Featured posts

 Today, I talk about some of the mental instability that is increasingly visible because of tools like Mewe and Facebook – and to encourage reactions in kindness.

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You’ve heard me talk about the Encyclopedia of Country Living before on the show. This is a guide to everything household from growing food, to cooking a rattle snake, managing livestock, to handling a birth at home. Carla Emory set out to collect recipes and processes from the moment she began her life in the country. She noticed that much of this information was being lost as people grew old and died. What started as a book she thought would be written quickly grew into a giant reference.

And yet, the Encyclopedia of Country Living is also a good read. Carla’s writing style is accessible. She does a great job if interspersing stories with processes. And she knows her stuff.

If I only had one book that I was allowed to have out here in the Holler, this would be that book. I keep it close at hand for reference for anything from canning times to bacon curing ratios. In fact, I have bought two copies of this book because I wore out my first one from reading it so many times — and I do not usually read things more than one time.

If you are already on your homestead, dreaming of going to one, or simply interested in learning new skills as part of your urban homestead experience, this is the book to get.

A look at the homesteader as a whole person. What makes a homesteader successful or not successful? Well, it turns out that there are some things that many successful homesteaders have in common and today we will talk about four of them.

#HollerHatWednesday: Where is she and who is she with?

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Today we talk about today and its role in building the life you choose to live on your terms. Because today is the first day of the rest of your life.

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Today is Friday so we have a thought of the walk and there has not been one of these in quite awhile since I took Fridays off in July. And today’s topic was sparked as part of a conversation over on our Mewe group about bullying. Because kids are mean, right? Or is it the artificial situations we put them in? But we will talk more about that in the main content of today’s show.

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Today, we will address a set of homestead/food freedom related questions: What to do with too much squash, composting outhouses, keeping your animals alive in the heat of the summer, small business finance, self-publishing and more.

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Today, I am on vacation so we have a replay episode and this is one from just about a year ago. It is all about #My3Things. This was the initial kickoff of that concept on this podcast and I thought it would be fun to revisit it a year later and think about how things have grown over this past year, the relationships you have developed with one another, and how many things we have all gotten accomplished in that time!

Now…off to sip a cocktail by the pool!

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Make it a great week!

Today, we have a fun interview with Tamlynn Clyde about lessons learned from the July Grocery Challenge – you remember right? The challenge where we decided not to go to commercial grocery stores for a month to test our pantry strength, our community relationships and ability to feed ourselves.

Remember, if you want to join us for an interview, you can do so by filling out the guest form here.

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And today we got 15 baby ducks and so must juggle the super small babies and the less small babies who cannot be raised as a flock yet because they are too far apart. And as I got to thinking about it, I realized that I have never shared how we seek tp protect our ducks from predators, so today I will review our 4 strategies for protecting our ducks from predators while free ranging them.

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Today, I really wanted to step back and take a look at something we do not talk about much here on Living Free in Tennessee – and that is reasons WHY people do not start their businesses. Or rather the top 5 excuses I see people using to not get started. 

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