Our Food Dilemma

We have a dilemma, my husband and I. We are getting tired of the eating regimen we have adopted out of necessity; that is, having to eat more dried (including grains) and frozen foods because the closest place to buy organic (or at least, chemical-free) food is two and a half hours, either north or south.

We are both sick of grains. I would strongly prefer a mostly raw Paleo-ish diet, but we have been eating grains for lunch, and DH has been additionally eating them for snacks. The only grains our son will eat without complaining are sweet brown rice, oats, and Ezekiel 4:9 bread.

Even without muscle testing, I know that my ideal diet is one that does not include grains – not because of having read any books, although I have, but going by how I feel after eating a plate of grains. Muscle testing does, however, confirm the fact. While I can be healthy eating a limited amount of grains a day, my ideal diet would nix them altogether.

I am also sick of cooked eggs, and all Mr. Picky (AKA our son) wants is sweet things (AKA fruit and fresh milk, at least in this household which is managed by a health nut). The egg issue is easily remedied: I can put raw yolks in my smoothie and toss the whites, like I used to do.

Giving up grains and replacing them with more fresh (not frozen or dehydrated) fruits and vegetables is a bit trickier. We need to start going to the local farmer’s market, but the nearest one is a thirty-minute drive away. I did not move out into fresh air with the idea of adding more pollution to the environment by having to drive more in order to get healthy food.

The long-term plan

Within three years, between the large garden and a small but intensely-managed orchard, we should not have to depend on anyone else to supply us with fresh produce. I even plan, by then, to be growing our own mung beans and lentils to sprout and eat raw in salads.

But three years is a long time. And except for Ezekiel 4:9 bread, DH would rather not continue to eat grains for meals and/or snacks for that long. I dare not even eat the bread, as the gluten gets to me (yes, Matt Stone, even if I eat it every day for several weeks to try to force my body to adapt to it).

Raw milk would be a great substitute for grain (if you can forget how much more expensive the former is), but I cannot tolerate the lactose (yes, Matt Stone, I have tried making my body adapt to that, too - you try being a pre-menopausal woman with a sensitive digestive system).

So, what is a health-conscious family living out in the middle of nowhere to do in order to obtain chemical-free produce?

Compromise

We have decided to sacrifice a couple of mornings a month, get up super early, and drink smoothies in the car on the way to a farmer’s market. I can keep most things fresh for two weeks; certain items such as stone fruits I can freeze. I don’t mind frozen, as long as it’s fresh when I buy it and I freeze it while it’s raw.

I am never happy about getting into a car and driving so much – our gas bill will go up, too – but I am much less happy with being confined to a semi-vegan, mostly  cooked diet. Besides, it’s only for the next two or three years.

The moral

When you set out to drastically change your lifestyle, you have to allow for a long transitional period. You may have to bend your personal standards, especially if you’re a perfectionist like me.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither has any homestead ever been. I choose to enjoy the relative freedom we have, thank God that wecan afford to do what we’re doing, and bend my rules a little so that we can really enjoy ourselves when we sit down to fuel up. 

Why I Am Not A Minimalist

All of a sudden, “minimalism” is a hot word around the Internet. New blogs and videos about the concept are popping up every week. You can find several books about becoming minimalist on Amazon.

I, too, have used that buzz word. But I have decided to refrain heretofore.

Well. Before I go on, I suppose I should give a brief definition of “minimalism” for those handful who have yet to encounter the term. Minimalism is a lifestyle philosophy in which you live with only those things which you absolutely need. One might set Henry David Thoreau, during his experiment at Walden Pond, as the quintessential minimalist.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? So, why have I decided to eschew the word?

1. Minimalism is a religion.

Think about it. Most religions end with the three letters “-ism.” Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism.

Okay, so I’m a little bit tongue-in-cheek here. But hang with me while I go through the analogy, and you might actually end up agreeing.

Religions provide a set of rules to follow in order to live a life that makes some higher power happy, and/or that makes you happy. Most specifically deal with how to escape Earth and make it to heaven (I beg my readers not to confuse religion with a relationship with our heavenly Father. They are not the same thing).

Minimalism teaches that in order to be happy, you must get rid of everything you do not absolutely need. No hanging onto clothes that you might wear once in a great while, no more chairs in the house than needed for the members of that household, no keeping your teenage diaries. It teaches you to spend no money unless you absolutely need a thing, to have no clutter about.

What’s wrong with those rules? Nothing, when taken at face value. Nothing, if those rules fit your personal bent. Ay, there lies the rub. Religion tries to make everyone conform to the same set of rules, regardless of individual temperaments, giftings or abilities.

“But I read so-an-so’s blog that said minimalism doesn’t have to mean anything so austere.” That’s because so-and-so isn’t really a minimalist.

*SHOCK!*

Look, if you don’t believe in reincarnation, you’re not really a Buddhist. If you don’t believe premarital sex is a sin, you’re not really a Christian. If you don’t believe you have to pray five times a day toward Mecca in order to please Allah, you’re not really a Muslim. If you have joined any of those particular religions, but changed some of the rules because you didn’t like them, then you basically created your own new religion.

Ditto for quasi-minimalists who…well, now I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s attack that in the next section.

2. The word “minimalism” has been abused and misused.

I am all for sticking to a budget, decluttering, and downsizing anything from a bookshelf to an entire house. But just because you’ve become a decluttering freak doesn’t make you a minimalist. A minimalist by definition is going to have a boring house and, quite frankly, a boring life (at least to outsiders; contemplative people who get a thrill out of meditating all day don’t think such activity boring at all).

The aforementioned Thoreau was a true minimalist – at least, during the period in which he lived at Walden Pond. His house was practically bare, and his only major activity was tending a garden.

If you have an uncluttered house and refuse to buy an iPad, but have a bunch of kids whom you regularly take on entertaining and educational excursions around the city, you are not a minimalist. You are giving your children experiences they don’t absolutely need (and therefore spending money unnecessarily, breaking one of the cardinal rules of minimalism).

If you have only one chair and one fork in your large apartment, but often fly back and forth between the United States and Australia, you are not a minimalist. You do not need to travel (besides, a true minimalist will be trying his best to reduce his carbon footprint).

If you live in a 5,000 square-foot house that is completely void of clutter and has only a couple of pieces of furniture in every room - and you have fewer than eight children, you are not a minimalist. (Five thousand square feet? Come on!)

If you have a well-followed blog because its domain name uses the buzz word “minimalist”, then put together a “simple living” course for which you charge $149 dollars a head, you are not a minimalist. You are the typical exploitive Internet Marketer (a real minimalist is not greedy for gain).

3. God is not a minimalist.

Ever read any books about people who have seen heaven? Sure, probably one or two have made things up to sell a few books. But I have reason to believe that the handful I have read were written by people who have had honest-to-goodness visions of heaven and wrote the books to encourage people of faith about what the future holds for them.

In these books, God does not hold back. He has provided a mansion for everyone who arrives there, and the mansion as well as its surroundings is loaded with accessories, décor, furnishings, etc., etc., that represent your deepest desires and personal tastes. One author has even seen a heavenly amusement park and movie theaters!

Say the authors of those books have made all that stuff up. Okay, so read the Bible instead. The streets of heaven are paved with gold, the apostle John wrote in the book of Revelation. If the streets are paved with gold, do you really think Father has held back in luxury and lavishness anywhere else?

I’m not suggesting that you go out and get into debt so you can crowd your bookshelves, dressers and side tables with pretty knick-knacks. I am simply pointing out the fact that it is not evil to have things, including things that are there solely to make an otherwise empty corner or space beautiful.

4. Minimalism doesn’t fit many people’s lifestyle goals and/or personalities.

Some women – and men – thrive in a home decorated country style. Ever seen a home like that? Let me give you a hint: there is “stuff” everywhere. The tops of the kitchen cabinets are lined with old-fashioned crocks, jars and dishes, and there will be a sideboard in the dining room packed with all sorts of quaint dishes and other accessories. That’s not to mention the numerous knick-knacks and accessories that will be found in the rest of the house.

If someone wants to dust – or pay somebody to dust – all those things, more power to ‘em! 

Then there are homesteaders. As one of those, I can tell you one of the most important Homesteading Commandments: save everything. While I don’t literally save everything, neither do I throw out or recycle every single supplement bottle or jar, empty milk jug, or piece of junk mail. They often come in handy for a variety of uses. We refuse to follow that minimalist rule of getting rid of “just in case items” – because often, those items turn out to be useful in a few months to a couple of years! And because we did not adhere to the minimalist religion, we did not have to go out and spend more money to buy another thing.

I have dozens of “just in case” flower pots in the garden shed, and row covers that I have not yet even opened. Jerry has a variety of tools. We are not going to get rid of these items because somebody wants us all to live like hermits in a cave.

So, why am I even bringing it up? I – and the others who want to/need to have a lot of things – should simply just not call ourselves minimalists, right? My problem with this facet of the anti-possession religion is that those who think they are minimalists try to make everyone else who definitely is not, look or feel as if she is doing something wrong.

Gee, maybe I should have written all this under the “religion” heading.

The long and the short of it…

I am not a minimalist, and do not want to be part of that camp. I am all for simple living, but that does not need to mean living in a home with mostly bare space, obsessing over the number of things you own, or feeling guilty about how little you may use or enjoy those things.

Small Town Love

I grew up in rural southeast Minnesota, and I have to admit: I didn’t exactly develop any sort of affinity for small towns. The small town where we traveled to in order to attend church services, do grocery shopping, and go to school was a “bedroom” town: most residents worked in Rochester, many at the local tech business or for one of the clinics or hospitals. 

There wasn’t a whole lot of “small town” friendliness I heard about later as an adult. In fact, in the local high school (which, when I was a kid, included grades seven through twelve), sexual harassment was rampant and was not uncovered until I was well out of college. Even before high school, there was a harsh division between the children who lived in the town and those who lived in the country. I remember calling those who lived in the town “townies” in a snide, uppity voice. At the same time, those “townies” looked down on us poor rural kids.

I liked it when we finally moved into Rochester when I was sixteen. It had a different atmosphere, I assumed because there were a lot more people and a lot greater diversity of people. So it was harder to stick out like a sore thumb.

By then, I was already well-jaded against small towns. This bias followed me into adulthood, to the extent that I sometimes wavered about moving to our new location in southeast Oklahoma, where I would have to relate to people in a small town.

Southern/Northern difference?

When I lived in Minnesota, I once in a while heard about how friendly people in the South were. While I certainly have had my fair share of positive experiences of that while living in the Dallas, Texas area (such as perfect strangers pulling over and helping me when I had a tire blow-out), that place is so huge that it’s hard to be anything but just another anonymous face to most everybody else.

Then we took the leap and moved out of the city. Here is what has happened to me in the past few months.

A couple of months ago, I walked into the store that provides our cell phone service to pay our bill. That was our last errand of the day, and we headed home after I paid it. Upon arriving home, I discovered that I had left my change purse - which contained around $200 – at the cell phone place.

I tried to call. No answer. (Yes, ironic, I know.) I drove back into town (not a big deal; it’s only about five miles away) and walked back into the store.

The lady who had accepted my payment was talking to a couple at her desk, but her eyes met mine and took on a knowing glance.

“Please, tell me you have it!” I exclaimed, so desperate not to have lost the money that I didn’t even think about manners.

The lady smiled at me, and held up the little purse. Relieved, I retrieved it and thanked her profusely. I did not count the money until I got home; I knew I didn’t need to. Indeed, every single cent that had been there was still there.

The next series of small town friendliness came out of the insurance agency where we had bought our Oklahoma car insurance. While in the process of selling our house, we needed access to a fax machine, copy machine, and somewhere to sit down with the mobile closing agent and sign papers for an hour or so.

The lady who runs the agency – Melissa – was really sweet and did the copies and faxing we needed – at no charge - and let us borrow a desk in the back of the office the day that we closed.

Most recently, I walked into the bank where we had opened a couple of accounts over the past month or so, needing the account number for the savings account I had just opened up. She retrieved it for me without even asking my name, let alone asking for an I.D.

I commented on that when she returned with the information written down on paper, to which she replied with a smile, “Oh, I know who y’all are.”

I haven’t even begun to talk about the great folks at the hardware store, or the ladies who run the library. I can’t say whether it’s a difference between the independent Northern culture or the more family-oriented Southern culture, but my idea about small towns have changed.

I like them a lot better than impersonal cities. (Thank You, Jesus, for leading us here. J  )

A Compelling Reason To Go Off-Grid

My big plan for when we moved to our rural home (where we now live) was to be off-grid immediately with both energy and water. In fact, last fall after we bought a travel trailer, parked it up on our land and started visiting it every other weekend, I dug in my heels and made Jerry buy a generator to produce our electricity.

Have I ever told you I don’t like noise? I don’t like noise. A generator makes a lot of noise, even if it’s not very close to you.

If you used to read my former blog, or have read my book Hatching The Nest Egg, you know that one thing I do like is saving money.

A gas generator eats money like it was ice cream. Two weekends after using it, I did the math and realized that if we used the thing during the summer when the A/C would be going most of the time, we would be spending as much money to cool a 21-foot travel trailer as we used to spend to cool our 2159 square-foot house with central air! We’re talking around $200 per month.

Not only that, in order for me to use the Vita-Mix early in the morning, that meant for Jerry having to go out and start the generator in the dark, and in very cold temperatures (we moved at the end of January). And besides that, the generator was noisy. Oh, did I say that already?

With some reluctance, I agreed to go on the grid with energy until we got settled – until we built our permanent house, really, which I was hoping would be less than a year.

But one thing bothered me about solar photovoltaic, and that was the price. Even for a small system, it would take something like eight years to recoup our investment, compared to paying the local electric co-op $40-$50 a month. So I did a bit more research on the issue, and found a blog post explaining how extremely inefficient and expensive solar photovoltaic energy is compared to grid energy. I told Jerry that I now understood his reluctance to use solar for electricity production. He is much better than I about not saying “I told you so,” but I could see it in his eyes. I rationalized that our severe cutback in our energy needs and subsequent usage was enough to do our part to save the planet.

I change my mind

Now, I want to get off-grid with energy ASAP. I don’t care how much the initial investment is.

Why? Every month, the local electric co-op sends out a publication. In the most recent one, they talk out of both sides of their mouth. At the beginning, they have a blurb about some legislation passed in Oklahoma that will make it easier for electricity companies to diversify their sources of energy (e.g., wind, hydro). Then there was a column singing the praises of that bill having been passed.

Flip through a couple of pages, and what do I find? A long-ish article explaining why the Oklahoma electric co-ops use coal. Okay, fine. I don’t mind if someone wants to explain their position. My problem with the article is that they ignore the two biggest problems with using coal: the pollution it costs, and the lives that the mining of it impacts in sometimes tragic ways.

Cleaner burning coal

Everyone knows that when coal is burned, it produces black smoke. Forget the whole stupid carbon dioxide-global warming debate. My concern is lung cancer and other fun diseases like that. The author of the article brings up this fact, but immediately blows it off by stating that people have invented cleaner burning coal. And then goes on to lament the fact that such coal is beyond Oklahoma’s budget right now, how sad.

Not to mention the fact that there is no truly “clean” burning coal. A person may be able to reduce some of the chemicals and carbon dioxide going into the sky, but it will never burn as clean as nuclear power, or be as clean as wind.

The tragedies of strip mining

The article completely ignores that the way in which some of the coal in this country is mined is via mountaintop removal. Now, from my understanding, southeast Oklahoma coal comes from underground mines. Be that as it may, the fact is this dependence on coal does have a negative impact on folks elsewhere in the country. 

Let’s set aside the sad destruction of the beauty of this country that causes, and consider the people. The people who live in the areas where mountaintop removal goes on are very poor, and cannot afford to relocate. Some of these people are killed in mining-related landslides, many other seriously injured and without the money to take care of these injuries properly. Houses are sometimes destroyed. And these mountain residents hardly have the financial resources to pursue and legal recourse against the mining companies.

So that gives me an ethical problem with coal overall. Besides, how healthy is coal mining, anyway?

I want off-grid…YESTERDAY

I got mad. Are you kidding me? Rationalizing your determination to stick with coal by ignoring two huge ethical and moral problems with it?

My “compelling reason” to go off-grid is that the electric co-ops of Oklahoma are practicing deception in order to make a few extra bucks. (I haven’t even mentioned that we are paying $.06 more per kilowatt hour for coal energy than we did for wind energy in Plano, TX.)

I don’t care how much off-grid solar will cost us. Three thousand dollars or so is a small price to pay to know that I am no longer contributing to the pollution of this planet or potential death of a resident of Appalachia every time I turn on my blender. 

If You Can't Write, Stay Out Of The Kindle Store!

I enjoy my Kindle. I enjoy not having to fill my bookshelves with books, not having to spend hours at a library trying to find information that may or may not be there. I enjoy all the features of the Kindle itself, and the ease and convenience of downloading books from my home.

And as someone who has always loved to write, and – if I may say so myself, is a talented writer – I especially enjoy the fact that Amazon.com allows people to self-publish their works to Kindle. I used to have a stack of rejection letters several inches thick. At a writer’s conference, Terry Whalin once told me that “someone should publish this” as he flipped through the manuscript for my book The Envelope, except at the time he was working for a small publishing firm that was only going to publish two novels that year. They couldn’t risk taking on a new, unknown author.

Folks, even the best writers have a hard time getting published traditionally. So digital self-publishing has a been a blessing – at least to an extent – for bonafide writers with pertinent and compelling stories and messages whose words might otherwise never go beyond their personal desktop.

But this ease of self-publishing has a dark side. It’s called greed.

I don't rant a lot, but once in a while, I just must. Here goes...

Enter the Internet Marketers

The first writers who published on Kindle made some good money. A few made a lot of money. Mostly, it was because there wasn’t a whole lot of competition. And the folks who were publishing there were truly talented writers.

Then, some Internet Marketers got wise. “If I play my cards just right, I might be able to make a killing on Kindle!” Most of these people could not tell you why “mispelled” is misspelled to save their lives. They didn’t do well in their English classes at school, and hated writing.

But, ah, look, people are making money with Kindle! If they are doing it, why shouldn’t I?

Great question! Allow me to answer it.

Why you shouldn’t publish to Kindle

1. You shouldn’t do it because you don’t really do it. You hire other people to write your stuff, and then you put your name on it and make all the money. That’s baloney.

2. You shouldn’t do it because all you care about is the money. You don’t love to write, and have no desire to improve your ability in written communication.

3. You shouldn’t do it because you have been called to do something else. Go out and do that, and forget about trying to make six figures on Kindle by next year. Instead, read my book Hatching The Nest Egg: How To Achieve Super-Early Retirement WithoutGambling, Side-Gigs, Or An Above-Average Income.

4. You shouldn’t do it because you’re just writing products based on popular keywords. What the *blank* are you doing writing a book about growing tomatoes when you never even eat them, let alone grow them? And you who wrote that forty-page “book” about oil pulling – have you ever actually pulled oil yourself?

5. You shouldn’t do it because you can’t write. Have you read the reviews for your book? Telling you about all your grammar and spelling errors, and all the repetition? That the story is a piece of s---? That’s a clue, honey. (And for you non-native English speakers, for goodness’ sake, hire a native English speaker to edit and rewrite your stuff before you publish it.)

6. You shouldn’t do it because you can’t do it without sinning. I refuse to apologize for using that word. Manipulation is a sin. It is not godly, because it is not loving. It is using people for your own means.

I was shocked, angry and sad when I heard that John Locke was the first Indie publisher to have one million books sold because he paid people to give him positive reviews. By the way, even though Amazon.com condemns the behavior and supposedly watches out for it, Indie authors can still go to fiverr.com and pay people to write four- and five-star reviews for their books.

In the book How To Make A Killing With Kindle the author warns you against paying for reviews, but then turns around and tells you to gift the book to all your friends and family and ask for positive reviews. How is this any different? It’s like going to your best friend with your MLM Super Supplement: she’s going to buy at least one bottle because she’ll feel guilty or afraid of offending you if she doesn’t. Or she just wants you to give you a warm fuzzy.

So a friend or family member of an author will naturally be inclined to give the Indie a positive review – simply because they are a friend or family member. Tell me, how objective do you think that review will be?

Another manipulative tactic is a hyped-up product description. Unfortunately, much of the time you can’t tell whether the description is hyped-up until you read the book and discover that it doesn’t deliver what has been promised in that description.

But at least you can return it if you read it before the thirty-day refund window closes.

By the way, to my non-Indie publishers, if you are a reading a product description that suddenly contains a string of keywords (rather than a coherent sentence), I advise against buying that book. It has been written by an Indie author who is likely  publishing just to make money, not because s/he can write. Another red flag is if you “Look inside this book!” and see in the Table of Contents a “bonus” chapter.

The word “bonus” has been used by salespeople and marketers for decades because it makes people think they’re getting something for free. It is yet another form of manipulation. A “bonus” chapter? Really? Why not just make it “Chapter Ten” or the conclusion?

Oh, yeah, I forgot. Because it’s supposed to increase your sales.

Right.

*****

Lately, I’ve read several non-fiction books, all by Indie publishers. Two of them knocked my socks off, another was almost that good, but the rest were obviously written by non-writers just trying to make an easy buck.

A little friendly advice to such so-called “authors”: don’t quit your day-job. Just because some guru Internet Marketer has conned you into paying for a several-hundred-dollar course in order to learn how to make money with Kindle, doesn’t mean you’re going to do so. Or should even try.

Unclog the Kindle store, please, and get off my Kindle. 

Blogging Gets In The Blood; Or, Nice To Meet You

Here I am, starting one more blog. My last, if I can help it. At one point, I had something like five or six blogs going in an attempt to make money from affiliate links and Google ads. Other people made five- and six-figure incomes every year with websites; why not me?

Because it was not to be, that’s why.

Over the last year, I’ve let over a half dozen domain names – and thus the blogs associated with them – slide into the Internet Black Hole. This includes my previously signature blog, The Crunchy Coach, where I desperately tried to inform people of the evils of processed food and modern medicine.

So, why did I quit? Other than the fact that blogging my eyes out (almost literally) for four years brought mostly disappointment, severely strained eyes, stress, and hardly any money worth mentioning.

And in the end, I didn’t need to try to make any money, because my husband, Jerry, and I worked hard enough and long enough at real jobs and at living frugally and investing wisely so that we could “retire” in our early forties.

But beyond that, I quit blogging because I discovered Kindle self-publishing. Now, as of this moment I’m barely making enough there per month to pay the gas bill. But I’ve always loved to write, received rewards for my writing in school, and always dreamed of publishing a book.

So I turned my focus toward writing for Kindle, and one of my last blogs was my author blog where I talked about my various books, now and then throwing in interesting notes about my personal life.

This blog will be more about my personal life, a lot about my philosophy of living, and probably some how-tos about simple and natural living, because that is my passion. When a combination of WordPress with the Thesis theme I was using began to cause me annoying technical difficulties – difficulties I am no longer willing to work through because I no longer have Internet service in my home – I was going to quit blogging altogether.

But there was one problem. I kept having a variety of things to say and teach, and I wanted to say and teach them to the world at large, just in case what flew through my mind happened to be helpful to somebody else.

So I decided, after deciding to cancel my paid webhosting, to start a free blog. I’ll be honest as the sun is hot: part of the reason I’m blogging here is to give my Kindle books exposure, and to get a few more sales a month. Mostly, however, this blog is to give me a place to vent my opinions and share what goes on in the life of a homesteading health nut. Maybe I’ll encourage and teach a few people along the way.

But I’m not going to try to collect your name and e-mail so I can send you weekly reminders to buy my stuff. I’m not going to have any affiliate links in any post. If it’s a link, it’s a link either to one of my books, or to another product or website from which I will not make a single penny.

If you have clicked over to this post because you are a faithful reader of my last paid blog, thank you for your faithfulness. If you are reading this post because you are one of those blog-obsessed people who, once they find a blog they really like, must read every last post in order to feel current, thanks for visiting and I invite you to follow my blog.

Happy reading,
Emily