What We Learned & Now Share With You

In the beginning...

It started with the two of us. 

This post is going to be link-heavy but my purpose is to try and give you a brief overview of some of the things we have learned along the way to a self-sufficient lifestyle.

2010 

2010 was a year of learning and doing. I didn't post much because I was spending all my time working two jobs and learning everything I could from Survival Blog and Rural-Revolution.

Before we knew it, there was eight of us (I'm taking the pic)

2011

In 2011, I posted 174 posts. That just about one post every other day. That's a pretty good pace just starting out. 

We learned about the following (click on topics you are interested in and ask questions if you would like more information for yourself):

1. Gardening. We planted corn, watermelon, purple carrots, purple potatoes, cabbage,  cucumbers and squash, lettuce, mushrooms and corn, strawberries, a variety of beans, pumpkins, and anything else we could get.
2. We learned about redundancy and the importance of having a backup, chicken tractors, and storing cooked, dehydrated hamburger meat. 
3. Friends from church taught us how to make raised garden boxes from pallets, a friend from work taught me how to shoot, 30 ways to cook Ramen noodles, and shared their fruits so we could make our own juices. 
4. My survival mindset began to surface on a trip to Disneyland, growing indoors with LEDs, we started storing our own rainwater in 55-gallon drums. and got serious about home security.
5. Next we learned the art (and fun) of bartering, securing our gardens against birds and cats with netting, the skill of cooking in a dutch oven, alternative locations to store food, and basic home carpentry. 
6. In May, I learned how to diagnose automobile codes myself, backing up my blog, how to save money on meat, started collecting sewing machines, more basic construction skills, teaching the girls how to start a fire, hand-pollinating corn, more dutch oven cooking, and an awesome homemade bread recipe was perfected. 
7. In July we started the great debate of public vs homeschooling, making homemade beef jerky, crocheting and making honey sticks, and more crocheting.
8. Redundancy is important in self-reliance and I learned the hard way about losing frozen food due to not knowing the freezer quit working. They make freezer alarms that can make audible sounds and I quickly invested. Lisa made tie-dyed shirts for a family trip to Disneyland.

2012

2012 came and went with half as many blog posts at 2011.  A paultry 66 posts all year can be found in order here. Suffice it to say we just continued to plug away at working, saving, and learning. 

2013

2013 jumped back up to 122 posts because I moved out to our old family farm in Hennessey Oklahoma. 

After losing a job in Arizona, I moved ahead of the family in hopes of setting up a homestead there. After three months, I had to return to Arizona because I couldn't get the backing of the family in Oklahoma to move onto the farm. 

We rode horses in Oklahoma.

The generation before me (Dad and Uncles) ended up selling the whole family land inheritance. Several farms in the family for generations were sold and are now gone forever. 

But I had some good times there before I left. You can see the articles linked above.

Then we moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. Where five weeks later our home burned down. It took my orange jeep and suburban with it. Total loss. Many valuable lessons were learned. 

Mostly that our family is rock solid and we can rebound from tough situations. 

2014

2014 we limped along trying to recover from the loss. We made some friends and continued learning survival and prepping skills. But no matter what we did, we couldn't get past the house fire in that town. 

So when an employment agency called and asked if we would be interested in working in Twin Falls, Idaho... I figured it was worth a look.

Lisa loves making matching Disney shirts anytime we get to go. 

2015

2015 we moved to Filer, Idaho. Moving put us through many trials trying to get our stuff from Flag to Twin in snowy January. Now we were on our own acreage and started raising lots of chickens, pigs, and a few guinea pigs. 4H became a big part of our lives for several years and it taught us a lot about animals. 

We also learned about beekeeping, caring for our own waterways, and almost got our own tv series. 

2016-2019

Then for the next three years, I just got pounded at work. I had a relentless boss that kept me hopping on a project after project after project. I learned a lot but I also learned a lot about what makes a bad boss. 

I was thrilled when I got promoted out from under that miserable person. I hardly had any time to blog or pursue anything outside of work. So the blog posts dwindled to only a few each year. 

But the learning continues to this day. 

2020

This year will see us leaving Filer, Idaho for a more northern experience. St. Maries Idaho is about an hour from Coeur D'Alene and the same distance to Spokane Washington. 

So we'll get to use our skills that we already acquired but learn a whole new set thanks to an environment surrounded by mountains and rivers. 

Conclusion

So this post was what I hoped would be a linkable summary of all the things we've done to lead up to this point in our lives. I realized after getting started on this post that there was just no way I could link to everything we learned. 

I think it would have been too long and too boring. You can always use the Search feature at the top of the blog to look for something you are interested in if I didn't cover it.