Obamacare and Guns

If I'm going to start blogging again, let's do it with both guns blazing.

 Consider the argument for Obamacare. If you do not have healthcare, you are costing the community (however it is defined), more money by your failure to pay for your own medicinal care. When you show up at the emergency room, you cost the state money if you can't pay.

Therefore it is fair to charge you a penalty, a tax if you want to call it that, for not providing this essential service to yourself and being a drain on the community.

But what about people who do not provide for their own security? That have to call the police who will then launch expensive investigations? People who do not own a gun and are not prepared to defend themselves and their property?

It's the same argument. They're costing the state money.

So perhaps a compromise can be reached ... we'll accept the premise of Obamacare (though not as the law is written ... it needs work) which is that citizens who fail to provide a service for themselves cost the state ... if the state will then accept the premise that every citizen should be armed.

If you are capable of bearing arms, you should. You have an obligation to do so.

Sustaining Your Business via Mail Order

If there's others of you out there struggling to make ends meet on the small business front, I hope this helps.

I've discovered you cannot sustain a small business off the shelves at the big box stores. There are a lot of consumable items I use in my shop, from flap discs on the angle grinder, to glue, to belts for the sander.

First, there's price ...

Angle grinder flap disc - $9.97 at Home Depot, $5.89 off of Amazon.

Sander belts - $5.95 at Home Depot, $2.89 per belt off of Amazon (in sets of 10)

This ultimately lowers my shop costs, which lets me lower the price on my knives, which in this economy ... moves more knives.

Second, there's availability. These are consumables I use for every knife. I go through them constantly. I know I'm going to need them so why not stock up? I keep an inventory of my consumables and whenever I get down to the last 2 of something, I place an order. In 3 days it'll show up in the mail. We pay extra for Amazon Prime, so I don't even have to worry about shipping costs. That sure beats the $4 in gas it takes me to go to town!

And finally, the big box stores only stock a few items at a time on the shelf. If I need drill bits, there's TWO of them on the shelf. If I need sander belts, there's 2 of them on the shelf. They don't order until they're out of a product, and it takes them two weeks to get in a shipment.

All in all, its just easier to run the business via mail than it is off the shelves of a big box store.

Possum Creek Radio Show - Episode 6!

Archived MP3 Versions of Radio Show

I  don't know how the show could possibly be interesting without cool pictures of me, but for those of you who have requested versions where you don't have to see me ... here you go!

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/667i6uyvlbd3v/Archived_Episodes

Apocalypse Training - Or Just Low-Carb Flu?

In this article on Survivalblog, the author discusses all of the physical symptoms they went through while they participated in a 7 day "bug out challenge".

They limited their caloric intake and exercised heavily.

I'm already doing a lot of physical labor each day and burning a lot of calories, and the symptoms they describe were EXACTLY what I faced when I quit consuming sugar cold-turkey.

My premise is that it's not the bugout challenge that was stressing their bodies, but rather the lack of carbohydrates and the abrupt change in their diets.

Bet You Thought I'd Forgot

It's the Possum Creek Radio Show! 53 minutes of Possumy goodness.

Late Show Today

Well, the show is longer than normal and as a result it's taking FOREVER to upload on our connection.

So another few hours and it'll be done ... maybe. :(

Ernie "Gets It!"

I was speaking with someone the other day and I was complaining about how little revenue my forays into advertising had brought me. Etsy advertising just whittled away at my profit and never earned me a dime, and Facebook advertising .. well ... that just sucked in general. Only a couple of bucks wasted but it garnered no clicks and certainly no sales.

This brilliant person said to me, "You don't need to advertise, you need to market."

I didn't get the difference. She tried to explain it, but I didn't get the difference still.

That's been a couple of weeks go by now and I suddenly get it.

I used to be discouraged because the vast majority of knives I have sold have been primarily to people who like me in some way. Either they follow me on internet forums, or my blog or I know them in real life. I was discouraged because people didn't just see my knife and go "wow, I should buy this". I felt like it was just people humoring me, even though my wife always said, "People who want to humor you will say, 'nice knife'. When they open their wallet, it's because  they want the knife."

And now I get that too. People want my knives, but they want an Ernie knife. They want MY knives. They want knives made by me, by someone living my lifestyle who holds the same viewpoints they do, and they want to help support that life. They're not just buying a product here ... they're helping to prop up a dream.

In short, I'm participating in a tribal economy. People self-identify with the tribe I'm in and they want to support someone in the tribe. It's the same reason people drove across town to buy sandwiches at Chik-fil-a or to shop at Hobby Lobby. It's the same reason people buy things locally from people they know. You want to spend your money in your own tribe.

It's why my sales have picked up so dramatically with the new radio show. People aren't crazy about the radio show, though some like it, but it shows people what they're supporting with their money. It shows people the lifestyle that their dollars enable. This is a fascinating thing to me.

The old model is to get your product out in front of as many people as possible. I was very pleased that a couple of local shops agreed to carry my knives in their stores, but ultimately that's proving to be a dead dog of a business model. One of my knives sitting in a display case with a hundred other knives is cool, but I'm not standing there to sell it. There's no Ernie in that picture. It's just a knife, and there's a lot of good knives out there. Even if you go to the handmade knife category, there's guys who have been doing this for 50 years and they make some very good knives.

If I post a picture of a knife on my Facebook page, it will get about 80 views. That's cool. I like that 80 people look at my knife. My Etsy shop is getting about 40-50 views per day and I'm selling 3-4 knives per week right now. This is a very good thing. But when I post some comment about what we're having for dinner or how we spent our day, that goes freakin' viral. I had over 300 people view my post about what my wife thought about us eating "chicken". That's 300 people with money in their pockets who might just buy a knife. You can't purchase that sort of advertising. I don't even know how to make it happen except by just being myself.

I can only make a limited number of knives per week, so even if I suddenly found myself "making the bigtime", I wouldn't be making a fortune. I don't need to. If I sold just ONE knife per day we'd be living high on the hog. Right now we're selling about 1 knife every 3-4 days, which keeps us rolling along. Ultimately I'm selling my labor at about $8-10 per hour. That's not a great business model, but we've arranged our lifestyle in such a way that it fits, and I LOVE the labor I'm selling. So that's worth a lot to me. I am happier earning $8 per hour for labor I love doing than I was when I got $80 per hour for labor I hated.

So thanks, folks, for showing up. Thanks for participating in my tribe. Every time you "like" a post on Facebook then all your friends see it and I end up with new people visiting my page, which has the net result of keeping the shop going. This also shows me where to focus my efforts in the future. I'm not making knives for me, or for the masses. I'm making a niche product for YOU. I am going to start trying to figure out what people want to buy and produce that sort of knife. Expect lots of polls and questions in the future.

I'm also going to start carrying a wider range of products in the shop. A common thing I hear is "I love your knives but I don't have much money right now." That's a situation I can completely identify with. So I want to sell some sort of $5 product that we make here on the farm. Keychains are going to be an easy one to start with. Heck, $5 doesn't look like a lot of money to big business or to most people, but it buys dinner for the whole family here. For about 30 minutes of my labor I can put an entire dinner for 7 people on the table? I consider that a win. That's the new paradigm for the new economy, folks. Just putting dinner on the table one night at a time.

So thank you, and stay tuned as I make all the necessary adjustments to social media and my business. This is a pretty big epiphany and it's going to take some time to absorb. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this so let me know through any of the available channels. God bless, and y'all keep on being y'all.

Possum Creek Radio Show - Episode 4 - Special Independence Day Edition

Are you feeling independent this weekend? In this episode, I discuss some of the basic principles of freedom found in homesteading.

Hope you enjoy!

Radio Show Fixed!

Stupid Youtube. Dang. I had to jiggle with it to get Youtube to accept the longer show, and it ended up setting it to private.

Fixed now!

Possum Creek Radio Show - Episode 3 is live!

And we're up! Whew. I'm exhausted. Time to take the rest of the day off. :)

Technical glitches and other events transpired to try and keep me off the air this week, but with the grace of God we have overcame! Now I'm going to go overcome me a cold beverage and see if I can't sweet-talk some of these rain clouds off in the distance to come stay awhile.

Enjoy the show!

Oh, also ... I'm working on converting them to MP3 and putting them up for download, but I need some sort of location to store them. Not sure what's best. Ideas?

New Shop Photos

I've decided to try and stop looking like some sort of businessman with the whole knife shop thing and just be myself. If Duck Dynasty can do it, so can I, right?

So my wife took some new photos of me in the workshop as I normally am. Here they is, fer yer perusal. :)

Working on a New Book

Christian post-apocalyptic fiction best describes it. :)

I like having a new story to work on. This will be my 6th novel to complete in my life, though the other 5 have went nowhere. This one may go nowhere as well, but it must be written.

May it be pleasing to God for me to do this.

Hey, Margie! It's Episode 2 of the Possum Creek Knifeworks Radio Show!

Now with sprinkles!

It's the Possum Creek Knifeworks Radio Show ... now with everybody's favorite Possum!

Now! The Possum Creek Radio Show!

 

And now, first time ever, the Possum Creek radio show, episode 1!

 

Yes, I know it's a Youtube video and not a radio show ... but that's part of the funny. :)

Porcupine!

I saw a dead porcupine this morning by the side of the road. I've never seen one before, live or dead. This one had been hit by a vehicle. I got out and gathered up some of his tail quills, but they aren't as impressive as I had hoped. Perhaps it was a young one.

First Fruits

Harvested the first produce from this year's garden just a few minutes ago. Two cherry tomatoes and a pickling cucumber.

Mmm mmm good!

Here Be Bunnies

We are in the rabbit business! Well, the rabbit eating business anyway. Our friend Miss Judy gave us some rabbits. There were four but 2 of them heat stroked out on the way home from her house and didn't make it. But we've got a pregnant female who seems to be doing fine and a younger male who is chocked full of rabbity personality.

His name is "Brigadier Stuart". Of the two males, one was for breeding and the other was a bonus bunny for stewing. On his box was written "Stew". After the breeding male died, Stew was then promoted to breeding male and renamed "Lucky Stuey" but apparently the kids are reading a Doctor Who book which has a character named Brigadier Stuart, so hence the name.

The female is named "Hope She Makes It", for obvious reasons. :)

A Humanure Argument

As compost ... human manure ... Both zucchini plants came from the same seed stock, were planted at the same time, and were given roughly the same amount of water. If anything, the smaller one received MORE water. Both were grown in position from seed.

 

Planted directly down into the soil through the mulch. No fertilizers or side dressing added.

 

Grown in composted humanure. Same stock. Both seeds planted on the same day.

The Baby Can Get It

River Lily will often find a pair of pliers, a flashlight, my car keys, my cellphone, etc. laying on the table and then she will bring it to me. When she gets here with them she'll scold me for leaving them down "where the baby can get it". She'll shake her little finger at me.
It's cute now, but I can't help but think that someday when she's grown, she's going to give her husband Hell.