Tips and Advice on all things Homestead related

If you're living on a small farm or piece of land, or even if you're stuck in a city there are many ways to make a little extra money if you're willing to put some thought into it, some planning and a lot of hard work. Here are a few ideas that I've done on my small farm or have seen other people doing. Maybe you'll get a little inspiration from these tips. Garden. If you have some land, and it doesn't even have to be much, there are many ways to make a little extra money with your garden. The obvious one of course is to grow extra produce and sell it to friends, neighbors, co-workers or set up a booth at a farmers market. My suggestion is to choose produce that you enjoy eating as a family. Don't grow eggplant if you don't like eating it, in other words. If you're new at gardening, don't try growing something super difficult. Look up your growing/planting chart and plant by the moon cycle and weather patterns to have more success. Do your resear...

Every year in my hometown, right before the annual fair would be a big parade which usually started at the river where the train station was because there was a large grassy area with plenty of room for the trucks to congregate. The train station was also at the very start of the main road through downtown.  This particular story involves my horse Foxy. She was a wonderful, hotheaded, bright, red, chestnut mare.  (all you horse people know what I'm saying!) I was probably around 17 or 18 at the time. Most of the horse people in our city knew who I was by that time and offered to haul my horse into town so I could ride in the parade that year. I loved riding in the parade, which was nothing like any parade you've seen here in the USA. It was mostly about 100 or more men and a small handful of their girlfriends who didn't really know how to ride, riding up main street. Most of the men were being showoffs and pretty much all of them had a beer in one hand the reins in another ...

 This is the story of the Trash Dump People. People who live in the trash dump, building their houses out of pieces of trash, digging through the trash to find enough barely edible bits of who knows what to eat. Sorting the trash and collecting the recycle items, or things that could be used or fixed or sold. This is how they survived.  This story happened when I was working in southern Brazil as a missionary with Youth With a Mission, (YWAM). Our mission base was in a large, well populated city. Our base director found out that there was a group of people living in the trash dump and we started an outreach to them. He asked for volunteers to go work with these people and I felt God leading me to be one of the volunteers. Somehow we got large donations of food that was still in great condition but the local supermarkets couldn't sell anymore. I was in charge of once a week cooking a huge pot of food for the trash dump people. And when I say huge I don't mean your biggest pot y...