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Life Before Homesteading: Living in a Bus
If you would have told me five years ago that I would live in a bus, then go on to become a homesteader and work my way to becoming off-grid and self-sufficient, I would have laughed in your face. I probably would have said “go home, you’re drunk!” I think its far to say people change over time and the plans we set out for ourselves do not always go they way we think they will. This is what living in a bus was like. Finding a Home My boyfriend (now husband) and I were talking about moving in together. We talked it over and decided one of us was…
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Getting rid of the ole ball and chain….Social Media
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Becoming Homesteaders
For a year we lived out our dream of living in a 1959 GMC tour bus, then made the decision of growing our own food. So what made us want to go from the RV life to becoming homesteaders? What was the first step we took that led us to this lifestyle? Living in a bus, was something I never saw myself doing, not because I was above living in an RV but because I did not know that was even a thing. I thought RV’s were for camping or sitting as a large yard ornament. For a year we lived in a 1959 GMC tour bus and completely enjoyed…
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Hurricane Preparations
As I am sure everyone in the US heard of Hurricane Florence and Michael over the past several weeks. Here in North Carolina we mostly dealt with heavy rainfall and 30mph wind gust during tropical storm Michael. I can only imagine what the people in Florida went through or came back to after Hurricane Michael hit their home town. With Micheal we never lost power or internet, to us we experienced a bad thunderstorm that lasted all day. With each storm we have a list of hurricane preparations we go through a prepare for each storm no matter how weak or strong they are projected to be. Hurricane Florence was…
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Simple Disaster Preparations
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Our Absence
On August 27th my husband and I welcomed our baby boy since then life became incredibly busy! We have dealt with our honey bee hives decrease in population due to hive beetles, extracted a little over a gallon of honey, finished our harvest for our summer crops, waited out two hurricane, welcomed three goats and new neighbors, planted our garlic and purchased 30 Freedom Ranger Roosters to process this winter. I will post more articles on each topic. I am finally catching up on everything since the birth of our son and can not wait to share what is going on here at 2 Ravens farm! Rachel
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Pumpkin Patch
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Homeschooling: an Alternative to Public Education (Part Three)
Part Three Click here to read Part 1 or Part 2 before proceeding with Part 3 of this series The solution to the problems facing our youth may well be a return to tradition and education at home. This system is the one under which we evolved, and it is a system that is quantifiably superior than public schools in terms of student performance and success in later life. Study after study has shown a consistent correlation between homeschooling and success when compared to peer groups in the public education system. In a 1997 study, homeschooled students were shown to perform on average in the 87th percentile in reading, 80th…
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Homeschooling: an Alternative to Public Education (Part Two)
Part Two Click here to go back to Part One The blame doesn’t lie entirely on the schools, however. Parents and the home environment they create for their children play a huge part in the development of young minds. The breakneck pace of today’s society has resulted in potentially dire consequences. For example, the US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that America’s children spend an average of seven hours a day engaged in various forms of screen-based entertainment. Other data gathered by the agency indicates that many children as young as two have free access to tablets and smartphones in their play areas. This constant access to devices…
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Homeschooling: an Alternative to Public Education (Part One)
As I am very busy at the moment, my wonderful husband has taken the time to reproduce a paper he wrote for his college English class titled “Homeschooling: an alternative to Public Education”. It will be published here in three parts over the next few weeks. His article clarifies some of the reasons for which we are considering homeschooling our children. Some of the statistics regarding our Public Education system might surprise you! Homeschooling An Alternative to Modern Public Education Part 1 In today’s America, society has become plagued by numerous systemic issues. Not least among these are high crime rates, degeneration of popular culture, political strife and others. However,…
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Getting rid of the ole ball and chain….Social Media
A few years ago If you had told me I would be willing to get rid of my social media I would have called you crazy and continued flicking through the monotonous junk filling my cell phone screen. My husband long ago deleted his Facebook page yet our conversations were still interrupted by my interest in the facade people displayed of their own happiness within their lives. I wanted that, their picture-perfect happiness, I’m not saying I was not happy, but I wanted all of the things I was seeing. If only I could have realized the one thing I was obsessing over was what truly was keeping me from…
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How I Unintentionally Became A Bee Keeper
As I have stated in many blogs, we want to be as self sufficient as possible. Everything from our vegetables to our meat to our milk we want it to all come from our backyard in due time. With that said one of my husband’s hobbies is making his own beer and mead. We do grow hops in our back yard but the North Carolina weather is not ideal for growing hops so they haven’t yet produced very well. However, having bees and having our own honey is possible here! Becoming a bee keeper was something we could get into being in the South East. My husband and I discussed…
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Issues with Our Honey Bee Queens
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Honey Bees Stinging You
Ever walk around your yard, pass a few bees, freak out and run the other way? You do not have to worry about that as much with honey bees. The only time I have dealt with bee stings from honey bees was after being in a hive to too long and my girls started to feel threatened by me. Bees will send out a pheromone letting their sisters know they need to defend themselves. This is where Hollywood comes in and turns bee swarms into an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I have had multiple bees land on me while out and about in my yard and my girls were just curious.…
