Crowdsourcing Better Homestead Systems - EP 1165

0:00The place to be is living free, living free and Tennessee. Welcome to Living Free and Tennessee, where we talk about building the life you choose on your terms. Today is Tuesday, September 15, 2000 and 26. And this is episode 1165 of Living Free and Tennessee. I am not in my studio today because I'm at base camp lodge and I was going to set up in the living room, but then this is the desk where I work. So you have a beautiful set of closets in the background and I will be building a new studio here. But it hasn't happened yet. We need to get a wall up in the basement and paint some things and that sort of thing and a little bit of sound dampening. So that is a project I plan to take on, but before we do that, a wood stove is in order here.

1:00Anyway, what are we going to talk about today? Today I want to talk to you about the Home-to-Home-Sted project. That's this place right now. We're turning it from a home into a home-stead and how crowdsourcing is informing some of the systems here. And I realized like after getting a single email from a friend, the fact that we've got this repository of like really strong people who have pressure tested what they've done, we have a great opportunity for all of our projects when we're working together to tap into that, to avoid making costly mistakes. We're also going to talk about all of our usual weekly segments, including tales from the Prepper Pantry and Operation Independence. I'm even bringing back a featured forage topic today because it's timely for Tennessee anyway. So that's what we're going to talk about today. If you have questions, as always, you can put the word question or comments in all caps

2:05and we will, I'll work it into the content as best as I can. Before we jump into our first topic, I want to talk about something though. We have the soil microscopy intensive coming up with Alan Booker and Chase Jones and it was originally scheduled for October 2nd and 3rd. And I heard from about roughly 15 billion of you that that particular weekend was a really bad weekend and I thought, well, the whole class was set up that once we hit 10 students, we have enough to cover the baseline cost of the class and go forward. We did not reach 10 students. I reached out to those who had signed up and have given them the choice to get a refund or to opt in to this next iteration of the class. So we are launching today at livingfreeintennessee.com. The next iteration of the soil microscopy class and basically right now it has the dates

3:06there if you go to the event section and click on it. But if you click on the sign up button, it will take you to the product. It will ask you for a $200 deposit. The class is $465 just as we had it set up before. And once we have all 10 slots filled, what we'll do is work with y'all to set the dates for the class. If for whatever reason you're the one student who can't make when other all nine other students can, I will refund that $200 to you. But the idea is we get 10 people to opt in and then we work together on a date and set it up with everybody can come because it's kind of a specialized class. And there was a lot of disappointment I was getting about that weekend and then I thought, well, obviously I chose a weekend that doesn't work the best. So check it out, you now have a chance to take the microscopy class. I think it would be great to get that done this fall because the cool thing of what you're going to learn is in autumn, all of the things are coming into play for you to set the foundation

4:10now for your spring garden to be stronger, for your spring pastor to be stronger. And this class is going to be a combination of microscopy, hands-on fieldwork, and theoretical learning for two full days. Plus all of the farm to table food we like to serve here. Check it out, livingfreeentennacy.com to get signed up. And you can of course, if you're on the Monday mail, that email went out Tuesday this week. You can also click on the link in that email and get going as well. So we'd love to see who really wants that class. So check it out, livingfreeentennacy.com. I also want to thank two sponsors today. The first one is strongrouteresources.com. We're going to talk about crowdsourcing today from the network and I'll tell you what, one of our great resources in the network is Carrie Brown from Strongrouteresources. And he can work with you to evaluate your homestead and get it set up or your urban backyard or your suburban backyard to get it set up from an edible landscaping design standpoint

5:12that meets your goals. And that's why I love working with Carrie Brown. He is in fact the food force whisperer here. He's the one who came up with the whole plan for how we're maintaining this. Check him out, sturdsresources.com. Our second sponsor of today's show is aggroistaxadvice.com. And that's Matthew Sursley who, if you've been to big events here, he's usually at them. And he works with you to figure out how the best way for you to structure yourself after he analyzes your finances. And then also talks you through what tax write offs work for you and any risks that might be associated with those. He keeps up on trends of what will trigger attention, how to document those. And so you can make your own decisions for the best way to set up your systems. He's worked in real estate. He's with end of life planning. He has his own business. He's got a great set of skills to offer to you. Aggroistaxadvice.com forward slash LFTN is where you can go to sign up for his e-news

6:15letter. Now, why would you want to do that? Because he breaks things down into one topic at a time. That newsletter isn't like, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. It's informational, useful. And of course, if you find his stuff useful, why not work with him? aggroistaxadvice.com forward slash LFTN. It will also give you links to some downloads that you can use that help you, especially if you're starting a business, kind of get your head wrapped around it. But if you already have a business, are you really taking advantage of the tax code? That's the question to ask. That's actually his sweet spot is when you started the business, he did the best you could. It got of a size. And then he looks at it and says, you know what, you can pay my consulting fee and I can probably save you more money than you're going to pay me. And you do your civic duty of adhering to the tax code and keeping as much of your money in your pocket as you can. I've always loved that sponsorship. It's a real good fit with the philosophy of the Living Free and Tennessee Pat podcast.

7:16Okay, with that, it's time for our first segment of today's show. Tales from the Prepper Pantry. And this is where we talk about storing what you use and using what you store, which it's funny. I have said that explanation of this segment for 10 years now. And I can remember back in the day when people would hear that and it was like this eye opening thing, oh, that's what you need to do. And it was because when I moved to the country first, I realized that going to the grocery store is not an easy adventure. It takes time investment. And when you're cooking a meal or cleaning a bathroom or doing your laundry or whatever you might need a thing for, it's just not as easy to hop to the store. And so I started developing a method to keep things on hand that I needed without keeping a bunch of things I didn't need. Now over the years, my needs have changed. And so there have been several cycles of purging and we're in a purge cycle right now.

8:19And that has impacted how my pantry is working for me. So the canned food bookcase that we've been working on got mostly done and then and there was an accident. And the person who was showing me how to make a good looking bookcase broke her toe. She was trying to like push through to get it done anyway and I was like, listen, let's just make a video about where to go from here. How to get it finished. I am confident I can get this done. And so now that canned food bookshelf is under the car port downstairs waiting for me to go down there and screw it together and then do the rattering and then it's done. And I figure that'll take me two to three hours, maybe four hours and that may seem like a lot of time, but I'm going slow and careful at this point because I like so much has gone into this bookcase. I don't want to make my canned good bookcase be something that ends up janky at the end

9:19because I got in a hurry. So once that's in, it's going to be the first accomplishment in the home to homestead part of this home where we're transforming this home into a homestead. And I started where I always tell people to start in my zone zero and that means the first question I'm answering is how do I handle the things we create here in a way that makes sense and doesn't result in a living room full of dried herbs. Actually, I'm okay with living room full of herbs hanging up, drying, but you know, it can be, it can be really exciting to get on your homestead and start raising chickens and growing food and all those things. But do you know where you're going to put them? How you're going to manage that system and how you're going to put stuff into your pantry, you actually eat and pull it out. So that's where the canned goods bookcase is at at this point. The impact of relocating on my pantry has been interesting.

10:19So all my stuff is still over at the place next door. I've moved here with mostly not my stuff and I'm not bringing most of my stuff over here in the long run. I'm planning to leave that place set up so that it functions and get this place set up so that it functions. And so in general, what's happening when I need something from next door is I just either borrow it and then bring it back and write down on an Amazon wish list or whatever. Hey, this is the thing that would be good to have here. Like we'd really use it here. Or I am deciding on things that will relocate. So the majority of the long term storage food is going to relocate here and I'm going to have a rudimentary, prepper pantry there. And that's why we're doing the canned good bookshelf. So the minute that bookshelf is done, guess what's going to move here? You got it canned goods. So we've got all of our green beans put up for the year. I have another harvest this afternoon that's going into dinner. I just looked at the garden and I'm not doing a full garden this year because of the impact

11:21like the impact labor to do what we're doing right now is like I don't need to add cultivating it garden. And there's no lesson for that in there for y'all who are homesteading and then life happens. And then you know what? Sometimes you have a slower homestead year. This is going to be a slower homestead winter for me. So and fall. So I looked at the garden and there's bell peppers. There's hot peppers. There are maybe some squash. I don't know. But we have some squash here that Sue got. And then I have a lot of green beans. So I could actually harvest those in canned them. But I thought, but you know, my philosophy is eat it fresh if you can from the homestead, right? So we're going to harvest the beans after this podcast and put together a big old everything stir fry where I've got some leftover meats. I've got some meats from the freezer. We'll put those in and then any vegetables we can find will go into that. And that's partially because of relocation impact.

12:22So there you go. That's that's something that's happening. And I one of the things I love about a homestead and about living or just about having a garden if you're not like homesteading, whatever that means is that you end up with these interesting meals where you have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you can basically put all of that together in a stir for it for a fry and it makes a delicious one pile. That's my thoughts on that. The last thing I want to talk about is the food shortages that are coming. Are you guys afraid of the food shortages that are coming if you've been hearing about these? You know what I remember? I remember back in 2020 when the food for food shortages came. And it came because shipping was heavily impacted by the virus that was going around and they were trying to prevent it. And the impact of those shortages went on for years because of that disruption. And now we hear about another round of food shortages that are coming.

13:24And I am watching people react to that news in fear. We are here to react proactively, not react in fear, my friends. I just want to know are any of you doing anything to prepare for the food shortages that people say are coming? Because I just got back from an event where we in our home setting and prepared this networks have a really bad habit of giving a presentation and starting it with when SHTF. And if you don't know what that means, it's okay. You do know what that means. Something hits the fan. People say, okay, so when SHTF, your water supply is going to be cut off or your money is going to be cut off or blah, blah, blah. Like there's a description of a dystopian world. And therefore this is what you should do today. It's interesting because S has not HTF at all ever in my entire lifetime, in my parents

14:27lifetime or in my grandparents lifetime. Except the smaller micro SHTFs have happened by which I mean the virus was a smaller micro one that was made worse by society's reaction to it or tornadoes tore through here in 2020 and just destroyed parts of cookville and Nashville and Lebanon and like literally displaced families, tossed people around, people died. That's that SHTF. Elaine came through and flooded people out. That's that's HTF. But what's interesting in our network is we talk about SHTF as if it's something that is this big future thing. I am here to tell you that that's already HTF. You're in it. You've been in it your whole life. It is actually a state of being and it's okay. We get stronger or less strong over your lifetime. But when you integrate basic preparedness skills into your life and don't freak out and

15:34don't make your decisions out of fear, you weather those things better. And if it's a really big one that kills you, you're dead and don't care. And I know that sounds like hopeless. But even in that, you can prepare for those that you love to be better off if a thing happens that takes you away from them unexpectedly. And that's why I like, that's actually why I like Jack at the survival podcast because he's talking about building a better life if times get tough or even if they don't. Because over your life, times are good, times are bad, times are good, times are bad. Crisis happens, no crisis happens. Crisis happens for a friend, you help friend, right? The skills of building solid relationships with people prioritizing your health, taking care of setting up systems at your home so they work for you and don't sap you. And all of those things that we talk about here, which is growing food and learning how to filter water and all of the stuff that we do, that's more important than anything else.

16:36So I kind of want it. I've been wanting to talk about this whole food shortage thing because people are asking me like, what do you think the color of power grid is going to go down in this and that and the other thing? And what I think is this. If that happens, we're better off when we've taken care of our immediate world and then those around us and then the wider community and gotten into the practice of mindful and purposefully, mindfully and purposefully setting that balance, then we are, if we go to the store and buy all the beans, bandages and bullets that we can stack. And that's where I find I'm fundamentally at odds with some other people in the prepared in the world because if you only have a week to figure it out, you do go buy beans, bullets and bandages. Hopefully you have something to put the bullet in if you don't then there's, well, I mean, I guess you could trade with them.

17:36But even then that may or may not help you. So it's better to have that long term steady, consistent burn and why I like my power pantry method is it churns the stuff you're keeping through a system of things you actually use. And that's better for you no matter what happens than anything else. And if you're also adding skills through that and improving your mental health and your capacity to think critically and to see through just the rabid misrepresentation of what's going on and manipulation that happens in how communications are, you're in a much more solid place. So Jen saying similar so you don't burn out. That's right. I was like a simmer well in here. I guess not today. But I do see scrambled high. I got a really happy notification about my coffee order today. Thank you. Speaking of that. I got a comment on Facebook from somebody whose coffee order was messed up where we sent

18:40them whole being and didn't grind it. And it turns out that happened in August. And I'm sure that was my fault because about that time I was also at the state fair and I probably read the packing slip wrong. But they said they'd reached out to me an email to let me know about it. And I don't have the email. They also reached out to me on Facebook and like a week ago to say like, hey, what gives? And I didn't answer it for a week. And then I think maybe today there was another message. I finally got that notification. This is what's going on with all of my social media right now. People write me things on social media. And sometimes I see them right away. A lot of times, especially if it's through the messaging system on Facebook and Instagram, which is like the whole meta universe. It'll say I have a message. I'll click on it. Nothing will show up. Or I'll get a page doesn't load. And so I am sometimes getting messages, but a lot of times not getting messages.

19:45I'm really glad they commented and they commented with their names so I could find the order because I'm going to reship that order tomorrow, obviously. But if you two have had any problems at all and then not receive a response for me, the best way to reach me is Nicole at livingfreeintendency.com. But then I'm also mystified because they emailed me. But I went to all, so I have several inboxes. I am actually simplifying my email. Wasn't in spam. Wasn't in my inbox. Wasn't anywhere. Wasn't in like searching by last name or email. So that's not awesome. But I will say I'm glad they gave me the opportunity to handle this situation by putting something in the comments because I don't like that stuff to language at all. So if you're in a similar boat, maybe try reaching out to me again. I will say that over the weekend I discovered an issue with the Holoros site where the

20:49SSL, which was up to date, was just not working right. And we had to rip everything down and reset it up. So then I'm wondering, is that why I didn't get email because the emails when you fill out the form go through the web server to the email server and I wonder if it just didn't get handed off or if I'm going to get all these emails now that that's fixed, I don't know. But in the days of me not responding to emails because I'm overwhelmed with emails or over, I've mostly handled that by just getting really rabid about deleting things. I mean, I answer every single email I get. No, but an email like that, I'm going to say, oh no, we need to redo your order, right? So yeah, it's grandma says oops, I'm like, yeah, big oops. Like the poor people got the wrong order in late August and it's like three weeks later. So that's not how that's not the kind of coffee producer I like to be at Holoros. That's for sure. So anyway, I'll be roasting in order for you tomorrow morning if you listen to my podcast

21:50and I'm sorry, but also anybody else, if I haven't answered you especially about an order like email me again. If that doesn't work, feel free to comment about it. I'm not mad that somebody says something on a comment so that I see that it happened because that's just like really bizarre. But I have really, really, really been having trouble with meta in particular and it'll show that I've read something and I haven't. And then I'll come back and I'll see and I'll be like, oh great, they think I read their mail. I couldn't get meta to load the message, especially through my business pages like living for the intensity, Holoros coffee, self-reliance festival and the Holor homestead, like all four of those inconsistently on Instagram and on Facebook. As I said, I'll get, I'll get six messages, load it and there's nothing. Refresh it and there's nothing. And then I'll find like a random thumbs up and think it was the thumbs up five messages

22:52ago. And then on this magic day, I'll suddenly get all these messages or I'll see them and it's just like, oh, and this is why I don't like communicating through those platforms very well on their messaging systems because this is really hard to count on it. Anyway, okay. Next up, I wanted to talk about this week's featured forage and this is not something we do every week, but I was on a walk this morning and I looked around and I saw aeroportatos and I didn't want to make that the featured forage today because I have a little bit more learning to do about how to determine if it's a safe one or not a safe one, but aeroportatos can be edible. However, I noticed something really important that reminded me of something that happened to me my first year home setting and that's that Jerusalem artichokes are blooming and they are the sun, sort of like daisy shaped flower with a yellow middle and yellow petals and then they have a stem with little teardrop shaped sort of like long teardrop leaves dark

23:55green. And right now, if you dig down below those plants, you will not get a Jerusalem artichoke which is a root vegetable. You will get nothing because all of its energies up in those things. However, they do make beautiful flowers for your tabletop, but the time to dig those is going to be later this fall when the plant has gone dormant and it puts all of its energy and sugars into that root and then you end up with what are affectionately called fart chokes. You can eat them raw but they have a tendency to cause gas and so heating them up helps if you have too many at once even when they're heated up if you are susceptible to the fart chokes problem. I would just say ease into it if you're going to eat them, but I find them delicious like simmered, till they're squishy, made into Jerusalem artichoke puree or even mixed with mashed potatoes. It makes a little bit different of a mouthfeel, but also really good sauteed. I do know that cooking really helps with the gas, the associated gas problem with those.

24:55What I do, because they grow wild here all over the place. The first year I moved here, I planted them because I was from Oregon and you have to plant them in Oregon. They came up in my garden leading to a multiple year adventure of trying to get Jerusalem artichokes out of my garden and then they bloomed and I was like, yes, I have successfully grown Jerusalem artichokes and then I looked around the holler. As I looked around the holler, what I discovered was that I was surrounded by wildly growing Jerusalem artichokes and so I went to the farmers market and I told my farmer friends from the area. My Jerusalem artichokes are blooming and they're going to make artichokes and I just realized that they're everywhere. They were laughing at me for weeks about actually planting what they consider to be a weed. But anyway, so what you can do is take like surveyors tape and tie it around your patches where you see them because that's where you dig in the fall but you need to let the leaves

25:56die back and for the plant to go dormant. So that's a way to identify where they are. The other thing you can do if you want to cultivate bigger ones is mark those, dig them up in the winter and then move them to a place for cultivation in your garden space. But you're going to do that. Understand that they spread by tubers and things that spread by tubers. If you leave a tiny bit of tuber in the ground, come back. It is possible to get rid of them. I have done it. I have killed Jerusalem artichokes but they also will spread. So maybe don't put it in the garden where you like rotate your beans and your whatever's through your garden. Like find a space that's dedicated to those. Packart saying insulin, oh, inulin grenades. Fun for the whole family at the party. It is a thing. Okay, next up we have Operation Independence where I talk about building local ongoing revenue into my life. And this year we've been doing, I wanted to talk about Haller roasts.

26:57So Haller roasts went through a lot of financial changes this year. And over the history of this podcast, I've tried to share with you all the financial reality of being on a homestead and looking for ways to develop revenue here so I don't have to travel to Nashville or somewhere else for a job. And that revolves around the podcast and the webinars we do our next October 12th on Fencing. It revolves around selling coffee. So like folks who listen to the podcast by coffee and sometimes I apparently I lose messages for three weeks when an order is messed up. I'm fulfilling those orders and so sometimes I do make mistakes. But I built this company from doing roasting half a pound at a time which meant a two point two pound order was four roasts. That's interesting, but I could kind of do it without paying attention to it so I could

27:58be doing other things and just resetting every 20 minutes. The roaster that turned out to be not the most effective way to roast a lot of coffee. But it got me started and it got me learning how to roast coffee and that was really important. Well over the years we've gotten bigger, we've gotten smaller, we've gotten bigger, we've gotten smaller. And this year because I went through an overall reset and I stopped promoting everything for about six months. Like I would say things were going on but I didn't really do what I usually do for marketing. Revenue went down. And then as I came out of that time of reorganizing what we're doing here, I started promoting it again and it instantly responded to that which was really cool. But the other thing that we are putting more attention to at Holler Roast is the local connections. And so we started going to the farmers market once a week when we came, we've developed relationships with people there to sell the product when we're not there and then doubled

29:00down on the Tennessee State Fair and have started working with some local stores here. So, that's been a big difference for Holler Roast. So then like last weekend my person who usually sells my coffee at the farmers market wasn't there and I got a text message from one of the people that comes to the market and he was like you're not here and I was like yeah I'm in Kansas. He's like but my fiance really likes your cold brew pouches. So I'm like yeah I've got about 40 million of those ready to go. But not until I get back from Kansas and so we agreed to meet Monday and he bought like a lot of cold, he brought like everything I had plus I had to make more and it was a huge awesome local boost for me to have that happen. So it's interesting to just start seeing how that strategy is shifting and the lesson

30:00I'm bringing from that is that a lot of times we build a business and we respond to the market right and so we're building this business responding to the market. But sometimes we want to funnel like in my heart of hearts I would like more revenue from a certain place and but most of the revenues coming from a different place right. And so if we keep just fostering where most of the revenues coming that different place that's maybe not desirable we don't have the time to foster it from the place we want. And so sometimes it's a good idea to sit back be real clear with yourself about what that is and then time in on fostering from the place you want it to be. Now if the feedback is this just ain't working like if you've given it the gold, old college try and it's not working and it's not going to work and whatever reason you've got to change what you're doing or find a different thing to focus on.

31:05What I've found is where I put attention is where the things start breaking loose. So the update there is that we are increasing our local revenue and doubling down on online sales not really focused on wholesale arrangements. You know we have some but something that will be pushing on hard the next 30 days is if anybody wants co-branded or special coffee gifts for their customers in December. Now is the time to talk about that because we are when we do a custom thing it's truly custom it's not like template custom like custom in print or whatever. And so it takes us time to put that together for people. And so that's that's all like happening right now and it's been really good to step back for a minute although scary scary and the result is start it's like I'm starting to see

32:05the results so that's kind of cool. Okay with that it's time to go into the main topic of today's show which is about crowdsourcing better homestead systems. Why would I be talking about this? It's funny so as a reminder I'm in this I said at the beginning episode I'm in this home I've just moved here three weeks ago it is a home. It is not set up for homesteading really at all the only thing that's homesteading about this is the fact that there's already a chicken coop here but the house itself is not set up to support a homestead although it can be easily adjusted to that. So we've started out embarking on a home to homestead transformation for this place and with the idea that it can be shown as a model for people trying to do the same thing but also come here and take a class like a cheese making class for example. So that's what's at the root of this. So as a result of the home to homestead project I've started talking about things I'm working on that are urgent for the first year on a homestead and for me the most urgent thing

33:12at this point is stability through bad weather in the winter. Not that I'm counting on it coming because I'm not but I just know that about every other year, every third year in Tennessee we have a power outage, ice or wind or whatever and when it's cold outside like the one of the easiest things you can do is set up a system that keeps you warm and cooks your food if that happens and then makes you not care a wit or care fewer wits that you have no power like we still have to then manually do some water things in a scenario like that. But if we've got the core center of the home heated in a way that also cooks food we're good. And so I was talking about this place has a fireplace and somebody who lived here before busted out the per of it irreparably damaged it and the only way to fix that is thousands of dollars to cut it out and put a new one in or just not have one which is just like

34:12heat and cool straight up that chimney. And so my thought was you know because I've got this whole list of things I want to do. My thought was the most important thing is heat and cooking in the winter and the second most important thing is that this house really needs to be painted on the outside. So I'm going back to starting to paint. I got a bid to do it. It was out of my budget. So I'm back to I get to do the painting and anybody who helps me in the hall or gets to do the painting and I might be able to pay some people for a few days work to help with the painting. But it's at least needs to be primed before the winter if possible. Especially we have anyway. So I've never installed a chimney liner but the good news is the chimney here can be converted to support a wood stove and then you can either get an insert or you can put an actual wood stove in and then the the heart itself is like stone and comes way out from the fireplace.

35:13So it's big enough to support a wood stove which is really good news. I don't have to like I was afraid we were going to go into the chimney project and find out the chimney itself is completely useless and it's a it's a brick and stone chimney. So it's not like oh super easy to fix. It's like knock the whole thing down if you want the wood stove there or just make it a decorative part of this part of the living room and put your wood stove somewhere completely different with a new chimney installed because that's probably more cost effective than fixing a badly damaged a badly damaged you know brick or stone or brick and stone chimney. So Jen says tap your inner Tom Sawyer tell everyone it's so fun. I am going to tap my inner homestead network and gets access to supply some supplies that are not usually accessible but I'm going to crowdsource some very important things that

36:16will make the project a little bit easier. So when I went to the fireplace store they told me to put this insert in and they told it's like a flexible insulated thing that goes down the the middle of your chimney and then you hook a wood stove to it and then at that point you have to choose a wood stove that then set out the back and is low enough to be below your fireplace the top of your fireplace as it's sitting there. Okay easy peasy right well except we need to measure and we need to measure inside the thing and that's all been done now those measurements are going back to the fireplace store today so we can buy the appropriate length of fireplace liner to convert the thing into it. And I just talked about that on the homestead I was probably a homestead updates or homestead happening show and Plummer Mickey which if you're on the Living Free and Tennessee Telegram group you know who he is he talks there from time to time super helpful dude in the process of moving to Tennessee from another state right now and building his homestead and he

37:19just heard that episode and he had thoughts because he's done it before and this is where I got the idea for the episode he said as to installing your chimney liner sometimes there will be mortar clumps along the inside that that it can get caught on so like we have to bring the liner down from the top or pull it up from the bottom or something and if there's hunks of mortar sticking out we don't want to bust them out because if we bust too much we damage the chimney and then we have a problem right so you need to get around them with the liner without damaging the chimney. The best method I've used for this is to duct tape a clothesline to the end of the liner with about six inches of rope sticking up maybe it's six feet I don't know it's the quote mark then loop that back down and put on another layer of duct tape to help keep the rope from pulling off that means six feet maybe on the other end of the rope drill a

38:21hole through a tennis ball and insert the rope through that tie a knot on that end this gives the rope enough weight to go down the chimney while the ball is soft enough to not damage any chimney rock then one person on the roof guides the liner down while the other person inside guides the liner with the rope to keep from hanging up on those clumps often a mirror from underneath helps guiding the helps to guide the liner down so you don't have to try to get your head in the chimney there have been a number of people with their heads in my chimney recently by the way so that is practical advice practical hands on how to guidance on what we need to do besides theoretically we need to be doing this thing down the inside of a chimney and that's the kind of thing that can happen when we are tapping into the community right you ask the community you find somebody with practical experience pressure

39:23test that advice like talk about it I'm going to talk to Fran at fireplaces and more about that and then do it and then give feedback on what worked and what didn't work the huge opportunity we have as home setters right now is that cross pollination but more importantly for the new home setters who are coming on the scene to help them avoid all the mistakes because what I see out there right now is sort of the Instagram the Instagram homestead channels talking about tips and tricks that may or may not actually survive pressure test of a real homestead there's also a big movement to complain about that and say no this is the real tip and trick but what works for a gardener in Wisconsin may be different than what works for a gardener in Tennessee for example and so you know it may not be that the person's misrepresenting it could just be that the advice

40:28they're getting is specific to their location and if you're watching the video I got up because Squeaks woke up and she's going to want out of this room at some point anyway I think that it's a huge opportunity for the resource source we have built with each other over the last 10 years to get this this stuff going right and to help other people do it as well okay and then Plummer Mickey went on to address another issue and in his name Plummer Mickey you will understand why I instantly took this advice for the hard water so I have hard water I'm making homemade laundry detergent it works well but I really want to make sure I don't set up a future painful situation where I have laundry detergent stick to my pie because I fought that early on with commercial powder laundry detergent and with the homemade then I came up with a new recipe that works better for hard water

41:33here's what he says for hard water it's already filled with minerals and therefore raises the specific gravity since water does not have a saturation point relative to its specific gravity you can dissolve your soap in a jar or so it's water does have a saturation point relative to specific gravity you can dissolve your soap in a jar of warm water shake well or stir and allow the settle for about 10 minutes then pour through a sieve or gently pour out without spilling the settled solids once you discover the actual amount of soap and your that your water will completely dissolve then you know how much to add safely add to your laundry load based on how much dissolves in a known quantity of water and then multiplying that into how large the water is that goes into your machine per load the hard part is figuring out how much water is into your machine or goes into your machine so basically what he's saying is take your laundry soap that you're worried about

42:35dissolve it in the mason jar see how much of it settles after 10 minutes that's the stuff that may stuck to your pipe but I can let that dry way and then know you know if for a 15 or 20 gallon load if that's going to stay dissolved and not just settle out on the pipes so that may seem like a no-brainer obvious piece of information but I never thought of doing it I did think of predissolving it and and just pouring the liquid into the laundry but you know we all face this problem of the new super water efficient machines don't get our clothes clean if you have hard water and the detergents that are commercially produced have taken the water softeners out or the most effective water softeners out under environmental concerns and therefore our clothes don't get very clean in those I don't know if you've noticed that I first noticed this 15 years ago when

43:42underarms of t-shirts still smelled like underarms after being washed and we're just mostly dry if you have a top loading machine in that situation by the way another hack is to pour five gallons of water in the top of the machine after it quote unquote fills and then it's forced to use more water because the best answer for getting your clothes clean is warm or hot water and more of it that makes a big difference like the detergents help but really the water and having it be warm or hot is what gets it clean and sure you want something to break through oils and break through odors which are attached to oils and to get the dirt out which is a different thing but but water really really helps so after I got that email which had one other question which I will answer in email because it was about a project we're doing here I got to think about the community and how much knowledge

44:46you have so like something I'm interested in knowing in the comments today is what one or two things are you particularly knowledge about knowledgeable about like I see redfire medias here and she could say video production for example but I also know that she's really good at troubles shooting electrical issues in campers and trailers because I've watched her do it so is there something that you're really good at and if so write it in the comments please and there's a reason I'm asking you to to really do that and if you're a person who thinks you're not good at anything you're wrong you're good at something if you know first thing that comes to your mind just write it down put it in the comments and let's get this conversation going because we don't always know who's good at what but if we're going to move to a model where we can crowdsource information I think that we have to get a little bit more open about what we're good at right so and I know we

45:53do it better on the telegram group than the Facebook group but those two resources exist and there are other communities out there that can do it so pack rat says audio and video already no redfire media would say video but she may actually say something else we don't even know about right it's funny when I'm talking to people and they're they pop out with I know how to I know a whole bunch about animal husbandry and you're like you don't even have livestock like how did you learn that well because I used to have livestock I just never talk about it because I've moved on to other things in my life right so home the thing that that's that home setting has that is interesting to watch from a millennial and Gen Z standpoint like watching millennials and Gen Z really get into it is a redfire media says D so redfire media knows a lot about the MSO you should totally hit her up if you're thinking about using DMSO people look at home setters and think

46:54they know everything and they don't and then they won't call themselves a home setter because they don't know everything and so they're not really a home setter I literally watch somebody post online today I don't know even though if I can call myself a home setter but advanced garden question followed and that means that they've done up through intermediate gardening that's and they live on a home set and have chickens and it was a whole thing that I had to laugh and then people answered their question and once and came in and said I don't have anything to add to all the advice but I just wanted to mention that you are in fact a home setter we get way too defensive about definitions of home setter or off grid living or any of these things and it's time to let that go if you think your home setting your home setting and if somebody critiques you about it they can sought off that's my opinion about the whole thing but watching millennials and Gen Z get into that they will always sort of put this caveat like they don't want to come off as overconfident it's

47:56time to be confident that you're good at something because when you're confident you're good at something and you can share about it through direct real experience you'll get a better at it because you've taught somebody else and be you're helping every other home setter or community member out there by short cutting it because here's what Mickey saved for me today by sending that email what he did is he saved me time researching how to put a chimney liner in not that I won't read about it at all he short-cutted where I'm going to research it he saved me getting involved getting halfway done running into a problem and not knowing how to overcome that problem because he's already done it he's run into that problem he's had to figure out how to make that that happen and he's openly sharing that so Mickey is such a good soul yep and by short cutting that he's probably saved me 20 hours of time maybe 40 on a project that should

48:57take us two to four hours to complete that's like the pre-work before we start the work and for the water thing he saved me future pain and suffering if I if my new laundry detergent really isn't compatible because now I have a way to test it and sure I could have sat around and thought well if it dissolves in water will it work but I hadn't yet and he just brought it out so he kind of pointed out something with the background understanding that could have been obvious to me but obviously wasn't because I didn't think about it and so and he didn't know way that wasn't condescending so we can help each other without being condescending but we have to start by saying what we're good at so Jenny saying I don't know I have a lot of knowledge I'm going to say organization and people there you go hey hey Alabama says even if you're not even if you're doing it badly at least you're doing it it's probably not as bad as you think hey hey Alabama what one or two things

49:57are you particularly good at I've got audio video I've got more video I've got DMSO I don't know I mean by people Jenny but organization you are very adept at that she forgot to mention the healing part but that's a whole different thing she's probably not allowed to say that in her outlaw voice but I could say it on your behalf it's I'm just trying to see who else is in here Margo Margo is very good at finding value in things that saves you money over time and I don't mean being cheap I mean she figures out how to set things up to tap into to value that's something she's really good at she sees opportunities where we don't go where we don't necessarily see it Tori Tori what are you good at come on you know what you're good at let let us know anyway so let's talk about crowdsourced homestead systems because when I started thinking about this topic

51:00I realized that a lot of what we've done here is crowdsourced like I started this podcast 10 years ago and my homestead I thought was running fine and it turned out as soon as I started this post podcast I started meeting people and learning that I could improve the systems and since that time we've installed a solar system so that we are more durable and the power goes out and our water still works so the solar system charges a battery which runs the well pump which can let's us have water it also lets us have lights you know it doesn't power everything everywhere but it powers necessary things that would get us through that and then paired with my favorite thing for the winter in Tennessee a wood stove that you can also cook on right it's good to go so the I crowdsourced that I got a lot of information from Sean Mills he he spearheaded the whole thing I also learned a lot from Ryan Siva I also learned a lot surprise surprise from Stephen Harris somebody you guys

52:06haven't heard of in a long time but Sean was the main the main driver of that and then because he's got so much in Sean if you were going to say one of his skills it's developing good relationships and trusting relationships with many people and then putting those things together so he had so many good relationships in the solar production world and use solar equipment world that he was able to put all of those pieces together so that we could have the solar system that's been installed now likewise we crowd forced putting a solar water heater in I'm planning to put one in here in my long term plan because solar water heater is one of the best things we can do for our budgets on power in a home set if or anywhere if we are heating our water with electricity or gas doesn't matter if you heat it with the sun you're not it's free but you want to put one in in a way that does not explode so it's one of those things that's like you want to learn how to do it right

53:09for here I think I'm going to buy a commercial one I'm not how to pursue like like a commercial is not a residential not a commercial great but I'm going to buy one on the market rather than build a custom one the custom one is a lot less expensive but I want something that looks nice here so that if it comes time to resell this place I can sell the system and it's also visually appealing so that's a decision I haven't made for sure but I'm pretty sure that's my decision and that all went back to me asking Sean a question like hey I noticed that the hose water's hot when it's missing out in the sun and I turn the hose out like hey could we do that for water he's yeah this is how let's do it and we did it as a build at a workshop and that thing saved me $250 a year I paired it with an on-demand water heater so that if the sun didn't get it all the way up it could bring it the rest of the way so the hot water would happen all the time and then we installed the necessary like heat activated relief valves in places that made sense to have a

54:12heat activated relief valve so we didn't have an explosion because if that's a closed system you set up and it gets too hot water turns into steam when it gets hot steam is bigger than liquid that's a problem so there's something to be aware of when you're setting that up and had I not had the crowd to source with I wouldn't have known that really important thing canning bookcase crowdsourced right somebody came through who knows how to do bookcases really well who was willing to teach me how to use some of the woodworking tools I've never used before so there you go I'm in the middle of learning how to use like she was really good at showing me how to router and we set it up so that I could use the router in a way that was safe and didn't ruin the project and I've gotten a lot better at using the router because I just routered everything food for us plans and care like I when I started a home stared I didn't know anything about permaculture and then I learned about permaculture and then I went back and started redoing everything as a result so if you're new to home setting go learn about permaculture or regenerative agriculture is another

55:16catch phrase for it but don't get too hot caught up in I need a food forest I need water collection I need I need I need I need learn it from the system standpoint first and if you're not confident there that's when I would hire a consultant I've hired several permaculture consultants over the time and I'm really good at looking at places and figuring out how systems would work it's a lot easier to do for somebody else and yourself by the way that's just a thing because you get so used to this has to be this way right and then you end up with a garden in your zone two for 18 of your 19 years on your homestead and you're like I know I'll move the garden the where it's supposed to be novel idea sheep sheep were totally crowdsourced I would say I've had several sheep mentors from the time the sheep came on as has um tactical and um sheep sheep sheep sheep sheep sheep uh the the trick was sheep has been avoiding the BS sheep advice that's where I really learned

56:16to drill down on whether the results the person's getting before I listen to them because everybody has opinions about your sheep everybody has opinions about diseases that your sheep might get or when to intervene or how to intervene or how to process it all of those things and what I learned is it's a great idea to talk to the people who have successfully raised flocks of sheep the way I want to raise them I mean I actually learned a lot from farmer that goes conventional right but I learned more from people who raised them the way I want to raise them and what's worked well in Tennessee specifically and then those people I have direct contact to when there are problems which means because we've had a number of problems in the last year particularly on the sheep which means when I circle back around I can work through prevention of those same problems or or just understand it wasn't preventable right so that's been a big one but I bring up the BS because

57:19the other thing is people will position themselves as experts who aren't so one avoid a BS advisor it's a good idea to look at what they're really doing and you can ask the community hey I have plumbing issues and you'll get all sorts of advice but then you'll see Plummer Mickey has Plummer in his name and then you'll find out how long he's been a Plummer and then you'll see that he's been a quality Plummer for all of that time right and then you start saying okay I see what's going on here likewise with sheep lots of advice about sheep right but but then do they have they ever raised sheep no they raised goats okay well there's some useful things bear but goats aren't sheep they're they're crossovers but they are not sheep they do they have completely different demeanors for example and I find goats to be a little more durable although sheep are pretty durable once you get them stable same with rabbits same with all those things so find somebody who's an

58:21actual practitioner or was a practitioner pressure test the advice so if it's something you can take advantage of a little bit at a time great and then document what didn't work and what did work and if something didn't work and you have a good relationship with the person go back and talk to them about it because they they may you may have implemented it wrong basically you thought you understood you didn't totally understand Jen says what's optimal is not always what's practical either yeah so we haven't been rotating our sheep is aggressively the last two months like one flock has been rotating but we have them divided up for a variety of reasons into multiple flocks and one flock in particular hasn't moved for two months which is not optimal but it was necessary while we navigated the situation we were in here and that means that paying closer attention to the famsha and so far you know they haven't had issues with that but we could and when they start rotating

59:27again the issues that could come up are that their rumens have to be used to the fresher forage because when you're not rotating sheep you are giving them hey so I actually fed sheep hay in the summer when I shouldn't in a year where we had epic grass growing potential here and it was just what had to happen because the first order of care here is humans not livestock in the second order of care here is livestock and so humans trump livestock this summer I have been able to source very reasonably priced painting scaffolding which in the mid germane to the fact that the outside of this building gets to be painted this fall advanced knowledge of how electrical fencing works so this one is why we had the fencing webinar on October 12th that you should totally sign up for and why we did the fencing class is that from the outside it's easy to put in electrical fencing like

1:00:29it's power plugs in you put grounding posts in and it works right no no it does not there are so many reasons your electric fence cannot work one of which is interference from the power lines going over the top of your electric fencing can impact that one of which is when the ground gets really dry your one grounding rod might not be enough one of which is you just put your grounding rods wrong right there's lots of different things that can come up and so we put in an electric fencing and it basically worked most of the time and I mean I know that's not controlling for like if a tree falls on it that's just a totally different thing but what we found out is we needed to have discussions with electricians about things as it's gotten into a bigger and bigger system and that advanced knowledge came from where then that work because that's how you crowd source better systems that's how we crowd source a mini skid steer that's maybe not the op the the US

1:01:35brand we wanted together whatever which cost a lot more money but we sourced it through somebody who specializes in taking care of those of certain brands of the Chinese models and that's Alan Bashard so the fact that he's in our network allows us to have a better home setting system because we're using a skid steer instead of shovels right which protects the people and we're able to do it in a more budget friendly way because we have somebody we can trust to talk us through the repairs that are inevitably going to come up and that's pretty important. Pippa and I've worked at a Dodge Chrysler Jeep dealership for 23 years did just about everything in the service department and now I organized the wholesale parts warehouse so there you go there's a Dodge Chrysler Jeep resource if you need parts and learning how the scale farms its table meal events is something else I crowd source I'm pretty good at it

1:02:38I have a natural capacity there I've had experience catering weddings and other things but I was able to bring in efficiency layers through my relationship with chef Brett and chef Ken who are in the network because they're interested in the topics we talk about so all in all I think back to that first day when when we started and started the podcast and the reason I started is I was just looking to start a repository of skills for people who want who are starting out in their homestead journey and particularly skills I was already good at like food preservation and cooking the food and making it taste good that you grow right canning cheese making pickling those sorts of things and what quickly started happening was other experts showed up we started making the repository bigger and I realized that we are seldom not crowdsourcing

1:03:42our systems here at the homestead almost everything we get into has a discussion with multiple people where I'm looking to find out information or tactical looking to find out information because despite being quite adept at taking care of animals and growing food and preserving it and cooking it there is something new to learn so what started out as being a repository of homesteading skills ended up building a community and that's of people who can help each other have better systems short cut and save the time it would take to learn everything by yourself and I find that far more useful than just a fencing class or a pickling recipe so I don't know I think in in traditional LFTN way I think we should end this with a recipe the best pork chop recipe

1:04:42that I've had and you can short cut this recipe by buying your spice rub at Thunder Hill Farms but basically you make a rub of cumin coffee smoked paprika garlic salt and pepper and she may have a few other useful things in that and you you just rub it all over the pork chops let him sit in the fridge if you can for a couple hours and then you sous vide them at 155 I know they say to cook pork to 165 but you have sourced pasture raised high quality pork and you don't have to do that so you can have that in the sous vide for several hours and from a homestead better system standpoint sous vide is something I crowd source knowledge of from chef Brett as a tool that's amazing for particularly cooking meats but all sorts of things hard boiling eggs all sorts of stuff and volume cooking for farm to table experiences but you let that go and then when you're ready to eat

1:05:47you pull it out dry them really well and serum and serve that whole meal takes seven minutes to cook of actual time it's like you have to put the rub on you have to put it in the sous vide you have to take it out and you have to sear it seven who doesn't want to spend only seven minutes cooking there dinner by the way but you know cook with what you have if you don't have all of those spices put other things in there that you do like you got a regano coming off put a regano in it I like to always have salt pepper garlic in the in the mix but anyway I just wanted to share that little discovery with y'all today and I think the bigger conversation we should be having here is this and it's the one that I see people are struggling with in our comments and if you're listening to the audio podcast email me the answers to this question please what are you really good at what are you really good at

1:06:53and have you shared that with the community I hope you do anyway if you'd like to show and want to support the work we're doing here you can do it in two ways one get your coffee at holarist hopefully I won't mess up your order and then not get your email about anyway I should let that go right I was just like right as I was going alive I saw that and I was like oh no um margo says don't tell Nicole I'm a great event planner you're hired anyway um the other way you can support the show is by joining our membership and you can you can do that by emailing me right now I've borne down that system and I'm setting up a new system so you can email me to get signed up for that put back go out

1:07:57I You