image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Since Starbucks’ “$2 for 2A” event went viral, very few symbols have been more representative of freedom and liberty than the US $2 bill.  Second Amendment supporters, Constitutionalists, and freedom-minded patriots alike have gained a new appreciation for this rarely-circulated denomination of US currency.

While listening to Episode 847 of The Survival Podcast today, it occurred to me.  I hadn’t really appreciated the significance of the $2 bill.  Until just a few weeks ago, I had always considered it a peculiar oddity that reminded me of my childhood.  (I’m sure most of you can recall seeing a $2 bill for the first time.  It’s usually a memorable occasion because of the scarcity of the note.) I had never thought of its potential to serve as a “members only” card that illustrates my support of my country, the United States Constitution in general, and the United States Bill of Rights in particular.  Now though, my view has changed.

Spending $2 bills has the potential to make a huge statement.  By using them in everyday cash transactions, you have the ability to start a dialog.  “Oh, you haven’t seen one of these before? Look here on the back.  This bill illustrates an important part of our country’s history.”

It’s also possible that by spending $2 bills, you’ll connect with like-minded folks.  These days, I think that spending a $2 bill is an intentional act meaning that the person spending it is trying to make a statement (other than, “I’m dirt poor and I had to raid my currency collection to buy a pack of smokes.”) Gun supporters love the $2 bill for its symbolism of the Second Amendment, and it’s quite possible that one could start some interesting conversations in the course of one’s day.

As I’ve said before, I think it’s important for folks to live on a cash economy.  I also think it’s important for folks to carry small bills with them.  Five $2 bills takes up less space than ten $1 bills so they’re easier to carry.  And like I said, spending $2 bills (when appropriate) makes a statement.  “I support the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Second Amendment.” How’s that for a symbol of freedom and liberty?

Those of us close to the raw milk debate have seen it coming.  Under the guise of protecting us poor, dumb citizens, we’re losing our right to choose what’s best for our own bodies, for our families, and for our communities.  After all, we’re too stupid to make informed decisions, so the government has to come in and protect us from ourselves, or so they would have us believe.

I happen to think that the powers that be feel so threatened by raw milk for many of the same reasons that the American College of Obstetrics and Gynacology feels threatened by the 1% of women who choose to birth their babies at home.  It’s all about the money!

The dairy lobby, like most commodities lobbies, is incredibly powerful because they have money.  They perceive those of us who drink raw milk as threats to their revenue, so they fight tooth and nail to bolster their case that dairy from anything but Big Ag farms isn’t acceptable.  I don’t know what the statistics are, to be honest, but I’d guess that those of us who choose to consume raw milk, like those of us who choose homebirth, make up a very small percentage of the whole.  In the end, our money doesn’t matter that much to the big guy, but in their eyes, it sure does!

To be honest, I’d like to examine the raw data on which this “study” was based.  As of yet, I haven’t been able to locate the paper.  I’d wager though that the 239 illnesses that were reported over 13 years weren’t all attributable to raw milk consumption.  And even if we knew for sure that they were, we can’t be sure that those folks were consuming raw milk from animals with which basic cleanliness procedures were followed.  For instance, if I send my kid out to milk the family cow and he doesn’t even bother to clean the cow poop off her belly or he fails to wash his hands after milking, it’s just as likely that the cow manure could make someone sick as the consumption of the milk.

Let me be clear.  I’m not saying that raw milk can’t make people sick.  It absolutely can.  But for those of us who’re making informed choices, for those of us who know the farmers or the animals that provide the raw milk, I view the risk to minimal.  I feel that I’m much more likely to get food poisoning from a fast food restaurant than I am to get sick from consuming raw milk.

I’ve said this many times before, but I’ll say it again.  It’s much easier to keep the food supply safe when you know where your food comes from.  Eat local.  Grow your own food if you can.  Talk to the farmers who produce your food and visit their farms.  If you do those things, you’ll be much less likely, I think, to come down with E. coli from contaminated veggies or salmonella from chickens bathed in poop soup! Sorry if I’m being too graphic for some of you folks, but I’m calling it like I see it.  The government can’t protect us from food borne pathogens while simultaneously protecting their revenue stream from the commodities lobbies.  That’s how I see it.  In the end though, it’s our right to decide, or at least that’s how it should be.

According to the survey, only 31% of parents and 22% of non-parents claim to have more credit card debt than personal savings.  While some might look at these results with optimism, I tend to think there are factors influencing those numbers that aren’t necessarily good things.  For instance, I suspect that the filing of Chapter 7 bankruptcy here in the U.S. plays a role in one’s ability to acquire new credit card debt.  And since we’re always hearing that filings are up because of the economy, I suspect that plays a role here.

Income level also plays a role here.  According to the survey, 70% of folks making over $75,000 per year have more savings than credit card debt.  When your income is higher, it’s easier to buy what you want when you want it without carrying credit card debt.

What I thought was more telling about this survey is that it focused on credit card debt specifically and not debt as a whole.  All of us, myself included, are guilty of carrying more debt than we should.  We buy houses that are too expensive, we buy cars that are excessive when compared to our needs, and everyone knows that grown-ups’ toys (boats, RVs, ATVs, motorcycles, etc) don’t come cheap.

I also know folks who keep using credit cards because they don’t want to risk losing them “in case of an emergency”.  I whole-heartedly agree with Jack Spirko over at The Survival Podcast though when he says that if you use credit cards, even if you pay them off in full every month, you’ll end up spending more money.  There’s something to be said for handing over physical cash that you took from your wallet.  When you can experience the physical transaction, when you can see that when that cash is gone, it’s gone, you tend to be more thoughtful about your purchases.  I know we have been when I’ve convinced my husband to buy groceries with cash.  When you swipe a card, even when it’s your debit card, there’s a different experience going on there.

Saving is hard, but getting out of debt is even harder.  I know so many folks like me.  We don’t have a lot of credit card debt, but paying down that debt means that it’s harder to save, and it’s hard not to fall back into those old habits.  “We need [insert unexpected need here] today and we don’t have savings yet, but we have available credit on this card that we’ve been paying down, so…” I will say, before I wrap up here, to the people who’ve thought like this, save just a little bit out of every paycheck.  Even if it’s $5 or $10, put it back.  Even in the tightest times, we can afford to put $5 away.  It might not seem like it matters, but it really does, especially if you switch to a cash economy.

I suspect that Americans’ problems with debt run a lot deeper than the BankRate.com survey would have us believe.  All I can do though is remind anyone who’ll listen that less debt equals more liberty and freedom.  Although the path will be hard at first, the destination is well worth the journey!

It’ll take me a bit of time to figure out the ins and outs of a full WordPress installation with access to any plugin I’d like to install, but I’m thrilled!

Great things are coming.  Vidoes, podcasts, and more photography to supplement blog posts are just the start.  Thanks to everyone who sticks with me through this transition!

Our kids couldn’t contain their enthusiasm.  Our 6-year-old wanted to use his tools to help his daddy.  I think our 9-year-old thought she was big enough to single-handedly assemble the entire coop.  And our 4-year-old just wanted to do what everyone else was doing.  They all woke up early, and it was almost like Christmas.  “Can we set up the chicken coop now?” “Is it time to set up the chicken coop now?” “Can we please start on the chicken coop now?”

After the usual Saturday morning chores, my husband wrestled the two massive boxes that contained the coop parts into the driveway.  He’d planned to use that area as the work space.  He opened the two boxes and went digging for the instructions.  He found a single sheet of paper that our 9-year-old thought looked like LEGO City instructions.  After some inspection, it turned out that we had the wrong chicken coop!

At first, I was thinking that we could make it work (if it had the same capacity as the one we’d ordered.) It turns out though that the coop we received can only accommodate two to four hens, and it retailed for $140 less than we paid for the larger coop.  Obviously, that’s not acceptable.

I contacted the eBay seller immediately.  I have yet to receive a response.  I gave the seller the benefit of the doubt, assuming that it was an accident that resulted in us getting the wrong coop.  The bottom line though is that the coop we received is essentially useless to us, and I don’t want to have to eat a shipping bill for a 125-pound package that’s destined for California!

So I called this blog post “Part 0.1″ because “Part 1″ will come when we assemble the coop that we actually bought.  We won’t lose any money in the end; our purchase is protected through PayPal.  It’s not the money that we’re worried about though.  We just want to assemble our chicken coop!

More updates to come, I’m sure!

The short article explains that a girl’s home-packed lunch was supplemented with a school lunch when a state agent decided the child’s meal didn’t meet USDA guidelines.

This story angers me on so many levels.  I don’t even know where to start.  It’s no secret that I blame the government — and especially the USDA — for this country’s obesity epidemic.  Big Ag lobbying and self-serving politicians have determined what’s “healthy” for us — not objective scientists.  The moment the government started making food recommendations that read like the label on a bag of hog feed, Americans got progressively fatter and sicker.  So the idea that a government agent was offering to swap one form of slop for another seems downright ludicrous to me.

It’s no secret that I wouldn’t consider this preschooler’s lunch — a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, chips, and apple juice — an ideal choice.  But I’m confused by the government agent’s determination that the girl’s lunch was lacking.  What? Did they want the girl to suck down a carton of sugar-laden chocolate milk too? Were the chips a problem because they weren’t “whole grain”? (For the record, my children are offered corn chips at lunch when they get “taco in a bag”.)

Despite the fact that I wouldn’t go to the effort of sending that kind of lunch to school with my children, I still respect the mother’s right feed her child the way she sees fit.  The child wasn’t being poisoned; she wasn’t being starved.  While I’d love to see everyone eating real, Paleo-type foods the majority of the time, insisting that I know better (even when I do) sets a dangerous precedent.  It scares me, and I’m angry for this mother who had to pay $1.25 so that her daughter could eat three chicken nuggets.

The pink-slime-filled, meat glued, refined, pesticide-drenched slop that passes for food in our kids’ schools is frightening.  What’s more frightening though is the fact that it’s now being shoved down their throats with no regard to a parent’s wishes.  The slippery slope absolutely applies here.  The issue goes so much deeper than a kid being fed chicken nuggets when she brought her lunch to school.  It’s scary, scary stuff, and we have to remain vigilant.

When we purchased our homestead back in 2009, I knew we’d have chickens eventually, but now that it’s actually happening, we couldn’t be more excited! As recently as two weeks ago, we were questioning whether or not we’d be able to pull it off this year, but after finding a decent, portable chicken coop for a fair price, we’re one step closer to fresh eggs from range-fed hens.

Because of some other have-to jobs on the homestead, we opted to buy our first chicken coop.  It’s a portable house/run that will provide shelter for the girls at night and protected range access during the day.  If it weren’t for my German Shepherd, Layla, who’d likely eat hens as soon as look at them, I’d probably free-range the birds during the day, but we’re doubting that’ll be possible.

We’ve done a lot of research, and we’ve gotten so much great feedback from some very knowledgable folks, but we know we’re going to mess things up.  We’re determined to try out best though, and we’ll certainly document our experiences along the way.

Right now, we expect the coop to arrive next Wednesday, but we probably won’t be assembling it until the weekend.  After we have a home for hens, we’ll make a final decision about whether we’ll buy chicks or older birds that are already producing.  My inclination is to get older birds if I can find them for a fair price, but we’ll have to see what happens.

I’m excited about the prospect of inexpensive, delicious eggs.  My kids are excited about the prospect new pets at the homestead.  My husband is excited about the prospect of getting chickens without having to take the time to build a home for them from scratch.  If there weren’t other projects that had to take precedence here, we’d absolutely build something ourselves, but that isn’t how things are going to work this year.

As a child growing up, I never thought I’d long to be a farm girl.  I’m constantly dreaming about all the options we have on our little homestead though, and what’s most exciting to me is that we’re finally getting to do one of the things that was at the top of my list.  Wish us luck!

After week 27, I’m down to 247.6 pounds.  That’s 31.2 pounds lost in 27 weeks, although I did see a low of 245.8 on Saturday.  I keep saying I’m going to get my husband to take a “during” picture since I never had him take a “before” picture, but I actually need to have him DO it! I was so ashamed of how I looked at almost 279 pounds that I didn’t really want it memorialized in photo form, but of course now that I’ve made some good progress, I’m wishing I had a “before” picture.  I think a “during” picture will suffice though since I still have such a long way to go.

I totally dropped the ball with exercise last week.  I was getting over a horrible cold, and I thought that stressing my body with the exercise on top of healing duty might not be the smartest idea.  I did notice when we went grocery shopping this weekend though that I had better endurance trying to keep up with my husband.  (He’s almost 6’1″ and I’m 5’3.75″ with very short legs, so I’m always running to keep up with him.) I think that tonight, I’ll go back to a nice, easy Leslie Sansone video and see how I do.

On a seemingly unrelated note, we picked up a bag of potting mix on Saturday.  Today marks 12 weeks before the last average spring frost date for my zip code.  According to GrowGuide, I should start broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, head lettuce, onion seed, and parsley this week.  Now, to be honest, I won’t be starting all those plants, but I love the guidance that comes from the info on GrowGuide tables.  It’s so helpful for complete gardening novices like me who’ve never grown a thing in the ground before.  I’ll post photos and updated when I get them going.

This upcoming week promises to be a good one.  I can’t wait to meet you all back here next Monday as I claim my own personal liberty through healthy living and prepping!

As I started to prepare said list, I got to thinking about the summer.  We’re going to start some chickens this year, and we want to get a real garden in the ground this year.  While this’ll help some with our monthly food bills, I still found myself pondering a CSA.  We have a couple farm markets near us, but the food isn’t always local, so I was curious about our options.

After a Google search, I happened upon Going Local: Indiana Local Food Guide.  I thought I was going to dance right out of my seat! While I didn’t seem to find much of an answer when it came to fresh, local produce, I DID find a company that isn’t too far from me, and their items looked promising.  I fired an e-mail off to the company’s e-mail contact, and within short order, I received a detailed and courteous reply

The farm, Vogel Certified Organics, sells grass-fed beef and lamb, pastured pork and chickens, eggs from pastured chickens and a large selection of dairy products made from raw, “organic” grass-fed milk.  There’s only one catch (if you want to call it a catch).  In Indiana, we’re not allowed to buy raw milk for human consumption.  Our state in it’s infinite wisdom doesn’t seem to think that we consumers can make important choices about the foods we eat, so they “protect” us by making the sale of raw milk illegal (when it’s intended for human consumption.)

Vogel Certified Organics does a very fine job of holding to the letter of the law.  When my dear friend went on a shopping trip for me yesterday, she purchased:

• 3+ pounds organic, pastured pork
• 2+ pounds breakfast sausage made from said pork
• 1+ pound of real lard from said pork, not the hydrogenated garbage you get in the baking aisle at the store
• 5 dozen eggs (from their pastured hens)
• 1+ pound of sharp cheddar cheese made from raw, grass-fed “organic” milk (which is allowed in Indiana because it’s been aged for more than 90 days)

But most impressively:

• 1/2 gallon raw “pet milk”
• 1 quart “pet” heavy whipping cream
• 2 pounds “pet” yogurt (which, amusingly enough, says “For dogs or cats or both” on the label)

Now, I have dogs, and I have cats, but I certainly wouldn’t find myself concerned if the milk “accidentally” ended up in my kids’ cereal or the cream “accidentally” ended up in my coffee.  I’m the one making the choice, right? (I can tell you though that it does taste a lot better than the dog food I tried eating as a kid.)

I can’t wait to try some of the other items that came from the farm, and I’m so thrilled to know that I have another source for beef when my grass-fed quarter runs out.  Eating that kind of food is EXPENSIVE, but it’s SO worth it for us, even when money is sometimes at a premium.  I feel so blessed that I’m in a position where I can make those kinds of choices.  And I couldn’t be more thrilled that we found a good farm that’s close enough to us to make it worth our while.  (While we don’t drive to Franklin much, my dear friends live in Franklin and visit us often.  I plan to contact the folks at the farm though and see if they’d be willing to let us bring our kids for an educational visit.)

Real food gets real people real freedom!

First off though, I’ll share my stats for the week.  This morning, I weighed 250 pounds on the nose.  That means I’ve lost 28.8 pounds in 26 weeks, and I lost 2.8 pounds last week alone.

Last week also saw me consistent with exercise.  I don’t want to exercise.  Who does? But I know I have to exercise to get healthy, so I think I’ve come up with a program that works for me.  For six out of seven days last week, I exercised, and despite my fears about being “wired”, I did my workouts in the evening after my dinner (to encourage lower blood sugars the next morning.) I did body weight exercises three of those six days, and I did the Leslie Sansone Walk Away the Pounds Power Mile three out of those six days.  Already, I’m feeling stronger, and it really amazes me.  I can’t wait to see what this week brings on the exercise front.

I’m also making some impressive progress with my food.  I haven’t had dairy in 9 or 10 days, and I’m so proud of myself.  Now, it’s getting almost easy.  I’ve also gotten used to drinking my coffee with no sweetener (stevia), and instead of cream or half and half, I added coconut milk to the two cups of coffee I had last week.  (I usually only drink coffee on the weekends — 1 big cup each day.)  The only non-Paleo items I’ve had over the past week have been (more than my fair share of) processed meat like bacon and sausage along with some stevia in some baked goods that I made for my family.

I’m really getting into the groove, and I love the freedom that comes with just making good food choices and not worrying about quantities or ratios.  Once that quits working for me, I’ll try something else, but for right now, it’s working well, and it’s making it easier to focus on other changes (like exercise and the like.)

I also got some good news when I went to the doctor for a checkup.  (I was supposed to see him after I’d been on blood pressure meds for 3 months.) He told me I could stop the meds, but if my blood pressure started running over 130/80, I’d need to start taking a half dose.  While this was great news, it seems like I still need the med because my bottom number is consistently running over 80.  That’s frustrating because I’m eating well and I’m exercising, but there may be other issues going on that are affecting my blood pressure.  I’ll just have to keep an eye on it.

Otherwise though, I couldn’t have asked for a better week! Hopefully next week, I’ll be able to report reaching a new decade with my weight!