Sodatrain's Journal

[sodatrain]

@AH - thanks for the poke! Just this morning was just lamenting the challenges of wanting to be active in this very important community and forcing myself in-front of my laptop to post and engage!

Let's see.....

* Life is frickin great. Just on my way back south after 10-ish days in the states. Oh my the consumerism hit me extra hard this time around. Duck and run!
* I'm unemployed for nearly 5 months. I'm looking for work but it's tough going for my demographic and historical line of work. I think the economy, AI and automation and my age are impacting things more than I thought they would.
* Colorado Dept of Labor and their Unemployment program is absolutely despicable. It's been nearly 5 months and they are so overwhelmed/understaffed/undertrained/who knows what that they haven't even been able to unlock my account so I can file for unemployment. Its astonishing. Thankfully I don't need it to feed myself/my family. I could rant for a couple pages about this. Including how they are asking for 7 or 8 identify verification things, some of which don't even exist. Not to mention my social security card. Thankfully I've had plenty of time to request a new one. puta!
* I'm building a 10x12 make that 11x12 studio (using an awesome mobile app called Magic Plan that is very simple to use/learn!) that I can live in and rent out my main house. It's also a practice run/prototype for a 14x16 in the future. Some pics of work in process
* Working on some goals for 2024. Will post em here about Jan 1. One of them is "attend EREFest 24"
* Skillathon sounds awesome. Need to read the thread on that and think about it.
* Went to Peru. Swam in the Amazon, played with monkeys, had some intense ceremonies with the local shamans, saw Machu Picchu, ate killer ceviche at the coast. Great 2 weeks.
* Went to the beach, drank beer, ate shrimp, fish and lobster, maybe accidentally watched a gorgeous sunset with narcos.
* crushed some roasted vegetables
* It seems I'll be hosting my first EREFest visitor in early Jan!
* Finished reading How To Want What You Have - thanks to @theanimal and am currently reading Radical Simplicity. Great stuff.
* Joined a MMG - made 2 of 3 meetings so far!
* Answered "Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker" when asked for my favorite book of the year! Made "good book" jokes.

[AxelHeyst]

Whoa, epic update! Keep em coming. That studio looks great. Thanks for all the pics.

[grundomatic]

We read Radical Simplicity in our MMG book club. Let me know if you want to discuss it after you finish it.

[sodatrain]

If you enjoyed 180 degrees South, I'd encourage you to check out Mountain of Storms. This was the trip that inspired Jeff Johnson's journey and film. Still free on Youtube:

viewtopic.php?p=234446#p234446

Oh geez. @WRC - thank you. I really love 180 degrees south and Mountain of Storms felt like a warm hug almost. I love Doug and Yvon and seeing more of their stuff is always welcome! Thank you for the suggestion.

[sodatrain]

We read Radical Simplicity in our MMG book club. Let me know if you want to discuss it after you finish it.

I would! I'm done!

[sodatrain]

so.... one of my goals for 2024 was to make sausages. Skillathon credits?! Late last year I procured a refurbished sausage stuffer, and a meat grinder. Recently braved my way to the local market in Guatemala to find the meat I needed (my Spanish is basic, and the cuts of meats here are different - not to mention just hanging on a hook in the market. You cant walk in and buy a 'pork shoulder' and 'brisket')

I took the plunge the other day and spent the better part of a day cutting, grinding, mixing, stuffing, twisting, and cold smoking 10-ish lbs of pork and beef. I made bratwursts, some smoked bratwurst, and jalapeno cheddar (and some jalapeno cheddar with some honey) sausages. It was a rewarding process. The sausages turned out OK for my first time. It was quite a bit of work and I was tired after it all. Future batches should be easier and tastier. (My scale was giving me grief of when trying to measure single digits of grams of spices).

.Fresh off the smoker
.Final product

It was a satisfying project! I'll certainly do it again. I'm tracking the cost per lb of sausage making (with equipment, supplies etc) and also using this opportunity to use my smoker and track my cost of smoking meat per lb... haha is that like stacking functions but different? Double accounting?

[Western Red Cedar]

Oh geez. @WRC - thank you. I really love 180 degrees south and Mountain of Storms felt like a warm hug almost. I love Doug and Yvon and seeing more of their stuff is always welcome! Thank you for the suggestion.

Glad you enjoyed it. That whole thread is a field of rabbit holes waiting to entertain, educate, and inspire.

[Cam]

I was already going to comment just after seeing the photos of your sausages But then I scrolled up further and saw your plans for your studio.

1) Your sausages look more than OK. I just finished breakfast, and you made me hungry all over again.

2) Please keep the updates going on your studio - I'm very excited for you. I'm curious: are you DIYing completely or having contractors do some of the work for you? Or something else entirely?

[sodatrain]

Woof! Time for an update before 2024 passes by in total! Uff da!

Rapid fire updates:

* I've been trying to more explicitly define my values, goals, etc, to help track towards my longer term desires/goals more intentionally. Like a framework to help make decisions with.
* related, I'm working on a daily/weekly/monthly system to plan and review my days, stay more focused on what is important. I'm using it to track habits I want to introduce and turn into regular behaviors. I'm also using it sort of as a journal - one line per day. April 14 was the first day... so it's been almost a month. I'm not following it 100% of the time, but that's ok. It's been a good tool for me so far. Thought I'd use a moleskin or something similar... until when standing at Target I saw how inexpensive the "composition books" are. $25 vs $2. Also, there happen to be 30/31 rows per page, which is one day per row which was my goal for the monthly view. (Monthly view spans two pages. Each day spans both pages. Left page is for a reflection/comment on the day. The right hand side is to track habits I want to do more (eg sit on the floor for 20+ minutes, reviewing said notebook each morning/evening....) and for setting the top 3-5 things I should focus on that day.
* still using YNAB as an expense tracking system - largely because it will suck in all my transactions and allow me to 100% customize my expense categories. Still spending too much (too many transactions) to have confidence in myself to manually record all them.
* Started work again, 6-12 mo contract. Remote with a little travel. Happy to be getting a paycheck again after 8 months. Fantastic time, but didn't do good things for the net worth.
* I'm grateful for the ERE-sphere and all the changes I did make prior to getting laid off, so my expenses were much lower than they had been. That plus some of the decisions I've made over the last few years really helped making it thru 8 months of unemployment suck less.
* Been having some great chats with @Axel about a variety of topics including community building - related to the ERE City thread. Really appreciating his council and ideas on things. Also GTD, also relationships etc. Oh, I've upgraded my financial tracking stuff now and am working on a version of @AH's FU Stash model. I really like the 4 buckets system, the triggers they have (like " go earn some money you putz") and am now calculating my ttmCoL mas o menos. Looking forward to having more data. Hot damn, I even have some graphs now! I totally appreciate the sentiment that it's best to build your own tracking XLS that makes sense for your situation.
* ttmCoL - still too embarrassingly high to post here, at least for now. Good news is, if I exclude some "capital improvement" spending on my property, my ttmCoL is about half of what it is compared to when I started paying attention in Jan 2023!
* Speaking of the ERE City thread, when @theanimal said something about the land next to them being for sale, it stuck me in a funny way. In the back of of my brain... over a couple of months that kept growing while Guatemala started feeling a little risky to put all my eggs in one basket. So.. I'm in Alaska, asking a million questions of which @theanimal is graciously and wisely answering in the way he does... and I might end up being neighbors of @theanimal and family! It seems like a very friendly ERE sort of place to be with lots of great people who are unknowingly ERE adjacent. As long as you don't mind the cold, the darkness, the mosquitos and the remote nature of the place. Lots to be said about the things that seem really great about existence here. I may be rationalizing, but I'm optimistic that landing here could be a meaningful nudge/opportunity to up my WL a bit without too much struggle.
* Food. Yikes. I average about $900 a month for just me. My goal is $200 at restaurants and $300 for everything else ("grocery stores"). Coffee shops etc are restaurants. @AH suggested 30 day challenges. The idea being you can do lots of hard things for 30 days. And then after you do it once, it's easier to keep going. So May 1st I decided to have a $0 on beverages challenges for myself. I broke it last night with a cocktail ($18 in a social setting to better learn about / explore life in Alaska. No big deal to break it. Starting again today. May 9th. This time it's $0 on beverages and $0 on restaurants. So only food from grocery stores. I hated spending money at the airport on my flights up here. $10 for a BS shitty sandwich from the convenience store. I *love* food and eating, so it will be a little bit hard for me, but it will also not be hard. Just takes some planning. Also, my water consumption is way up! (Also tracking this in my notebook...)
* Lastly... I find myself the most focused and "productive" when I leave home and go to a coffee shop to "work" (personal or professional). Given my $0 challenge, I realized I couldn't go to the coffee shop, but a coffee and use the space. At least not strictly speaking. The local library is closed for construction. So I'm at the local University library, getting the quiet focused coffee shop experience, for $0. A simple/silly little example, but it feels good!

Thats enough for now...

[sodatrain]

I was already going to comment just after seeing the photos of your sausages But then I scrolled up further and saw your plans for your studio.

1) Your sausages look more than OK. I just finished breakfast, and you made me hungry all over again.

2) Please keep the updates going on your studio - I'm very excited for you. I'm curious: are you DIYing completely or having contractors do some of the work for you? Or something else entirely?

Thanks @Cam... feeling hungry at the moment too

2) The studio is on hold, mostly because I am trying to lay low and not trying to attract some attention while some craziness swirls around with the new mayor and rumors on increasing permits/taxes etc on foreigners for this sort of thing. Also I was sick with a couple nuisance colds the first part of the year and didn't make any progress. Hope to resume it at some point! To answer your question, after a back breaking day of digging in the ground with a pick axes on very rocky soil, I gave up on taking the opportunity to learn how to build a foundation Guatemala style. So I subbed out the footings/piers. I'll stick frame from there and finish the rest of it. Will be the biggest DIY project for my yet!

[sodatrain]

Feeling inspired to update my journal. Feeling like it's a little directionless.

I feel like I'm getting ready to level up on the Wheaton Scale. Or I'm finding myself more motivated to do so. Or maybe both. I'm not sure. I'm definitely spending more time on the forum - I think because I'm feeling motivated and that some of the WL5/6 concepts are starting to click more. I feel like I'm probably WL4 realistically, as I have a long way to go in reducing my expenses - can I really still be spending $6k a month (depending on what I include in that) and even consider being at WL4. It feels like I shouldn't. Some of those expenses are Child Support and other family/home improvement expenses that should resolve themself with time. I still have progress to make on reducing my spending, but I feel much more prepared to stop spending so much on good and services that I can DIY more. In a chat with @theanimal, he highlighted that the difference between where I am and where I want to be might be skills. The reality is that I've been relying on comparative advantage too much and have skills that I don't use as much as I could.

But! I'm set up to meet my Grocery Store budget ($300/mo) for the first time since setting that goal over a year ago. The first 4 months of the year I'm averaging $426.45 each month on groceries, and $339.65 on restaurants (food outside of grocery stores). This month I'll have spent $297.46 at grocery stores and $74.31 on restaurants. Average since Jan 2023 is $1044 / month on food. For just me. And that generally doesn't include buying dinner for other people. I split their portion of the bill into my "gifts" category. The month of May will conclude with total of $371.77 on food, which is a big improvement for me. And it wasn't hard. And it's inspired me to be more intentional about my menu planning and grocery shopping. Which will also benefit my health (hopefully reduce my obesity). After being gone from home for 6 weeks, I returned Sunday (today is Thursday) and have only spent $5 on some vegetables. I have otherwise been eating things from the pantry and freezer. It's surprising to see how much food I have stored away, but haven't historically seen as things to eat. Now I'll be spending down my pantry and freezer, adding what's necessary to make meals out of it. And can be more intentional/mindful about my food reserves.

I also think this is good timing and will the right nudge to be more vegetable centered in my diet.

I'm finishing a $0 on beverages and $0 on restaurants challenge (thanks to @AH for the suggestion of a monthly challenge) on June 9th. I started the $0 on beverages on May 1st but faltered on May 8th on a social outing. My partner did buy me tacos and a coke out the other day, but that was technically within the rules as she was buying me lunch.

I'm also very excited about buying land (haven't closed yet) in Fairbanks, Alaska. I feel like moving there, while will have an expense of it's own, will put me in a good spot to further my WL/ERE progress. Maybe that's unrealistic to hope for, but I see several things that should help.

- A community of people living in simple (no real plumbing/dry cabins, disconnected from the electric grid) tiny homes. I expect to build something 320-400 sq ft.
- seems like a good place to escape the rat race and be around other people that are not "keeping up with the Jones" mindset.
- people embrace seasonal / non year round / non full time work. Alaska has a law prohibiting billboards along (at least) the highways.
- a culture of people that embrace self sufficiency - lots of gardening, fishing/hunting, foraging, and preserving.
- trying to live the 'normie' suburban life there can be very expensive, so that is a nudge in the right direction. (The majority of my restaurants expense for May were $55 one night on a single cocktail for $18 and a [delicious] flatbread for $18 that I spent, as an example). @theanimal tells me that Fairbanks just doesn't have a strong restaurant/nightlife culture, so that helps too. Social gatherings tend to be pot lucks more than nights at the bar/disco. Fantastic.
- This "Alaska" plan relies on using/building skills a lot. I'll build the house myself. This will build on some basic skills I have, but require me to uplevel them for sure. Time to get serious about gardening. New skills. Same for fishing, hunting, and foraging. Time to get serious about permaculture and start with designing the site as it is right now - essentially raw land. I've been wanting to do this (grow and apply these specific skills) for a couple of years but life just hasn't let it happen.
- It's far away - good and bad. It should make it easier to reduce my travel expenses. A little harder/more expensive to jump on a plane to do something fun. Also, my desire to travel has been getting smaller the last couple years. Despite writing that just now, I'm heading to Europe soon for some family time. Which should be great, but also expensive. This will be my first big trip with my motivation levels high to keep spending in check.
- I'm starting to think more in WoG fashion. And I can see that coming together in Alaska. I'm getting ready to write that down and improve on it more. Optimizing the nodes, yields and flows. For example, I want to grow vegetables, and hunt meat, and then make sausages to feed myself as well sell some to make some money.
- I see a path to quitting my career based on reducing my expenses more, the end of child support, and submersing myself in this environment/culture more.

I'm excited and motivated to make Alaska happen and about what feels like making real progress on my ERE/WL. My amazing partner is also excited and motivated, which is kind of mind blowing. She's excited about Alaska AND shes jumping into the ERE space more. Ive been talking about it for a while with her but now she's more interested and motivated to as she sees a path to financial freedom and a better more interesting life too! We are able to be excited about spending less on food, being more intentional about spending etc together. She's catching on the ideas/philosophy quickly and will be with me at EREFest24!

[AxelHeyst]

This is exciting stuff sodatrain! Great update. Really looking forward to seeing you again and meeting your partner in September. Nice going with the $0 eating/drinking out challenge.

[sodatrain]

As I've mentioned, I'm buying ~2 acres in Fairbanks Alaska and will be neighbors with @theanimal and fam.

The land is essentially raw land. It has the start of a driveway and some (more than I'd like) bush hog clearing done. I intend to develop the land using permaculture principles and practices. I thought about doing this on a couple acres I used to own in Colorado, but that did not pan out. So I've been aware of permaculture for sometime, and have picked up on some of the basic ideas. I've never tried to implement them or even do the basic written down site designs.

I've wrestled with wanting to take the higher level concepts and just get down to business and "do permaculture". So far my level of sophistication is low but it feels like... be mindful of the property, observe how nature exists as much as possible thru a full year of seasons, and then build out the site in a way that incorporates zones of activity that are driven by proximity to the home (zone 0). Dig swales to catch water. Food forrests are rad and basically mean that you contemplate the 7 layers of a forest and recreate those layers (ground cover thru canopy) with edible/food producing plants. kugelkultur beds are apparently good. (but maybe not?) . There are 3 main permaculture ethics that are pretty simple and straight forward, yet debated a surprising amount. You can take a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) and somehow learn the high level concepts but also do hands on work. There are a few big names in the space - Sep Holzer, Geoff Lawton, Bill Mollison, Paul Stamets, Mr Wheaton himself. As I've mentioned other places on the forum, I'm still struggling with bridging the gap between the abstract and the practical/tactical. "yeah ok, but what about growing vegetables - where does that (best?) happen in permaculture context?" Neat and tidy raised beds in straight rows don't seem to fit. My reading/watching YT/asking has not given me a great answer. All the permaculture content seems to be high level and sort of vague, or done in a click-bait-y way that my basic level of understanding feels like it's not quite consistent with permaculture practices. I have this sense that people really want to sound like they are informed/educated on the subject, but that not many really people are and that leads to not a great answer about "how do I get the outputs of a home garden (annual vegetables and fruits) within a permaculture cotnext. But who know, maybe the question demonstrates my ignorance.

I'll start collecting resources and bits of information in a post (next post) - and editing that post as more are collected. And after I learn a bunch, I'll get started on the project and keep record of it here in my journal.

Current Wheaton Eco Scale Level: 2 at best.

[sodatrain]

My collection of permaculture resources. Starting out, this will be a collection of links that people have suggested and that I've found on my own. No guarantees on quality - just what strikes me as interesting or something I may want to revisit later. Hopefully consolidating them here can be helpful to others. Some of these are resources I've known over the last few years, some are newer finds.

**Please feel free to make suggestions! I'll probably add them to the list.

If you are asking...What is Permaculture?

Start Here - 4 Minute video explaining Permaculture from the guys that created it. What is Permaculture? By Bill Mollison, David Holmgren

Second Step - Essence of Permaculture (Free 35 page PDF) by David Holmgren (One of the fathers of Permaculture). It is a "Summary of permaculture concept and principles taken from Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainablity." (This book is linked below)

Other Resources:
Books:
- Gaia's garden (A guide to home-scale permaculture), by Toby Hemenway
- Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren
- Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening
- Introduction to Permaculture by Andrew Millison, Oregon State University [FREE eBook - ePub, PDF. Hint: DL links are under the picture to the right]
- The Earth Care Manual: A Permaculture Handbook for Britain and Other Temperate Climates by Patrick Whitefield
- RetroSuburbia by David Holmgren "Part manual and part Mainfesto" (How-to permaculture at home scale?)

Links/Blogs/Articles:
- Wikipedia page on Permaculture
- Massive collection of links, books, podcasts, and videos from Oregon State
- 6 Maps to Draw for Creating Your Own Permaculture Site Design
- 201-Understanding Regenerative Agriculture and Permaculture, with Dr. Jake Mowrer
- https://permies.com/

YouTube Videos/Channels/Podcasts:
- Geoff Lawton's YT Channel
- The Permaculture Principles
- Richard Perkins permaculture content. Lots of other good regenerative agraculture/farming content. He's one of my favorites.
- Curtis Stone's permaculture content. He is pretty prolific and goes broader than just permaculture, but I believe he's well respected.
- How to (build and) use an A frame to plot contour lines (for creating swales). Make contour lines 6 feet apart or so.
- David Holmgren: "Small and Slow Solutions - Permaculture Design" on Nate Hagens podcast The Great Simplification (Nate's podcast is great... check out his other episodes.

Forumites: (There are a few people on the forum with Permaculture knowledge... do you want to be mentioned here?)

I think Regenerative Agriculture, as an idea, should be mentioned. Maybe Regenerative Agriculture is the more hands on / practical application where permaculture is the systems thinking level? Perhaps for Farm Scale vs home/homestead scale. A lot of Regenerative Agriculture content talks about and uses permaculture concepts - like swales and Companion Planting. Kiss The Ground is a fantastic Regenerative Agriculture movie. I wish everyone would watch this! The Biggest Little Farm was more mainstream movie - moving and obviously with a big budget. Maybe Biggest Little Farm is 101 on Regenerative Agriculture (RA) and Kiss The Gound is the 201 level. Richard Perkins Regenerative Agriculture Book

[Western Red Cedar]

It sounds like you have a lot of cool projects going on. That's great!

But! I'm set up to meet my Grocery Store budget ($300/mo) for the first time since setting that goal over a year ago. The first 4 months of the year I'm averaging $426.45 each month on groceries, and $339.65 on restaurants (food outside of grocery stores). This month I'll have spent $297.46 at grocery stores and $74.31 on restaurants. Average since Jan 2023 is $1044 / month on food. For just me. And that generally doesn't include buying dinner for other people. I split their portion of the bill into my "gifts" category. The month of May will conclude with total of $371.77 on food, which is a big improvement for me. And it wasn't hard. And it's inspired me to be more intentional about my menu planning and grocery shopping. Which will also benefit my health (hopefully reduce my obesity). After being gone from home for 6 weeks, I returned Sunday (today is Thursday) and have only spent $5 on some vegetables. I have otherwise been eating things from the pantry and freezer. It's surprising to see how much food I have stored away, but haven't historically seen as things to eat. Now I'll be spending down my pantry and freezer, adding what's necessary to make meals out of it. And can be more intentional/mindful about my food reserves.

I also think this is good timing and will the right nudge to be more vegetable centered in my diet.

I'm finishing a $0 on beverages and $0 on restaurants challenge (thanks to @AH for the suggestion of a monthly challenge) on June 9th. I started the $0 on beverages on May 1st but faltered on May 8th on a social outing. My partner did buy me tacos and a coke out the other day, but that was technically within the rules as she was buying me lunch.

You mentioned a focus on health in another thread, and I think the nexus between health, nutrition, food costs, and quality of life are a natural way to approach and improve systems on a personal or household level. You've done a lot of the initial hard work by tracking costs and experimenting with a different lifestyle for a month.

Kicking the restaurant habit is the low-hanging fruit in your situation. I was in a similar position at one point because it was something my wife valued and a nice way to treat ourselves on the weekend. But, looking at the monthly and yearly costs can be a bit shocking. When you start to prioritize health and cutting costs restaurants are one of the easiest items to cut. At some point, eating out becomes disappointing because the meals you are cooking at home are better than what you get when eating out (and/or you start noticing how salty, sweet, or oily some of that food is).