Question- What The Hell Happened to Homesteading???

 

 

 

Question- What The Hell Happened to Homesteading???

I stumbled onto this Youtube video (link to article in Substack Jill Winger Substack) and was blown away. I had been thinking the same things for quite a while now. Video here, please comment on what you think? My comments on Youtube and Substack below video-

 

My comments- 

Really great post on Substack, interesting comments. I'm a little different where my husband and I started a little urban homestead back in the 2010 or so. I grew up in the city in Southern California, mostly in apartments and never had a yard until I was an adult. I got married and raised a family with a wonderful man who loved gardening! I started blogging in 2011, Little Homestead in Boise, which I still do. I thought it might be fun just to sort of document what we were doing as we did it and it's actually really great to be able to look back and see what we did over all the years. I think my grandparents would be proud! I grew up in the city with the only set of grandparents I knew who had fruit trees, avocado tree, Concord grapes and strawberries in their little tiny urban backyard. My grandmother also knitted, crocheted, embroidered, canned foods, made everything from scratch. That was the generation that were adults during the Depression. I'm almost 70. After I became a Master Gardener we bought our current house where I really wanted to pursue more self-sufficiency type skills. I had stumbled on to a California family that were doing hardcore "urban homesteading" and Permaculture. It was really inspiring to me. I didn't know what else to call it, so "urban homesteading" fit for me. So after we moved in we planted fruit trees, medicinal herbs, low water use plants (high desert here), got chickens, and planted another summer garden like our two previous houses. Almost all of this was done frugal and DIY. Sadly my husband has vetoed beekeeping as he is afraid of liability issues! Oh well, what can you do. My husband luckily had parents that were hardcore gardeners also, in Portland, Oregon. His Mom grew tons and tons of homegrown produce. Eventually I learned how to can and dehydrate foods, etc. I never really made any money off of my blog. When I started to see YouTube taking off years ago and a lot of bloggers going there or even just switching to Facebook I just sort of shook my head. I really didn't want to lose my privacy by going online and posting videos of myself doing stuff and I didn't really think there was much interest in it anyway. Boy was I wrong. While I'm not sure if I thought it was a movement, it was something. When chickens became a "thing" for instance, I saw a huge onslaught of cheaply made, inappropriate sized instant chicken coops for sale. I saw a lot of people buy a lot of chickens and a lot of them died. People didn't know what they were doing, but it sounded fun. I did about 6 months worth of research before we ever bought our three little chicks and built a nice sized big coop. We've been successfully raising chickens for years. Sadly many of my blogger pals who were around the same age or maybe younger have either stopped blogging or passed away. I used to have a real regular group where we crossed pollinated each other's blogs with comments and now I'm down to one or two. Sad.  Now we have the cosplay farmers and homesteaders who have millionaire husbands and dress up in overly expensive, quaint clothing and say that they are farmers. They have large families (some of them) and promote all their sales and/or services and the attitude of "you can do this too without any money"! It's also easy to raise lots of kids when you have lots and lots of staff doing most of the work. I do feel sorry for the children in that scenario as the ones who are all over social media have no choice in that sadly. I see a lot of therapy in their future. Good job on your post and you made some excellent points! Will be putting a link to this on my blog. Will be curious to see any comments. 

 

I'm Back! Prepping For Winter and Beyond, Over One Million Views!

 

I'm Back! Prepping For Winter and Beyond, Over One Million Views!

I am back to blogging! I recently retired, had a nice refresh and will start posting more now.  Obviously there's been a lot going on in the U.S. and the world recently. I had some mixed feelings about retiring recently given the state of the world.  The good thing is that Dave and I are both pretty resilient, I have a lot of skills if I do have to go back to work at some point. Time will tell. We recently got some of the weather from the bomb cyclone on the West Coast. Then our first major snow up in the mountains last month. Dave and I celebrated our anniversary up in McCall, Idaho. It was cold on Saturday and when we started to drive back on Sunday morning it had snowed about 4 inches-

 

Snowed steadily on the way back, turned to rain in Boise. Since then we've had some rain and dry weather. Sadly we went through an inversion for a few weeks with poor quality air and very cold! Today the sun is shining and most of it is blown out, but maybe coming back next week. Built a new sunroom for the coop-

 

 

The previous one used a somewhat flexible PVC pipe which did not turn out to be sturdy enough. Weight of snow I knock off as needed and wind. I had the idea for Dave to design something that would use the heavy PVC or 2' x4's. Dave came up with the idea of the one, then he built it. We can store off-season easily. It is much more stable. Chickens are already using it! I'm planning on probably getting a few more chicks in the spring. Not sure if I'll be working, probably part-time after the first of the year. We'll see how things go. Retiring from the federal government was quite the adventure! Lots and lots of paperwork.

Preparedness-wise I went through our pantry closet, pulled some things that I had bought.  Made some donations to the Idaho Food Bank. I called to see if they also needed toiletries, as we had a lot of brand new mini toothpastes, etc. that we just didn't need. It's always good to think of others needing all kinds of things and they were happy to have them. I've been re-stocking the freezer a bit. Always watching for deals! I thought I had about the effects of the new upcoming tariffs. I stocked up on some things online, as well as some things locally. I already bought some needed things like bed linens, clothing and misc. stuff. We invested in a sorely needed new mattress/frame, replaced old worn out couch cushions. The couch is a flex steel, but cushions were in really soft. We both need to take care of our backs. Those were good investments! Here's a good video about some things to stock up on soon, I really like this Youtuber, he's very non-political-

I had read about the Japanese budgeting system called Kakeibo. They talk about mindful and wise investments. Great intro video here-

 

 

Lots more on Youtube and books out there. It's great being home full time, I have more time to do meal prep and I'm losing weight which is great. My back seems to be doing much better being home with not being stuck at a desk all day. I'm really happy that one year after my back surgery my back is completely healed and doing well. Also cleaned out my craft closet and donated some different decorative items I just didn't want anymore. Lots of them were already thrifted items so not much of an expense initially anyway. Will be donating more winter/holiday decor. Now I have the time to really sort and sift! Dave did get me a fun retro Santa for my birthday that I was looking for to go by our front door, courtesy Lowe's

My lovely daughter needed me some Scandinavian style wool mittens I had requested a while back. She did a beautiful job!

I also recently invested in my first solar panel to go with my Bluetti solar charger. They were doing a Black Friday sale and so I bought one. I fired it up, even in part sun and shade it started charging!

 

 

 

 

We did buy another car after our Mazda 3 started having some odd intermittent problems that nobody seemed to be able to diagnose. It was at the point where we just didn't feel like it was worth investing anymore in it. We wanted something that would be super reliable for a LOT of years. Even though we didn't want to get into a car payment we felt we got a really good deal. We bought a used 2023 Subaru Crosstrek, only 8,000 miles on it. Basically like new. We like the fact that actually has a little bit less technology than the 2024 (better price). (The 2025's finally just came out.) We didn't like their huge infotainment screens. This one was smaller screen-wise and actually had a CD player (yes, we're old school)! I don't think it's safe to be scrolling through my phone while I'm driving. We did have the front tinted windows tinting removed. Driving around on really gray days, at night made it way too dark and we felt it was a safety issue. It didn't cost much and luckily it came right off. When we drove it around much better! We still have our old 2011 Outback, still going strong!

 

Over One Million Views!

I was shocked when I saw this blog had exceeded One Million views! I started this blog in 2011 when we bought our current house. I wanted to really track our improvements. I was reading other people's blogs, getting a lot out of them and thought I might contribute my own little version. I had no idea I would go this long, and far with folks from all over the world reading it!!! While blogging is kind of a dinosaur to some when it comes to social media there are still actually a lot of us that like to read! I know a few people migrated to Facebook/Instagram and their blogs are just sort of sitting there unattended. I may get to that eventually, who knows? But for now I guess I'm kind of a storyteller at heart and we'll see how things go. I've never really made any money off of this which was never the point anyway. Now with the whole huge monetization of social media sometimes I do scratch my head. Anyway, thanks for the views! Bring your friends, bring your family!!!

 

Happy Thanksgiving! I'll Be Back Soon!

 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

I'll be back soon to blogging! Watch for a new post next week, lots to share!

Time For A Blogging Break

 

Time For A Blogging Break-

Things have been winding down for me for quite a while, in the blogging realm of things. I've always loved reading and then I also really learned to enjoy writing. I've been blogging for quite a while and I've never made any money off of it, which is fine. I was never one of those people who wanted to monetize my social media to make big bucks, especially in the early days. The 13 years of blogging has left lots on my blog for people to peruse if they want to. I'm just not feeling really inspired to write much right now. In general- my back is healing up well, that is good, and one of our chickens layed the first egg since last Autumn!

The snow has melted here with record highs, almost 67° last week. We're getting some of the rain from the moisture stream in California. 

On the other side of things- my spiritual side is calling and so I am going to be going a little bit more inside. At some point I may be little bit more external and write.  I don't know if that'll make sense to people but it makes sense to me. I find that spiritual growth for me seems to come in waves and cycles. It was interesting after seeing the series from HBO His Dark Materials DVDs from the library (10 stars!) it got me interested in The I Ching again. Funny how things work out that way sometimes. 

Otherwise everything is doing really well here and I'm looking forward to Spring. I may get three new pullets to expand our little flock since I have two who will be laying. Debbie, God bless her, is still with us but not laying (for the last year). I frankly don't know how she's hanging on but animals can be quite inspiring. The Vet last spring made it sound like she would be expiring soon. That was almost a year ago! I've given her extra TLC this winter by lifting her up onto the perch at the end of the day so she can be up there with her friends. She's still cleaning herself,  eating and moving around. I think some animals don't have a belief system about death, so they just keep putting one foot in front of another until they decide not to anymore. Time will tell with her. Otherwise we'll still be here and I may throw in a post now and again. Explore some older posts and will still be on Instagram, link on the side bar. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT!!!

 

 

Why I Closed My Amazon Affiliate Account

 

Why I Closed My Amazon Affiliate Account-

I have closed my Amazon affiliate account. You will see my links on the left side bar be replaced with photos of recommended books, etc.  I never made money off Amazon, I actually made a couple hundred $$$ over the years doing the Hometalk posts instead. Amazon has also become the giant, not treating their employees well, and I suspect they sell their data to whoever. I also suspect they will go out of business in the not-too-distant future. If China goes into Taiwan, and I think they will, a major cut off of Chinese goods may hit the U.S. right away. Time will tell. When fuel goes back up (and I think it will), the prices will soar as well affecting consumers. I never started blogging to make money, just to document our journey and share it. I have made some great friends online and read their journeys too. And congrats if you still actually READ!!!  Some just looks at photos and move on. It's sad to see some of the dumbing down in social media. I miss people who can write well, for more than a short paragraph. So there you go, that's the skinny. I will be rearranging the look of the blog a bit. Stay tuned!                     

Oh What Blogger Fun, Not

 

Oh What Blogger Fun, Not-

If you use Blogspot you may have been in the same boat as me last night. I went to my blog and got a red screen saying my blog was full of malware, etc. 

Oh what fun, NOT! I didn't know what was going on, then got an email that one of my posts had been deleted by blogger. I did a post about the red screen which was also promptly deleted too, with an email. I could feel my blood pressure rising! Would my entire blog be deleted??? Panic mode. I did back up my blog, although I was worried about the malware issue with that. I posted a help question in the Blogger community saying what happened. I guess it was an error on their part. I did get 2 emails early this morning saying the posts had been re-instated, with a URL, which didn't work. I also got some emails from answers on the Help post. I stumbled on the one recent post (the other from March) and it was in the "draft" mode. Glad to find them! I re-published the one from March The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly It did appear to go back to it's original publishing date. If this happened to you atleast you know what the fix might be for you! Wow what crappy way to the the work week. But atleast it's fixed...

DIY Photowall Art Review & Discount For You!

 

DIY Photowall Art Review & Discount Coupon!

Periodically I get emails from different people/websites asking me to put a link in my blog, and they'll put a link back to me. Almost all of them have absolutely nothing to do with anything that really interests me or has to do with this blog. I usually just hit the delete button. But then I got an email from Photowall US. I thought I recognized the name so I looked them up. From Sweden, I thought oh yeah, I've seen them before! If you're a Jonna Jinton (Swedish blogger) fan they sell some of her amazing phots! Photowall Jonna Jinton  After I spent quite a while on their website I decided to email them back. Basically they offered me a free print in exchange for a review and a link on my blog. They gave me a link for my readers to get a discount if you'd like to order (if not that's okay too). I'm not making any money out of this, just a freebie that I got to review and keep. So first I had to figure out what to order. Ironically right before I got this email I had decided to take my current dining room print down and replace it with something, but I didn't know what-

Goodwill scores years ago, Italian/French-ish

I plan on keeping this print, will put back out in the fall. So Eureka! I measured the print (about 24") to get something about the same size, on a frame. I was on their website quite a bit and got it down to five choices-

With the light wall background I decided we needed to get something with a pop of color since most of the ones I liked where a bit too beige-ish. Dave and I went for the blue! I placed my order, about 5days later I got a nice slim package from Sweden! 

They had a nice video showing how to assemble the canvas on the frame on their website-

First I got out a card table, covered with a bit of wrapping paper (had some sticky spots on it) laid everything out-

Nice substantial wood frame! No tools needed, great directions.  A nice wall hook is included.I laid everything out and started with the frame. Just peel tape off the sticky edge, line up and attach the canvas (face side down)-

I worked my way around-

All four frame pieces attached! On with the braces-

No tools needed, just screw in the large thumb screws-

I could see I should have gone in about an 1/8th of an inch, but I can live with it-

All done and we love it!!!

If you'd like to order here is the discount code that you can use: littlehomesteadinboise2021. This code will give you a 25% discount on any product on the website, and is valid for a month!

Happy Spring!!! My Swedish coffee pot with flowers, how fitting! 

Here's A Hint!

Here's A Hint!

We've been off the little homestead for a few days and back tomorrow. Here's a few hints where we are!!! More later...

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm, Thanksgiving & Family, Blog Re-Vamp

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm-
Unlike some people I was really thrilled last night when I heard some really strong gusting winds hit the windows and heard the rain! It is been so long since we've had any rain, probably a couple months. We really don't get summer storms that produce any rain anymore. 20+ years ago, when we first moved to the Boise area, we would pretty regularly get some summer storms with thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Those days seem to be over. This morning when we woke up there were lots of leaves on the ground and everything was really wet, perfect. Air smells great and there's still more rain headed this way today. David cleaned out our gutters a few days ago knowing the storm was coming in. It's so much easier to do in the leaves are dry in the gutters! Our maple tree still has quite a few leaves, but that's just the way it goes. Every year.

Sunroom on left

Dave decided to put the coop sun room up Wednesday since he had that day off work. We were both off work all week on vacation, a nice treat! Dave created this sun room for the girls years ago after I saw something similar online. We salvaged lumber, and bought some really cheap, used shower doors. Dave then built a frame for it and made it removable, so we can store it when spring comes. The chicken started exploring it as soon as he had it up. n space and they were taking dust baths yesterday. It just gives some extra room for the birds if the weather gets really bad. Ironically two winters ago when we had Snowmageddon 2017 we had decided not to put it up, go figure. That winter turned out to be the heaviest snow on record, or close to it, in the Boise area ever-

It's been really fun collecting eggs again! We've been getting one small egg everyday and I'm not sure if it's from one chicken or both of the younger ones? They're a little smaller so I suspect they're not from our two older hens. The really nice thing about having younger hens is that you know you'll have several years worth of fresh eggs. While the older hens are doing pretty well, they stopped playing when they went thru their Autumn molt. I suspect they will probably start laying again but time will tell.

With the colder weather I brought out my faux sheepskin chair cover from Ikea last summer, nice and toasty! My back always gets cold sitting next to the glass in the dining area-

The morning after

Thanksgiving & Family-
We had a really great time yesterday for Thanksgiving, and we hosted. I provided the following (sorry no photos)- the 22 Lb. turkey, Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, homemade cranberry sauce (Emeril's), Indian pudding and a Flourless Chocolate Almond Cake.  Since Dave can't really eat dairy anymore I wanted to have a dessert that he would enjoy. My one daughter brought a pumpkin cheesecake and I made Indian Pudding, both with dairy. The chocolate almond tart was a big hit with everybody! I could go the rest of my life without ever eating another pumpkin pie anything. I'm just not a fan. Between an apple pastry my daughter brought, a berry pie, pumpkin cheesecake and the chocolate tart there were just desserts galore! I must say I really miss having a separate dining room that we had at our last house.

Dining table needs to be put back together

Our current house is smaller and has one space for the kitchen/dining area. With the table leaf we can seat 6 and you can squeeze in 8 if you need to. We also had a card table set-up that works next to that. It was a tight squeeze but we all had a good time and lots of great food and that's all that matters. We also had an unexpected guest which was fine, someone was at their families house and wanted to drop over. I'm a big believer in the idea that a house full of love has elastic walls. Ironically I had roasted an extra turkey breast for plenty of leftovers.The next day or two and I will clean off the carcass to make turkey soup.We don't watch football here, play computer games, we just talk and it's really nice to have just family. Someone in our family has gone to other Thanksgivings elsewhere and said there were just way too many people, friends, neighbors etc. They missed just having family time to just hang out. That's the way we like it! I hope you had a great one!

Blog Re-Vamp
You'll be seeing some changes on the layout of my blog soon. You may have already noticed a few? I'm eliminating a lot of the Amazon links on the left side bar since it wasn't really generating much income. For whatever reason people just weren't looking at various items. The reality is that I found I earned more money as a Hometalk featured blogger in two months than I did in the last year or so with Amazon, so I'm concentrating on that. My total out of all the years I have been blogging has been less than $120.00 or so. While I don't mind working for free I would actually like this blog to generate some income at some point. Time will tell, but you'll see some changes. I still may have specific items in specific posts with a link, but many of the other generic links will go away. Everything else is still there, just maybe on the other side of the blog.

Prepping The House, Cars & Coop For Winter, Affiliate Earnings Reveal!

Coming soon!

Prepping The House, Cars & Coop For Winter-
With winter just around the corner next week we are wrapping up the prepping phase for winter.
We have temperatures dropping 20 degrees tomorrow night, with lows in the low 30's, highs in the low 50's. It's supposed to be around 70 today.

In our winter prep we include both of our cars. Recently they have both been waxed, much needed. We added new wiper blades (Costco's great deal!), I put in a car size spare blanket, ice scraper/snow sweep. It does snow here on occasion. Good to do early when the weather is nice. Dave cleaned up his work bench in the garage today. No big projects looming, that we know of.

With the house we've been re-caulking windows. Dave had rinsed off some spider webs on a window in the summer and I found there was actually some water on the inside of the window sill. Not a good idea. We installed new windows about 10+  years ago, since the old ones were pretty well toast. To say this house had little insulation when we bought it(attic and windows) is an understatement! We both caulked the new windows really well. After 10 years it was time for a refresh and so Dave re-did all the windows again. No ladders for me with a brace on my arm! Caulking keeps the cold weather and helps the house stay cooler in the summer. We already put the vegetable garden to bed. Sad looking but that's it, just an empty space. We added more compost to the cold frame to break down over the winter. It's kind of cute that one of the annual flowers that went into the compost pile is actually still alive!

One of the things I always do is clean off and cover up our garden work bench with clear plastic to protect it from the elements. We store the tools in the garage for easy access if we need them. I repainted the bench early this summer since the wood stain was pretty well shot. We bought it right after we bought this house since the deck was fairly small, but we needed some kind of work space. It's held up really well, it just needed a fresh coat of paint. We already closed the foundation vents. New furnace filters, extra batteries, and water jugs. I'll empty the rain barrel soon since it freezes.

For the coop Dave already added the lower window to cover up the bottom portion of the coop. It got spattered with mud during our 1" record rain fall recently, so he cleaned it up today, here's the before shot, no after sorry-

It replaces the hardware cloth in the winter. Late tomorrow, or weather depending, I'm going to cover the screen top of the coop main door-

We'd had a couple of cold nights and didn't have any clear plastic on hand so David covered it with a black garbage bag. I took that down when the weather warmed up again, since the weather has been crazy! We use the deep litter method in the coop and it worked amazingly well. David cleaned the coop out a two weeks ago, the pine shavings/poo went to the city compost. They finally added compost totes to our garbage service this year and it's been great! We have built up the soil level so much over 10 to 12 years that we can't really add a whole lot more to it. So we either give the pine shavings away to our kids or it goes in the compost tote. I touched up the paint today on the coop since there was a few spots that needed it. Luckily we had some paint left, since it was the old house trim color. I still like it!

Before

After- 

This is possibly the last weekend of real warm weather, as far as I can tell. Time for these kinds of outside jobs, so we get them done fast. Dave mowed and stored the hoses, covered the water spigots with their styrofoam caps. In the next day or two we will lay out the big industrial, exterior extension cord that we use to power the coop, including the heated water and the two lights. We have a reptile light that we use on the upper part of the coop for a little extra heat when it's really really cold. We also have infrared heat lamp that's hardwired in. I don't really use either of those until it's in the low 20's, or lower. We always add extra pine shavings when it gets really cold and that seems to help quite a bit. I am proud to say that none of my chickens have ever had major frostbite over all the winter's that we have kept them. They can go out in the cold weather and there's enough ventilation to keep them healthy. They all seem to deal with the cold very well. We will put up the "sun room" (to photo) when it gets colder, for extra space in the rain and snow. All made from recycled materials and custom built by Dave to fit onto the coop. I'll keep an eye on the forecast. In a year or two we may need to re-build the coop. Time will tell. When you design your own coop (after tons of research) there's always things that can be tweaked.

Affiliate Earnings Reveal!
I was reading an article today that some "Instagrammers" now call themselves "Bloggers", but don't have an actual blog. They post photos with a few sentences on Instagram. Not much writing involved. Sometimes it's about making money and that's all. I know there are some bloggers who are young, competitive, have no families and work 24/7 at a job and they blog. They make quite a bit of $, but I just can't do that. I sit at a computer all day at work and don't want to do that at home. My eyes object as well. This post today took several hours, for instance, not counting photos and editing. I read this post today and it is a FASCINATING read The Dark Side Of Blogging

If you've been following this blog for a while you have probably seen my Amazon affiliate statement and the various items that you can click through, and buy to help support this blog. I get a tiny percentage. It's been really interesting to see what did, and didn't happen, with Amazon. If you look below you can see what my total earnings have been for the last 90 days, and well, it's pretty pathetic-

Yep, $1.72. They owe me about $10.00, but won't pay me til it hits $20.00. Nice. Ironically I actually have made more through product click-through at Hometalk. I was actually shocked when I got an email saying that I had earned $57.00. It was my first payment. It works like this- people read my DIY projects on Hometalk. When I list specific items, like my back splash material in my kitchen, they can go to the bottom of the post, then buy that item. That goes as a credit towards me and eventually I can make some money doing that. It was actually pretty funny when I got an email from them saying that I had earned money. I thought it was a scam, but it wasn't. Here's a screenshot from Paypal-

I have posted 11 DIY projects, taking about an hour each. So, it's been an interesting experiment. Since I basically don't get any income from this blog I've been writing for years, maybe there's hope. Do you make any money off your blog?