I’m working on this page but here’s a quick overview.

Family of four barely above the poverty line and we got a late start as a family. I’m middle aged and wasted over a decade being a single guy without a care in the world. I also work with my hands but ended up in a trade that requires the abilities of many trades yet tops out on pay at less than some of them and it can be downright ruthless because it’s B2B. I’m multi-talented and so I get bored very easily doing one thing yet I can concentrate on a project for weeks. I’m not real thrilled with having to look and see where a particular food item at the grocery store came from and even in The U.S. there seems to be problems. Peanuts butter recall, egg recall, no more stockpile of grain for national emergencies because we gave it all away to other countries. I feel the need to take complete control over our lives or come as close to it as possible. Employees either seem to make way too much or not enough. Small business owners are having it tougher everyday. The system’s broke and so is government in a monetary sense. Trillions of dollars in the red for the U.S. and all but four States are also in the red yet all rely on the FedGov for incoming money. Almost all of our manufacturing has left the country and those that remain rely on the U.S. government and/or unions to survive. I’m not an environmental alarmist but natural resources are going to dwindle at some point, the environment isn’t getting any better with all the goods that are available having such a short lifespan or going out of style so quickly and heading for some landfill. Everything that goes on just seems unsustainable. Oh, to be that single party guy without a care in the world. Ignorance truly is bliss. There is one thing I can do to ease some of my concerns though. Start a homestead and live as cheaply, naturally and self sustainably as possible. Balancing this with what one may consider the comforts or minimal modern conveniences is the tricky part and is going to be different for everyone. Our goals are alternative power via wind and sun, Insulation values close to R50, veggie garden, fruit trees, chickens for eggs and meat, rabbits for meat and goats for milk and maybe meat. We’ve never tried goat meat before and I know I could probably eat it, I’m doubtful about the wife and kids. Luckily, where we’re going people mostly farm cattle. We may end up getting one calf every spring and raise it on mostly grass until fall or we may just buy a half or whole side of beef a year from one of the locals.

Well, so much for the quick overview. The only thing I can add is that we just started homeschooling. Like being tired of checking to see where our food comes from or what the quality is, we’re also sick of signing a paper to opt our kids out of the  “human growth” program which is just another name for sex ed. Our kids would have started 2nd and 3rd grades this year and we had to sign the same paper last year. How about us, being the parents giving that course. I can understand that some kids are not getting the attention and basic parent to child life education they need but I have a problem with public school teaching certain things. My 19 year old niece who graduated with a high school diploma can’t tell me what two single digits multiplied equal, 6×9=54 etc, yet they feel it necessary to teach my elementary school aged kids about their private body parts and functions? From what I remember the government got involved in education to improve the level of academic education because we were allegedly behind compared to other developed countries. Seems we’ve gotten a little off track.