Today, I share my journey of dealing with loss on the homestead because if you enter into livestock, some will die – and some will die because of you. If you grow plants, many will die – and they will die because of you.

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Network Update: Open House and Homesteader Swap Meet Last Weekend.

Save the Date: Tickets go on Sale Saturday for the Food Forest Class at my place. Oct 28-29

DEADLINE WEDNESDAY! Email community events and meetups 

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

  • Canning dribs and drabs and how that works (Weird year)
  • Almost through the 2021 chickens 
  • Tomato Pie Recipe?
  • Moving everything out of the prepper pantry (Why)
  • Chinese Food Moment

 

Frugality Tip

Another time saver: Setting up your canning system

Shopping Report Update – 08/04/2022

We missed a couple of things on Tuesday, so did some more shopping last night, since we’ve got the replacement refrigerator to restock.

Right after leaving work, I went to the Aldi which is not our usual one. I only rarely visit that one, because some of their prices are a little higher than the two Aldi stores we regularly visit. There were holes all over the place. The store looked rather picked and sad. Entire produce bins and shelf sections were empty. There was very little meat, and almost no fish, but they did have some chicken thighs, and I got the last pork loin. Their pet food area has always been paltry.

After dinner, we went to our usual Food City. Most shelves looked full, but there were a few things missing or limited. There was very little natural peanut butter, and none of the large jars. Even the stuff with waste added was limited to small and medium jars. There was a lot of flour, but very little unbleached. They had decent amounts and variety of cat food. Some varieties of eggs were in short supply or absent.

The changes I am seeing are not in a good direction.

Operation Independence

Main topic of the Show: 4 Phases of Loss on the Homestead

Why

Phase One: Deeply Hurt, Debt

Phase Two: Deeply Hurt, Self Loathing or Blame

Phase Three: Deeply Hurt: Anger

Phase Four: Deeply Hurt: Acceptance

What about you?

Membership Plug

MeWe reminder

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Today we catch up on 2 weeks of homestead updates, discuss a sick lamb, produce overwhelm, and more.

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Forage

  • Echinacea flower and leaves (Discuss root harvest)
  • Fodder trees
  • Creek mint
  • Goldenrod
  • Elderberry

Livestock

  • The story of the sick sheep (Vet, etc)
  • Baby duck
  • Muscovys are free ranging
  • The molt
  • When sheeps get feisty
  • Pigs and pond
  • LGD

Grow

  • Success with zucchini (duck factor)
  • Round 2 of beans, hoping for a third
  • Pasture veggies
  • 55 lbs tomatoes so far (Duck factor)
  • WEEDS

Holler Neighbors/Community

  • KH stayed home from swale – seeking a homestead sitter to work with over time
  • 1st Airbnb renter comes from our community
  • Story of connections and housing

Infrastructure

  • Water system failure

Finances

  • Spent money on a vet
  • Swale workshop broke even – There will be a training video from the class to hopefully recoup time

Membership Plug

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. It makes a great Christmas Gift!

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Today we talk about international and US politics, monkeypox, growing food, the swale class, and more with Jack Spirko and John Willis.

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Show Resources

Special Operations Equipment

Living Free in Tennessee

The Survival Podcast

Main content of the show

Replay of the Tuesday Live on Youtube.

https://youtu.be/_imqfsQ9Jlw

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Today we have a fun conversation with Bradley Bleasdale: Raw milk producer, freedom fellow, and founder of a preparedness training center.

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Open House: Saturday 9am-1pm. Bring a dish to share. 605 Long Branch Rd, Lancaster, TN

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

  • All tomatoes ripen at once as predicted
  • Time to harvest and dry mint – (The creek mint is prolific)
  • Hoping to be canning green beans or corn or salsa this weekend

Frugality Tip

TIME SAVER

This tip saves time, which IS money, right? If you think this idea applies to your Frugality Tip section, here’s what I got:

I have a printout of all of the recipes that I use frequently. It’s called my Frequent Recipes Cheat Sheet. ALL of the recipes (at least 50) are on 1 sheet of paper (front and back). They’re not detailed at all, just the ingredients and oven temp, basically. Since I make them so often, I don’t need all of the individual steps. This saves me tons of time because I don’t have to look up recipes on my phone, computer, or big ole recipe book. Bonus tips: you can keep it in a plastic sheet protector so it doesn’t get dirty, AND you can use a magnetic clip to hang it or stick it to your upper cabinet handle right in front of your face while you’re cooking. Saves me so.much.time.

Operation Independence

Working on a video project with Billy Bond from footage gathered at the Swale Workshop.

Main topic of the Show:  Choosing Liberty with Bradley Bleasdale

About Bradley:

  • One of 13 kids
  • Grew up in Massachusetts
  • Got running water in our house in 3d grade
  • Left Law school at the beginning of my last semester
  • Went from owning an 5,000 square foot home in Florida to living in a barn in Tennessee
  • Made every homesteading mistake possible
  • Now my family has the largest raw milk dairy in Tennessee and I am the founder of the Sequatchie School for Self-Reliance
  • Www.Sequatchieschool.com

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Would you be able to physically handle it if services stopped for a few weeks and you had to carry all your water, chop wood for heat, or walk ten miles to get to a new place? Today, we talk with Stephen Boone of SHTF Fitness about getting our bodies in shape.

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Show Resources

https://www.shtffitness.com/

https://boone.fitness/

Main content of the show

Stephen has been coaching clients in person for years in his studio. His passion for helping others become the best version of themselves has led him to start SHTF Fitness so that he can help like-minded, freedom loving individuals who may not have access to a gym.

Stephen specializes in strength training and corrective exercise. He blends conventional strength training methods with Chiropractic corrective movements in order to create a strong, mobile, and pain free individual.

Stephen wants to provide value to the prepper community by teaching them how to be physically prepared for the future. Stephen feels that this is currently extremely lacking in the prepper/homesteader space where most things are considered except for physical fitness. This is done without the use of a gym, since most preppers and homesteaders will not have access to a conventional gym.

Interview

Membership and Coffee Pitch

Make it a great week

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Today we talk about butchering with Josh the Renegade Butcher and John Willis.

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Show Resources

Special Operations Equipment

Living Free in Tennessee

The Renegade Butcher

Main content of the show

Replay of the Tuesday Live on Youtube.

https://youtu.be/rMEZvNs0he8

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Last night, I ate Chinese food and read my fortune – it basically said Life Goes ON – Being an overanalyzer, I thought about that throughout the night and wanted to talk about the sentiment – some people consider it defeatist, but is it?

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Going Live with Toolman Tim on his show at 12:30 today: https://youtu.be/odWS8cSuTGs

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

  • Canned beef from the webinar – about 12 lbs
  • Pickled Okra
  • Using up relishes from 2020
  • Making cheese this week: cheddar and chevre or feta

Frugality Tip

  • Seeking yours – the purpose of this section. (The bag of bags)

Operation Independence

  • Webinar was a screaming success – thank you Mama Sauce, Lettie and Tactical (Seeking a better camera set up)

Main topic of the Show: Life Goes On – Defeatist or Insightful?

Failure is not defeat unless you stop trying – in other words Life goes on…

Have you ever been in a really tight place, and someone said to you Life Goes On? And you get mad because it is A: heartless, and B: defeatist?

I know I have….but is it? 

Life goes on – defeatist view

  • Cant improve the situation
  • Your problems dont matter
  • The person saying it is an asshole
  • You are powerless
  • You don’t matter

Life goes on: the facts

  • Life indeed goes on (scorched earth, building left to become forest, etc)
  • You problems, in fact, don’t matter (And that is a good thing)
  • The person saying it might be an asshole – or they may be wanting to encourage you to keep trying
  • Which means you do matter – they cared enough to listen in the first place
  • It is not all about you (the world) and that is a good thing
  • Failure is not defeat unless you stop trying (Life goes on) – same sentiment two spins – let’s talk about spin and the stories we tell ourselves
  • If you are alive, you can still do something, do good things, make progress so no matter what just happened, you at least still have your life
  • Looking backward at the problem, situation, or defeat for any other reason than to put it emotionally behind you  and learn from it is investing time in defeat rather than in forward momentum

So life goes on…

And since that was a short overanalysis, we had a second fortune: Cooking is easy. Doing the dishes is the hard part.

I really love this one. Have you ever cleaned dishes behind a chef? It can take hours. (BRETT Story)

But what happens when you don’t do the dishes?

  • Annoyance of having to clean before you cook or eat later
  • The smells
  • Health problems
  • The mess

Figurative overanalysis

  • The concept of finish (and my struggles with it)
  • Eating frogs
  • Do Hard Things

A final thought: Cooperation works better. 

Thank you to the community for supporting an anonymous need – we made an immediate difference.

Membership Plug

MeWe reminder

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources

Today we talk about a hurt sheep foot, hogs, garden production, new babies on the homestead, preparing for the dog days, and more…

Open House (As seen in the monthly newsletter)

Canning Workshop Sunday at 4pm (https://livefree.academy/checkouts/how-to-pressure-can-beef-with-nicole-sauce/?ref=52)

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Forage

  • Mullein seeds
  • Dill seeds
  • Many herbs and spices

Livestock

  • Ear mite update
  • Sheep are in their “final” home base
  • 2 baby ducks
  • Henry’s foot
  • LB is up for sale
  • Pig pasture update
  • Dog conflict update

Grow

  • Eating 100% from the garden this week AND disappointed with output – next steps
  • 10 pounds tomatoes
  • Second round of green beans re up – and fragile
  • Shade cloth needed
  • Update on the 
  • Pasture veggies
  • Saving seeds
  • Herdshare

Holler Neighbors/Community

  • Kh is doing better
  • Basecamp Update – on Airbnb now: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/675911235487058406
  • Zello as a homesteading tool – sheep incident
  • Mike L needs help this weekend clearing downed trees from the Wednesday storm near Jamestown – see Mewe for details

Infrastructure

  • Battery operated sheep fence (Primashock 4 – https://www.premier1supplies.com/p/primashock-4-fence-energizers-kits?cat_id=245&option_id%5B0%5D=78)
  • Changing storage plan with the basecamp basement in mind
  • New hole in the pond

Finances

  • No need to buy food

Membership Plug

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. It makes a great Christmas Gift!

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Today’s livestream was fantastic. We had so many people join us and ask a ton of questions. Homesteading, acquiring land, prepping, protecting your house from lightning, sourcing seeds, raising livestock, protecting yourself and so much more! I was joined by John Willis of Special Operations Equipment, Patrick Barnes from EMP Shield, Tag from Life Done Free, and Billy Bond from Perma Pastures Farm.

Download

Show Resources

Special Operations Equipment

Living Free in Tennessee

Life Done Free

EMP Shield (Use coupon code SOE for a discount)

Main content of the show

Replay of the Tuesday Live on Youtube.

https://youtu.be/aNNLKjiNadw

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. 

Community

Advisory Board

Resources


Today we talk about an update on the drought, green bean palooza, succession planting in the garden, what to do when you only get male squash flowers, a hurt pig and more.

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ONLY 5 SEATS LEFT! Swale Workshop: https://selfreliancefestival.com/product/swale-workshop/?aff=nicolesauce

Forage

  • Echinacea
  • Seed saving: Dill
  • Confrey and Jewel Weed (Salve time)

Livestock

  • No ducklings yet
  • Rats!
  • Lady Pig’s Foot (2 ppl needed to inspect)
  • Sheep are becoming easier
  • May breed rabbits – it is too hot,,,, expanding genetics
  • Egg count is down from the duct so watching for the molt
  • Fodder Harvest Time

Grow

  • Blueberrypalooza
  • Green bean harvest 1.0
  • Reseeded the potato area with green beans
  • Setting up the garlic bed 
  • 1 lb tomatoes
  • Male squash flowers (Nitrogen, heat, age)
  • Rain Update

Holler Neighbors/Community

  • By by Jenni – you are still a Holler Neighbor (The Rain Storm)
  • Basecamp Update: Possible Apprentice, Transitional Housing
  • Covid

Infrastructure

  • August 6 Open House (Potluck and Project)
  • Tractor Tire Problem

Finances

  • Inflation Hits Us Too – just not as hard

Membership Plug

Make it a great week!

GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce. It makes a great Christmas Gift!

Community

Advisory Board

Resources