LOL, the pickled okra are water bath canned, not frozen. They are quite popular with dill seeds, garlic and serano pepper.
Robbie, please share your canning recipe for the hummus? We love hummus.
I have around 800 square feet. of purple hull peas as my cover crop. They are gorgeous and lush! Conditions must have been perfect for them this year. We plan to harvest them once in about a week before plowing them under. I know, what a waste not to get 3 harvests … but timing is everything and we have to get started with the new planting.
Regarding batteries … We are living in a condo on the beach … learning to garden in the community garden here on the island. While it is beautiful, there is no room (or tolerance by the HOA) for power back-up. We are using this time to learn what we can to reposition to a more resilient life-style while we wait for our condos to sell, one at a time, before moving to a more sustainable property. I feel like we waited too long to pull the trigger.
Convincing the wife hasn’t been easy.
While she humors me, I’m not sure she will actually come along when I finally get the cash together to move to a rural plot in the mountains. And it just gets more expensive with time.
But, never give up.
MKI, Agreed. Unfortunately, the owning of stocks has not been my forte … All that technical stuff just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Where do you recommend one go to learn valuable stock trading skills?
How do you choose where to set your stop loss?
Yep, you should be able to do that… we are using only the top 10% of the battery, they have a 10 year warranty and are still going strong.
Over the years I have collected canning jars at estate sales, my wife suddenly understands… I love to can, she loves to freeze, we will hang on to that convenience till it fails. We butcher and smoke, but I still love fresh sausage.
I don’t know about you Robbie, I am eating better than I ever have. The rewards of this lifestyle are expressed at the dinner table.
I had to smile at your tagline Steve. I was sitting here wondering what a similar styled tagline for us might be. Perhaps: Deer steak, firewood, tomato sauce, half runner beans, and Mountain Life. 
Funny how so many different perspectives and lifestyles can get crammed into one site’s members isn’t it?
About being too late? You know I have to say I’ve been surprised how that aspect has played out. It seems like things have been and still are playing out in a process instead of an event. As some things like land availability (in some locations) and the time to startup begin to bite you also have other things like telecommuting being more accepted by employers. And that makes it easier to unplug.
Take care,
Will
Where to learn stock trading, where set stop loss?I don't think it's necessary to learn much about stocks to own them: 1) Open a brokerage account at Vanguard (only a minor PIA). 2) Buy Total Stock Market ETF (VTI, the entire US stock market). This is free to buy/sell 0.03% annual fee, basically free. 3) Set a stop loss 1% below where you buy, easy at Vanguard online. Raise the auto-sale price (stop loss) monthly to lock in all gains. When sold $ rolls to an interest bearing account (~1.5%) then set up a re-buy option at the prior sale price. You can get more complex with value investing individual stocks (I do both it and VTI) but VTI has matched my value investing for a decade. This process is minor work (re-buying every time stocks go gown 1%) but VTI is quite stable and it's enjoyable to lock in profits anyway :-)...if your wife like to can or freeze she will love locking in profits to save you the work :-). BTW: we are extremely jealous of your growing area. Hell, I nor my wife don't even know what hummus is, had to look it up! It's amazing how every area has it's strengths for food production...yet few even do it anymore! Our crab-apples/berries rot on the vine in our area, our animals and fish go unharvested, and nobody has chickens or gardens even with lots of land...it's criminal... Regarding canning: there are several foods that we can because they taste better that way (pink salmon & crab-apples) but mostly we just do it for cost saving (ran the numbers once and it was painful). I do agree with those here that we get more nutrients freezing (we have 5 chest freezers!) and prefer it but it's a luxury while cans are our staple.
1) Open a brokerage account at Vanguard (only a minor PIA). 2) Buy Total Stock Market ETF (VTI, the entire US stock market). This is free to buy/sell 0.03% annual fee, basically free. 3) Set a stop loss 1% below where you buy, easy at Vanguard online. Raise the auto-sale price (stop loss) monthly to lock in all gains. When sold $ rolls to an interest bearing account (~1.5%) then set up a re-buy option at the prior sale price.MKI, I just don't see how it is possible to invest like this. I would get whipsawed constantly and my stop losses would register much greater losses than 1% because they can't be executed overnight. How do you deal with these problems? Thanks
I would get whipsawed constantly and my stop losses would register much greater losses than 1% because they can't be executed overnight.A "stop order" triggers a sell order if the price falls below a certain level. A "stop-limit" order sells at the stop price, only executing at the limit price or better. I use "stop-limit". If some strange event occurs where I can't find a buyer in an after-hours or flash crash, I could just hold until things stabilize. This has never been an issue for me; VTI has endless owners & note that night is when the gains are typically. Also, the 1% is just an arbitrary number; I adjust that based on the volatility. But VTI is very stable, just check out the range in 2020. The real risk is "opportunity cost"; I get out just fine but by the time I get back in the market may have jumped so I've lost that potential profit. But it's profitable either way, and I would rather give up a few % for the security. YMMV. I also like to hold about half my stocks are dividend-paying value stocks I own regardless of price; this is another layer of protection...but these stocks are getting rarer these days... One comment: People trying to eliminate "all" risk from their life are simply fools. Inflation alone is a massive risk; one simply cannot afford to be out of the physical space of business and RE because the Fed is going to inflate away the USD. Sure, be safe; I bought my first 100 oz of silver as a teen for $7/oz & am amazed the US has not collapsed decades ago. But I'm also practical; we all eventually die, risk is part of life itself, and holding 10% physical PM & 20% in RE gives plenty of security for the courage to dump the rest of my worthless USD into stocks. For the final security? Garden/hunt/harvest/can & own a water well, wood stove, and bicycle. Who cares if (when) it all comes down? Just imagine what your 10% PM will be worth then :-)!