Michael Bunker's Blog: From Michael Bunker

The age of social media, as should have been expected, has become the age of defamation. In times past, a gossip or low-life tale-bearer had to go house to house in order to harm an enemy. It might have been gratifying for the defamer of old to look into the face of a witless dupe as they succumbed to the lower angels of the human nature, reveling in the poison of personal destruction, but it was still a lot of work with relatively little or no reward. Now, instant communications and access to platforms accessed by millions in real time has given sociopaths, liars, and vengeance minded defects the ability to commit the ultimate crime with both impunity and a startling level of success. Add to this the willingness of most people in this morally darkened age, to not just revel in damaging gossip, but to weaponize it against political and social enemies, it becomes easy for honest people to see that we are in very perilous times.

Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person’s reputation; decreases the respect, regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against a person.

Defamation may be a criminal or civil charge. It encompasses both written statements, known as libel, and spoken statements, called slander.

West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Defamation has always been a difficult law to access for those attacked by a defamer. It is one of the few areas of law where (often — not always, but often) the burden of proof lies with the victim (by “victim” here I mean the one being falsely accused, or accused without evidence or presumption of innocence.) In most cases, the victim has to try to establish a few things that are quite difficult to prove. Things like actual malice (that the accuser is making the accusation, or making a false statement, on purpose to harm the victim,) and that the harmful defamation is actually costing the victim something tangible (social contacts, respect, financial harm, etc.) It is also virtually impossible for a high public figure (for example: the President or someone in public office,) to ever take advantage of defamation laws.

So, two realities have come together to make this time period the Age of Defamation: 1. The ease with which mentally unbalanced people can spread lies in order to harm their perceived enemies. 2. The difficulty victims have in stopping it. This second point is a double-edged sword though. Precisely because defamation is historically difficult to prove and easy to commit, many modern defamers have gotten lazy. They’ve moved from the area of “defamation per quod,” to “defamation per se.” Which means they are making harmful statements without any regard to the truth, but also without any regard to an area where the law sides absolutely with the victims.

In some cases, called “defamation per se,” the victim does not have to jump through hoops in order to prove actual malice and so forth. When an attack is prima facie (on it’s face) defamatory, the victim does not have the burden of proof. For example, if you say Bob of Bob’s Magnificent Spectacular Burgers puts poison in his burgers, this is “defamation per se.” Bob doesn’t have to prove that he doesn’t. The accuser would have to prove that he does. If you say someone in their business is committing a crime or some immoral act, that is “defamation per se,” and it is much easier for a victim to get justice in such cases. Generally, “defamation per se” falls into the following categories:

Indications that a person was involved in criminal activity
Indications that a person had a “loathsome,” contagious or infectious disease
Indications that a person was unchaste or engaged in sexual misconduct
Indications that a person was involved in behavior incompatible with the proper conduct of his business, trade or profession

FindLaw.com

That is, of course, if you rely on the courts. For some people, most notably those few true Christians out there, the carnal courts are usually not a place where we’d like to see justice served (1 Cor. 6:1-8.) 

Why call defamation “the ultimate crime?” Because that’s how the Bible represents it.

In the Bible, a specific instance of defamation is instanced as the only unforgivable sin. That should tell you what God thinks about the “parent category” of defamation.

And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. (Mat 12:32)

I’ll note a few things in this passage. First, see that the crime against the Holy Spirit is to “speaketh against” Him, which, of course, is to speak lies or untruths against Him. As you will see in the definition of defamation I’ve given above, this is what defamation is: speaking lies or harmful untruths against a person in order to damage them or their cause. In this case, this defamation is also considered blasphemy. Second, you’ll notice that it is mentioned that (to those who are forgiven, and only to them,) speaking defamation against the Son of man (Christ,) will be forgiven. That Jesus says it will be forgiven, illustrates what a serious crime it is. This is to say, “EVEN the unspeakable, unconscionable crime of defaming Christ will be forgiven eventual converts,” but, defaming the Holy Ghost will not be forgiven them. Will murders be forgiven? Yes. Will thefts be forgiven? Yes. But this one category of defamation will not be forgiven. This illustrates plainly that defamation is the highest sin, and that every case of it is a very serious offense. Worse than murder. Some will say, “Well, yeah, but that is talking about defaming God, not defaming people,” but Jesus Himself said that what is done unto the least of these, His brethren, is done unto Him (Mat. 25:40.) Defamers in their self-deception will say “I’m not defaming, I’m telling the truth.” Well, you better be right, and the context of most deluded “truth tellers” condemns them as liars in that case too.

I’ve always said that you can always tell who is right in any disputation. The side going public in a personal way, slinging mud, anonymously spreading accusations, hysterically seeking to gain adherents, is almost always the guilty party. And in the area of Christian discourse, the attacker is self-evidently not a Christian person. Christians rely on Christ to defend them.

Defamation is worse than murder.  You may say, “I’d rather be defamed, than murdered,” and perhaps that is true of you, but our personal preferences don’t effect the severity and effects of a crime. Christian’s do not see this life as an end in itself. It is a means. Their testimony here is more important than their carnal lives. Murder just kills the body. The reputation, love, care, affection, and respect for the victims of murder remains in the minds and hearts of honest people. Even people that did not know the victim well can harbor positive thoughts and memories of someone who is murdered. Positive affection and opinions means that the murdered person’s testimony remains intact. The good they did or believed in their lives remains untarnished. It stands against the darkened testimony of a darkened age as a rebuke against evil and a bulwark to good. “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.” (1Ti 5:24-25)

But what if that person isn’t physically murdered, but is defamed (socially, or reputationally murdered?) As I mentioned earlier, defamation is now easier and more rewarding than ever before. Well, their life testimony is attacked as well. Anonymous parasites can ruin lives, relationships, careers, etc. with merely an accusation. #MeToo, which started as real victims, in their own real names, making real accusations with real evidence, has morphed into a means by very low people to harm anyone they wish without any repercussions.  Defamation has just become another tool in the toolbox of evil people who seek more than anything else in the world to harm others. Even those few sociopaths who are willing to defame under their own name see little to stop them in the age of attack blogs and twitter rage. Books freely available on Amazon teach people how to defame others in order to ruin lives. Liars can surround themselves with gossip whores and bottom dwelling garbage, and not lose any sleep over what they are doing. They can even build a platform of dupes and gossip lovers who are looking to see lives and reputations destroyed. Dogs don’t have conscience problems, so the ball keeps rolling downhill. Worse, low-life scumbags can now set up camp on the Internet, digitally harass, stalk, and verbally and socially murder whomever they want to harm, with little fear of any repercussions. Want to make sure everyone imbibes your poison? Easy. Create a fake Facebook account, farm your victim’s friend’s list, then private message links and lies at will. And what is the result of this crime? It is not just social and reputational murder. It is self-murder. They just don’t kill the person, they kill any good their victim ever did. They kill that person’s testimony, which is the work of their lives. But they also kill themselves. They evidence themselves as bereft of any humanity, but also as without any spiritually regenerated life.

Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn’t allow for gossip in any form, even if the accuser thinks himself to be in the right. The true believer knows that there is a system in place to redress grievances, and that even if he feels like he has been denied justice in the official forum for such things, he has an Advocate in the heavens who will surely make things right. Since gossips and liars are self-evidently unbelievers, even if they claim to be believers, they will next convince themselves that they are spreading their hate in order to protect others. This is almost never true, and can certainly be deemed false if the defamer is using unauthorized methods, anonymity, lies, and such to harm their victims. These folks can be dismissed out of hand.

A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief friends.
(Pro 16:28) (John Gill Commentary: “one that goes from place to place, from house to house, carrying tales, whispering into the ears of persons things prejudicial to the characters of others, mere lies and falsehoods”)

Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD. (Lev 19:16) (You’ll note that the gossip is pictured as one actively moving against another – going up and down. This is the same terminology used for Cain, and for Satan himself, the accuser of the brethren, who is said to go up and down in the earth, seeking whom he may devour.)

He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets: therefore meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips. (Pro 20:19) (John Gill notes that telling such secrets (even more so false secrets) is a violation of Christianity and the Law of Moses: “a man that has really got the secrets of others out of them respecting themselves and families, and the affairs of them, or however pretends he master of them; goes about telling his tales from house to house, to the great prejudice of those whose secrets he is entrusted with, or pretends to be; and to the great prejudice of those to whom he tells them, as well as to his own; this is contrary to the law of Moses, and the rules of Christianity”)

The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. (Pro 18:8) (John Gill: “they are wounds; they wound the credit and reputation of the person of whom the tale is told; they wound the person to whom it is told, and destroy his love and affection to his friend; and in the issue they wound, hurt, and ruin the talebearer himself.”)

We live in the age of defamation. It will only get worse. People ask me all the time why I have not publicly defended myself against public defamation, even though it is both lawful and biblical in some cases to defend oneself against the false claims of evident unbelievers. I have not done so because I believe my testimony of faithful reliance on Christ as my ultimate defense has been a stronger message than to do otherwise. Even in the face of “defamation per se” I have chosen, rather, to remain silent and to let my God defend me. “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” (Mat 5:11-12)

I’ve chosen to be blessed by God, even if it means I am cursed by wolves.

As defamation takes over the headlines, destroys entire venues of discourse, and becomes the de facto tool of the reprobate in this age, perhaps we are better served, as the Bible says, to practice intently blocking our ears and hearts from the preferred poison of the day.

These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.
(John 15:17-21)

Michael Bunker

You like my stories right? Chet isn’t in this one.

Since we’ve been having power issues, a nice lady in Montana bought us a generator. She ordered it online through Home Depot to be picked up at our local Brownwood, Tx store. We were informed that they did not have it in stock and it would take a week or more to get it. I knew this was going to be a disaster. Just knew it. Home Depot is a disappointment mill. The generator she ordered is the Ryobi 3,600 watt model. Great reviews. So we get a message on Wednesday that the unit is at the store in Brownwood.

I can’t go because I’m expecting company, so Danielle and Sarah go to pick it up (I might get to the sexism part of this story in a follow-up.) It’s a 30-45 minute drive. Each way. They go and when they get there, they discover they can’t lift the unit. It’s too heavy. The store sends some clerks to go put it in the car. It won’t fit in the trunk (but would have fit perfectly in the back seat,) but as they are lifting it one of the guys lifts it by the straps and it drops.

THEY DROPPED THE GENERATOR.

May not have mattered, since the box was already shredded. They end up unboxing it since according to my daugher, “the box was in bad shape before they tried to load it, then they dropped it.”

So, Danielle gets it home. I follow the instructions. Add oil, gas, etc. Try to pull start it and it sounds like straight metal on metal. Really bad. You never want to hear that. I hope maybe it’s just that the oil hasn’t gotten around to all the parts yet, so I let it sit and move it around a little. A half hour later I try to pull start it – same metal on metal shriek, but this time it starts and makes a hell of a racket. Black smoke. I stop it immediately and load it back in the car. Danielle can’t get to town on Thursday because she has to work.

Again, I can’t go to town because today is the day I bake bread for the Farmer’s Market tomorrow. So, Danielle takes the generator in to Home Depot today. First story: They don’t know if Ryobi can get any more and it may be discontinued. * But, it’s still on their online store… right now* Can’t tell us how long it will be (they don’t even try to contact Ryobi.) They say, “Maybe YOU can contact them and find out.” Like it’s our job. Then they scare Danielle by telling her that since it was a debit card, they’d have to have the debit card in hand to do a credit or a swap. So this is their first gambit. Basically, NOTHING CAN BE DONE.

(Remember, we bought the three year extended warranty.)

The debit card is IN MONTANA, like we told you. Then they offer the Briggs and Stratton 3,500 watt since they have it in stock. Not even close to the quality. Classic bait and switch. My wife is in tears. We’re on the phone. I say “No, I want the Ryobi. We got the extended warranty, just tell them to fix it.” Now the manager says “We’ll have a tech look at it to see if he can fix it. It’ll be a warrantied repair.” He goes and whispers to the tech. Tech looks at it. “Can’t be fixed” he says after 1 minute. So they’re back pushing the Briggs an Stratton on us, even though there are Ryobi models in nearby stores. Or there were a few days ago. They don’t even try.

So, Danielle, worn down, finally gives in to the scam and agrees to the B&S. (I don’t believe they would have pulled this with a man.) They say, “Sorry, the Montana lady used a debit card. We have to charge back the old one, and then recharge the new one.” Their whole vibe is “this is your problem, not ours.”

Ahh, too bad, she’s at the doctor, you’ll have to wait an hour until we can get hold of her and get her debit card to do the new charge (acting like it will be solved that easily.) Danielle spends an hour in town waiting. They finally get hold of her. “Sorry, we can’t complete the transaction yet because our refund hasn’t reached her card. It’ll be Monday before we can finish the transaction.” Go away. We’ll half-ass this later. We have to wait to Monday to get a sub-par generator with lower wattage and worse reviews. They never even talked to Ryobi and never called any nearby stores to try to make it right. They really don’t even care. Oh, but I got an autobot robotweet from their Twitter account asking me to dial into their 1-800 disappointment sweat shop, probably in India, where I’m absolutely positive someone is going to say “What can I do to make this right?”

This is why Amazon is winning.

Michael Bunker

A Great Opportunity to Touch the Past

We have the opportunity to buy, repair, and put into use an awesome tool we can use to work toward our independent farm goals. Remember, our overall goal is to build a traditional farm that YOU can come visit – to learn the old ways. And if not you, then someone who can. Sometimes moving forward means using one hand to push off from the dock. I talk about this reality in my book Surviving Off Off-Grid. The basic premise is that anyone who can afford to jump completely and totally off-the-grid all at once, probably doesn’t want to do it. And those of us who really desire to learn the old paths and use the old ways, we have to “work our way backward.”

The truthful irony is, we can use a special machine to help us move back to the pre-machine days.

Most of the industrial revolution involved the commercial/industrial system working toward getting the independent farmer and his family OFF the farm. Generally farmers were not encouraged to work small acreages, to save seed, or to work towards independence from the commercial system. There were a few exceptions, where farmer driven solutions did the exact opposite of what big agriculture wanted to do. The Allis Chalmers All-Crop was one of those machines. This combine (the first iteration was built in the mid-1930s and the machine was manufactured into the 1960s. The goal of the All-Crop was to keep small farmers on their land, to make them more productive, to teach them (and help them) save their own seed, and to allow the farmer to use one machine for almost every crop. At the same time, the Amish and other “plain” groups liked the All-Crop because it was PTO (power take off) driven and could be powered with horses or a small generator (or a stationary tractor,) with the crop (sheaves) brought to the thresher. The machine could be hauled by horses and that made it a good deal for old-school and more modern small farmers.

Long story short, we’ve located an old All-Crop combine. One of the great things about the All-Crop is that people who love the machine have become something of enthusiasts. Parts are still available, used and new, and there are people who go to yearly festivals honoring the machine. Anyway, the machine we’ve found, and arranged to buy, is in tremendous shape for as old as it is. It needs some repair, and we intend to repair it and get it back in top shape. We have agreed on a price, and have located the place to buy parts. All we need now is the money to purchase the machine. Right now (immediately) we’re hoping to raise around $1200 to purchase the machine and get it running before spring (barley) and summer (wheat and bean) harvest season. We think that amount should get it done. If you can help with a donation right now, please do. And we appreciate your continued support.

Donate!Watch a video of the type of machine we’re getting: https://youtu.be/heCt-3t3i2E

Donate!Michael Bunker

Few foods combine the attributes of being healthy, being easy to produce, and being naturally harmonious with an independent lifestyle. Chicken Bone Broth in particular is one of the few foods that truly can be called a “Superfood” (I know that word is overused, and usually erroneous, but in this case it is not.) Bone broth is easy to make, utilizes parts (bones) usually cast aside or sold as a post-industrial commodity in most industrial/consumer/commercial applications, and is one of the few products where the by-product of the main food source is actually healthier than the main food source.

The concept of Bone Broth is simple. It is the broth made from boiling the bones of an animal (fish, fowl, land based mammal… basically any vertebrate) in water until all the good stuff, vitamins, minerals, calcium, and other goodies, including the gold – amino acids called proline and glycine – comes out into the broth. Many people add vegetables and herbs to their bone broth, but in this article we will be focusing on pure bone broth. From there you can add whatever you like.

Proline and Glycine are the gold in them thar bones.

The whole broth is fantastic, and if made right it is one of the tastiest liquid meals you’ll ever have, but proline and glycine are the magical ingredients. These two amino acids are key components, participating in the health and strength of human connective tissue. Think of it like this… everything that holds “stuff’ together inside you, sinew, cartilage, tissue, as well as the support material for organs, blood vessels, muscles, arteries, skin, etc., needs proline and glycine. These two amino acids are necessary to the right function of the body, and though your body is capable of making it’s own if it needs to, it goes without saying that human bodies that are compromised in many of the critical health functions are probably not producing proline and glycine efficiently or in sufficient quantities to do the daily rebuilding that is necessary for maintaining good health.

Books can be written on the benefits of bone broth, and in particular the benefit to the body of consuming readily available amounts of proline and glycine. And if you’ve read stuff from me for long enough, you know that I believe that inflammation is probably the central cause of almost all diseases. Maybe all of them. Proline and glycine assist our body in healing, including decreasing inflammation, and high levels of glycine are important for managing gut flora and in limiting infection from inflammation in the gut and intestines.

As I said in my bestselling book Surviving Off Off-Grid, I believe that chickens are probably the most essential animal element to a successful off-grid, sustainable homestead.

We keep chickens on our off-grid homestead, and so should you. As I said in my bestselling book Surviving Off Off-Grid, I believe that chickens are probably the most essential producing element to a successful off-grid, sustainable homestead. And when you have chickens, especially if you hatch out your own eggs, you will have excess roosters. It’s part of the deal.

Excess roosters are culled into the homestead food system, and in whatever way they are cooked or prepared, inevitably you will be  left with the carcasses… the bones.

Step One:

Prepare your chicken. However you want. Bake it, boil it, pressure cook it, or just cut off all the meat. That’s what we often do. We like to move fast, so we butcher quickly by skinning the birds instead of plucking them, then gutting them and after washing the bird, we cut off all the meat to be canned separately.

However you do it, keep the carcass (the bones.) With most large vertebrates, you’ll want to cut open the bones so you get more of the goodies out, but with birds or fish, and even with rabbits, you don’t need to do this. Once you have a fairly clean carcass, then just toss the bones into a pot. There will always be some meat left on the bones, so don’t sweat it. This will add more taste to your broth, and eventually you’ll reclaim all of those meaty bits. My wife gathers them from the broth after the boil and cans them separately as a soup starter. You’ll need a pot big enough to cover the bones with water, and if you have a big enough pot, perhaps you can boil 3-4 carcasses at once.

Step Two:

Turn the bones on to boil. Add 2-3 tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar to the water. This will aid in leeching out more nutrients and goodness from the bones. You’ll want it to cook for a good long time. For the first few hours, some scum will rise to the top, you can just spoon this off and throw it away. Later fat and goodies will rise, but don’t get rid of them. You can skim the fat and can it separately, or just leave it in your broth. My wife boils the bones for 8-12 hours, then covers and let’s the whole thing steep overnight.

Step Three:

Let everything cool down, then remove the bones. Depending on how long you cooked them, the bones can be edible. Some people cook them for up to 48 hours, at which time the bones are very soft and chewable and are said to provide a lot of nutrients and beneficial calcium, etc. If you don’t want to do that, then you can throw the bones away at this point, or add them to your compost pile. You can strain the broth into sanitized jars if you want a totally clean broth. You’ll still probably have some fat in there though. My wife scoops out all the meaty bits and fills pint jars and then cans that meat separately as a good soup starter. She then puts all the broth into pint jars, which means she ends up with a yield of three distinct products from the butchering: straight meat in jars, meaty bits for soup starter in jars, and chicken bone broth in jars. She then goes through the canning process for long-term preservation of the brine. But if you are going to consume it all fairly quickly, then just pour the boiling broth into jars. The boiling will sterilize the inside of the jars. Once you have lids on tightly, turn the jars upside down for five minutes to sterilize the lids.

Step Four:

When you’re hungry, heat up a jar of broth and drink it like coffee. If you didn’t season the broth on the front end, you’ll want to season it now. Salt, pepper, garlic salt, or any herbs you want to add will make the broth delicious. The amino acids, collagen, and other good things are there, but the taste itself will convince you to add bone broth to your routine.

Survival and Preparedness Angle

Not just homesteaders, but all survivalists and preppers, should get in the habit of making bone broth from any and all creatures killed for food. Only dumb campers and posers would ignore the value in utilizing a “waste product” that provides more energy, healthy nutrients and minerals, and well-being than the meat itself does. In a grid-down situation, every calorie, every beneficial nutrient, can be critical, and if the outage lasts long enough, or becomes permanent, knowledge of these primitive survival skills can mean life and death. In Soviet Russia, any animal killed for food also had the bones harvested for broth. Poor Russians boiled potatoes, drinking only the broth, for weeks in order to get the most out of their food, can you imagine how highly prized bone broth was?

Enjoy and Survive!

Michael Bunker

 

 

 

The solar oven is one of the best tools we own. Not one of the best “survival/preparedness” tools, but one of the best tools period. So it makes sense that one of the best and healthiest homesteading food products, the sweet potato, would match well with the solar oven.

This year we planted a half-acre in sweet potatoes, and got a pretty good crop, so sweet taters are on the menu. Sweet potatoes are one of the very few complete foods in the world, meaning you could survive indefinitely (and be well) on just sweet potatoes. The delicious tuber is chock full of vitamins and minerals, along with beta carotene, and provides 100% of the necessary nutrition for human survival.

We clean the taters and dry them, then poke them through a few times with a fork. Rub the skins with sea salt, or butter and sea salt, then either wrap them in foil, or put them in a pan to bake. If you feel like mashed sweet taters, go ahead and cut them up first and peel them if you like. Totally up to you.

How long your taters need to cook is going to be completely subject to the conditions and the size of the potatoes. If you have good direct sun and the temperature can get to 375 degrees or hotter, then they should only take an hour or two (depending on the size of the sweet potatoes.) If you can only get the oven to a bit over 300, it may take 4-5 hours. The lower the temperature and the bigger the tubers, the longer the cooking will take. Today it is the middle of December, and we still had enough good sunlight to bake up a mess of sweet potatoes. I also made butter today, so sounds like a match made in heaven!

When the sweet potatoes are soft to the squeeze, they are ready. Add butter and go to town, or if you like them sweeter, a touch of brown sugar or honey and maybe some cinnamon will make them perfect!

Don’t forget to eat the skins too. The skins are where some of the healthiest elements reside, and since you grew them, you know the skins aren’t steeped in pesticides and chemicals the big companies spray on them to keep them from sprouting. If you didn’t grow them, look around for a local grower. New real food places are popping up everywhere, so keep your eyes open. Here’s a hint, if the sweet taters are really cheap (less than a buck) at your grocery store, they are either last year’s crop, or they are heavily industrially raised – in which case you may not want to eat the skins, if you choose to eat the taters.

Every homesteader or off-grid farmer should at least try to grow sweet potatoes. They will grow just about everywhere, do great in the heat of the deep south, and you really cannot find a better, more store-able survival food. Stay tuned here because soon I will be posting my Sweet Potato Planting and Growing guide!

Michael Bunker

I made a video for you! This is making sauerkraut the old school way, with the philosophy behind fermentation rather than a focus on ingredients and recipes.

 

This whole thing is a metaphor. It still works and is true the way it’s written, but sometimes I’m too subtle so… this whole thing is a metaphor.

We live completely off-grid on an off-grid farm in Central Texas. The grid really doesn’t have much to do with my topic today, living disconnected from it just explains a lot of the context, but I thought I’d head off some of the inevitable questions.  At our old farm out in West Texas we were still living on-grid, and for a good part of that time we worked regular “town” jobs and we had a little money to spend on things like a nice driveway and… you know… planting and watering grass.

We don’t grow grass now. If it grows it grows, and if it grows, great! If it grows tall it becomes animal food.

The point is that when you live like we do, particularly when you first start out, you deal with mud. You deal with mud A LOT.  Even out here in the semi-arid desert. If it rains, there is mud. And not the kind of mud you might be used to. Ours is the perfect clay for making pottery or plates.  It is the kind of clay that when wet, sticks hard to everything and won’t let go.  That kind of mud.

When you first get started in this kind of endeavor, you are one of two kinds of family:  You either have money or you don’t.  We didn’t.  You can throw money at your problems, or you can take the long, slow, muddy road of grinding it out.

The thing is, if you move to a rural farm and just throw money at all your obstacles, the chances are that you won’t have learned how to really live that way.

You won’t have built up hard-earned skills and experience that gives you the confidence to know that you could do it again if you needed to. Anywhere. Anytime. That’s the thing of it. The hard way kind of sucks at times, but it is the way you learn… and teach others… how to survive.

When we moved to our acreage in the sticks, there wasn’t even a real road through the property. There was a dirt drive coming in for a bit, maybe a hundred feet or so, then it ended and the rest of the acreage was just wild.  No roads. Few fences.  There were a couple fields that had been cleared back in the 30’s or 40’s but hadn’t been used much in the last 20 years or more. And part of our deal with the seller was that they had to bring in a bulldozer and cut a road through the whole property. And that’s what they did. They just bulldozed trees and obstacles and pushed them off to the side. The road was basically made from driving the clearing.  And it was clay, which is great when it doesn’t rain.  Not so much after 5 inches of downpour in a couple of days.

If we’d had money we could have paved it or graveled it. We could have ordered in road base and crowned it so the water would run off. We could have put in water ditches and culverts to direct the water when it rains. We could have immediately put up fences and planted grass and maybe we could have built a nice, comfortable home.

Instead, we did none of that. We started in a tent.  Then we moved to a camper. Then we moved to a 12′ x 16′ box with two tiny windows on the wrong ends of it so it never cooled down in the summer. And we painted it a very dark barn red, which is actually how you would make a solar oven if you ever want to try that in Central Texas.

I don’t recommend it. Of course, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we were glad to be doing it.

The first 6 years were fun, exciting, educational, miserable, and completely horrific sometimes. We didn’t know if we’d make it.  I remember the first time we found a nearby flowing stream that was deep enough to swim in. That was in the first year. It was summer and it was nearly 105 degrees every day. After about 2 p.m. every day we’d just sit under a tree and swelter. It was pure-on misery. And it rarely cooled down much at night. The mosquitoes would descend like we were in the jungle. We’d bought a membership at the State Park a dozen miles away and we’d go there to fill our water containers every day or so. I was driving home and decided to figure out the back roads, and took a detour. The road was winding and it was a beautiful drive, and at one point a few miles from our land, the road did a double-back into a little valley and dropped down over a small creek. I pulled over. If you walked in either direction from the road down the creek widened and there was a beautiful “swimmin’ hole,” several feet deep. Or at least deep enough to submerge ourselves. You couldn’t dive in it, but you could cool off.  After a month of 105 degree temps with almost no water (we had to drive to the State Park to fill water containers for any water we’d need,) a stream to cool yourself in is like finding God’s own mercy.

I drove home fast and skidded to a stop in front of our old army tent.

“Grab a towel and get in, ya’ll!” I shouted. “We’re gettin’ a bath!”

We drove like we were crazy people over to that swimmin’ hole and boy was it fine! After that we went looking for other areas to swim and get water, and we found quite a few not too far from our land.

At one point, the year after we moved here, it hadn’t rained for 10 straight months. Not enough to even wet the ground. The next year it rained 41 inches, like it was a rain forest, and we lived… literally… in the mud.

But that’s how we learned.  That’s how we know we could do this again if we had too. Anywhere.

We’re over a dozen years in to this life now and we still have to deal with the mud.  The mud years have made us strong, resilient, and wise. Not to mention understanding.  There’s that too.  You can always throw money at your problems, but there’s no promise that doing so will work, and even if it does work you may miss out on some very important lessons.  In some fields of endeavor, throwing money at problems only works once in many millions of times.  You have no real control over whether you succeed or fail. When you do things the hard way, no matter if you succeed or fail in the world’s eyes, you will not have failed. You will have learned valuable lessons. And you’ll be a different person because of it.

Stronger. Smarter. Wiser.

I know people who try to overpower every obstacle with brute force. They hate discomfort. Hate challenges. Cower under difficulties.  If they can, they try to make the obstacles go away the simplest and easiest way.

I’m just saying maybe you should think of your obstacles as good things.  It’s just another way to look at life. Maybe doing hard things the hard way could work for you.

Thanks,

Michael Bunker

I’ve been working hard on my “technical infrastructure,” over the last few months. As I’ve reported to you before, including in the last post here, we’re building a couple of new websites so I can better serve readers based on what information they want to receive from me. I have a VERY diverse audience, and that is because I have a very diverse set of interests. Some (few) people like to read a full cross section of the things I do and the content I produce, but most people get a little frustrated because they may be interested in only one or two categories of things. The people who like my spiritual and theological writings, are usually not too interested in my fiction writing. The people who come here for off-grid, preparedness, or pre-industrial living content and materials, may not care for the fiction stuff or the theology stuff. People who like my fiction books, may not care about the other things. So we’re building some new websites that will let those who want to get only a certain type of materials, get exactly want they want and only what they want. This site, michaelbunker.com, will remain the main blog and location for anything to do with my books and fiction writing.

All of this is to make sure that you get exactly what you want from me, and nothing else.

Over the next month or so, there will be a little house cleaning. We will launch The Michael Bunker Report site first, hopefully in the next week or so, and that site will be solely dedicated to the off-grid, pre-industrial living, survival, preparedness, DIY, stuff that I teach and talk about. That site will have a totally different feel and look, will offer a lot of premium content, and will have it’s own mailing list. To get on that mailing list, which is free, you’ll need to sign up for it here:

 

Sign up for the Off-Grid Newsletter

 

The Michael Bunker Report site will be an awesome hub to get articles, videos, how-to materials, and other content on survival, preparedness, off-grid living, pre-industrial living, and everything that intersects with those categories, including news and analysis. If you are already a Patreon patron, certain levels of patronage will automatically make you eligible to receive the premium content from The Michael Bunker Report. More details on that to come…

After that site is up and running, we will be launching a theology and spiritual writings site, so that people who are interested in those materials can focus their attention there. That site will have it’s own newsletter too, so if you are interested you’ll need to make certain you are signed up for it if you haven’t already done so:

 

Scripture Studies Email List

 

Hopefully, when we are done, everyone will be able to get exactly the content they want from me, and that’s the goal.

For everyone who is just interested in my fiction books and writing, right here is where you want to be. New stuff coming soon!

Thanks!

Michael Bunker

Join My Newsletter!
Special sales, ARC copies, news, and more!



Subscribe Now!



My Books

























































































PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

I have hinted cagily over the last few months that I have a few new websites being built that will help organize the myriad




















Get This Book










Purchase Links

AmazonKindleBarnesnobleNook








Amazon Reviews


Amazon Reviews








GoodReads Reviews


GoodReads Reviews





















things I do and the multiple categories in which I produce materials. The first one to appear will be The Michael Bunker Report which will be a blog/site for everything to do with off-grid living, homesteading, pre-industrial farming, sustenance farming, survival, and preparedness.

For well over a decade I’ve been begged to produce more materials, videos, content, articles, etc. on this kind of living and frankly I’ve been too busy actually living this way and raising my children to focus much attention on it. I’ve been offered thousands of dollars in consulting jobs, and have turned down several TV offers and appearances, and participated in producing “sizzle reels” for two TV pilots. But the fact is that my philosophy, knowledge, experience, and opinions are probably too edgy for any mainstream program. So I’m going to start producing content: articles, videos, materials, etc., for The Michael Bunker Report and I think those of you who are interested in these topics will love it. Rob McClellan, the brain trust here at Thirdscribe.com is working with me on the project and I hope to have an announcement soon!

To make sure you don’t miss the announcement, make sure you are subscribed to my current email list: http://michaelbunker.com/newsletter

Thanks!

Newsletter CTA


Join My Newsletter!
Special sales, ARC copies, news, and more!



Subscribe Now!



My Books




















Get This Book










Purchase Links

Kindle








Amazon Reviews


Amazon Reviews








GoodReads Reviews


GoodReads Reviews












































Get This Book










Purchase Links

Kindle








Amazon Reviews


Amazon Reviews








GoodReads Reviews


GoodReads Reviews












































Get This Book










Purchase Links

AmazonKindleDirectfromauthorDirectfrompublisherAudible








Amazon Reviews


Amazon Reviews








GoodReads Reviews


GoodReads Reviews








Preview

View Preview

































PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.