Featured posts

Today we update you on the things going on this spring at the Holler Homestead including new life, loss of life, foraged plants and more.

Featured Event: Saturday, 2pm — BOGO Deal for the Permaculture Technology Jambouree!! https://wheaton-labs.com/permaculture-tech/?f=496

Paul Wheaton is extending a once in a lifetime deal for his Permaculture Technology Jamboree this summer.  When you buy your ticket before Tuesday April 18th at 2pm MT, you can get a ticket for your friend absolutely free.  Don’t miss out on the Buddy Bonanza, buy your ticket today: https://wheaton-labs.com/permaculture-tech/?f=496

Today’s sponsor: Strong Roots resources

StrongRootsResources.com

Forage

  • Watercress
  • Rocks
  • Hairy vetch
  • Blackberries and raspberries are leafing out another time
  • New mullein plants

Livestock

  • Lambing watch
  • Water bowl is a bed (Need to do something about some rabbits
  • Handling the rabbits
  • Chick update: Time to move so we are 911 fixing the chicken tractor
  • Bees have moved on (Failure discussion)
  • Duck babies died and I am going to incubate eggs (Series on snort.social)

Grow

  • Pollarding worked great
  • Hardening off the plant starts
  • Peas, radishes, brassica look great
  • Getting slugs drunk
  • Tomato start problem

Holler Neighbors/Community

  • Holler Roost Update
  • GSD Light Weekend
  • Linner

Infrastructure

  • Tractor
  • Brainstorming time for the rabbitry

Finances

  • Being purposeful about tracking and sales tax exemption
  • LFTN23 workshop meat all came from here excepting the quail and the seafood
  • Buying from the farm

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

Every Friday, we record our Homestead Happenings update, followed by a questions and answers session. Today’s podcast is the questions and answers session from yesterday’s podcast. We cover: rat poison, sheep, \

Today’s Sponsor:

Agorist Tax Advice

AgoristTaxAdvice.com/lftn 

 

Featured Event: April 27-29 Spring Workshop in Lancaster, TN

 

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, I share thoughts about how important it is to pivot when things come up. 

Featured event: June 24 Chicken Processing Workshop in Lancaster, TN

Today’s Sponsor: The Homestead Consultant, TheHomesteadConsultant.com

LFTN listeners get a special offer of a free 20 minute initial phone consultation. Just send an email with the subject LFTN Consult to TheHomesteadConsultant@gmail.com with a brief description of the homesteading topic you would like to discuss and we will respond to you with available time slots.  

Main topic of the Show: A Freestyle Discussion

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

 


Join me for an update on how the Word of The Year is going, and what I have learned about the Break in Breakthrough. We will cover all the usual segments for a Monday show as well.

A word on the guest form: https://www.livingfreeintennessee.com/guest-interview-application/

Available through midnight Central today! https://livefree.academy/op/the-great-financial-reset-response-webinar-3/?ref=52

Today’s Sponsor: Paul Wheaton and Permies.com

Kickstarter: Low Tech Laboratory – FOUR MORE DAYS!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/low-tech?ref=5xwwb3

Email feedback to nicole@livingfreeintennessee.com

Livestream Schedule

Tuesday, 12:30pm CT – John Willis and I welcome Joel Salatin

Thursday, 1:00pm CT – I am joined by Amy Dingmann for an episode of Spicy Sisters

Friday, 10:30am CT – Homestead Happenings Livestream

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

  • Easter Linner – Leg of Lamb, roasted squash, mashed potatoes, gravy, wild edible salad, homemade dressing, cheeses, meats, pickled things
  • Sun Tea Season has arrived with all the mints
  • It is GREAT to have a real kitchen again from a Harvest Cooking standpoint
  • Pantry audit is moving slowly but in progress
  • Making sauerkraut for the Spring Workshop

Weekly Shopping Report

There were again two trips this week. We took our first trip on Sunday, which is different than our usual time on Saturday. This could affect stock levels, depending on store schedules, however I saw no large changes that could mean a deeper problem.

Traffic was rather heavy; I’d have thought it would be lighter on Sunday. It did not look like churchgoers, at least not dressed in their “Sunday Best.”

Dollar Tree was first. They were looking a little unkempt. Stock levels didn’t look too different, but were a little lower in some shelves in the food aisles. Other than some browsing, I think I just grabbed a drink in there.

Home Depot was next. The store was weekend-busy. There was plenty of stock all around. A 2x4x8 remains at $3.35.

Aldi was next. We found everything we wanted, including heavy cream. While I didn’t see any new price jumps, the bill was certainly higher than it used to be.

Food City was last. I got one of only three 16 lb. bags of Meow Mix (that our kitties ask for by name), a box of Friskies cans, and a 2-pack of waste-free peanut butter. Just that was $61. Maybe we should get some Vaseline…

Today’s trip included Walgreens and Weigels (gas). Walgreens is affiliated with Kroger. Think convenience-store pricing but a larger selection. Two sections of coolers were covered, indicating new products coming soon. I was there for Rx; we don’t get food there, but it would be a backup backup source if things got desperate.

A gallon of untainted regular gasoline remains at $3.999.

Frugality Tip from Janet

  1. I have one of these and it works for more than just ketchup; I use it for shampoo and anything else that will fit.

https://www.amazon.com/Barproducts-com-Inc-KS-Ketchup-Saver/dp/B00FG8S1NO

Operation Independence

Pretty sure “Tweedle Dum” (T calls her Amy I believe) is going to give birth this week

Main topic of the Show: The Break in Breakthrough

What is the word of the year

Why do I do it

How to Find Your Wod of the Year

What is the TRAP of each word

Why I chose Breakthrough

Q1 Lesson: BREAK – as in shatter all the things

  • House breaks
  • Relationship breaks and boundaries
  • Personal, internal break
  • Awareness of breaking in the world
  • The OTHER kind of Break

What I am doing about it

  • Well, what CAN I DO?
  • Boundaries & Communication
  • Tapped into network experts and paid some of them for help
  • Stopped telling people why
  • Simplification
  • Working ahead
  • Clarified availability
  • Identified two things the I will mentally adjust 
  • Made the decide list

The Good: conversations and new expansions (SRF creative arm, Toolman Tim and the radio show, sought after to speak, doing fewer things better and finishing them)

What is next

Can you choose a word of the year in April or do you need to wait until december

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 more babies on the homestead, a chicken update, the poultry processing class, being behind on the spring garden, and more.

Featured Event: LFTN Poultry Processing Class, June 24

Today’s Sponsor: Agorist Tax Advice

AgoristTaxAdvice.com/lftn

Forage

  • Watercress
  • Plantain
  • Raspberry and blackberry leaves
  • Wild mustard flower 
  • Oyster mushrooms

Livestock

  • 2 forlorn Muscovy drakes
  • Baby ducks
  • Baby chick update: 5 dead of 50. Chick ICU
  • Brooder Tray Cleaning
  • Time to breed rabbit A
  • Sheep have integrated well

Grow

  • Things that are planted are growing well
  • Hoping the banana will come back
  • Time to transplant the first rounds of seedlings
  • Behind on planting and starting at this point – strategy to move forward anyway

Harvest Cooking – WE ARE BACK!

  • Baked chicken with lemon garlic dill & freeze dried broccoli

Holler Neighbors/Community

  • Easter Linner
  • Time to talk projects with the neighbors

Infrastructure

  • Holler Roost
  • Major home wiring redo is about done (there was fuckery afoot)
  • Need to repair the chicken tractor
  • Need to set up brooder 2.0 for chickens

Finances

  • Not buying anything for Easter Dinner

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 I welcome Reed Richard, a fellow anarchist living the dream on an island off the western shore of Canada. We talk about his journey, the intentional community he has joined, island life, and the reality of living as an anarchist.

Featured Event: Exit and Build Land Summit, May 18-22

Today’s Sponsor: Paul Wheaton and Permies.com

Kickstarter: Low Tech Laboratory

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/low-tech?ref=5xwwb3

Show Resources

www.bendingreeds.com

https://youtube.com/channel/UCa6F6teRkjOukSg65SAbCQw

Main content of the show

Reed Richard is a father, permaculture enthusiasts, gardener/conductor, rouge thinker/philosopher, musician/dancer, bitcoin curious, novice builder/plumber/electrician, author, the list goes on…

Living on a semi small island on the Salish Sea on unceded territory, Reed enjoys life with his family of 5, all home births, in a community on 20 acres of land, celebrating the pagan sabbath in attempt to rekindle a connection through the generations. He also tends a 3/4 acre plot of which 4000 square feet is planted in a combination of berries and food forest along with bigger patches of squash and potatoes. 3 greenhouse structures, one of which is currently uncovered, handle tomatoes, cucumber, ganga, and various other edibles and medicinal.

Reed has lived in community for over a decade and spent 4 years studying collective living in North America.

Reed is a trained musician, saxophone being the primary instrument, and has been dancing in the ecstatic dance, dance temple, contact dance worlds for 16 years. Utilizing this sense of listening, Reed has turned his focus to the natural world to listen to the pulses of nature to assist with cocreating a thriving place of being.

Reed enjoys fatherhood, encouraging his 11& 2 year Olds, and 3 month old to live an embodied, hands in the earth, emotionally agile, engaged in discovery life.

His current home has space for chickens, with 60 birds coming in January to augment the 10 hens currently in the coop and run. Thoughts of ducks and pigs, to work the land are actively being spoken of with his other landmates.

Reed is also part of a weekly Manventure group. Engaged in a wide array of activities, the manventure group builds trust and fun into being healthy men and a strong network of doers.

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 I am joined by Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast and John Willis of Special Operations Equipment. We talk about the death of the Petrodollar, BRICS GDP surpassing the G7 GDP, and how to build a great small business. Seem unrelated? They are totally related!

Featured Event: June 24 Chicken Processing Workshop

Today’s Sponsor: The Homestead Consultant

TheHomesteadConsultant.co

LFTN listeners get a special offer of a free 20 minute initial phone consultation. Just send an email with the subject LFTN Consult to TheHomesteadConsultant@gmail.com with a brief description of the homesteading topic you would like to discuss and we will respond to you with available time slots.  

Show Resources

Special Operations Equipment

Living Free in Tennessee

The Survival Podcast

Main content of the show

Make it a great week!

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

Community

Resources


Every time there is an incident that causes death, whether it be a hurricane, earthquake or tornado – or something else, people say things like:

“I could never live there.”

Or they ask: “How can you live in tornado alley?”

Today, we will talk about what it is like to live in a tornado prone area, what we do to prepare for them, and why we stay.

Featured Event: 2023 Permaculture Technology Jambouree in Missoula, MT at Wheaton Labs

July 3-14 – multiple tracks. Tickets range from 

$1600 to $2500 depending on the options you choose. 

  • Natural Building
  • Cooking and preserving
  • Homesteading
  • Beekeeping
  • Rocket Mass Things!

https://wheaton-labs.com/permaculture-tech/?f=495

Today’s Sponsor: Strong Roots Resources:

https://strongrootsresources.com/

Build Food Freedom outside your front door.

Permaculture assessments and support.

Livestream Schedule

  • Tuesday: 9:30am Live with Jack Spirko
  • Wednesday: 9:30am Live with Reed Richard
  • Friday: 9:30 Homestead Happenings

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

  • The pantry looks like an angry toddler got in there and ripped everything out
  • Kitchen Normalcy has returned – Thanks Tracy and Mama Sauce; Matt, KH, T
  • Deep pantry audit – webinar being prepared for members

Weekly Shopping Report from Joe

03/27/2023

Saturday’s trip included a couple of extra stops as well. Dollar Tree was first. We’ve been buying single-use applications of superglue there, which has avoided a lot of waste. The coolers were all in good shape; all pretty much full less typical usage. Other shelves were also well-stocked. For those interested, they now have seed packages.

Our second stop was a little ethnic Mexican store we visit from time to time for things Sonia particularly likes, such as plantains and a vanilla flavoring she adds to her coffee. I like their small bags of pasta noodles. Here, we paid the price for a late start to our day, as it was lunchtime and the store was packed. Their shelves are always full.

Next was Hobby Lobby. They were busy as well. Sonia only wanted a couple of mixed media pads, so it was a quick in and out, but I didn’t see any empty areas.

Home Depot was next. A 2x4x8 remains at $3.35. They looked busy as well. If I had to guess, people are ramping up their gardening.

Aldi was lastWe found heavy cream this week. I definitely noticed higher prices. The meal replacement shakes I get are at least $2 higher.

I stopped in Food City. There is still very little choice in larger bags of dry cat food; I saw mostly generic that I wouldn’t feed a dog. There are a lot of recipes online for mug cakes, but we like the simplest, which is to combine one box of angel-food cake mix plus one box of any other kind; no oil needed. They’d had little angel-food cake on recent trips, but today they had multiple boxes of two different brands.

Untainted regular gasoline remains at $3.999/gallon.

Frugality Tip

(none)

Operation Independence

  • Holler Roost – Function Stacking, Getting Into Eggs Again

Main topic of the Show: How Can You Live in Tornado Country

Weather this weekend – What living in tornado land is like

>Situational awareness, getting information

>Jokes vs taking responsibility for your welfare

>Zello, FB, TG Communications Throughout the State

>Weather Radio

Preparing

  • Avoidance is the number one goal (mountain views, building quality, driving in it, leaving an area, staying in an area)
  • Likelihood
  • What happens when a bad set comes through: 
    • Power Loss
    • Road closures
    • Need for assistance
    • Water system failures
    • Communications knocked out
  • Be ready to: Take care of yourself and your community, render aid to those nearby, provide temporary shelter, go help if you can (Share photos/video as an emotional processing thing)

Why do we stay?

  • Odds of being killed in a tornado are relatively low and other locations have different things that are risks. Floods for example.
  • It is beautiful here
  • People become nonchalant about risks with more time spent near a danger
  • Where else would we go? We accept the risk, take what steps we can, and go on

How about you? Would you stay somewhere where tornadoes happen?

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, I talk about new chicks on the homestead, THE SNAKE INCIDENT, garden update, sheep matters, rabbits for dogs and more.

Featured Event: Self Reliance Festival March 2023 Recordings!

Today’s Sponsor: AgoristTaxAdvice.com

Matthew Sercely of Agorist Tax Advice can help you make sense of all the options, understand how to stay on top of tracking write-offs, and see new ways of organizing your finances so that you keep more of the money you earn in your pockets. 

Matthew has a broad knowledge of business finance, real estate and rentals, end of life planning and more which means that he can help you find legal tax loopholes and understand risks. 

Head on over to AgoristTaxAdvice.com/lftn to sign up for a free consultation.

Forage

  • Watercress
  • Dandelion
  • Mushrooms

Livestock

  • Snake
  • Reuniting the sheep
  • Pigs gone
  • Rabbit escape – babies
  • 2 muscovies setting eggs (6)
  • Baby chicks
  • Watertown feed source

Grow

  • Brassicas made it through the deep freeze and there is a lesson there
  • Some Rosemary is still alive
  • Strawberry plants are blooming
  • Onions are up
  • Pea chutes
  • Seedlings are doing great

Holler Neighbors/Community

  • Saturday dinner
  • SRF
  • Kitchen Surprise

Infrastructure

  • Chicken coop is going in
  • Rabbit cage temporary solution
  • Pneumonia

 

Finances

  • 13 rabbits = 28 days of food for one dog ($50 in crappy feed savings)

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

Pat Watson of Uncensored Tactical and I intended to talk about how he turned a lock picking hobby into a full time income. Instead, we talked about addressing the poverty mindset, how to build your empire, and taking ownership for your future. 

Featured Event: The Exit and Build Land Summit

https://livefree.academy/checkouts/exit-and-build-land-summit-iii/?ref=52

Today’s Sponsor

The Homestead Consultant

At The Homestead Consultant, we believe that the solution to bridging these gaps starts in the individual home. By taking practical steps toward food production, land restoration, independent education and rational preparedness we can begin to restore these disconnects. That is where The Homestead Consultant comes in. We will work closely with you to evaluate your property with your unique goals, vision and resources in mind. Using a restorative,  permaculture lens we will help you design a holistic and actionable gameplan to help make your homesteading dreams a reality. Our sincere desire is to see all of our clients become more connected and resilient! Find out more about our services by visiting our website at TheHomesteadConsultant.com 

LFTN listeners get a special offer of a free 20 minute initial phone consultation. Just send an email with the subject LFTN Consult to TheHomesteadConsultant@gmail.com with a brief description of the homesteading topic you would like to discuss and we will respond to you with available time slots.  

Show Resources

UncensoredTactical.com

Main content of the show

Pat Watson spent over a decade in military operations overseas and federal and local law enforcement including large scale counter narcotics seizures and anti-piracy off the coast of Somalia. Pat left his government careers behind to pursue real Liberty and to bring high quality tactical skill set development training to people regardless of their employment or badges.

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