Wow!!  So much has happened at Arid Acres and I need to catch you all up.
First, I want to wish you all joy and peace  and to wish you all a Merry Christmas (or whichever Holiday you chose to celebrate) from our homestead to yours. 
Yes, that's a lot of stockings- only 4 are for us the other 5 are for our dogs.

November 9, 2016 has brought us a new President Elect in Donald Trump.  Whether you supported his candidacy or Hillary's or like me a 3rd Party Candidate, this one is in the books.  No amount of hand wringing or caterwauling will change the outcome.
​However, that is the only thing that is certain at this point.   

So much has been going on since I last posted a blog.  Where to start?  Well, life has been keeping things pretty interesting for sure.  There have been big changes on the job front, on the project house, going to be starting with swap meets and farmers markets and some new adventures to talk about in this post.

Hello and thanks for dropping by!!  Last week I said I had some big news, well here it is.  Today I want to talk about and unveil a new project that I am asking your help with.

In this part of our homage to  International Homesteading Education Month, we are going to explore the possibilities for raising animals which will help reduce our own food bills and allow us to make some money.  

Our views may differ slightly from others in regards to animal husbandry and animal raising and we do not mean that as a slight of any sort or to start any feuds, it is merely our take on things.  We try to offer our animals as natural and comfortable a setting as possible, we treat each animal with respect and compassion, even up to it's last moments alive.  For us, they are more than just meat or eggs or milk, they are living creatures that we have taken responsibility for their well being.  Our way is not better or right, it is simply how we choose to run our homestead.  I guess coming from a large corporation has helped me develop that viewpoint, which I hadn't thought of until just now.  For years I was just a cog or employee number and my well being didn't mean squat to the company so long as I kept producing for them,  I didn't like being treated that way and I won't treat other living things that way. 

Through out the last 2 posts, we have decided that yes homesteading is for us, figured out ways to financially afford the homestead, planning, designing and we even started getting into some of the larger expenses- buildings, barns, fencing and even solar energy, this post is going to focus on ways to make some money from our homestead.

So after reading our last blog or maybe just with the help of our last blog, you've decided you want to homestead.  This blog will show you  what is possible on your Homestead, we'll be sharing some more blogs and articles from other bloggers and authors and we're going to also be sharing some great video advice from Joel Salatin and a couple of our other friends.

A lot of people have the misconception that to have a homestead you need a spread that would rival the Ponderosa in the tv series Bonanza.  While that would certainly be nice, it is far from the truth.  You can Homestead no matter where you live, a large city, a suburb, a 1/4 acre or even in an apartment.  You just have to scale the homestead to your particular situation.  

For this post,  we had hoped to have gotten through the weeks best blogs, posts and articles that we wanted to share with you and provide a synopsis.  But like everything in life, especially in homesteading, we can't bend others schedules to fit our needs and something unexpected always seems to happen.  This week things were interrupted by the coyotes still jumping the fence in the "Back 40" and my having to add another layer of fencing and several unexpected customers dropping by looking for lambs.

We will be posting the week's best stories, articles and blogs on producing your own food and getting a Homestead started later tonight or tomorrow. 

I wanted to share this with you and share our opinion of why we post a mix of homesteading and prepping stories with all of you.  In our minds there is very little difference between the two groups.  The main similarities are that both groups believe in self sufficiency and both groups believe in being prepared for whatever life throws at us and both groups probably have a firearm or two in their home for varmints- whether 2 or 4 legged.  

I also think that we, homesteaders can just as easily find ourselves in the groups mentioned in the blog- politically dissenting, living in an unregulated city, zones of economic disparity.  So, we see a lot more similarities than differences.