terms of how much food…

I have just finished a glass of apple cider, sitting on the back deck of our new dream.  We sat in silence for a bit listening.  All we could hear were birds.  Closing my eyes now I can still here them.

We signed the final papers for our dream farm.  A relatively new house sitting on 21 acres of recently timbered land.  We started the first steps today by changing all the locks and pulling out the carpets.  It was two hours of knee braking (carpets hurt).  We had some…

I work at a local nursery.  The change I have seen since the economic collapse of 2008 is inspiring and saddening at the same time.  After the crash the nursery nearly went under.  Many others did.  Then more gov't regulation was added, almost as if they wanted to put small businesses out of business.  To top it off, the state of Oregon, where I live, passed a retroactive tax increase on business.  Some how this family owned business managed to survive, but it sure wasnt a result of…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog

In New York we loved cooking, it was a nice way to relax after a day at work. Frequently, we would cook together. Going out to eat was always a good way to try new foods and drinks, but it was never a pressing desire. It was taken for granted. If I look back at our time in NY I was generally eating about 5-7 meals per week outside of the home, which was FAR lower than 99% of everyone else we knew. Now that we’re…

This is a guest post and entry in Round 2 of the Farm Dreams writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

Door #1: A Travel Royal Berkey Walter Purification system from Directive 21. Valued at $228!

Door #2: Two…

Well, ran into troubles with damping-off, but I think I have enough starts that didn't get it to transplant. Watered all the starts with hydrogen peroxide to help re-sanitize the soil, seems to have helped.

The eggplant starts are tiny - it's just not hot enough for them. They look healthy enough though, so I am hoping they will get going faster once the weather heats up.

The lettuce is finally going strong. I planted some out in the onion bed and have some in…

This week's hour long podcast is now live. You can listen/subscribe directly here, or at itunes here. If you prefer to just hear this week's episode click here to listen right here, right now.

The Practical Prepper

Recently, I came across a hundred-year-old book on carpentry. Flipping through it, I was reminded of my father teaching my brother and I how to build and repair things around the house. The section on using a hand saw paralleled the skills my father taught us, but I don't know many people that learn the proper use of hand tools anymore (everything's powered saws now).

Of course, from a prepping point of view, having basic hand tools and knowing how…

Yes.  You actually can do this!  I'm not talking about the Flowbee haircutter that attaches to your vacuum and sucks up your hair, but actual haircuts that your family is used to.  You can be the stylist that your family depends on.  

At the cheap walk-in hair cutter's in town a basic men's haircut is $14.95 plus tip.  If you figure that the average man gets his hair cut about every 6 weeks, then that is almost $150 a year spent on hair cuts.  Got two kids?  Now you're talking…

The weather warmed up this week and my starts are much happier!

Except for the brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage), they are tiny and look terrible and I'm not sure what is wrong with them. It's time to plant them out though, so I will see if they do better outside. I will also put a few seeds directly in the ground and see how those do.We eat a lot of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, so I hope I can get them going in time!

My potatoes went in this week, the peas are…

The Aspiring Farmer Blog



If you’ve read our personal blog recently you know that we recently lost a cat to a curious guard dog. It was a tough loss, particularly because the cat was given to me by my sister and we had only had her for a few weeks when it happened. I decided to post about the incident on…

Wild Wanderings Blog – May 10, 2012

Hello again my earthy and earthly friends! Life on the farm has been quite wet again this week. Numerous, almost daily storms have saturated the soil to its carrying capacity. A huge very fast moving storm on Sunday has crippled my internet access, making communications and running a school a bit challenging. The plants of…

This is a guest post and entry in Round 2 of the Farm Dreams writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

Door #1: A Travel Royal Berkey Walter Purification system from Directive 21. Valued at $228!

Door #2: Two…

You want to talk about sustainable meat? For many, those last two words just don't go together. Now it's true that there is no sustainable industrial model for raising meat and it is arguable that even pasture raised poultry is not very sustainable. The two major factors in poultry is that most farmers are dependant on a hatchery for each new batch of chickens and to raise them to market weight, they are also dependant on off-farm inputs of grain. We are one of those farms, the demand for…

This week's hour long podcast is now live. You can listen/subscribe directly here, or at itunes here. If you prefer to just hear this week's episode click here to listen right here, right now.…

The Practical Prepper

Last July, Scott Adams had a Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert's coworker Alice lets him know that she's planning on going to his place in the event of a financial meltdown. As with all Dilbert cartoons, it's very funny. While meant as a joke, such a thing is all too possible if you talk freely…

Around here you never know what surprises are going to be waiting for you, like the morning I woke up to an egg that had hatched a week sooner than I expected, because I was putting eggs in the incubators at different times I was writing the dates on them so I could mark the calendar with the approximate hatch dates so when I put the duck egg in I marked the calendar well guess what Aracuna eggs are the same color as some duck eggs Then you have the ducklings that just have to…

The Happy Homesteader

This time of year everyone around us is cutting hay.  When you see a neighbor on the street or if you bump into someone at the hardware store the question everyone is asking is, "Did you get your hay up?"  It's this strange phenomenon that I never knew about until I became a land owner.  I actually remember the time that I asked what the difference between hay and straw is.  Now I know far more about hay…