Sustainable Living

I grew up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farmland. I could not get out of there and to "civilization" fast enough. It has been six years, a wife, and two kids later and my perspective on life has changed. I want my kids to be able to play outside without me worrying about traffic. I want to learn how to provide food for my family without having to go to the store. When I look back in history and look at how society has changed I see a major shift from when most families were farming and the kids learned responsibility from a very young age to nowadays where if you have your kids do chores you are a rare parent. I do not see us necessarily making a living on the farm or by any means our only mean of income. I just want to have the opportunity to live off of the land and know exactly where my family's food comes from. I know I may sound crazy so feel welcome to comment.

The next thing in this process is that I have an interview coming up to intern at a sustainable farm close to here for the next few months. This is exciting for me and I will keep you posted.

Homeschooling and living off the grid

 I would like to have something like this!
Well, I have been thinking about this for awhile now, but have not fully come to a conclusion on my thoughts here. My wife and I have entertained the idea of working at home and homeschooling our children. We feel the attention they would receive would allow them to advance through the proper skills at a faster pace. I also want my children to learn the classics and understand the ancient teachings. I do not feel the schools today would do better than we could at home. I will be certified in less than a year and I am going to be looking into ways to work from home. My wife has not yet started school so they might have to go to public school for a year or two depending on how it all lines up before we both have our degrees.

Now, this next part might be where I lose some of you. I want to live off the land. I want to have a dairy cow, chickens and a large vegetable garden where we could raise all of our produce. This would allow us to only have to buy grain based products from the store. I want this to be somewhere in central texas where we can do it year round. I grew up for a lot of my life out in the middle of nowhere but never really learned how to live off the land. I want my children to have that life information.

If you have any suggestions or comments please, please share them!

P.S. even if you thinkI'm crazy

A few Updates

Ok, so I thought I would update you on a few things that have been going on in my life and that go in line with some of the previous tip blogs I have written.  I was going to write this one yesterday, but I got extremely sick with some 24 hour thing that made me appreciate being able to be more than 20 feet away from a toilet if you know what I mean.
 Ok, well in my schooling there are a few updates. I am officially a member of the education honor society kappa delta pi now.  I had a call with my placement specialist for student teaching.  This call marked the introduction to the january 2012 cohort. These two things have been two key moments in my education and they both happened this week.
As far as the making extra money goes, I have tried a few of the tips that I gave and will continue to try more. I have been tutoring one student for the past few weeks. This has been very enjoyable, but proves to be a difficult experience to build up more clientele. This would be a great addition to my income if I could get just 3 to 4 more clients a week. Me and my wife went to give plasma on Tuesday of this week and I will tell you she definitely had a better experience than me. We waited for four hours since the first two hours is a medical screening. 2 hours is the total time it takes once you have done the medical screening and each time you come in after that. So, I was grooving along through my donation and then the machine starts to beep, signaling that I am finished. The attendant comes over and pulls out the needle and wraps my arm telling me I am finished. She then points me over to the sink where I can wash my arm off, So, I stand up and go over to the sink thinking this wasn't so bad. Then as I am looking down at my arm I can fell my eyes start to become blurry and I know I need to sit down. I rush over to the recovery room, which is more like a waiting area with juice and crackers. There was no attendant there, so I do not know what I would have done if the lady  that didn't work there had not gotten me a juice or told them I needed help. By the time I got to the room I could barely make out the outlines of the chairs and by the time I had the juice in my hand I could feel I was about three seconds away from blacking out.  As soon as I drank the juice it felt like life was rushing back through my veins. It was kind of exhilarating to think how the body works and how just a little thing of juice could bring me back that fast.  My wife did not have this issue. I am going to keep going until the promotion is finished and I will stop. The payout is 25, 30, 35, 40, and then goes down to 15 and then 20 for the second of the week. I will probably stop after the fourth time. I was going to go back yesterday, but with me being sick I thought it might not be the best choice. We have begun to save our pop cans so we can take them to the recycling center when we get a few bags saved up to update on how much we get for them.