Robin Tidwell's Blog, page 21

Prep Monday—Your Neighborhood Makes a Difference

Let’s assume you live out “in the middle of nowhere,” which is where I like to say we are now. We’re about 15 miles from a little stop on a highway, and about 25 miles from a town of under 5000. Basically, we have all the conveniences nearby—in country miles—but we’re pretty isolated once you […]

Fan Friday—Trust

Sorry about the lack of a Work Wednesday post; frankly, I was too tired after that long drive back to STL. However, I did use the time to do some thinking, and my question to myself was this: Do I trust the government? A pretty broad question, but I started from the top down. Regarding […]

Prep Monday—A Warning

I’m sure you’ve heard that you should keep your prepping on the down-low and not advertise to every Tom, Dick, and Harry where you are and what you’re doing and planning. This is very, very true. But you also have to be careful around friends and family. My husband and I were discussing our kids—we […]

Work Wednesday—Having Fun!

So here’s your question: do you work all the time, or take time to have fun? Is there time available? See, living on a farm, or a homestead, or whatever you want to call it, is a lot of work. I’ve touched on this before, and it really can’t be said often enough. People visit […]

Prep Monday—Taking Stock

Now that I have a supply closet in the barn, I can take stock of what supplies I have and what I still need. It’s much easier when everything is organized, and in one place. Back in STL, I had a shelf in the garage, plus overflow onto the pool table, plus the upper kitchen […]

Fan Friday—The Reality

For all you tiny house and downsizing enthusiasts, I’m going to talk a bit about the reality of both these things. Not necessarily going off-grid; that presents its own set of challenges. But the idea of “tiny” is much more palatable than actually doing it . . . As I’ve discovered. Originally, we were planning […]

Work Wednesday—And More Work!

Sometimes it seems as though all we do is work on the farm. It’s hard to relax when everywhere you look, you see more things to be done. Which is why we’re having Work Wednesday on Thursday! I don’t think I turned on my laptop even once this past week. Between the wall-scraping and the […]

Prep Monday—Work

We’re just getting started on our farm, and lest anyone be disillusioned, let me be the first or the fifteenth to tell you: it’s hard work. I mentioned before that someone mentioned she’d thought we were planning to “live off the land” and “go pioneer” and therefore use only hand tools, preferably ones we’d fashioned […]

Fan Friday—Racism

I’m am so sick of feeling like I should apologize because I’m white. I didn’t ask to be born white. Black people didn’t ask to be born black. I didn’t ask to be born into a middle-class family, upwardly mobile, even. Black people didn’t ask to be born into whatever class they, individually, were born […]

Work Wednesday—The Remodel

We’ve been working more on the house remodel than anything else lately, especially due to the heat. Every day, of course, there are chores like composting and burning trash, weeding and checking over the garden, and tracking the progress on the old house. Which, I’m thrilled to say, now resembles a one-story A-frame. They pushed […]