The City Mouse in the Country

      I want to talk about making money on a small homestead.   Yes, it can be done.   Now that being said what the hell do I know about about homesteading or making money?     Actually not much about the first, but quite a bit about the second.   My whole life I've been in banking or financial sales of one sort or another.   Making money really isn't that hard, it's just that what is available is either misunderstood (life insurance for example) or somehow hidden away (ask your banker for rates on a No Penalty CD it's like a savings account but with a higher interest rate).      Sometimes it takes research, sometime it takes time to learn a new skill or just someone to point you in the right direction.     So I thought I would throw out a few ideas that I see mentioned time and time again on various Facebook and Reddit pages dedicated to "homesteading."  How do I make money?       What is actually being said is "I have a beginning and I have a end.  It

     Every homesteading article I read says the same thing.   Take it one step at at time and learn new skills.  Now that's all well and good, the only problem is that I am a "City Mouse" and I've become used to having things either "on demand" or having someone that can do it for me on my time schedule.          Thus it was the first weekend in November that I had planned on learning how to split wood.  Sue and I ended up buying a pellet stove, and buying a ton of pellets (50 forty pound bags) which were stacked into the back of the garage to fuel it.      Originally we were going to go with a traditional wood burning stove and had even bought a cord of wood, however that plan fell through due to cost to replace the original wood burning stove and bringing everything up to code.  (See previous posts).        So we gave the cord of wood that I had previously bought to a family member and spent part of the day Saturday loading and unloading  two pickup truck

      With everything that has been going on recently, the recent death of my mom and some changes in my job which required me to go through an intensive background check, getting a new roof - which should be happening this week hopefully -installed on the house and our new wood pellet stove installed next weekend (more on that in a bit).  I've simply not been able to move forward on some simple projects.   For example, I wanted to get the mulch pile for the gardens started in mid October.     Now here it was, getting into late October/early November and I still didn't have any mulch piles started.  Nor do I think that I'll have them ready by spring.  For example, not only do I have to deal with my Dad's needs - he's currently living with my brother, which is roughly a 75 minute drive south of me - but I've meetings with a lawyer, insurance to sort out and other things.   Thanks do to an internal change in my company, I have to fingerprinted and undergo an inte

     It's mid September and already you can feel winter in the air, it lurks like a proverbial horror movie villain just outside the windows.  It's presence is felt in the dropping temperatures and the winds that blow across my neighbors open fields.       I had escaped it's grip twice before in my life, moving to North Carolina when I was a younger man fresh from college, and when I moved to Florida shortly after the 2008 housing crash because I could not get arrested in the Pittsburgh job market.     Now I had returned, perhaps for the last time due to aging family and the wishes of my long time girlfriend I easily called "wife."  The first winter would be hard on me I knew.  I loved the warmth, the sun, the longer days of spring and summer.  I was not someone that enjoyed the concepts of being cooped up for three months hunkered down and waiting for the golden rays to return.     However I could survive it.       It's all in how you prepare for it.     For