It’s been a while, I know…I decided to focus more on the podcast versus the blog in an experiment. And…We bought the Little Red House in September, and moving and all of that made life crazy difficult as we settled into a routine here. Unfortunately, I didn’t make time to blog a priority; it was easier to sneak away for 10 minutes to record a short podcast than take half an hour to type up a blog post.

Now, with Baby Bug due to arrive in August, I’m thinking about some changes for Liberty All Day. The weekly podcast just isn’t going to happen for a while, so that will become a once a month half hour or so episode. I will get back to the blog, and it’s looking to be a weekly thing again.

I have to admit…I’ve missed taking the time to write. I haven’t done any writing, really, since November. NaNoWriMo is always fun, and I hit my 50,000 word goal in about 10 days last fall! I have a few bits and pieces to add to finish it, and then I’ll put it aside for a bit before going back to edit, separate into chapters, and self-publish! Yep! Lettie Loo is going to be a published author, hopefully by the end of the year, if my planning works out the way I want it to.

But…anyway…spring is in the air here in Northwestern Wisconsin. And by spring, I mean…rain, sleet, snow, sleet, and rain again the past several days. It is strange, because it is now April, and we have yet to see any neighbours out working on their yards, and we are still straining to reach 50 degrees! Good news…This weekend and next week are supposed to be mid to upper 50s!!!

I planted some bulbs out front last fall (I think one of them was gladiolus), and a good portion of them have popped up from the frozen ground. Once they bloom, I’ll be able to figure out just what it is Little Man and I put in the ground last fall. In the back, I’m got 60 cloves of garlic and about a dozen or so walking onions planted. Fingers crossed they come up. I’ll be throwing some regular onion seeds and carrot seeds in the ground at the end of the month, or even early May.

We are trying to be self-sufficient, or at least on the path to self-sufficiency this year, hence the small vegetable garden. I had plans for A LOT more to be planted, but knowing Baby Bug is on the way, we decided to scale it back because I will be heavily pregnant in summer and dealing with a newborn come fall harvest and canning time.

We have established a “prepper pantry” in the basement with several months worth of dried, canned, and household goods. Do you now how good it feels to only have to pick up eggs and meat on bi-weekly shopping runs? Or to go “shopping” in the pantry? We do make sure to refill whatever we use from the pantry. Aldi is a GREAT resource for building up that pantry. Their prices on canned goods, pasta, rice, and meat is so MUCH BETTER than what you can find at Walmart. We also haven’t seen all the shortages at Aldi that we’ve seen at Walmart.

In March, we bought a deep freeze! Now we are slowly stocking it with meat from Aldi, but the plan is do buy a quarter beef and half pork this spring/summer. Yes, it is pricey to buy so much meat at once, but it will give us 6 months or so without buying meat at the store. And you just pay a set price per pound for all the meat, versus X/lb for ground beef, X/lb for different steaks, X/lb for roasts. It evens out in the end. I’m looking forward to steak and breakfast sausages!

The other big news I have is that I was interviewed by the one and only, absolutely fantastic Amy Dingmann over at A Farmish Kind of Lifehttps://afarmishkindoflife.com/183-dealing-with-negativity/. We talked about leaving the suburbs for the country and dealing with a lot of the negativity that comes when you live outside the norms. Feel free to check the episode out!

And…I am one of the Firestarters over at Fireside Freedom. Let me tell you, it is a bit intimidating but also inspiring to be a player with these guys. I get to talk to and learn from Hawkins from ChickenHawk Homestad, Brian from the LOTS Project, Amy Dingmann, Toolman Tim Cook, Ken Eash from Constructive Liberty Podcast, and Buddy from BudD.I.Y. You can find 3 or 4 of us chatting live every Tuesday night at 7pm Central over on YouTube, Odysee, and Flote. We also have a MeWe Group, and a Telegram Channel and Group. Come join us around the campfire as we talk about life.

Keep an eye out here as I fill you in on some of the projects we’ve done around the Little Red House the last few months. Let me tell you, Wayfair has become one of my favourite places. And they have helped us get rid of all the boxes that have been sitting around.