Automating On The Homestead

I have been busy reading my new book, The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and have been spending much time on his blog,  http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ . It has been enlightening to me. Especially since I already have two websites where I sell a product and write this blog and another. The only thing is that I work more hours by owning my business though I understand that most of the New Rich (NR as Tim calls them) own their businesses but have automated them to the point where they don't have to do the day to day jobs that need to be done. I haven't done that. To tell the truth, I like doing those little jobs. So I am not sure how I will utilize his advice but I am reading the book very carefully to comprehend his advice. There are other jobs around here that need automating and I feel that this book is a very useful tool for my homesteading lifestyle.

The modern homestead, as I call our homestead, is different from most. Some of the things I envision doing has to do with modern technology. We use old fashioned tools for some jobs because we choose to......not because we have to. My husband really likes electric tools because we can run them free using our alternative energy system. So it makes more sense. He is planning to change from using a gasoline powered chainsaw to using a crosscut saw for cutting our firewood. He does not like the noise or gasoline smell from the chainsaw, though we will keep our chainsaws for some jobs. For the same reasons we have never used a rototiller for our garden.

In The 4-Hour Work Week, I have been working on the timelines. Making a list that is titled "5 things that you dream of having" and my list is not like most people's I guess. Most people would want to move into a dream home and drive a dream car, (though I would like to own the Tesla Model S) or travel around the world. Nope, traveling is not for me. Did that and am done with that. I love my home and would just want to accelerate the remodeling and repair of it so that it would be finished and just the way we both envision it. I would not mind being able to afford a high quality horse trainer to come to my house weekly and work on training my three horses so they are better trained and can be ridden by  others as well as us. They are very spirited girls!

Homesteaders, even ones who live in the modern world like us, still do things much different from the regular civilization. One thing we do is to prepare, prepare and prepare some more! What does that mean? We stock up on our preparations as they are called.....food, supplies, tools, medicines, etc. everything we would need in case something happened in the world. I know for us, I had us stocked up real good and my husband was hurt real bad in a work related accident in 2002. We had plenty of food and supplies. So I am always adding to that. That is another one of the dreams I have......having our supplies so that we would have enough stocked up to keep us in case something happened or we could not get out of here.

So planning on automating our homestead and ridding ourselves of excess that we don't use is my first two things on my list to work on. Then it will be to develop my root cellar and pantry to sustain us in any emergency. And keep working on our websites to offer the best products we can get with free shipping and superior customer service to keep our customers coming back. For now, this is enough......don't want to overwhelm myself with doing too much at once.