elle sagenev

I don't have forest pigs so I could be wrong here but...my pigs are unlikely to help me eradicate underbrush. We do have a tree line with caragana spreading wildly and they don't bother it all aside from an occasional crushing as they walk. They aren't interested in eating woody things as far as I can tell. Maybe without other food options they would, or they might just break out. Hard to say.

Ok so I posted this and never came back. I suppose I have several things I should have said.


I have swales and Kraters. Everything there but a very hardy plum tree died. It's pests that are the biggest predator there.

What I'm looking to do is a kitchen garden/orchard. It's a smaller area, fully fenced, close to the house and water source. I have been attempting to grow a garden here for years and the plants just don't get very big and certainly don't fruit. The trees and bushes that survive pest pressure just don't get very big either.

I just want that smallish garden area to thrive. I want to see some results. I've been mulching for ages in the area. I think part of the problem might be grass. I have a lot of grass in that area. So I'm hoping super thick mulch around the trees would be good and compost where I want plants. I don't know, I'm going to try it.

Your assumption is correct. We keep the food in our garage and you can find the animals in there all the bloody time. Makes my husband SO MAD. He just yells at us not to feed them anywhere outside the barn area so they never expect food at the house.

Brody Ekberg wrote:

Brody Ekberg wrote:

elle sagenev wrote:We also want to talk to a financial advisor about investing a little bit of money into what I believe to be some really good ideas. That may turn out to be a surprise source of income in a few years.

You've no idea how many "good idea" peddlers we represent so just be careful out there and good luck.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying investing money into “good ideas” is a bad idea?

I'm saying anyone promising you easy money is likely a scam. Some of the scams I see are so elaborate and real looking they fool experts.

I have been content to play the slow soil building game. Planting soil building plants. Mulching. Mulching with shredded paper (to help surpress weeds), leaves, hay, wood chips, etc. It's going poorly. My plants are growing slowly.

I am tired of seeing nothing every single year. So, this year I've ordered compost and I've ordered wood chips and I better see something grow or I swear, I quit.

I'm a great swimmer. There my hubs and I are in Hawaii snorkeling and looking at fish. Unbeknownst to us we were getting quite far out. Suddenly my husband pops out of the water and screams "SWIM FOR SHORE". I had NO IDEA what was going on and my body just shut down. I could barely swim. Here I thought a shark was coming to eat me and I was completely shut down.

Turns out we'd swum into some man of war. So it was important we flee but man, I still think about how I froze.

Brody Ekberg wrote:

elle sagenev wrote:So I get your thought process. It's super normal. I used to think like that. We bought 2 cars, a house, tractor all new. Had some personal loans. Had medical debt. Had student loans. We had everything, super normal. But man is normal hard to keep up. All those payments. It hurts. So we decided to change that. It took us less than a year to pay everything but the house off. Now houses, those things aren't easy. Even now it's painful because our property taxes and insurance have gone up so much to be painful. But what if it was just your house you owed money on? How much money would you have not fleeing your pockets every month? Could you live on one income if you only had a mortgage?

Only you could answer that question. My only worry is the little rainstorms stacking up on your while you're in so much debt and just killing not only your life but your marriage. Money problems are the main thing people divorce over.

If you want to know how we did it, well it was budgeting. It was having cash in envelopes we paid with. It was hard but it was temporary. We only did that for a year and then we just had the mortgage and we stopped the intensity. I'm happy they never repo'd our kid. ;)

And stuff kept happening man. Broken cars. Injuries. Kids over kids. Water heater lit on fire, did you know that could happen? Life is crazy! It's just not financially painful when things happen cuz we got money in the bank. It puts these things in a different perspective.

You’re right, normal is hard to keep up. I’d go even farther and say normal is downright insane and unsustainable. But I think what we’re going for is transitioning that old normal into a new, sustainable normal. At least that’s how I’m looking at it.

And if our mortgage was our only debt, we would certainly have more freedom. In a perfect world, we could knock out all of our debts besides student loans and mortgage probably this year alone. But as of now, we may be needing to replace a vehicle (should find out later today) and a garage roof soon. Our emergency fund could handle one or the other, but I’d rather take from the savings for both and leave the emergency fund in case the old hot water heater or water line decides to give us any surprises! But we are doing well financially right now and paying off at least a couple small debts soon would be wise. We also want to talk to a financial advisor about investing a little bit of money into what I believe to be some really good ideas. That may turn out to be a surprise source of income in a few years.

You've no idea how many "good idea" peddlers we represent so just be careful out there and good luck.

So I get your thought process. It's super normal. I used to think like that. We bought 2 cars, a house, tractor all new. Had some personal loans. Had medical debt. Had student loans. We had everything, super normal. But man is normal hard to keep up. All those payments. It hurts. So we decided to change that. It took us less than a year to pay everything but the house off. Now houses, those things aren't easy. Even now it's painful because our property taxes and insurance have gone up so much to be painful. But what if it was just your house you owed money on? How much money would you have not fleeing your pockets every month? Could you live on one income if you only had a mortgage?

Only you could answer that question. My only worry is the little rainstorms stacking up on your while you're in so much debt and just killing not only your life but your marriage. Money problems are the main thing people divorce over.

If you want to know how we did it, well it was budgeting. It was having cash in envelopes we paid with. It was hard but it was temporary. We only did that for a year and then we just had the mortgage and we stopped the intensity. I'm happy they never repo'd our kid. ;)

And stuff kept happening man. Broken cars. Injuries. Kids over kids. Water heater lit on fire, did you know that could happen? Life is crazy! It's just not financially painful when things happen cuz we got money in the bank. It puts these things in a different perspective.

So I put up 4x4s for the net. My hubs decided to hang on one, which happened to have a big knot in it and you could hear it cracking. None of the others had an issue but yeah, not even going to try swinging weights at this point. I did tell hubs we can install the net and whenever 4x6s are back in stock we can put them underneath the 4x4s as support.

I'm surprised. I find crazy bitter people outlive most out of spite.