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Friday, December 6, 2013

Rural Wisdom and Know How #4

Thanksgiving has past. Black Friday and Cyber Monday has come and gone. People are spending money like there is no tomorrow. All to buy the latest gadget that will keep them entertained for a little while. I work in retail and had to work on Black Friday. I will say I am more than a little concerned with the trends that I am seeing. We truly are in a consumer based society.

Don't get me wrong gift giving has been a part if the Christmas season for as long as there has been a Christmas. Originally, though the gifts were more personal and most were homemade. Some of the best gifts I have ever received have had the emphasis on thought. These are truly the best gifts. I have included a link below about the birthday gift my wife gave me this year. It was incredible and I used items from that gift weekly till this day. Read The Best Birthday Gift

Part Time Homesteader

I have come to the truly horrifying realization that I do not have enough time or energy to do all of the things I want to do on my homestead. Both my wife and I work full time jobs on different shifts. My job if fairly physically demanding, some weeks are worse that others. This has put a major strain on my body. As a result I am not accomplishing near what I had hoped. I see others doing so much more than I am and I feel as if somehow I am failing on my goals. That is until I take a closer look. Those that are accomplishing more than I am have one or more of the following advantages when it comes to the homestead: (1) They make more money that we do and can thus hire out some of the labor of building an outbuilding for example (2) One or the other of the couple do not have a traditional job, some are contractors and consultants so they only work in spurts or (3) One of the couple works at home.

Rather than throwing my hands up in defeat and becoming just another spoke in the wheel of the system, I have decided that I need to extend my planning period. All of the things that I wanted to accomplish next year, may take two or three years to complete. That is not a bad thing as long as I continue to work toward my goal.

The thing I want you to take away from this is just because you are not getting as much done as you would like does not mean that you are not moving forward. So times we have to re evaluate our situation and change our timeline.

We are pleased to announce that The Rural Economist has a new affiliate. Trayer Wilderness Inc. Please click the link to the right to see what they have to offer the outdoors person on your Christmas list.

Questions for The Week

(1) Have you started planning for next year on your homestead?
(2) What is your favorite Christmas carol?
(3) I ask this on The Rural Economist Facebook page, but if you could have one thing for Christmas and not worry about price, what would it be?
(4) I know this one sounds strange but, what time of year are power outages most likely where you live?

My Answers
(1) I have started planning. We are going to put in a lot more tomato, jalapeno, and bell pepper plants than we did this year.
(2) My favorite is I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day (lots of people have never even heard of it)
(3) I would like to have the land right across the road from our house.
(4) Winter is our most likely time for an outage. Normally caused by ice storms. We haven't had one in a couple of years. I think we are due.


The Rural Economist

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