Cimarron Layne

I'm a jigsaw addict and usually have one in some stage of completion on my 8-ft dining table which is seldom used for dining.  Usually they are 1,000 piece or larger.  I have one that is 3,000 pieces that I do about every 5 years or so.  That one takes me about a month of "spare" time, and like a favorite movie, I don't mind that it's a rerun.

I think doing puzzles keeps my mind sharp.  There's sorting by color or pattern; spatial relations, i.e., looking for pieces the right shape and size; manual dexterity handling and turning small pieces; visual acuity; patience building and other emotional training, like handling frustration.

Then, as one of the posters mentioned, there's camaraderie if you work with other people.  I used to live in a large RV park in Texas that had a community library with 100's of jigsaw puzzles and a half-dozen long tables to work them on.  I'd hate it when anyone would mess with my puzzle, but now I enjoy doing them with a neighbor family with sometimes 4 or 5 people sitting around the table.  Each of us picks a section of the puzzle to work on, and we have a lot of laughs.  If we find a piece that doesn't go in the section we are working on, we try to figure out where it does go and pass it off to the appropriate person.  Frequently, they say, "Ah-ha, that's the very piece I've been searching for."  It's like we gave each other gifts.  Quite satisfying.

What most of the commenters eat seems odd to me, but maybe I'm the odd ball.  I wake up famished and start the day with microwave-warmed juice (apple, cranberry, or pineapple are my favorites) to raise my blood sugar level.  Feed my livestock.  Then I cook up a couple of fresh eggs (over medium, scrambled, poached or soft-boiled), toast (2 slices of sourdough bread, an English muffin, or a bagel) with either berry jam or creamed cheese/yogurt/fruit concoction that I whip up about once a week, and a cup of hot tea.  On Sundays I usually have cinnamon rolls, Danish, apple fritters, coffee cake, or filled donuts with tea.  I don't drink coffee, alcohol, or carbonated beverages or eat or drink anything with high fructose corn syrup, GMO, or labeled "manufactured food".

I seldom eat lunch, if I do it is a sandwich, and I have a 3 course supper of salad, pasta or stir-fry, sometimes pizza or the like, and dessert, milk or tea.

With that high-carb, sugary fare, I've maintained my weight at 175 for at least the past 10 years (I'm 5'10") and my blood sugar level and cholesterol test "normal".  I'm 78 and have eaten this way most of my life.

Been looking at this deal for the past week, and though I have already received some of the items offered, the rest of the bundle made it a no-brainer, and happily, I was able to use the points on my credit card to pay for it, so $0 out-of-pocket.

I'm especially interested in food forest guilds, hügelkultur, and RMH oven.

Thanks for the great deal, Paul.

Too many?  I wish!

My apple trees haven't started fruiting yet, hopefully this year I'll get a few.  I look forward to eating fresh Grannies and McIntosh, weekly pies during the season, making applesauce, apple butter, dried apple wedges for snacking and winter pies, nuggets for my oatmeal, cider, and juice, maybe even apple jelly, though I prefer berry jams.  The insect chewed ones go to the chickens, goats, and pigs.

I've planted six varieties of tomato each of the past 4 springs, and last year finally got a decent harvest.  Far from "too many" yet.  Fresh Beefsteaks for slicing, sun dried with basil for crackers, Romas for spaghetti sauce, puree, pizza sauce, Better Girls and gold varieties for salads, tomato and veggie juices, Rutgers for ketchup, stewed tomatoes, salsa, and many other uses.  Again, the nibbled tomatoes go to the livestock.

I just can't imagine what "too many" would be.

I don't qualify as I'm in Zone 6B, but I'm going to do it anyway just to see how my plot compares with other gardeners.  I've got an area picked out where my 3 feeder pigs were pastured for a few weeks last fall.  It was just dirt and weeds, but they rooted it up pretty well and left it well manured, so the native weeds are greener than other parts of my yard now.

Is there a chart or something showing calories per pound or bushel or whatever for various veggies, or do I need to do the research to figure that out for myself?

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I'm always behind schedule and under-funded, so progress has been slow going here at Liberty Tree Farm.  Summer stuff still not finished, greenhouse project still in original boxes on the front porch waiting for excavation of a level spot for it.  Every time I feel like working on a project on my to-do list, a well pump stops pumping or a burst pipe floods the pump house or something unexpected pops up to use what little funds I've saved up for materials, and the project gets delayed for another month or two or ten.  Truck and tractor repairs, road maintenance, computer problems all take time and money I hadn't planned on spending.

I frequently wonder if it's all worth it.  I get so frustrated and overwhelmed.  Strawberries won't grow, deer broke through an 8-ft net deer fence and cleaned out my garden, fruit trees I planted 2 years ago are barely surviving.  The hill up to the barn seems to be getting steeper. But then the clouds blow away, and the sun brightens everything up, so the depression turns to joy, and I start over again.

This winter I want to finish renovating the trailer.  It was an empty shell with the south end wide open when I bought the place 4 years ago this month.  I had great plans then to rehab it for temporary living accommodations until I could build my dream underground house with south-facing solarium.  Thought I could build it with wood beams harvested from the property and recycled fixtures, but that hasn't moved up my list.  In fact, it's moved down.  I'm content enough living in the trailer for now though it is pretty rough still.  It's sealed and insulated, plumbed and wired, and my recycled kitchen meets my needs, but it still has a way to go.

This year I finally finished the master/south bedroom and most of the bathroom (still need to tile the shower).  Recently I moved my bedroom furniture from the north bedroom to the south along with clothes, shoes and boots, seasonal boxed up stuff, etc.

August and October were mostly dealing with outside problems: replacing submersible pump (2nd one in two years) down at the spring-fed cistern, electrical problems with the midway pump house, and now flooding from a broken pipe in the upper pump house and the pressure tank in the mid pump house was not holding pressure, so had to replace it.  All fixed and hopefully will last the winter at least.

I'd been using the middle bedroom as a pantry and catch-all with a couple of bookcases for food storage and boxes and totes piled up where I could never find stuff when I needed it.  So far, I've moved everything to my now empty north bedroom and am drywalling the outside wall that has been just ugly insulation for over 3 years.  I have the materials collected to build shelving around 3 walls, so I'll have enough room to organize and label everything.  With adequate shelving, I'll have more than enough room for all my tools as well as food storage.  Still need to lay vinyl flooring (easy to clean if a jar slips through my fingers and smashes on the floor).  I drop a lot of stuff these days.  Peripheral neuropathy I'm told.

Then I'll empty the north bedroom into the storeroom shelves and rip up the old, stained carpeting, clean, repaint, lay laminate flooring same as the south bedroom floor I recently finished and trimmed, and build an extra-long queen-size captain's bed with built-in drawers on both sides and foot.  I also have a dresser and mirror and night stands to put in there (stored in the barn for now).  This will be the guestroom for tall visitors.  Then maybe my 6'5" brother and his wife will come for a visit.  I've invited them every summer, but considering our guest accommodations consisted of sleeping on the floor on air mattress(es), tenting, or tossing a sleeping bag on a pile of hay in the barn, the visit didn't appeal to them.  LOL.  He's 80 and she's 76, so I guess their camping days are behind them.  They'd prefer a 4-star resort with maid service these days.  We're a long way from that, I'm afraid.

Little by little, I keep plugging along with a vision of a permaculture paradise dancing in my head.  Hoping Santa will bring me some sharp saw blades this Christmas (all types and sizes).

9/6/23 - Interesting thread.  Took me two days to read through it, check links, download lists and Erica's templates for Family Reference Binder, something I've intended to put together for years.  Now I'm committed to doing that before this year runs out.

I've always been pretty much a minimalist, keeping only what I needed to live comfortably but frugally.  I've been an avid backpacker with more than 10,000 miles under my boots and long-range cyclist.  Since my teen years I've spent up to 3 months at a time hiking in the mountains, including the Appie Trail, Long Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and climbing most of the highest mountains from Maine to California and many in Europe, Japan, the Himalayas and Karakoram Range of Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, and Kilimanjaro in East Africa.  Aconcagua in South America is still on my Bucket List though I'm not sure (at 77) that I'll achieve that dream, but maybe.  I'm still in pretty good shape.  The trek will just take me a lot longer than it would have 30 years ago.

While backpacking or cycling I usually carried about a week's worth of food and replenished often. But whenever I lived someplace with enough room to store it, I've stashed away plenty of food and beverages to keep me eating healthy for at least 3-6 months.

Since purchasing the farm in 2019, I've accumulated about 3 years' worth of staples and canned goods, freezer is well stocked with meat and fish, pre-made meals, and ice cream, and with a greenhouse this winter, we'll be able to have fresh veggies and some fruits year-round.  One of my next projects is to build a smokehouse in which to smoke and store a couple of butchered pigs.  Within the next couple of years, we hope to become food self-sufficient.

I'm also consistently reducing my debts and paying off mortgage, equipment loans, etc., and together we are building sweat equity in the farm and buildings and stocking up on dry firewood, poles, dimensional lumber, fence posts and other wood products from the forest.  My sense of security and confidence in our ability to survive here, come what may, have never been higher.  The land can support at least 6 families, so we are searching for others to join us here in SW Virginia to continue developing our gardens, food forest, livestock, and other farm enterprises.

Many of the replies to this thread mentioned down-sizing and getting rid of "stuff," all of which makes good sense.  I've been down-sizing since 2006 when I sold my 6-bedroom 3-bath house with 2-car garage and left the corporate world behind to take up solo sailing, though I did put far too much of my dry-land "stuff" in a storage unit while I was out to sea.  After only 6 months of sailing up and down the Pacific coast from San Franciso to Vancouver, B.C. and down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, I gave up my dream of sailing around the world like Joshua Slocum because I found out I was too claustrophobic and couldn't walk enough on the 37-ft deck to overcome it.  So, I sold the yawl and bought a used motorhome.  It offered a good deal more living room and storage space, and when I wanted to take a long walk, I only had to pull off the road and step out.

I had to be really organized to outfit both the yawl and the RV and find a home for every tool and personal item, sufficient food for a long trip, and maintenance supplies.  It wasn't difficult for me as I'd been highly organized in my career as a CPA where I had many clients and had to keep each client's paperwork and projects separated and secured.  I only allowed one client's papers on my desk at a time and put everything back in the client's file before starting on the next client's work or at the end of the day or the end of the project.  At home I was a little less organized and tended more to "selective clutter", but I always knew where everything was.

Now I'm building a homestead, agribusiness, and permaculture community and am having a problem with staying organized and productive with my time.  I've reached an age, 77, where my short-term memory is not what it used to be, and I can no longer remember where I left stuff last.  If I don't put stuff away in its designated place after each use, I have to spend precious time trying to find it again.  Often, I'll remember seeing the wanted item only a day or two before I needed it, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd seen it.  Sometimes I'd find it exactly where I'd first looked (or rather overlooked it).  I guess my eyesight is going too, because I don't always see what's right before me.  Getting old is very frustrating.  LOL!

I have a catch-all room / pantry / feed room that is getting more and more cluttered and crowded every day.  I need to move everything out and build floor to ceiling shelving around the perimeter of the room.  That's been on my to-do list for a couple of years now but keeps getting pushed down as higher priority projects are added to the list.  Right now, installing a rain catchment system on my barn roof and assembling a greenhouse before the end of summer are more urgent.  Only 20 days left of summer!!  Hopefully, this winter I'll finally schedule time to build the shelving.