Today, we walk through all the endeavors here at the Holler Homestead and assess if we are in track, where to focus and how to move forward. Assessing your progress along the year is important to developing the lifestyle you want, building independence and stability and staying focused.

What Mother Nature is providing

• Poke Weed
• Elderflower Fritters
• Watercress is done until it cools down
• Seeing unripe wild raspberries on the vines

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

• Corn is used up! Celebrating
• Strawberry Geranium Jam

Harvest Bounty

• Lettuce and chard
• The 5 foot tall tomato
• Vining plants are ready for trellising

Operation Independence

• $50 in on the replaced plug

Make it a great week!

Song: Mr. Clammy

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Today, I want to circle back on community, self-reliance, and side hustles. You see, we had a great Spring Workshop here in late April, and some pretty cool relationships came from that. And not just the - oh hey I met you at a workshop kind, but some real relationships. My next door neighbor has worked two days at another participant’s farm, there is another gathering coming up this weekend that has coordinated itself, and so much more. 

What Mother Nature is providing

• Hemlock is flowering
• The usuals for salad: hairy vetch, watercress, dandelion
• Garlic scapes!!
• Salad
• Sprouts are back up and running since I am home

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

• Farmers market update: All salads all the time - things are waaay behind this season
• Staying the course on using things up

Harvest Bounty

• We lost about 5 of the 20 fish 

Operation Independence

• Update on the new schedule: Today has been the first day I was able to really follow it.
• The AirbnB is open for the season and we are getting lots of rent

Song: Wolf by Sauce

Today, we explore why adding creative pursuits into your life helps you succeed in other areas, even if you are not the best in show in whatever creative thing you choose to learn. You may be wondering what this has to do with designing a successful and happy life, homesteading, freedom, or side hustles. Here’s the thing. It’s hard to justify it in a pithy soundbite. But creative pursuits result in physical, mental and emotional benefits. So hang with me on this and I hope you will find ways to reprogram yourself through creative pursuits as you design the life you love.

This episode is dedicated to Puff --- our kitty that was with us for too short a time.

What Mother Nature is providing

• Asparagus
• Goldenseal, a plant rife with medicinal uses
• Salve season is here with the comfrey and jewelweed right at perfect harvest size for this purpose.
• Aquaponics update: Another salad has resulted from the system, which is crankin out some growth. We added 20 goldfish last night and have lost one so far. And I did plant all the seeds in advance of what was supposed to be a rainy day. It’s sunny. And blazing hot.

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

• Still getting set up to dry teas for the winter
• Hoping to see beets at the farmers market soon.

Operation Independence
13 hours in the car with Mama Sauce has helped me restructure time in a way that I think will leave more room for creative pursuits - guys - if you can’t afford a consultant to help you deconstruct your choices as you build your life the way you want it, find some close friends and ask for coaching from them. The outside view is instrumental in helping you get more effective and this long talk with mama sauce really helped me adjust some priorities that were more oriented toward urgent rather than important.

Five benefits of building creative pursuits into your life.

Song: Feed My Hunger by Sauce

Make it a great week!

Today, I want to share with you a beginner’s perspective on Aquaponics. At the LFTN Spring Workshop, two awesome guys installed an Aquaponics system here, so I got to witness first hand how to install something right the first time, AND we have been using it for a week now. One of the things that has kept me from doing aquaponics here has been how hard it sounds to set something up, so having this in place is a big deal. So for those of you out there thinking about aquaponics, or even those who are not sure it is a good idea, I want to let you know what it is like as a beginner to launch and learn about Aquaponics.

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What Mother Nature is providing

• Watercress is winding up
• Hairy vetch, chickweed and deadnettle
• Stinging nettle is blooming here and will die back until fall, unless we get rainy/cooling in the next month or so
• Asparagus
• Goldenseal, a plant rife with medicinal uses
• Tea time: lemon balm, blackberry and raspberry leaves. There should be bee balm, but I must have managed to kill my patch of it. 

Tales from the Prepper Pantry

• Putting up dried herbs and tea makings - both for flavor and medicinal. Creek mint is ready to harvest. 
• Beeswax
• Story: the swarming bees - when 2 hives become 4, plus 2 off site

Harvest Bounty

• Aquaponics are in and we are setting strategies for where/how we will run vines.
• Garlic should scape out in the next few weeks.

Stretching meals

• Workshop leftovers

Operation Independence

• Mama Sauce came and helped do another round of get rid of the clutter - which frees us to focus on the important rather than the urgent
• Spring Workshop ROCKED and is a foundation in our walk toward independence. 
• Taxes are back on the todo list right after carnegie hall.

Speaking of Carnegie: May 12th, 2pm meet up in New York at a pub near Carnegie Hall. The Irish Pub:  837 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019. DO check on our Facebook page and website though because if it is full, we will adjust our plans. Just look for the chick with the cowboy hat.

Why Aquaponics: Things grow too well in Tennessee - by which I mean the wrong things grow too well and with the coffee business, I wanted to have time to devote to coffee.

Project goal: Aquaponics that looks great in front of the house so Mark does not make me remove it, pays for itself or even earns money, runs itself when I am away in case Mark is out working on the paper.

Lesson 1: Aquaponic is much easier than it seems when you start learning about it.

Lesson 2: Installation can be cheap and hard work, or more expensive and quick and easy

Lesson 3: It is frightening how fast things grow

Lesson 4: You can plant things closer together - and kill things fast.

Lesson 5: It’s not about the fish

Make it a great week!

Song: Special by Sauce

Today, we review the good, the bad, the ugly from the Living Free in Tennessee Spring Workshop with The Tactical Redneck, one of our participants. All in all, things went well, folks got to learn from each other about homesteading things, a surprise session on how to capture bee swarms happened, and we even got to be intimately involved with a real aquaponics installation. It was a good time, and we hope that the relationships forged at this event will serve all those who were here well for years to come.

Make it a great week!

Song; Cilly Song, by Sauce