self reliance – Page 2 – Kensho Homestead

Between Intrepid and Genteel

From Kenya to Llano, Berit pictured with Kath, visiting from the UK

Hunters often get a bad rap and it’s not always for good reason. I had a chance to learn something about this on a recent trip to the Texas Hill Country where I was led to question the difference between a hunter and a poacher.

Before assuming this is a niche topic and of little interest to the vast majority of folks whom are neither hunters nor poachers, consider it’s a matter of philosophy as well, along with colonialism, globalism, human nature and modern life.

A wall of hunting ‘trophies’ not uncommon in Texas homes.

Mostly they have much in common, the hunter and the poacher. There is a similar skillset, clearly, but one I know nothing about, so I’ll leave that to the hobbyists and professionals. As strictly an occassional observer I imagine it to require more patience than I’ve ever mustered, more tenacity than most and more courage than the vast majority.

We might say the poacher is lawless and greedy and violent, and in some cases that may well be true. It may also be true that some hunters share such qualities as well.

But again, I’m coming to this as a complete outsider to their world, strictly an observer, and occasionally a beneficiary.

The differences between the hunter and the poacher must lie somewhere between intrepid and genteel, I figure. And so it is most apropos that I should think of it with a hunter who fits the bill for both adjectives.

Our hunter in question, Berit, at her home in Llano, Texas

I’d never have taken this fair, mild-mannered, small and slender woman as a big game hunter, that’s for sure, and I suspect that made her something of an attraction at her home in Kenya, kind of like a pretty little sparrow among bulls. Though looking at the full and adventurous life she’s led, we mustn’t think a sparrow at anyone’s mercy.

A beautiful display of African artefacts collected during their time there.

I met her with her second husband, an avid big game hunter, but her first husband was a professional one. They had a business together leading safaris until the laws were changed in an instant, hunting banned by the government, their livelihood lost.

Neither were Americans, but he had a prospect in Texas. So, with young children in tow, they moved to the Hill Country, to Llano, and started anew.

That was in 1977. It is still illegal to hunt in Kenya.

What’s more interesting, Kenya has remained on the fast track ever since, to full-tilt modernization. They have been an international fore-runner for all the Global Village United Nations WEF grand schemes for their ideal Future: ESG scores, vaccines, digital IDs, carbon credits.

That’s the great gift of compliance. Or, as the old adage goes, “Give the devil a finger . . .”

https://open.substack.com/pub/escapekey/p/the-complete-architecture?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

“Esc’s analysis, backed by meticulous documentation, sets the stage for understanding a system already operational, where resistance is economically suicidal and socially ostracized. Esc details how development programs in nations like Kenya test governance technologies—digital IDs, carbon credits—later exported to the West, ensuring global compliance under the guise of progress. The Earth Charter, as esc notes, serves as a global constitution, subordinating individual rights to expert-defined collective responsibilities, a theme echoed in The Invisible Empire’s critique of sustainability metrics overriding democratic will. We need to recognize this system before the window for democratic resistance closes, as each institutional capture—from ESG compliance to AI-driven surveillance—tightens the web.”
The Complete Architecture – by esc

“For 130 years, a coordinated network of institutions has been systematically replicating the same control structure across every domain of human life – from healthcare to education, from banking to environmental policy. This structure, originally perfected in British banking, creates the appearance of local autonomy while concentrating ultimate decision-making power at higher levels run by credentialed experts.
The breakthrough came when science claimed moral authority over all aspects of human experience through the 1986 Venice Declaration, positioning scientific expertise not just as informing ethical decisions, but as the source of ethics itself. This created the intellectual foundation for what we now see operational: a system where questioning expert consensus isn’t just wrong – it’s scientifically illiterate, ethically irresponsible, and potentially pathological.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/the-ethics-trap-130-years-of-systematic?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

How close is your country’s hunting policy to Kenya’s?
Is hunting policy about creating the lines between hunter and poacher, or obscuring them? Because, if everything is forbidden except to a tiny few, aren’t we pretty much all destined to become poachers?

“And the pity is that it will do nothing for the wildlife, controlled licensed hunting has never been a threat to wildlife. When elephant hunting was closed a few years ago, I wrote to the East African Standard and pointed out that poaching was the problem, not licensed hunting, and that if poaching were not stopped, the elephants would disappear anyway, whether licensed hunting were allowed or not. Unfortunately I have been proved right, and since that time the elephants have been exterminated all over large areas of Kenya. For this licensed hunting can in no way be blames, as legal hunting of elephants was closed.” Finn, Berit’s husband

Should hunting be allowed in Kenya? | davidlansing.com

“When I was in Kenya a few years ago I stayed on the edge of the plateau overlooking the Mara. About a mile away one night, a leopard broke into a Maasai boma and killed a cow. The game officials came by two days later, photographed the pug marks on the ground and the carcasses, payed the elder a pittance for his loss, reminded them that they were forbidden to kill the leopard, and disappeared. A couple of nights later, it happened again. So they staked out a goat and speared the leopard to death and buried him. That same leopard could have brought in tens of thousands of dollars in fees to Kenya and the local economy – now it’s a skeleton. When the wild game is seen only as a nuisance and is not allowed to pay its own way in a crowded land, it will always end like that.”

To be continued . . .

Feel free to chime in below!

Homestead Happenings

It’s been so long since an update I don’t know where to start. Or where to end, or what to include. But I figure there have got to be a few readers out there hankering for some other news besides the shitstorm coming at us from the global mafia and the media cartels.

In my last update we’d started remodeling the kitchen. That was a very big DIY job, it took a very long time, and we’re still not totally finished. But we are very pleased with the results that were easy on the budget and tested our creativity, skill and resourcefulness.

I thought I’d include our first time redoing the kitchen, in 2009 when we first moved in, with the previous owners’ belongings to haul away before we could begin. It had been empty for many years and the mice and roaches had taken over. It was a disgusting experience, the worst of which we got to avoid this time, so that was a bonus.

This time we also repainted the ceiling and walls and all the cabinets as well as the breakfast nook bench and storage unit Hubby had built previously. He also replaced the countertops and handcrafted new lighting and shelves, expanding on the same ‘steam-punk’ style as he used on the entryway table he built last year.

Work in progress:

Just installed butcher block countertops, quite the challenge when floors and walls aren’t level or plumb!

After way too many lost hours, I was not always a happy DIYer! But I am pleased with the result.

I spent a lot of time stripping and re-staining the kitchen table. I still want to dress-up the windows treatments and paint the doors and bases of the table and stool. But then we got too busy and had to devote our time to the garden and orchard.

The cucumbers and zuccini that were badly damaged by hail in late spring did make a bit of a comeback, but now are succumbing to the heat.

Unfortunately and as usual, a lot of the time devoted to the garden gets wasted because of crazy weather. This year has been no different and we had a lot of rain at the wrong time for some crops at some stages. The older peppers did fine with it, but the younger ones look terrible and are not recovering. Same with the tomatoes. The heirloom Scarlet Runner bean is struggling and not producing, but is still quite pretty as an ornamental.

I’ll be writing about those seeds, as well as the ones that grew this great big beautiful Black Hopi sunflower (the tallest I’ve ever seen!), in an upcoming post about Gavin Mounsey’s book Recipes for Reciprocity, because the seeds came from him.

https://recipesforreciprocity.com/shop/softcover/

These cucumbers were just the right age for survival and are going strong now.

I’ve gotten good at succession planting over the years for the reason of crazy weather. In very early spring I try to get tomatoes, flowers and herbs started, but am often disappointed by late frosts. Days of heavy rain and high humidity with overcast skies can easily cause damage to younger more vulnerable plants in early summer. By this time of mid-summer I’m sowing more cucumbers, herbs, and sometimes beans, but it’s often already too hot for them to get established. At this point, we get what we get until fall brings more hope.

But of course I can’t be satisfied with that and am always experimenting. Often it’s fall tomatoes or melons, which rarely work out. This year it’s the challenge of romaine lettuce through summer. I seriously doubt it’s possible, but I’ve got a tray that has just germinated under lights inside to give it a try. I’ll put them in a shaded box, with plenty of hardwood mulch in an attempt to keep the roots cooler. It’s been in the 90s everyday lately, humid and not cooling off much at night, but there’s still some growing that wasn’t smashed by the heavy rain and hail a couple of weeks ago.

Left photo is view from garden, normally the creek is not visible at all. Right photo is walking along the power easement to the very flooded creek banks.

We also had another big oak tree die suddenly in the prime of life. The last one was just taken (partly) down by the electricity company’s crew because it risked falling into their cables. The latest one Hubby will have to fell himself, before it comes down on the fencing. That will probably be after he fixes his bridge to nowhere that he just built last year in response to flooding and was nearly taken out by this year’s repeat performance.

In the last two years, with no tornados or hurricanes to blame, we’ve had three large trees right around us flash out dead in a matter of days. Rather disconcerting to me, to say the least.

Still, let’s end on a positive note. Some years are better than others. We had an inexplicably bad blackberry year, but this year was excellent. Hubby made blackberry wine with much it, which was much better tasting as a young wine than the one I tried to make and age last year. Some years we have amazing tomatoes. Other years it’s great melons. Maybe this year it will be spectacular grapes?

It doesn’t take much for fabulous meals when food is fresh. Fermented herbs and veggies add flavor and nutrition with just a little garden surplus or foraging time. The chanterelles always do better with lots of rain. Hubby’s delicious young blackberry wine makes such a refreshing spritzer when mixed with kombucha.

Eating seasonally from our land is so rewarding even when we don’t have a bumper crop.

I have a long list of content coming up during the swelter season, so all the more excuse to stay indoors. Thank Man for air condition! 😆

And thanks for stopping by!

Between Shitty & Country

Having become far more accustomed to the surreal ‘nature’ of ‘reality’ in the last decade or so, I was less baffled by the still ever-increasing Suburban Sprawl on my recent roadtrip through the Hill Country of Texas.

Because of course, by now we are all hearing constantly the war drums of the Globalists and their plan to put all ShittyZens into Smart 15-minute Cities™ under Palantir Surveillance Systems™ paid for with our tax dollars and paving the way for digital money cheered on by ‘Freedom Fighters’ where everyone will be eating food manufactured by Pig Pharma, who begrudgingly keeps the ShittyZenry alive through forced drugging deemed voluntary.

Homesteading gets sold as a solution, which it is not, and never was, and even I knew that as a novice 15 years ago, before it was cool. Homesteaders rarely last 5 years, I’m told, like most small businesses. Makes perfect sense to me, because it’s the only work I’ve ever done that gets harder with time instead of easier.

It’s a lot like all the lies being sold to us about everything, everywhere, all the time.

Perhaps the 15-minute city agenda works in some places, but I see nothing of the sort here. The Shitty Sprawl continues, unabated and unabashed, developing the vast parcels of land without the people, in an unstoppable concrete jungle that clearly doesn’t listen to the same news as we are subjected to from the 24-hour Cybernews Today Club.

Residential and commercial alike, vast development continues, and sits empty for tens of miles outside every major city in Texas: Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston. The foreign populations increase, but not nearly at the rate the buildings to house and employ them get constructed.

And out, and out, and out they go, encroaching far worse than infesting cockroaches. Blocking the views, crushing the landscape, sculpting and paving and polluting any and every open space where someone can maybe hope to make another dollar.

11 new Commercial Mega-projects for the Austin market!https://aquilacommercial.com/learning-center/megaprojects-planned-for-austin/

“The project is set to deliver 1,200,000 square feet of office space, 140,000 square feet of retail space, 1,700 multifamily units, and 200 hotel rooms. The development will also create 14 acres of green space. ”

Mind you, there are already huge empty building ALL over the shitty.

Plus,

(A whopping 14 acres of green space! 😂)

I like when I hear rural (and other wise) folks refer to the cities as ‘shitties’ because I think it fits. Let’s call a spade a spade. What I saw on my roadtrip was horrendous and makes me thankful for the wee refuge we have created here, for now. But the Shitties aren’t the real problem here, in fact. We are being swallowed up, everywhere, by the relentless Shitty Sprawl.

Amazon and Walmart will be offering drone delivery service, so perhaps that will alleviate some of the choking traffic that stagnates around every Shitty, all day long. Those drones must be very adept at navigating through the expanse of electrical towers and fat mess of wires that crisscross every skyline and create a hideous hellscape of prison-like bars. So much for the vast open horizons of our fabled cowboy days.

In Houston, veterans and cripples beg at every underpass and intersection, weaving themselves like Frogger players through 5-lanes of traffic. San Antonio has been ruined by tourism and is now, in just the last 5 years since I was last there, a crowded, filthy slum pretending to be full of family fun. Austin is just more of the same which started well over a decade ago, and continues its relentless expansive march into the drought-stricken Hill Country, paying no heed whatsoever to the limits of water or other pesky human needs. Technology!

Yes, technology is both the Great Driver and the Great Savior. As well as the Great Disrupter and the Great Connector.

While the water gets diverted into Data Centers, swimming pools and water sports for the foreign tech teams, tourist traps sprout up like, well like tourists traps always do.

Mystery Tours and Great Escapes (TM) and Wild West Simulations based on previous historical simulations. Hotels that require Smart phones to check-in and coffee shops that sell fancy foamy cocktails, but don’t take cash.

Such is the American Dream I’ll be expanding upon in the next posts, based on my recent, rare roadtrip. There will be highlights among these many Shitty Horrors, I hope they will be enough to create some kind of basic balance, as temporary as I expect that will be in the grand scheme of things.

The Pie in the Sky Tech dreams are in fact nightmares for a great many of us. The kind of projects ‘our betters’ have planned for the world are little more than anti-human miseries sold as ‘fun’ and ‘sustainable’ while they are in fact conning the populations of the world to build playgrounds for the uber-wealthy on the backs of the common man: THE story as old as time.

Will Austin become the next Neom?

city of neom saudi, future home of the 2029 Asian Olympic Winter Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom
Yes, there is the usual rumblings of faux climate concerns.
“Amidst increasing global-warming concerns, the project raised multiple issues ranging from the expected high temperatures in the desert land, the energy impact and detour of local water resources to the construction of artificial ski slopes from scratch.”

Our Texas mega-Shitties equally demonstrate ZERO authentic concern over their continued expansion.

“The new construction home market in Austin, Texas, remains vibrant, with homebuilders offering attractive incentives like rate buy-downs and closing cost contributions. Demand is steady, as Austin continues to attract buyers drawn to its growing tech scene, great schools, and high quality of life . . .”

In Shitty-speak, a ‘high quality of life’ is apparently defined by constant drought, non-stop shitty-wide traffic and enough beggars to make one feel rich even while living in a mini-studio apartment above a freeway.

Pay no mind whatsoever to Austin’s infamous traffic. It’s main corridor, dubed ‘A Freeway Without a Future’.

I-35 in Austin is one of nine freeways where the infrastructure is “nearing the end of its functional life.” Photo courtesy of Getty Images
Apparently this was a problem inherent in the 1928 Master Plan of Austin’s infrastructure that is now visible to ALL: The Master Plan was in fact, rascist. So that explains everything.

The Master Plan https://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/austin-i35-freeways-without-futures/was rascist, of course!

Perhaps the future plan will mirror a devotedly Non-Racist plan, like that of Neom, Saudi Arabia, where everyone has equal opportunity to be a ShittyZen, provided they don’t mind being surveilled like a prisoner.

From Wiki:
“At one company meeting, Nasr said on record, “I drive everybody like a slave, when they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.”[108] He also threatened to replace employees stuck in other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020, which included the former director of branding and marketing.

Surveillance
Designers of The Line announced plans to use data as a currency to manage and provide facilities such as power, waste, water, healthcare, transport and security. It was said that data would also be collected from the smartphones of the residents, their homes, facial recognition cameras and multiple other sensors. According to Joseph Bradley, the chief executive of Neom Tech & Digital Co., the data sweep would help developers feed the collected information to the city for further predicting and customizing every user’s needs.
However, Saudi Arabia’s poor human-rights record and use of espionage and surveillance technology for spying on its citizens emerged as a roadblock, according to digital rights experts. Vincent Mosco, a researcher into the social effects of technology, stated that “the surveillance concerns are justified” while further adding that “it is, in effect, a surveillance city.” The Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology did not respond to digital rights experts and researchers’ requests for comments.

Other criticisms
The project has been critiqued as a “laboratory of false solutions” inasmuch as carbon capture and storage (CCS), green hydrogen, and carbon-offsetting are self-serving panaeceas backed by the fossil fuel industry which do not work at scale. Furthermore Salman’s vision for the city includes such fanciful technologies as flying cars, robot maids, dinosaur robots, and even a giant artificial moon.”

Even a giant artificial moon?! Wow! Who needs water anyway, fly me to the moon! 🤪

Millennial Pep Talk

The Millennial Gardner gave a great little pep talk at the end of this confessional concerning his myriad gardening mistakes over the years. There should be more such vids as this. The positivity movement is dead, in my opinion, though MG is still a devoted adherent.

Positivity–Capitalism couldn’t survive without it!

He’s not yet reached the ripe age of bitterness. He thinks he will be able to continuously throw money at the problem, and I rather doubt that’s a viable long-term solution. I hope I’m wrong.

But overall I really appreciate his rejection of the typical appraoch to problems today: The Head in the Sand vs The Pie in the Sky. That’s what I see most often, and on that I think he’d agree with me.

So, more power to him!

We all need a pep talk now and then and Millennials especially it seems to me are inheriting the ends of the Shitshow and are expected to pull it all together again after the wrecking ball.

Hardly a lesson in equity, or perhaps the best lesson that could be.

The gist of his little pep talk is valid–anyone who excels at anything worthwhile has experienced, and learned from, the greatest teacher of all–Failure.

It’s not nice or pleasant or fun or comfortable to learn the lessons of failure. And we live in a culture addicted to nice and pleasant and fun and comfortable.

Not really a conducive atmosphere for learning.

Yet, sometimes the results of the lessons are far more pleasant than we might expect. Like, in my case, my greatest lesson in gardening so far has been flowers.

Flowers and ‘weeds’.

I had no idea the delight they offer when I first started gardening and I made little room for them in my garden, whether the classic garden cultivars or the wild weeds who long to make themselves welcomed. HUGE mistake!

I’ve been working on correcting that for many years now, and it’s absolutely paid off in myriad forms: more bees, more joy, more pleasure, more beauty, more sense of wonder.

The garden feels like less of a chore and more of a privilege with every bloom. The attraction is magnetic, to insects, to birds, to me. I observe better, I take more time, I allow my natural esthetic sense to align with the food crops and converge into a very satisfying balance of food and fancy.

Somehow, whether in my heart, or soul, or imagination, co-mingling the wild in with the crops has engaged me in a way that is a continual wellspring of curiousity and desire, even in the worst of times.

The rapture of emergent colors, the allure of fragrance on the breeze, the dance of the petals and the delight of the bees, I think what my early garden experience was missing was in fact the essence of ME. Because you don’t get that from books.

Learn from our failures dear ones, that’s why we tell y’all about them. Don’t let them dim your spirits, but use them in good faith, and find a way.

More Bees Please!

I don’t follow this very popular homesteading channel, Off-Grid with Doug & Stacy, too chatty and hyperbolic for me, but that’s what gets the clicks, so more power to ’em. Yet somehow, the Algos knew to put this particular new episode prominently on my feed.

Natural beekeeping in horizontal hives!

It’s excellent! I first heard this beekeeper many years ago and am so glad to see he continues to promote natural beekeeping and adding to his informational website. He’s also added equipment, books and events, and if I still lived in Missouri, you can bet I’d have befriended him ages ago.

Dr. Leo Sharashkin
https://horizontalhive.com/index.shtml

It really is a thrill for me to watch the growth of treatment-free beekeeping over the last decade. It used to be not only terribly difficult to find good information, but also it was treacherous. I’m not joking either. Natural beekeepers are the anti-vaxxers of the beekeeping world, with all the bullying, ridicule, and obnoxious bloviating to prove it, which I experienced for years with this simple preference.

I do not want Big Pharma livestock. It’s really not a crime, though you will be treated like a criminal to suggest it or admit that it’s your practice to most mainstream and commercial professionals. According to many of them, the fact that treatment-free beekeepers exist at all explains why their colonies are filled with diseases. It’s blind faith in The Science. And The Science is not rational.

Folks might be surprised to learn that the lifespans of pets and livestock has decreased sharply over the decades. Bees, like all the animals, are basically treated as a disposible commodity. One disgusted veterinarian who turned his practice to homeophathy complained about this in milk cows, but actually it can be observed in ALL livestock:

“While my cow patients in Wisconsin often lived well into their teens, some to over 20 years, the average California operator culled cows at 2 years old. They’d been pushed with so much grain and ever higher production goals that their health suffered and they were literally dispensed with when they couldn’t keep up.”
(3) When “organic” dairy ain’t – by Will Falconer, DVMhttps://vitalanimal.substack.com/p/when-organic-dairy-aint

But that is clearly changing! It could be that more are recognizing the false science of Pig Pharma, finally. Or, that there is so much success now in the treatment-free circles, and so many more are starting to practice it, that the bullies in the business are starting to become outnumbered. That’s my hope anyway.

One commercial beekeeper replied to Leo’s inquiry with a common fact:

14:45 “If I stopped treating my bees, I’d lose 85% in a year . . .”

I would LOVE to try a skep hive!

That’s right! And plenty of beekeepers, commercial and hobby, have experienced that, unfortunately. I also had a very hard time in the beginning. It took a lot of failure and a lot of research.

Mostly it took conviction. Good health is not found in medications. It is achieved through wholesome practices, which are the same for bees as all of life: Clean living and being left to pursue the most natural ways as possible.

From the interview we learn Doug & Stacy had similar issues as I had when beginning in beekeeping, and it was through Leo’s work and presentations they understood why and began to change their practices with continued success. Leo insists, you don’t need to invest much money, contrary to popular opinion. You don’t need to keep buying bees to grow your apiary.

Treatment-free practices rely on the natural intelligence of the bees to care for themselves. We do not requeen when we make a colony split, requiring the bees to raise their own queen. This keeps all beekeeping local, as it should be.

One of our horizontal hives with an observation window.

Instinct of the local area grows in the colony from one generation to the next. Also contrary to popular opinion, the bees get more resilient with each generation when left to their own decision-making, ie. when to swarm, how much honey to store for the winter, when to build up brood in the local conditions, which queen to keep, and when to get rid of her.

Leo’s entire apiary was grown through trapping swarms and making splits. I’ve not had much success with swarms and will try to start following more of his advice for attracting them. You’ll actually have more success attracting swarms in less rural areas, as counter-intuitive as that might sound. But bees are a bit like deer in that regard, they are attracted to the closest and most abundant and varied food sources, which often means near where humans are residing.

While he uses horizontal hives, like I do, he also has some good advice for beekeepers in cold climates and hive designs which help keep colonies alive during long winters.

LOVE SWARMS: The Complete Guide to Attracting Honeybees

by Dr Leo Sharashkin, Editor, Keeping Bees With a Smile

I once drove all the way to Arkansas on my search for treatment-free bees. This is what the car looked like when I arrived home! 😆

Unfortunately, after all that trouble, these bees also did not survive a full year. BTW, I was not stung once.

When I finally understood the importance of getting bees locally and allowing the weak colonies to die off, I finally had some success. But, it’s still a work in progress and I’m so happy for all the advice and expertise from those with more experience and success.

Live and learn!

Beauty & Bounty

Such a busy time of year already, made busier with our remodeling projects, but we always make time to stop and smell the roses.

And bow to the weather gods, or geoengineers, who have spared us this time, and after so much barking, we are grateful there was no bite. Before I sing our praises, let me acknowledge those further north who are biting the bullet this time around. Our picture perfect skies are so very rare, I don’t like to think about all that means.

We did prepare all we could for the worst, annoying as that was. Out came the row cover fabric again and the wheelbarrows full of logs to hold it down, after just having cleaned all that up and took it to storage the week before.

We expected a frost for sure.

All the pots had to be gathered to cover all the peppers and tomatoes. And considering it was so hot and humid and over 8o degrees when we were doing all of this, it felt more incongruent than snow along the coast of the Gulf of America. 😂

But, I can’t complain, because as I just said, we got very lucky. No hail, tornados, landocaines, flooding and we just barely scratched by the frost threshold.

Just look at that sky! I can’t tell you how long it’s been since seeing such a sight!

There is so much beauty and bounty, in nature, and in cyberspace too!

Just yesterday I was scrolling through my Youtube feed and about every 100 suggestions up pops a true gem, like this old Mexican lady cooking her heart out and sharing it with the world. This is the very best of the power that’s right at our fingertips, I truly believe that: The world’s people sharing about their cultures. The cuisines, the histories and myths, the music, the dance, the landscapes, the languages, the gardens, the architecture–and the ordinary folks sharing them. Unfortunately, as the AI gods have demonstrated, for every such miracle there are about 100 curses.

Make food not war!

There are the tiniest gems not to be missed through all the noise and all the neon glare.

And it seems like they are beckoning me to slow down and notice them.

What would you rather do . . . follow me around the garden, or do more of that thing you call work?

A plot of volunteer poke weed and garlic, as if they’re just screaming, we are here for your good health, so happy to be here, we keep returning for you!

Sometimes, when I least expect it, we learn how to grow together better. Like I was thinking of the old Southern trick to set out red-painted pebbles to fool the birds into keeping off the strawberries. I thought, I bet some well-placed breakfast radishes would have the same effect, and sure enough, it’s working. The birds have moved off that bed ever since those radishes started showing their little red tops, and bonus, we adore radishes, maybe even as much as strawberries.

We have been eating giant salads every day, with enough surplus for our neighbors.

Along the country roads all is flourishing. The bluebonnets are brilliant and I even caught a roadrunner, just barely.

Such gifts of beauty and bounty! What a precious, ephemeral time to infuse their bursting energy into our year ahead. What we put into it is what we’ll get out of it, just like life.

I hope your spring is being beautiful to y’all, too! Thanks for stopping by!

Country Life, Modern Style

Still, no time. I’ve lost a month, maybe two, in projects and to-do. Now I risk missing the whole spring to more of the same. And yet, in spring, it’s never all that bad.

There will always be time for baking delicious bread, and making fabulous cheese. Even in the midst of kitchen face-lift chaos, the healthy food must go on.

Quinoa-rosemary sourdough made with potato water
Fantastic!

Still, no time, but still want to share some quick happy snaps and briefest of updates, because I’d hate to be totally forgotten before even gone! 😊

It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take the scenic route to the herdshare where I pick up one gallon of raw milk at the cost of $15, that’s about a 1 hour round-trip. On this day, it took more like 3, with multiple occasions for nearly getting stuck in the mud. But it was very scenic and an adventure to boot!

Excuse me, sir, might I pass?

Apparently they get much more rain than we do and the scenic route proved impassable.

But the cows didn’t seem to mind.

Meanwhile back on the wee homestead, Patty has had a big brood!

………….

And the wild cherry has never looked so good! I wish I could get a better pic.

…………..

We’re spending so much on our interior face-lift the roosters are taking over, no time to reduce their numbers, the benefit being, no sleeping in.

………..

The garden is growing so fast, and the citrus and magnolias I planted last year are just now sprouting. But all that for another post, too much to do!

Hope all’s springing with y’all, thanks for stopping by!

Another fixer-upper on the route to my herdshare. Looks a bit over our pay grade.

How about this one, also on the route?

Destined to become a Black Heritage museum, so they say! 😆

Homestead Hope(ium?)

What is the difference between Hope, and Hopium? There’s a fuzzy line and it’s very easy to misjudge, but it’s located somewhere between: “Yay, Trump will save us all from $11/dozen eggs!” And “We should start a chicken mega-ranch.”

If those two meet in the middle of the road, might creative minds find that they’ve absent-mindedly crossed with logic and conclude a few laying hens might be just the ticket? A bit of self-sufficiency, why not? After all, it’s not rocket science . . .

Joel Salatin exposes the WEF agenda!
“Josh Sigurdson talks with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, an entrepreneur and farmer who for years has fought against Monsanto, factory farming and dependence pushing for people to homestead and/or farm and not be dependent on the system.
We previously interviewed Joel in 2017 regarding Monsanto. Now, 8 years later, we delve into the massively expanded technocratic grid as more than ever, people are dependent on grocery stores, the grid and AI, weakened by design.
The World Economic Forum agenda is to destroy self sustainability and make people weak slaves to technocracy. Eventually they want food rations and carbon credit scores. They’re already being rolled out to some degree and with the 2024 United Nations Pact For The Future, this problem is encroaching quicker than ever.
The climate lobby attempting to bring down farms is more alive than ever. There are solutions however which Joel Salatin has spent decades teaching people.
There is also a rumor circulating that Joel Salatin was picked to head the USDA. He explains this and more in this interview.”

https://www.bitchute.com/video/xp8FhgIdgdHh

Though it is the gateway livestock, and that’s official, I’ve even heard it repeated by the official fact-checkers at NASA.

Don’t worry, more government will save us! They will VAXX this FLU away, similar to the way they spray on the weather!

Respiratory diseases? I can’t imagine how that might be happening! So baffling!

But as James Corbett points out, chickens are the simple solution, but not necessarily the Easy one.

Most folks will take the easy way out, drink the Kool-aid, puff the Hopium, and exclaim RFKJ is here to save the day. Cheap eggs and healthy injections on the way!

To Hope is to Hopium as to Smoke is to Suffocate.

Resilience their way?

Moving Aussie’s to Smart Cities:

https://open.substack.com/pub/unbekoming/p/the-managed-retreat-resilience-racket?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

They got you by the balls! Now what’s a bit of responsibility for a few hens compared to that?

Homestead Happenings

It’s been quite a long time since an update on the wee homestead projects and activities; it’s hard to know where to start! How about, for consistency sake, I bitch about the weather for a bit, and then move along to better tidings.

Of course the geoengineered chem-filled skies continue, as does our Yo-Yo season (formerly known as winter). We are using the air conditioning now, it’s been 80 degrees for days.

Buttercup is especially sensitive to the YoYo, to the point of regular getting seizures at such times, also lethargic and losing her appetite.

There was of course the lows not long ago in the 20s and I was very concerned for the newly planted citrus. We employed quite the set up of lights and covers and they faired very well, I’m happy to report.

Invasion of Asian beetles on the citrus cover

But there has been a bad invasion of these awful beetles, which we’re vacuuming off the ceiling multiple times a day. Not to be confused with the garden-friend, the lovely little lady bugs, NO, these little beasts are really nasty. They infest, as obvious from the photos, and they bite, and as if that’s not enough, they stink.

I don’t like when folks call them lady bugs, they are not at all ladylike, so I try to correct them anytime I hear complaints, which is more often than you might think. The reaction I get is much more open and accepting than when I inform them about the manufactured weather.

Old lettuce bolting, replacing with new lettuce started under lights indoors, along with broccoli and cauliflower.

It does keep us on our toes, dealing with the Yo-Yo. Lettuce and herbs bolt prematurely quite often, seedlings come up then freeze or wither. We never know from week to week what to expect or how to plan.

I don’t normally have such a fancy setup, but these trays were gifted to me and they’re working quite well germinating some lobelia and snap dragons.

My indoor lights and heating mats make things easier, as does the row cover in the garden, but it is constant juggling. And if I miss a beat, death. Like happened with the Mexican oregano I was so proud of. I forgot about it outside one night when it frosted. Very disappointing considering our long journey of discovery, and how long I babied those few little sprouts, trying to anticipate their every need, carting them inside for warmth, then outside for sun and wind, and just when they were getting their legs, gone. All my fault.

Well, except for the geoengineers, because I wouldn’t be doing this constant refrain if our weather was consistent or predictable or seasonal.

I’ve tried twice since then to sprout the herb again with no luck. I will succeed eventually, of course, we’ve come too far in our quest to fail. The Mexican oregano has a long tale in these parts. Failure is not an option. More on that in the last HH post, if you like. https://kenshohomestead.org/2024/11/14/homestead-happenings-43/

I’d like to say it was the same with the milk quest. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as confident; I feel failure is probably inevitable and maybe even imminent. For the time being I’m counting my blessings I’ve found another (perhaps temporary) source. Last time I was complaining about the cost, this one is even more expensive at $15/gallon. At that price I’m not going to be experimenting with any new cheeses, that’s for sure. To make cheese at all is not really feasible, except for the most delicious of selections—Camembert. Otherwise the precious commodity goes toward morning coffee, ice cream, and buttermilk for recipes and the extended expiration date.

I’ve been doing continued research on the topic of raw milk and what’s available and in general, where’s the market vibe. I found one young entrepreneur with a private herdshare selling cheese for $25 a pound. (A Herdshare Agreement or a Grade A license from the state are the only ways to sell raw milk in Texas legally.).

With my new herdshare deal I can buy more milk for cheesemaking, if I’m willing to pay $15/gallon. Considering the hard cheeses I typically made were 5 gallons ideally (better for aging in less than optimal conditions), that’s a really expensive cheese.

Certainly what can be made on-site are far better cheeses than can be bought at the store; that’s why I started making cheese in the first place. But still, it’s really hard to justify all that work, and expense, when we can still buy organic cheese for about $8/pound.

I will splurge one time in late spring, if possible, when the grass is thick and so the milk most rich. And we do still have two goats, hopefully pregnant, so there’s a small hope of cheesemaking in my future, if all goes well.

Moving on to the garden, the garlic is going strong and I’ve just got the onions in, 3 big rows of each. The garlic we plant is elephant garlic which does so much better here than any other variety I’ve tried, and I’ve tried lots. These are local for over a decade now and their productivity has yet to disappoint.

The onions are from purchased sets and they normally do well, though some years are a bust, like last year. I also started some from seed under lights, to compare if they are more consistent and adaptable, because the sets have gotten pricey in recent years and it’s irritating to pay good money for possible failure. Onions do not like Yo-Yo weather, but then again, who or what really does?

At least some seem to tolerate it better than others. We’ve got a couple of ‘oyster trees’ that are bringing us regular tasty gifts.

I’ve also tried a couple new things that have been long on my list. There’s the soap that’s just now cured, a bit earlier than I’d read is typical. I’m really pleased with it! It lathers very well and the scent is rather sensuous. My intention was something earthy and erotic, and I think I succeeded.

I got the sensual part down, now I need to up the aesthetic! Trust me, looks are deceiving here, I just need better molds! Never underestimate the power of packaging, eh?

After finishing up slaughter season and chopping up downed trees for a month, Hubby has moved on to a far more desirable and needed project, according to me, our kitchen! Yippie!

We’ve needed new countertops badly for many years, ours have been well-worn in 40 years, especially since we’ve gotten here and the space went from softly used a few times a year, to a daily year-round assault. It’s actually pretty impressive the counters aren’t near dust by now, considering how quickly more modern materials fall apart.

Old, ugly, not square or plumb . . . Good times coming in Hubby’s near future!

New countertops got us on a roll and now we’re planning new light fixtures and maybe even a new paint job. Big ideas, perhaps not backed up by time or commitment.

Those big ideas, I’m full of ‘em! In my mind the kitchen’s already painted and my next project is to paint the table, which I’ve wanted (and once tried) to do for as long as we’ve had it. I can imagine I might have a table with a surface that looked something like this . . .

But I’d be perfectly willing to settle for this . . .

Or this . . .

So, after I repaint the kitchen in the few spare moments between juggling plants in YoYo season, I acquire the skills of an artist, and paint something I can really be proud of . . .

Whenever I’m finally able to manage that, y’all will be the first to know!

In the meantime, here’s where we were at in the last update . . .

Homestead Happenings

Assessing Value

Back to this unpleasant subject again. It’s been a very long loop; I haven’t considered it much since first attempting to barter goods from the wee homestead.

It’s something we really do take for granted in our modern economy, whether one takes that as an inherent good or evil.

The good part is that it’s comfortable and I prefer it, on the surface. I hate bartering. I SO suck at it. I suck at it for reasons that are so deeply-seated (seeded?) that no logic can ever possibly be applied.

On travels to some countries barter was the norm and I was told to keep practicing as I’d get better at it. Some seem to enjoy it. These sorts always baffled me. They say, “Treat it like a game!” But that is really stupid, isn’t it, because I did not go out shopping in order to play a game. I already don’t like shopping much, to think I’d like it more by making it game-like is to make it ever closer to hellish.

So while it may not sound like it, this is the good side of money. It took me a long time to learn that. Not until I had to consider such exchanges as, which was of better or equal value, the handcrafted Top bar beehive, or the wormy, bossy, but still a good milker, Summer, a 7-year old goat?

Money, in partnership with “the Market”, make such exchanges far more simple. Since none of us has a crystal ball, and I have no idea how long Summer will live and there are no guarantees, and my friend has no idea if she’ll enjoy beekeeping, or be able to keep bees alive in our chemskies and YoYo climate, our exchange is made more simple by imagining what would be the ‘market value’ of each of our offerings.

The dark side of money it seems to me relates quite easily to the dark side of most things—like religion, or science, or even education—it provides, by its very nature, an endless potential for ‘middlemen’. It becomes a profession, then a vast sea of professions, then an institution, then an institution ‘too big to fail’.

It’s convenient and comfortable, no doubt about it. It’s easy enough for a child to use, but complex enough to build empires upon. Try to imagine living without it.

Do we really consider how we, as individuals, would place value upon goods and services anymore?

What about once money is replaced with tokens. It’s pretty much the same thing already, right? Tokens as a medium of value exchange—your massage is worth 2 dozen yard eggs. Right?

Well, the market value of your massage today is 20 tokens, but the value of my eggs is 10 tokens, today, and 15 tokens last week, and is projected to be 25 tokens tomorrow. That’s the real problem with the market, right? For you and I, as individuals deciding value between us, the eggs and massage exchange didn’t fluctuate vastly over a matter of days, or even weeks. It’s pretty steady, really. You use 2 dozen eggs per week, I like 1 massage per week, stable value exchange.

But I’ll bet you 5 economists in the room with us would tell us 50 ways it’s not really a stable value exchange. And, why be stable at all if there might be a profit to make? Then a dozen lawyers will tell us why those economists are right. And a nation full of universities will continue to produce a fat muffin top of middlemen to stuff between every simple interpersonal transaction in every tiny hamlet around the world.

I’m bothering to restate the obvious at this moment because I’m trying to re-assess the value of technology in my life. It started with the recurring headaches of social media many years ago, then moved to Smart phones, and lately it’s WordPress.

Then a cyber-friend shared a dream, which caused this spark of inquiry.

“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”

Can we make a more agrarian life through technology? Which I understand as, can technology help us to get back to basics? And by basics we mean an understanding of nature, an appreciation of its organic processes, a “re-enchantment” as I’ve heard it lovingly expressed, with the natural world. Working with our hands again, I presume, creating items of value to exchange with one another. A slower life perhaps, where we have the great luxury of time to enjoy our lives and our nature world to a greater degree than afforded to most in the modern world.

A ‘re-enchantment’ with nature, I like the sound of that.

An ‘agora’ that’s not corrupted by fiat, usury, taxes, violence and coercion, perhaps?

Technology in our private life here on the wee homestead has benefitted us in a few crucial ways—helping us to learn new skills has been the most significant. But keeping us from feeling terribly remote and unconnected and uninformed has also been very important. I’ve made a few good friends thanks to the internet and I’m very grateful for that. Feelings of isolation and loneliness can be significant spiritual hurdles for some of us living rural for the first time.

And I have seen promising shifts over the years. Homesteading is clearly a bonafide cultural movement at this time, I think primarily thanks to technology, as oxymoronic as that sounds. Herbalism has become more appealing as Pig Pharma breathes heavier down our necks. Pockets of interest and learning are all over the cyber world, every craft, trade or skill imaginable is available somewhere with a few clicks, I’m sure.

But I have seen and heard some really concerning trends lately, which makes me realize that the time to be re-assessing the value of the tech in our lives is reaching a crescendo.

For example, the young entrepreneurial types who are coming in to fill the needs of the rural communities with essentials like raw milk, homegrown veggies at the farmer’s market, small service businesses and the like, well they aren’t like us in some really fundamental ways.

They trust The Science, for the most part, evident in their willingness to vaccinate, medicate, use the latest supplements and vitamins, and not question any of it. They also love the tech and fully embrace the insane trifecta of the Global Grid: Surveillance cameras, Smart phones and digital payment systems.

How is that value assessed? Who is benefitting more?

My guess would be, more often than not, the middlemen. Like any pyramid scheme a few must be making good for anyone else to follow. For a while.

Seems to me these young entrepreneurs are setting themselves up for certain failure. I met one of these ambitious young women last week on my quest for raw milk, now that my goats are mostly gone. I really miss making cheese. The price of raw milk, not even organic, has gone through the roof as demand has perked up—$11/gallon around here. It’s too much for us to afford.

What did I learn from this experience? Her surveillance cameras everywhere tell me she doesn’t trust her customers or neighbors. Her vaccination schedule tells me she does not do her due diligence in caring for her animals. Her price and her preferred payment by QR code tells me she prefers dealing with middlemen over direct transactions and getting to know her clientele.

I will not be doing any business with her, that’s for sure.

So, while I still have a lot to learn about assessing value, there is a point to this rather rambling post: The goat is dead, no bees have yet to make that hive a home—but no one else profited or lost from that private exchange—and our relationship stayed in tact to trade another day despite these apparent failures. I think nations have gone to war for less.

And that’s something so far social media, Smart phones, WordPress, and indeed money, all fail to assess a proper value.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or ramblings about my cyber-friend’s dream, what do y’all think, is it possible? Would you want such a world?

“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”

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LOVE SWARMS: The Complete Guide to Attracting Honeybees

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