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FiddleHodlHomestead
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Violinist and teacher, building a homestead on raw land in between lessons and concerts. Fascinated by how we can develop resilience in our lives, in our families, in our communities. I'm excited about freedom tech and circular economies, and am deeply grateful for the devs and advocates who are helping build tools for a better future.

Hello nostr:nprofile1qy28wumn8ghj7vfjxuhrqt3s9ccn5dpcxcusz9thwden5te0v35hgar09ec82c30wfjkccteqqsrvxtz7pjs9puh9dhgm38j4j0ysngc0lc623n309zgg8ydmt5mlfqgatykv !

I wish I had realized while in the city how much food I could grow without having land - rabbits, quails, potted goodies.

My family and I have a ton of stories, but the main one is that we didn't know anything about growing our own food 3 years ago and now we have a dairy cow, goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks and geese. So - meat, eggs, milk, herbs , the occasional tomato plus lots of fruit coming in the next few years (trees and berry bushes). It's very satisfying.

There are lots of us on here! Look for #homestead #permaculture

GM, Nostr!

Caught this cool moment of one of our chicks on her momma's back yesterday:

Yeah, that's what he says - that he was at the top of the pyramid

looks like they could use some of your "erosion."

Gorgeous pasture!

look at those little fluffballs!

So these are a result of a hen that finally did go broody? or you bought them?

We have some English game hens. Not great layers for most of the year but amazing mothers.

Yes, I think looking at human history provides a great heuristic: use as a default what our ancestors did for millennia, and approach with caution things outside of that.

Regarding honey - it seems to be such an important food for various indigenous groups, and I've heard crazy claims, like people downing the equivalent of a quart of honey at a time. I don't know if that's true, but if so I wonder if it serves as more than just instant energy. If you're very insulin sensitive, a lot of honey several times/year might get converted quickly into bodyfat that can be accessed later as needed.

I'm not pushing honey, and the reason we homestead is in fact to raise our own meat. I've just wondered about this. It's hard to gain extra fat eating fat and meat, which seems like a good thing these days but would not have been great when we relied on hunting.

Yes! I'm hoping to get it so that they can harvest a lot of their own food for much of the year.

The goumis and siberian pea shrubs are nitrogen fixers, so they should be good for the fruit trees around them. I went back and forth on them for a while since they're not native and I had originally planned to only do native fruit/nut trees, but they both do incredibly well in our soil and even 2yo goumis already have berries on them.

The chicken run has been one of my favorite areas to set up, but I recently got started on a duck and goose buffet close to the duck house: lots of comfrey, figs, mulberries and probably some persimmons. I'm improving my propagation skills so that we can do most of this almost for free.

This is one of my favorite subjects!

We have siberian pea shrub, mulberry trees, goumis, two apple trees, figs, elderberry, blueberries, currants, quince, aronia, bush cherries, blackberries, plus lots of mint, yarrow, and comfrey. Most of those are for the chickens but we'll want our share of the blueberries, apples and figs. This year I'll probably add some annuals (sunflowers and sweet potatoes), there's a passionflower vine that will come up in the next month, and there's a large viburnum and poplar that we added for shade.

Last fall we planted a number of fodder trees that feed the rabbits that share the area with the chickens - mostly hackberry, elm, apple rootstock, linden, maple.

Protecting the roots from the scratching is an ongoing challenge. We have wire cages around the base of each tree and shrub. If I can fill each cage with mulch and then put enough heavy branches on top of the mulch, that holds up relatively well. Another thing that works is a small ring right next to the tree and another larger one that's deep enough that the chickens can scratch to their hearts' content but still keep the mulch pretty much in place.

One counterintuitive bad thing about Bitcoin is that it is a far better investment than land.

Real estate prices are inflated by decades of fiat games. Cheap debt. Tax advantages. Mortgages stretched across generations. This early state of bitcoin makes it massively cheaper in comparison.

So yes. If we are talking pure returns, real estate is a shitcoin. Buy Bitcoin.

But here’s where it stops making sense. I see plenty of Bitcoiners who've already won. They've seen massive gains and are financially free in ways that we all dream of. Yet they still live in cities boxed into apartment buildings and subdivisions. They still live inside the system they claim to see through.

Admittedly, I have my own bias here. I grew up on a farm and will never totally feel comfortable living a city life in a way that many people do. But I also fell for the same trap during my 8 years in cities and didn’t appreciate what I had growing up until I came back.

When you’re in the city and think about moving to a small town, you worry about what you will miss. The events. The bars. The endless options. I was afraid of that too and moving home felt like giving something up.

But once I was out, I realized none of it mattered. You stop chasing plans and start actually living.

Many Bitcoiners talk about citadels. About someday buying land. About someday living differently. I get it. Making the leap is expensive. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if my dad hadn’t made it his life’s mission to buy the farm where I was raised. What feels misguided is having that financial option and still choosing to live and raise your kids in their world.

You get eighteen years with them. That’s basically it.

Do you really want those years spent in apartments and crowded parks? Wouldn’t you rather have them outside? On land they can know. In a place they can return to with their kids?

At a certain point, you have to stop looking at your gains as numbers on a screen. You need to turn them into something real. Put down roots. Give your kids a place to know. Buy The Family Land

I never imagined my life outside of the city but am so glad that we bought our land. It didn't feel like a financial investment, more of an investment in the family and the life we wanted to live - we're living here, growing plants and animals, building skills that I could not have even imagined.

I think the current system is pretty much beyond repair in many ways. We're not too far from the state where only those who can afford it know how to read or do basic math and the statistic are getting worse by the decade.

I'm hoping something better will emerge from the ashes. If I had young children I would keep them as far away from schools as I possibly could.

Replying to Avatar Diyana

I used that in my meditations years ago- just repeated it silently to myself over and over.

It's a good one šŸ’œ

oh! I'm so sorry. I've only recently discovered the sweet magic of dogs

šŸ«‚

True story: on a recent domestic US flight, I asked to opt out of the scanner, which means a pat-down. That was going fine until the woman had moved to my front and was moving down from my chest. She got to my ribs "what do you have here under your bra?"

"what?"

hits her hand against my my right side: "what's this?"

"my ribs?"

"oh- ribs! I forgot about those. Haha! I haven't felt those for a long time"

So many people who pass through that airport are fat enough that she forgot that ribs exist.

😳