Suburban Intro to Homesteading

Lifestyle update! Last night our family got to go out for a big pasta dinner to celebrate an anniversary. The only issue is that I've spent the last 5 or so months doing a low-no carb diet called Keto. Diets are lame so I've called it a lifestyle which is exactly what this post is about. Lifestyle choices allow your progress to be more like jumping over a chasm rather than "failing" on a diet and falling off the cliff. People have lots of reasons for choosing a nutrition plan and there are 10 times as many diets and plans out there as reasons to be on one. I found the Keto Diet and Intermittent Fasting in my search for a healthy way to operate in endurance sports. I have been hypoglycemic for as long as I can remember which to me meant I couldn't walk a disc golf course without needing a snack. Sugar ruled my life. For more than a decade I would intake more calories from Mountain Dew alone than I now consume in an entire day. No longer. I am thrilled that...

Recently I shared a post on Facebook about LeBron James describing the incredible personal achievements he has made on top of his career achievements. I don't know anything about basketball or the player that is LeBron James, but I live in Ohio so I certainly know of the guy. Heck, my wife even got to see him play in a tournament when they were both still in high school! But I was very impressed to read about how he has been a loyal husband, a good father, and basically a father figure to over 1,000 local youth by helping pay their way through college. It's incredible! The guy is a freaking great role model.   The post about LeBron got me thinking about role models and their importance in our culture today, especially in regards to who my children will look up to. I didn't really grow up paying much attention to any role models, except maybe Bob Saget because lets be real, Americas Funniest Videos was the amazing predecessor to YouTube. However, soc...

In honor of it being 1 year since I wrote my first blog post, I wanted to start focusing on it again. So here is a glimpse of the going-ons of my life right now. More writing coming soon. If fat is stored energy I would like to turn on that generator please. After reaching a couple of milestones in the fitness world I had to take a hard look at the progress I've made. That lead me down a road of admittance that I don't have a lot of self control. Wanna race? You betcha. Wanna eat a whole pan of brownies? Absolutely. Drink all these beers? I'm already 4 ahead. So what's the answer to burning fat? Is there only one? (Preview....Of course not! This is a post about the one I am trying though) It took quite a few years and an abundance of exposure but eventually the Ketosis diet/lifestyle peaked my interest. Mostly because of a fitness expert/adventurer/bio-hacking podcaster I listen to swears by it. The big issue is that everyone says it's hard. Of course its har...

Chickens!! Our family is very excited that getting a half dozen chickens is becoming less of a fantasy and more of a possibility in the near-er future! Most of my spare time has been spent watching YouTube videos on how to raise backyard chickens so that we can be as prepared as possible. This will be one of the first major steps towards my Blogs original goal of introducing our family to Suburban Homesteading. So far we have done a couple minor things like getting a handle on Brewing Kombucha, I'm able to brew 2 gallons of yummy goodness every 8-10 days. Like so many Americans, I grew up in a normal suburb with fences, cats and dogs, and a lot of lawnmowers. No one had anything more exotic or farm-like than an occasional pet snake or a gerbil. It wasn't until adulthood that I developed an interest in having pet chickens. "What? Pet chickens!? You cant have food for a pet." That's my voice up until I was about 27. Lots of things have walked me down the p...

Faith over Worry. It has been my experience in life, that "God only gives us one obstacle we cant overcome, and we will die from it." At first this seems a bit dark, or dim. However, this quote almost entirely encapsulates my faith in God. I was raised in a Christian Church doing all the weird ritual things that might give you heebie jeebies like chanting along with people in robes, singing off key in unison, Christian rappers, drinking wine that everyone insists is blood (which is just so so weird to a child, lets be honest). *me looking toward the sky* I mean come on God, drinking blood? Super weird. But despite constantly being surrounded with things that feel weird and awkward in the modern world of Christianity or any religion for that matter, one thing has always stayed steadfast in my heart and mind and that was God working things out.  Maybe not how I thought it would get worked out, but it happened anyway. I could write a book ...

Getting back to my homesteading interests, I want to talk about my new favorite hobby, Kombucha Brewing and my motivations for it's consumption. First off, what is Kombucha? It's fermented tea that you can flavor almost any way you can imagine. It's also carbonated, which is a huge plus for those trying to kick soda habits, or just generally get tired of only drinking water all the time. I am about to finish up my third batch of Kombucha and I'm super excited about it. So far I've had Mango Ginger, Blueberry, and Cherry Cream Soda flavors, Those might sound pretty involved but for some perspective, in all of my batches the only ingredients I've used are Water, Sugar, Tea, SCOBY, Mango, Ginger, Blueberries, Cherries, Vanilla Bean, and Honey. About as natural as it can get. Wait, what was the weird word in the middle there? SCOBY. That sounds weird. It is weird! HaHa. It stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, which is a really long acronym ...

"Ok, we now recognize that kneeling for the national anthem is for social injustice and not intending to insult the military, but now what? come up with a solution right now and stop complaining because we still think your insulting the military, so come up with a solution right now because your making us angry complaining about social injustice"                  -Everyone who is smart enough to kind of get it, but expects everyone to live exactly how they do. Yesterday I wrote out a post outlining an experience I had with police officers where I feel I could draw a different outcome if my skin had been a different color. Would that outcome be different every time? Is every police officer a racist, mean, hateful, bigot? No. I believe that statistically there is a higher risk for violence if a black man had been in my shoes even without thinking that the majority of officers are bad. The...

I'm still alive. Without trying to sound overly dramatic, I want to write about why I believe in and support the current protests going on in America. We have for a time now seen NFL players taking a knee, or sitting on the bench during the National Anthem. So here is a story from my life, and some thoughts. I'm still alive, and it's because I'm white. My family and a few close friends and colleagues know this story, but it wasn't until recently that the entire event has really taken a deeper meaning with me. Before my wife was pregnant I spent some time basically wasting life away as an Uber driver trying to avoid the daily 9-5 grind. What I found was that to make money, I had to drive drunk people home at night. About this time, there were surfacing stories about people attacking their Uber drivers. Well, I'm a little dude with little muscles. And at the time, didn't have the money to get a CCW license to carry a firearm. So I did what I thought was ...

I want to take a couple minutes to celebrate my wife today on her birthday. Opposites attract is pretty much the foundational building blocks of our relationship, and I have been very blessed to learn so much about life from my perfect opposite. We are very excited to go out and celebrate her birthday together, just the two of us. Which is mind blowing to me. I can't even dream of not going out with 15 people and having heck big party with tons of attention. But that's why Lindsey is so perfect in my eyes. She asked that we go out to her favorite spot, just the two of us for an evening. Elegant, simple, independent. Three characteristics that I love about her so much and want to celebrate. Lindsey knows exactly how to be elegant. She can hold herself with class, knows how to put together clothes, makeup and jewelry in just a way where it isn't flashyn but when you look a little closer she is perfectly put together. Simple. Simple might sound negative at first, but with...

Last week I shared an article on Facebook that talked about how the FDA has approved butchering chickens here in the US, shipping them to China to be processed, and sending them back to be sold here. I also mentioned that a grocery store was selling eggs for 88 cents per 18 eggs and how I think that equates too getting a really terrible product. You get what you pay for essentially, and if a factory can produce eggs for literally less than a dime a piece, maybe you might as well just pass. Some friends brought it to my attention that it can be difficult to eat quality food on a budget, which I have experienced. Trust me, I'm a baller on a budget. I truly love good food with every ounce of my being, and yet, I work a high school diploma level job and my wife and I are raising a baby. We don't have Jay Z money. For real. So I thought I would do the math, including an embarrassing phone call asking for some conversion help, to see what a quality and deliscious breakfast act...

Everyone knows the phrase "Space, the final frontier". Because you know, Star Trek is awesome. Who doesn't love Yoda and the Jabarwakis?? Exactly. But let's be real here and look at this differently. I don't think Space is the final frontier. It's time. Our futures. The only thing we have left to explore is everything. Nothing exists 5 seconds from now, it only exists now and in the past. Our futures are the final frontier. Ok, put to doobie down and lets get to work. Anyone who knows me in the realm of fitness knows that I talk about the five year change. Anything can happen in 5 years. Lets be honest, 5 years are going to come and go. in fact, 10 years are going to come and go, but that's a little harder to wrap your head around. So for context, lets stick with 5 years. Right now, you could decide that your done with your desk job, your tired of being single, your ready to have a family, and your ready to become healthy. In 5 years you...

If you ask for something, it will be given to you. Of course, it wont necessarily be what your expecting. All day I've been looking for something to write about that matters. I feel like my blogs have been pretty running focused, but that's only a part of me and honestly, not even my favorite part. One of my favorite things is to sit and talk with people about unmentionables. Unmentionables? You know what they are. Religion and Politics. 30 people just stopped reading and closed out of the blog. Ha-ha. That's ok. Kind of. But it's time they talk about them anyways, and Juan Vasquez is my case and point. Who the heck is Juan Vasquez? Juan was the answer I was looking for today as I was scrolling through a popular time wasting website. Juan was an LA gangster. He did gangster things.  However, the story didn't end there. Juan had a baby, and a familiar story emerged. His "I don't care to die" mentality turned into "My kids are more important tha...

"Some things cannot be learned until it is time to lean them". After an extended absence from church, I have learned a lot about my personal relationship with God. I have also learned a lot about religion. Most importantly is that these are different things. But I have learned my biggest lesson from my 4 month old son just the other day. It was an amazing Aha moment that left me feeling like God was sitting next to us. There are many different ways to think about God, some see him as a Him, some as an Almighty Smiter, maybe as a Brother, as the Earth itself, or possibly even just an Ancient sense of Awe and Wonder. The most common way I've been taught about God is as a Father. So it's no wonder this lesson has been lost on me for the better part of 29 years. I've never had the opportunity to be a Father before! Humans struggle to understand people of different political views, people on the other side of a battlefield, people of different socio-econom...