I've got a new helper.

I used to get visits from the local wild turkeys and deer but last week that all ended with the addition of a new helper on the construction site.

I remember a few months back my neighbor to the west said he had picked up a dog at the dump. Well she started showing up every day. She picks up all my scrap lumber and helps me eat any food I bring out to the site in addition to chasing the local wildlife. So I guess I will get my Silver Queen corn this year and hopefully get some early warning when the bears come by. I haven't noticed any raccoon tracks and the two foxes that hung out around the site seem to have disappeared. All in all I would say she is a welcome addition to this one man crew.

You can check out the progress on the projects by clicking this link Stairs & Studs 

Common Cents Economics

Nothing brings economic awareness to the forefront of daily issues like tax filing season. Once in awhile people will venture into the melting pot, talk to folks they don't normally talk to, read what is inside of a newspaper or peer over the self erected barriers that keep them from the real world. Then all of a sudden they realize things aren't so great and maybe they should pay more attention. The realization soon passes and they again immerse themselves into oblivion hoping that by ignoring the facts the bad stuff will go away, never grasping that if they don't deal with bad stuff and it doesn't go away they lose self determination.

One such event happened recently at the grocery store when the prices in the dairy aisle went up 10% overnight. All of a sudden the chatter in the check out lanes was all about the  price increases. Where have these people been for the last 5 years ? By the end of the week, no more talk about the price increases. The facts are that we have not recovered economically from the recession of 2008/2009 which by classic definition makes it a depression. How many folks get food stamps ? That makes for some pretty long bread lines, which by comparison to the Great Depression and percentage of population in bread lines makes today's bread lines much longer and effecting a larger segment of society.

These types of things bring up the question of - why has the government not done anything to correct this problem of economic woes, unemployment, inflation, lowering standard of living, increasing tax burden on the working class, growing entitlement class, rising healthcare costs .....etc. After all they have the wherewithal to get us back on track. The answer is very simple; a socialist administration and a Federal Reserve using the wrong economic models. You couple that with a population of socialist leaning, under educated people and you get exactly what we have - a mess. Things are going to be different when this all shakes out. I hope you folks are ready.

Stairs and Studs click the link to the left or watch the video below for stair construction progress.

Blast from the Past

It was around this time of year when we decided to unretire. Two years ago sitting in the sun room of our apartment in Cuenca, Ecuador, Barb and I started talking about missing the changes in the seasons back in the U.S.. I had just gotten back from a week of working on the place in LaPaz when I mentioned that the same weather every day was getting to be a bit of a drag after almost 2 years. As it turned out that innocent comment was the straw that broke the camels back. We talked all night about the things we missed in the U.S., the idea that Obama couldn't possibly be re-elected after all the damage he had done, what the implications of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, if we stayed in Ecuador, would have on us and could we really start all over again back in the States. In the following weeks we figured out where we would like to live back in the U.S. and started to research the areas we liked. The process went from sending Barb back to the States on an exploratory mission to forget about thinking this thing to death, lets just go. If we land in the wrong place we'll go somewhere else. By June we were gone from South America.

That's the way it happened almost two years ago, it was a fun experience but no way for us to live out the rest of our lives. As it turned out Obama was re-elected to inflict even more damage on our economy and raise our taxes and ruin our health care system. We have started over and we are doing pretty well but we have had to take a offensive posture in our re-building and financial matters, especially in the arena of equity management.

The biggest problem we see in the future is that the change everyone is hoping for in the market place and standard of living ( the economy ) will never come. The change has already happened - a much larger entitlement population, higher prices, more taxes and a lower standard of living for most of us who work for a living. It's mostly down hill from here. There are alternatives, we just have to work on them, instead of thinking things will change somehow by ignoring the facts.

http://youtu.be/7Bhdpooop0U
You can click on the link above to check out the stair building on the house project.

Progress Report

I've got the chicken shed closed in and a spiffy blue roof on it.

I'll go over the whole thing once I get it trimmed out, the windows and doors cut in and Barb paints it.

Progress Report

You can click on the link above labeled Progress Report to hear the excuses for taking so long on this project.

Chicken Coop framing is done.

It's been raining for the past few days but I have managed to get the chicken coop framing finished. I put in a little kickout on the side for the laying nests and the water system.

I'll have to do some clearing around the coop for the chicken yard but the weather is supposed to be clear for the next few days so it may be a while before I get working on the coop again.

Chick Coop  

You can click the above link to check out some of the video's on the house building and other projects on the YOUTUBE channel.

Chick Days

Chick days around here isn't about humans, it's about chickens. For a couple weeks in the spring ag stores have day old peeps for sale usually at a better price than you can order them from the hatchery for. It's a good time to pick up some of the most popular breeds and replenish your flock or start a new flock.

This year we have decided to put in a permanent coop instead of the portable one we had last year. You can click on the link below and follow the construction process of a pretty well thought out coop - I hope. We'll be getting some new peeps too.

http://youtu.be/hVBowC08cDs

Getting up to speed

Getting up to speed

There should be a link around here somewhere that will take you to my youtube channel. I think it is in the upper left hand corner of the post.

I'll be coming off my hiatus in a couple weeks, starting in on the second floor framing on the house project and every bodies favorite - economics and politics.

 

Building your own house Intro

A year later, different format, same issues.

American Devolution on Youtube.com