Hello Out There

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Just a quick post to dust off the old keyboard.

Things are moving quite quickly around here. Kids are growing up fast. Graduated one from high school already. Another is a senior.

The homestead is still a blank canvas for the most part. We moved here to southern Idaho and engaged in a 3 year 3 month lease to make sure we liked what we picked. So far, this has been the best location for raising our family. So I haven't modified the property much until we determine if we are staying long term.

We've raised chickens and pigs, as you can see from previous posts. We've talked about goats, sheep and cattle. No garden yet to speak of but have planted six fruit trees.

I still haven't replaced my Orange Jeep which is where I got my moniker. A mixture of finances and busy life has side railed that endeavor. I have an alert on my smart phone via a CraigsList app that keeps me informed every time one if offered for sale. I have seen a few but none like the one I planned on keeping.

I have lots going on, some of which I'd like to post about, but haven't quite found the time to sit down and write. I'm considering a post for the monthly SurvivalBlog entry about moving to the American Redoubt and getting settled in. Some of things I've done to acclimate include:

• settling in with the local church. I'm LDS and have become the President of my Elder's Quorum. This has proven to be a tough calling but lends me the opportunity to meet and get to know scores of families in my community. We have monthly activities including yesterday's fun Date Night Shooting activity which involved running an obstacle course of pistol and long gun targets with our spouses. Last month was BOBCON 2016 (Bug Out Bag Conference) where we had a supply swap, How To session on packing a bag and taste testing about eight different MREs, freeze dried foods from Mountain House, and a 2400 calorie food "bar."
• joined the local Freemason lodge. I'm an Entered Apprentice at this point so a few more levels to go before I am a Master Mason. If you've been reading my blog, you know my daughters have been in Job's Daughters for several years. That is a group within the Freemason family. I liked the local lodge enough to join now. This has led me to grow my circle of friends throughout the southern Idaho region.
• join the state society for my craft of Radiology. This has allowed me to again extend my network of friends and associates statewide. I was nominated for President of this organization but was not ultimately selected. It was still an honor to be considered worthy for the title.
• participating in several of the local "fun runs" for both adults and kids. We participated in a Super Hero race yesterday and Monster won a brand new bicycle. She's thrilled! Macky dressed up like Spiderman and took pictures with the kids.
• service projects are everywhere and we've done as much as possible: fairgrounds cleanup, helping serve and clean up at the Senior Citizens Center breakfast fundraiser, numerous helping neighbors projects including painting a house for a senior, and lots more.
• hosting dinner with other families at our home monthly. One weekend we had three sets of people over and it was great. Hosting dinners is a great way to get to know your neighbors.
• joined as a reserve police office for the local PD. As a level three volunteer, I simply ride along with a patrol one or two nights a month and help by being an extra set of eyes. 

The list of acclimating goes on and on. I'm a firm believer in giving back to the community where you reside. If everyone followed this one rule, our country would be in much better shape.

So that's my update in a nutshell. There are many projects I still would like to attempt but many are waiting to see if we take ownership of the property:

• geothermal greenhouse like LDSPrepper has on YouTube
• improve my chicken coop to make it more human friendly (easier access, more automated)
• add more animal pens
• add a perimeter fence to the whole property
• build a workshop into the garage and get out of the 8x10 trailer
• landscape front and back yard
• toy with an idea on podcasting that I've been thinking about
• solar panels to power our home
• rain barrel water collection system
• building some cob houses on the property for crafting, music studio, man cave

If you read this, thanks for stopping by. I welcome your comments below. Let's keep in touch.

OJD

Everyday Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: a set of storage bins, a daily planner, and a durable tote bag.

An Unbelievable Legacy

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https://survivalblog.com/obamas-wide-open-throttle/

Everyday Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: a set of storage bins, a daily planner, and a durable tote bag.

Best Thanksgiving and Christmas Ever

As an Amazon Associate, Orange Jeep Dad earns from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

Sis at her Junior prom in 2015. (Steady boyfriend too!)

I should have been asleep by now but Wifey is watching YouTube videos with Macky in my bed and having a roaring good time. One of those late night guys doing silly skits or something. We killed the cable/satellite years ago in Mesa. It was such a blessing.

Now that we live in southern Idaho and no longer have the mother-in-law living with us (can I get an AMEN?!) we an enjoy our home in its beautiful surroundings. We're in a lovely little town not too far from Twin Falls and are slowly getting used to Idaho weather.

Right now we're in a fog warning and I shared a WeatherChannel warning that says we can expect to see no farther than 100 yards. Snow, fog, rain...I'll take it. That heat back in Mesa, Arizona was such a drain on everything: car batteries, VHS tapes left in the backseat, my behind on a leather driver's seat. No thanks.

Community events every other weekend in rural Idaho 

Bring me the snow and I'm happy. I post pictures of snow and family in Arizona replies with a chuckle as if to say "ha ha, sucker." Joke's on them. I love this stuff. Along with the snow comes low crime, no pollution and a small town atmosphere that boasts of community spirit and knowing your neighbors.

I've taken a small break from blogging even though it is something I love to do. Writing has been enjoyable for me every since I took Writing for the Professions at Arizona State and had a wonderful woman teach me the joys of writing.

These days, along with my 8-5 job in town, I'm keeping my toes in the ecommerce world by dabbling in arbitrage. If you aren't familiar with the word, give it a google. These days it is super easy to sell a widget to any corner of the world. You don't even have to own the widget to sell it. You can post an advertisement about the widget and could end up selling it to someone half way around the globe.

Sister's 18th birthday (+ beau) and all 5 sisters going to lunch.

I'm enjoying eBay and Amazon at the moment. I pick items from Amazon and post them on my eBay account. I mark it up a few percentage points and "dropship" the item straight from Amazon to the eBay buyer. With the right software, you can automate the whole thing. All that is left is responding to customer questions and at the moment, I have that task farmed out to a fella in Bangladesh.

Anyway, I just thought I'd hop on here and drop some thoughts. I don't expect many of my old blogger friends to be around much any more. Not sure if blogger is still something many folks do or if everyone has moved on to new adventures.

Thanksgiving in our new home = best year ever. 

If you do stop by and read a few words, try to leave a comment and say hello. The notification should still go to my cell phone and it would brighten my day to hear from some of my old blogger friends. Let's see who's still out there...




PS. I finally got to play Santa Claus this year. I rented a suit for an employee Christmas meal and handed out trays with a peer at work. Since I had the suit for the whole day, I took it home and had Wifey drive me around to about five neighborhood houses. We stopped at church members' houses who had little children. I don't know who was having more fun...the kids or me.

Parents happily reported that many a chore was completed for the next week thanks to a visit from Santa.

Holiday Prep Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: seasonal storage bins, LED string lights, and a gift wrap organizer.

Holiday Prep Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: seasonal storage bins, LED string lights, and a gift wrap organizer.

No Post in Eight Weeks

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Wow,  has it been that long? We've been busy enjoying life (finally).  Idaho has turned to out be everything we've been looking for in an American Redoubt community.

Sis is a cheerleader for her high school.  She's finishing up her first 4H project (Hercules,  her swine).  She was elected Honor Queen of her Job's Daughters Bethel.  She is in the high school choir and drama club and has her first official,  father approved boyfriend. She turned 18 last Saturday. I've never seen her so happy and involved.  She started off her birthday by not doing just one act of service but TWO!  From 8-10am she served at our local church Temple and from 10-12 she cleaned the fairgrounds with her 4H club. #ProudDad

Macky is finishing up her 4H swine project too.  She's looking forward to track season as she seems to have a knack for throwing discus and shot put.  She submitted her short story to Deseret Publishing but was turned down.  Now she is tweaking her book in hopes of making it just a little bit better. She is very interested in criminal investigation and crime lab stuff.  Like looking at blood splatter on a wall and determining the angle and trajectory from where it originated. She was also nominated Outer Guard by her Bethel.

The Queen is starting freshman year and made the cheer team with Sis.  She's as pretty as ever and super excited that the nearest town now has an Ulta (makeup store).  Her 4H swine is named Queenie and likes to eat dead mice. She enjoys church socials and dances and is having a great time in her elected position as Junior Princess in Job's.  She gives me near daily hugs now without me even asking...at age 14!

Boo is the most involved with her swine and enjoys walking "Bacon"  around the pasture. She is a Jobie to Bee and attends all the parades and stuff with her big Sisters.  She helps me feed the chickens,  swine and Lucky and is really into animals. 

Running out of phone battery.  Will complete post later tonight.

OJD

Everyday Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: a set of storage bins, a daily planner, and a durable tote bag.

SurvivalBlog Appears to be Down Again 2015

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Update: SB appears to be up again. Not sure if I just experienced a glitch or not. Glad to see it back nonetheless.

Also, the Swedish server appears to be nixed and replaced with the following, albeit still under construction:

http://50.193.232.247/

------------------------------------------------------

I intended to re-read a recent article about the recent decisions of our Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. Unfortunately, SB seems to be down again. In the past, Rawles gets hacked on extended weekends by hackers that know he will have an extended period of time when his server will be unattended. Last I checked, Rawles does not have a server in his home and is dependent on commercial servers.

These companies tend to staff lightly (if at all) on holidays like most other American companies. He did have a server in Sweden last I checked so I would think that it would be up. However, neither of the IP addresses I have on file are working at the moment:

Please bookmark both of SurvivalBlog's servers:
http://64.92.111.122/ [U.S. Server]
http://95.143.193.148/ [Swedish Server]
One or both of them may go down.

 My guess that this is the same DoS attack he tolerates every year and if we wait 24 hours, we'll probably hear something from him.

 It is Sunday, so enjoy some time with your families.

 ~OJD

Backup Options When Online Prepper Resources Go Down

Outages like this are a good reminder that relying entirely on a website for prepping knowledge has a real weak point. Keeping a couple of solid physical survival reference books on the shelf means the information is there even without an internet connection, and an external hard drive is worth using to back up any digital guides or PDFs you have collected over the years. Websites come and go, but a good physical library does not depend on a server staying online.

Our Own TV Series!

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The producers of Gold Rush interviewed us this morning.

I know, it's silly...but we did an interview this morning for it. A production company in London called RAW TV has interviewed our family to potentially be in a short tv series on living the self-sufficient lifestyle.

Apparently this is a popular thing across the pond right now? I guess you can say America is kind of waking up to the idea too. For several years now we've been trying to move farther away from the big city and closer to rural America.

We were tired of the crime and pollution...the 90 minute commute time to work (one way!)...and all the other joys that come with living in an overpopulated area. So we moved from Arizona to rural Idaho.

My children now ride their bikes on a private dirt road that has but one other house on it besides mine. We have enough land that we can grow as much food as we want and raise several animals. We currently have around 27 chickens (lost five last weekend to Lucky) and 5 pigs. We've planted six fruit trees and one of our apple trees has popped out three little baby apples (we're SO excited!).

Anyway, this film company thought this was all very interesting and of course my girls thought that having their own reality show would be a hoot. It would be nice to offer something to the American public that was a total polar shift from the Kardashian junk on the tube now.

So what do you think? Would you do a tv show if asked?

Let me know in the comment section...if there is anybody left out there.

OJD

Everyday Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: a set of storage bins, a daily planner, and a durable tote bag.

5 Pigs Added for 4H Projects

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Working on becoming friends first...

Now that the 32 chickens have room to roam, we've gone to the next level. We've added five pigs to our homestead to raise for 4H. We got them on Sunday (today is Tuesday) and we'll be raising them until the county fair in September.

At that time, the girls will show them to the best of their ability and if they do a good job, maybe even come home with some ribbons.

Wifey hanging with the boys

We're learning as we go and having tons of fun doing it. Idaho and the American Redoubt has been very good to us. We are so happy we moved here.

Lots of friendly people and wide open spaces to explore and enjoy.

I'll try to post a video of the day the pigs were brought over. I didn't have a trailer to load them into so the folks we bought them from were nice enough to deliver them.

They have even offered to take them to the fair for us. The girls are SO excited!

~OJD

Supplies That Help a 4H Pig Project Go Smoothly

Raising pigs for a 4H project takes more day-to-day gear than people expect. A sturdy feed trough cuts down on wasted feed compared to tossing it on the ground, a reliable stock tank heater keeps water from freezing during colder months, and a good show halter makes training pigs to lead a lot easier before fair season. Little details like these make a big difference over the life of a project like this.