Sodbusting

One of the things that manages to survive the constant transition between one set of ideals and the other is my desire for a garden.

From a budgetary perspective it makes sense no matter what we are doing. From a health standpoint it just seems to make more sense to have good healthy food, and far more fruits and vegetables than what we are eating now.

Up to this point I had tinkered with raised beds of various format, 4 x 8 beds and 4 x 4 beds. It was most likely my fault but I was never too impressed. They seemed a bit constrained, restricted even. Unless I was a master biointensive gardener I could not count on a very high yield with a low bed count.

Along with this was the fact that there was an additional outlay for materials, which in my experience only served to really delay ever planting a garden. Waiting to have the money to put together more beds and finding the time to build them and THEN digging and prepping the beds meant that my garden activities were slowing to a halt.

I had loosely committed to taking a more traditional approach to the garden plot but just hadn’t go around to any action. This week was an internal battle between hiking, while it’s still “cold”, and taking care of chores around the home that really needed to get done. I floated some feelers out during the week and even as late as Friday night in an effort to let hiking win the epic battle but in the end, the homefront won.

After running some other errands I returned home and work got underway. I roughly plotted out a section that was around 20 x 20. It contained the area where my first three raised beds were so there should be some good soil in those spots. It was largely covered with bahia grass and some Johnson grass I believe it’s called.

The rest of my day was spent breaking up the ground with a shovel (400 sq. ft. of it) and then raking out the pulling out the grass and weeds with a 4 pronged rake. It may not have been back breaking but it was back pulling at least.

After breaking up the ground I did a little raking to get ready for the digging. I plan to double dig the plot but I’m not sure if that will be smart.

So for now the plot is at least ready for further work. I plan to have it done in time to plant something for the spring. I may start looking for some heirloom seeds between now and then and look at a transplanting schedule as well.

Up till now I have fiddled with a lot of theory and very little practice and figured its probably best to just jump back in and learn through trial by fire. Grow and amend, grow and amend.

Until next time.

Survival Revival for the Backwoods Bushman

Since roughly Sunday I have been toying with the idea of getting back into survival and possibly survival instruction.

Probably arising from a combination of discontent with current employ and realizing that God gives us a passion for things for a reason, has created each of us uniquely for a reason, I started further embracing the fact that I love being out on hikes in the woods alone. My heart worships God the most when it’s just me and His creation.

Partly out of wanting to feel as comfortable and as much at home as I can out there, especially while alone, and being able to return with honor and help any in need, I started tinkering again with the thought of starting up survival training again.

I think I am just a mostly simple backwoods bushman at heart.

We will need to add this to our plan but that’s relatively simple, we just need to plot it out.

Byron Kerns, whom I had my first survival training with, is doing week long instructor classes and some 3 day training courses I am looking at. There is also a school in Georgia taught by Jimmy Culpepper that I have looked at but these are mostly day longs. One other is Wilderness Awareness, it looks pretty interesting and they have a self-led at home course you can buy and it is a little different from survival training.

I will probably get into one, two, or possibly all of these options over the next couple years. The idea is to be able to start up doing it at first with friends over a weekend, then possibly as a ministry at church, and then with very small groups for a fee and just grow it from there while I work.

I will keep you updated as that plan develops.

The Self Sufficiency Itch

If there is such a thing I have definitely been hit with it. I have started to be consumed with it in a sense. The Amazonian Liber Vortex rejuvenated itself and began sucking volumes of self-sufficiency writings out of the world and to my mailbox. There were seven in all I believe so let’s start there with the super duper numbered list:

1. Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money

I have ready about 3 or 4 chapters so far. It was written by an 18 year old girl in the Carter era. I have mostly enjoyed it but there are things I have a difference of opinion with but nonetheless a good read, and a quick read too.

2. The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook

Haven’t dug in to this one yet

3. The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living

This looks to be possibly a worthwhile practical read but far from a beneficial ideological one. Though I have not read far enough into it to know their bent I am assuming at this point that this couple had socialist, communist, or collectivist sympathies so it will require a heavy filtering

4. You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise

This one is from Joel Salatin, most widely known from the Food Inc movie. I have read through probably a chapter and so far I like it. I have heard Joel described as a Christian Libertarian, we shall see. I suppose there are some compositions of this I could agree with.

5. Mortgage Free!, Second Edition: Innovative Strategies for Debt-Free Home Ownership

I have yet to read any of this but it definitely lines up with what we are trying to do and applies to a necessary step in our process, getting out of debt and becoming mortgage free.

6. Concise Guide to Self-Sufficiency

Title speaks for itself.

7. The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Mar…

I was hooked by the preview chapter on Amazon that spoke about ages old farming techniques.

I also picked up seasons 1-4 of Good Neighbors, which airs on PBS. It was broadcast as the Good Life in the UK but possibly because of the content and title of the book here of the same name it had to be changed. I’ll watch those shows often for dream fodder. It’s good to keep dreaming about your vision.

Hooked would be a good word for my mood lately, I really believe we can do this. Really do without things that are just not important. Who honestly NEEDS cable nowadays. The stuff that comes out of that television is mostly tripe and garbage anyway and of little to absolutely no intellectual value. News channels are hopelessly bias, sports have become an entirely self-serving business venture with the fans being an afterthought. Documentaries are crackpot jokes, the History channel is two steps away from weekend long smutfests describing the history of sex, oops I think they’re already doing that aren’t they. The Science channel is anything but scientific, Home and Garden is in a perpetual hunt to find and promote homosexual males with a flair for color, and even Sesame Street is hosted by such denizens as Jack Black and Russell Brand. MTV is practically the Sodom and Gomorrah of the airwaves and reality TV is the unwashed appeal to the corporal and fleshly of the world. It’s all garbage. And we pay for it.

Just recently Brighthouse has started loading up its HD channels with pornography, unabashed pornography. You can’t access it unless you pay for it of course but have you seen the titles they unashamedly have no qualms about displaying on the screen for any 8 year old with a remote?? It’s horrid.

I haven’t quite figured out the Internet route yet. That may be a necessity. If we are going to maintain a website and do some other things it may be a necessity. I know we can go to the library but that just may not be practical. Plus if weve eliminated many other things it might not be a burden.

Little by little things are starting to fall into place, at least upstairs. We will share more as we perhaps put it on paper and firm things up. I would drop it all tomorrow and start if I could. We will just continue to pray that God will open up doors for this to happen and be patient as best we can. We will also use the time to make this 1/4 acre a training ground for what is to come, if anything is to come.

I don’t care too much about money anymore, I am more interested in rewiring our brains to find ways to do without it, where our first instinct is not to go out and buy whatever arises as a need or a want.

Now I am off to read and to squeeze in the monthly budget meeting for the home. Until later!

Disaster Relief Training

We will start with a common saying for the times regarding my blogs and that is, “It has been a little while since posting”. That it has, nearly 2 months to the day. Things have been very busy here, as usual. I may go in to those in a later post devoted to that.

Today began my association with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Association and primarily with the state branch, the Florida Baptist Disaster Relief Assocation.

The SBDRA is the third largest disaster relief organization in the country behind the Salvation Army and Red Cross. They have been all over, Haiti and Guatemala, New Orleans with Katrina, Mississippi with Katrina, to mention a few. Today a few of us went up to the Ocala Baptist Church and attended a regional event, I will most likely be attending one in June down in Lakeland as well.

The day started with a short 2 hour orientation that talked a bit about the SBDRA, including its history and function. They first and foremost exist to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to those that are suffering. They want to bring the love of Jesus Christ to these people. I kept thinking about Romans 8:38-39 while I was there, which says:

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

They also reminded us of Matthew 25:

““Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”

It really touched my heart to be able to have the opportunity to go out there into the darkness and the hurt and discomfort and ugliness of a disaster and shine the light of Jesus Christ for people, to give them hope.

The second part of the day newcomers were actually able to attend a training class. I had intended to go to a Communications training class but at the last minute changed that and went to a Cleanup & Recovery session. A brother there made a good point at starting at the ground floor and getting in the mix of things. Interestingly enough they didn’t talk about chainsaws and procedures but primarily about maintaining focus on why we were there and having a very heightened awareness of the survivors needs and sensitivities.

The day ended at around 2:30pm and we made the roughly hour long trip back home.

When the Lakeland event rolls around a couple of us discussed attending it. I will for sure. I plan to attend training sessions the entire day since I’m not a newcomer any longer. My goal is to attend a Communications session and an Emergency Chaplaincy session.

It was a great event and I am eager to attend and do more.

New Byron Kerns Survival Courses

I haven’t sung the praises of Byron Kerns survival school recently so I figured now is as good a time as any. In case you are a latecomer, I attended BK’s school back in March of 09 and it was awesome. Here is the post on that:

Click Here for Survival School Post

His school has grown a bit since then and they have added to the lineup of courses you can take. I highly recommend any of all of the courses and look forward to the day when I can take one of the more rigorous ones myself. Take some time, read through my review, and then hop on over and check out what is offered.

Byron Kerns Survival School Courses

God Provides the Test…

It is quite interesting how things work out, or when paying attention, how seemingly trivial daily occurrences take on greater importance or meaning.  One never truly knows how the best laid plans perform until they are needed.  It has been said, butcheringly here, that a plan for battle never survives the first action.

Weaknesses instantly arise when they are put to the test and that was the case recently here…

Survival Philosophy That Should Be Stressed

As I was saying in the post about the Byron Kerns school there were a lot of philosophies of mine that have changed.  That’s what I want to talk about today…

Byron Kerns Survival School – Bodacious

I have been rolling this writeup around in my head ever since I left Byron, Francine, and my fellow survival 101ers on Sunday.  There is no short and quick way to describe the experience and do it justice at the same time.  I guess what that means is jump into your slippers, grab some coffee, poke the fire, and relax a while as this may take a bit.  And the title?  Well, it is an appropriate description, with meaning…

Surviving We Will Go, Surviving We Will Go…

Well at last the time is upon us, ’tis the weekend I tiptoe into the big scary woods a neophyte and storm out triumphantly a survivor…

Florida Preppers Network

First off, no this is not a group of guys in Birkenstocks with pastel polos with their colors turned up