Many people have the perception that a food storage has to be expensive, or that you have to do it all at once. They let themselves be overwhelmed by the prospect, and end up doing nothing. Achieving a functional food storage is an attainable goal by any family.

There is no “right way” to do it. There are a few wrong ways (like going into debt for it, or stocking up on ten year’s supply of Little Debbies), but there are enough right ways that one of them is bound to fit your situation.

1. Monthly budget. You can assign a certain amount per month to food storage. It need not be a huge amount. Even $10 a month will get you there in the long term, if you stock up on sale items. $25 to $50 per month will generally allow you to participate in a monthly plan through a food storage supply company.

2. Spend the same, buy more. Any time an item on your grocery list is on sale, add an extra if you can do so and still stay within the amount you intended to spend.

3. Shop less often. There is real magic in this! You’ll plan better, eat better, and spend less. If you spend the same, or split the savings (half in savings, half to food storage), and you’ll still be amazed at how quickly you accumulate a usable supply. The key to this one is that every time you go in the store, you usually lose a certain amount on impulse buys. If you reduce those impulse buys, you have that money for more important things.

4. The Two-Can Plan. Buy two extra cans of food every time you go shopping.

5. One Plus One. If you are purchasing dry packed food, grains or beans, or bucketed food storage, aim for ordering one item each time you go to the grocery store, or one item per month.

6. Food Storage On the Hoof. Get chickens, ducks, rabbits, or other animals that can eat your kitchen produce scraps and leftovers. You’ll still need some feed for them, but they’ll benefit from kitchen waste, and reduce your expenses, while providing a food source that replenishes itself, reducing the need for other kinds of food storage.

7. Grow a Garden, and Save Seed. You can grow a garden any time of the year, even if it is just sprouts in the kitchen – usually though, you can do way more than that! A garden reduces food costs if you do it smart, and gives you food reserves that keep producing. It can provide surplus to can, freeze, dry, or brine. It can provide seeds this year to grow next year. A good garden can be started for $100 or less (often WAY less), and can produce hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of produce from that investment. Keep it simple, and make sure each expense really IS an investment.

8. Look for sales on produce, and preserve it. A $30 food dryer from Wal-Mart is sufficient to dry large volumes of food, one to two batches a day (as long as it has a fan, it will dry food quickly and efficiently). You can often find canning supplies at yard sales or being given away. Many foods freeze easily, and all you need are zip bags (some vegetables need to be blanched before freezing, but most fruits do not, and a large number of veggies don’t require it either). Dried or frozen foods may be stored in repurposed containers – peanut butter jars are a great storage container, as are other reusable containers.

9. Stock up on cheap storage items. Tuna, dried beans, rice, split peas, pork and beans, canned soup, and other items that cost less than $1 per item. It is easier to start with these items – either one or two at a time, or by the case. Easier to think of getting case goods when you know they’ll only cost you $12 for a case.

10. If you buy bulk grains in bags instead of in pre-packed buckets, you can significantly reduce the cost of acquiring bulk grains or beans. If you have 5 gallon buckets shipped, they’ll usually cost more than if you acquire them locally (feed stores usually carry them). Buckets can sometimes be obtained used, either free, or for a low cost, from fast food restaurants or bakeries.

You can’t do a food storage with no sacrifice. You have to give something. But if you think about what you can do, and what you are good at, you can find a way that works for you. It IS achievable.

In response to a list of 50 excuses posted here:

http://totalcollapse.com/2012/05/20/the-top-50-excuses-for-not-prepping/

1. “The U.S. Economy Is The Greatest Economy On The Planet – There Is No Way That It Could Ever Collapse”

   The Greeks said the same thing of their country before it collapsed. The US Economy WAS the greatest economy on the planet – did you fail to notice when we lost our AAA credit rating? Did you fail to notice that we have record high unemployment rates (the real rates, not the skewed ones reported each quarter that leave out people who have stopped looking)? Did you fail to notice that the price of fuel (not just gasoline) and groceries are at all time highs and still rising?

2. “Once Barack Obama Wins The Election Everything Will Be Better”

   Been there. Done that. It didn’t get better. If you throw gasoline on a fire instead of water, it isn’t going to put the fire out any better the second time you make the same mistake.

3. “Once Mitt Romney Wins The Election Everything Will Be Better”

   Mitt thinks the things Obama did for the economy (you know, the ones that escalated it into a rapidly worsening state?) were GOOD things. His can of gasoline is only a little smaller than Obama’s can – but it is still gasoline, and he doesn’t know how to find water.

4. “When Things Get Really Bad The Government Will Take Care Of Us”

   Things are really bad. The government made it worse. They have no plans to make it better – only to use the economy as an excuse to take away your liberty, under the guise of “helping you”. There aren’t enough government resources to go around in a major crisis. If there were, things would not BE really bad now, they’d have “fixed” it by throwing money at it. When the government does something, it takes 99 people being taxed at 50% to take care of ONE person. In a major crisis, the equation just doesn’t work!

5. “When Disaster Strikes I Will Just Steal From Everyone Else That Has Been Busy Preparing”

   Preppers have guns. They also understand their Constitutional right to defend their home. They also have rope. Some have handcuffs. If they have to wait for the police to arrive, they are prepared to hold you until they get there.

   On the other hand, if you really are in need, and you ask nicely, chances are pretty much any prepared person will share a meal with you. They won’t do your job for you, and they won’t adopt you and let you be a sponge. But if your children are hungry, they usually won’t let them starve.

6. “The Rapture Will Be At Any Moment So I Don’t Have To Worry About Prepping”

   I guess if your goal is to meet God, and the Rapture does not come when you expect, you can die of starvation and meet Him that way. Your choice. I’d rather use a little common sense and do what I can to take care of my own needs.

7. “The Economy Has Always Recovered After Every Recession In The Past And This Time Will Be No Different”

   It takes 10 years average to recover from major economic depression, and that is when the government has NOT been meddling in a way that makes the eventual fallout far worse. Even if it took just 4-5 years, that’s a long time to survive without any reserves or backup.

8. “The People That Are Running Things Are Very Highly Educated And They Know Exactly What They Are Doing”

   That’s true! But what YOU think they are doing and what they are ACTUALLY doing is two different things! They are not trying to “take care of you”. They are trying to get money and power. Yes, they do know exactly what they are doing. The less you prepare, the more power they have to take your liberty and limit your choices. I rather like freedom. I rather like independence. But by all means, believe that the people in charge are smart – if they can enslave you, they are smarter than you are, for certain!

9. “Wal-Mart Will Always Be There”

   Have you ever seen a Wal-Mart that was THERE, but which wasn’t any good? I have. I’ve seen a Wal-Mart damaged by a tornado. Shut down, doors closed and locked through the whole emergency. I’ve seen a Wal-Mart with the power off – cash registers don’t function without power, and Wal-Mart clears the store of customers, and locks the doors until the power comes back on. Have you ever seen a Wal-Mart after the interstate highways have been closed for three days? I have! A Wal-Mart does you no good if there is nothing left on the shelves. And it takes about three days to completely clean out a Wal-Mart of everything useful in an emergency.

10. “Our Politicians Are Watching Out For Our Best Interests”

    See number 8. Our Politicians are watching out for THEIR best interests.

11. “The 2012 Apocalypse Is Almost Here And We Are All Doomed Anyway – So Why Even Try?”

    Because an Apocalypse doesn’t destroy everything. It just makes a mess of things, involves a lot of war, and leaves the majority of people to live through it and clean it up. You aren’t going to die tomorrow – you are going to live. Horribly! (Ok, so that is melodramatic… but seriously, doesn’t anyone know what an apocalypse really IS?)

12. “Preppers Do Not Have A Positive Mental Attitude”

    We absolutely DO have a positive attitude. Preppers believe that if they do what they can, even if it is just a little, they can survive what they have to survive. BECAUSE they are as prepared as they realistically can be, they feel confident.

13. “If An Economic Collapse Comes I Will Just Go On Welfare”

    Um… what part of “economic collapse” do you not understand? The government is broke. It is borrowing more than the entire US makes. It is the most likely CAUSE of an economic collapse. And it means that when it happens, there won’t be money for welfare. There WILL, however, be long long lines of unprepared people, standing around filling out applications for assistance, on the hope that there will be enough of nothing left by the time their application is processed, for them to get help that isn’t available. Because people who rely on the government to fix things would rather stand in a line to fill out an application (somehow filling out an application seems productive to them even when it isn’t), where there is no real hope of getting something than go out and work to take care of themselves.

14. “There Are Some Things You Just Can’t Prepare For”

    Right. But there are some things you CAN prepare for, and SHOULD prepare for. It just makes sense to prepare to depend upon yourself when you realistically can do so.

15. “Prepping Is Too Expensive”

    One can at a time. If you stock up on sale, budget a small amount each month to invest in storage supplies, or shop less often so you spend more on core food items and less on impulse buys, you can painlessly build a good food storage over the course of a year or two? It really works.

16. “We Are Not Like Other Countries – U.S. Cities Are Designed To Withstand Major Earthquakes”

    Just like San Francisco. Right? The earthquake in the 80s only caused damage to a few of the major roadways, and a small percentage of buildings (earthquake and fire damage). Only PART of the city was shut down. Only PART of the city was damaged severely enough to be eligible for Federal Disaster Relief Assistance (remember what that is? Only available in a MAJOR disaster?).

17. “I Need To Save Up For Retirement Instead”

    Food storage pays a better rate of return. Who says it has to be one or the other? A little here, and a little there accumulates quickly for either one.

18. “The Stock Market Has Been Soaring So Why Worry?”

    Which stock market are you following again?

19. “I Don’t Have Room To Store Anything”

    Of course you do. You just don’t want to make the effort!

20. “Prepping Is For Crazy People”

    So is Welfare. Prepping also goes by other names… Wisdom. Prudence. Security. Emergency Planning (that is the one the Government uses when it is THEIR idea). Pretty crazy alright!

21. “I Don’t Believe In Conspiracy Theories”

    I don’t either. I do believe in the normal ups and downs of life, and I do believe in the lessons history teaches, and I do believe in basic math that says that 2 + 2 cannot equal 14 trillion, no matter how you cook the books.

22. “All The Food I Store Is Going To Go Bad”

    Not if you eat it first. Good food storage is rotated regularly. This ensures that you are storing things you actually EAT, and it keeps you in the habit of regularly using and replacing it to keep it fresh.

23. “I Would Rather Spend My Time Watching American Idol”

    Keepin’ your food storage around your waist, are you?

24. “All The People Who Freaked Out About Y2K Look Really Foolish Now, Don’t They?”

    No. They are the ones who have not had to fear as grocery prices escalated. They are the ones who have made it through unemployment with less pain and hardship. They are the ones who still have their homes because they were able to use food storage to reduce their grocery budget and still have enough to pay their mortgage. They are the ones who have been able to cope with high fuel price spikes because they had something to fall back on to keep their monthly expenses within their incomes.

25. “I Don’t Want To Look Like Those Idiots On ‘Doomsday Preppers’”

    So don’t. Apply some common sense. Sometime within your lifetime, a food storage is going to be a major asset to you. So it makes sense to have a reasonable food storage. If you know what “overboard” looks like, don’t go there. Just be smart about preparing for what is most likely – unemployment, financial loss, snowstorm, electrical outage, etc. Those things DO happen. To everyone!

26. “An EMP Attack Could Never Happen”

    Whether it could or not is not really the issue. Electrical outages DO happen, internet interruptions do occur, hard drives crash, and lightening strikes. Often enough that you are going to be inconvenienced for anywhere between a few hours, and a week or more at some point in your life. The more dependent we become on electronics, the more likely it is that something major WILL interrupt it, for short or long periods. But the realistic interruptions are more likely to be the same old thing that has always caused problems. If you are prepared to last the week without ordering pizza over the internet, you’ll get along better!

27. “There Will Never Be A Nationwide Transportation Disruption In The United States”

    Perhaps not. But there are frequently local interruptions, which will inconvenience YOU just as much as if there was a nationwide interruption. Big things are scary, and horrifying to consider. But smaller local disturbances are the things that are not just LIKELY to occur, but pretty much GUARANTEED to occur. Most of the nation won’t even notice – but YOU will. And if you have food in your cupboards when everyone else is searching the empty shelves at Wal-Mart in desperation, you won’t regret your decision to plan ahead.

28. “Instead Of Being So Paranoid, I Would Rather Just Enjoy Life”

    Paranoia is not required. Wisdom is. Life is far more enjoyable when you don’t need to fear, and preparing keeps you from fearing. No need to get caught up in the impractical race to prepare for EVERY eventuality. Just do what is REASONABLE, within your means and capacity.

29. “If Society Falls Apart I Wouldn’t Want To Continue To Live Anyway”

    Congratulations. You don’t need to prepare for anything. In fact, you probably better commit suicide tomorrow, because society has been falling apart piece by piece all around you and you haven’t even noticed.

30. “There Will Never Be Another World War”

    They said that after WWI. And Santa Clause is real too.

31. “I’m Too Lazy To Grow A Garden”

    So don’t grow a garden. Or grow a Lazy Garden. There’s an amazing thing about gardening… It takes a lot less work and expense than most Gardening Books or Seed Catalogs will let on (after all, they want to make it seem complicated enough to justify a BOOK on the subject, and expensive enough to justify BUYING all that stuff). Gardening is also addictive – once you grow something, and it produces food you can eat, that you DON’T have to buy at the grocery store, you get a feeling you get from nothing else – not even from laying in front of the TV eating potato chips. If you can’t expand your life beyond the TV and Ruffles, you will be pitied. If you think maybe you’d like to feel really good about yourself though, try growing a tomato plant in a bucket, or put in some lettuce in a corner of your yard. There really is nothing quite like it. If you need more on successful, easy, and cheap gardening, you can find it at http://books.firelightheritagefarm.com

32. “If You Assume The Worst Is Going To Happen Then You Don’t Believe In America”

    Preppers never assume the “worst” is going to happen. They do assume Bad Things will happen though. And you know what? They ALWAYS DO! Even in America! That’s life, folks! Preparing just means you are smart about knowing that the Constitution does not give us the right to “happiness”, only the “pursuit of happiness”. It is easier to be happy when the Bad Things that are LIKELY to happen don’t have the power to derail you, because you were already prepared to handle them. Besides, what defines America has always been individual independence. You can’t be independent if you expect the nation to provide all your needs and protect you from calamity.

33. “Deficits Don’t Matter”

    The government in Greece tried to say the same thing… And if you don’t know what that means, then the government financial deficit is not the deficit you need to worry about – a deficit in intellect is a more pressing worry for you.

34. “I’ll Always Be Able To Get A Job In My Field”

    Good luck with that. Farriers thought the same thing at the end of World War I. They did not see the automobile as a threat to their livelihood – after all, horses were still less expensive, friendlier, and more prevalent, and horses were still the only practical choice for farming. They could not have forseen the increase in credit which allowed for the rapid adoption of tractors, and family auto acquisition. The job of farrier disappeared overnight. So have hundreds of other jobs as technology has advanced suddenly into new areas that were merely theoretical, and for which a pivotal breakthrough was not anticipated. There are a dozen new college grads coming into the job market for almost every position available, and the government is strongly encouraging students to get degrees in understaffed industries. With the economy so bad for hiring, many people have gone back to school, which means that we will be seeing a flood of new graduates in the job markets over the next few years, and the markets will get increasingly flooded over a period of 4-6 years. That’s your job they are going after, one way or another.

35. “If There Is A Financial Collapse All Of My Debts Will Be Wiped Out So I Might As Well Live It Up Now”

    Funny thing about financial collapse. When your creditor goes under, their records don’t just evaporate. They go into collections. Very aggressive collections. When high numbers of people default, the credit companies do NOT get more compassionate, they get more ruthless.

36. “If Things Hit The Fan I Will Just Go Move In With My Relatives Who Have Been Busy Prepping”

    Most preppers are willing to share when someone is truly in need. But if you aren’t really in need, or could have avoided being in need, they aren’t going to have much patience with you! They also tend to operate on the “no worky no eaty” philosophy. Your relatives won’t have any patience with a sponge. If they let you stay, they are going to make you muck out the barn, weed the gardens, and butcher chickens, so you might as well start getting in shape now.

37. “Those That Believe That There Will Be Massive Riots In American Cities Someday Are Just Being Delusional”

    Pretty delusional to believe that what has already happened could happen again.

38. “My Spouse Would Think That I Have Finally Lost It”

    Yeah… planning ahead is pretty stupid. If you come at your spouse with both barrels firing and mount an all on frontal assault on Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and start spouting conspiracy theories and doomsday prophecies, then yeah, they’ll probably wanna lock you up. But that isn’t what it is about. If you explain that you’d like to have a little extra food on hand, and not have the cupboards running from shopping day to shopping day, so that there is enough on hand in case you or they get sick, or in case you experience an income interruption, or in case something stops the stores from stocking up on schedule (this is more common than people realize), then they just might listen!

39. “I Don’t Know Where To Start”

    Start with things you use. An extra box or two of Mac and Cheese. A few extra pounds of burger in the freezer. A few extra cans of tuna and mushroom soup, or pork and beans. A couple of extra bags of rice. A great way to start is just by shopping less often. This forces you to think ahead on your needs, and reduces impulse buys, leaving room in your budget to buy extra of sale items.

40. “I’ll Just Deal With Problems As They Arrive”

    That’s a good attitude for things you CAN’T see coming. But it doesn’t make sense for things you KNOW are coming. Think about your life, and the things you are very likely to have to deal with. Plan for those things. You can do that and still retain your capacity for impulsive coping!

41. “I Don’t Have To Prepare For A Natural Disaster – That Is What FEMA Is For”

    FEMA takes three days to get help anywhere. That includes water. And FEMA takes weeks to get financial aid to an area in a way that benefits individuals. When they do come in, you get what they think you need. If you have special dietary requirements, forget it. Big disasters are all FEMA handles anyway, and you are more likely to experience small disasters that affect only yourself or a few other individuals. FEMA isn’t gonna help you, and most of the time, there won’t be other organizations there to help either.

42. “We’ll Never See Martial Law In The United States”

    We’ve already got it. What do you think Homeland Security really is?

43. “I Don’t Want To Scare My Children”

    So don’t. Teach them the wisdom of intelligent and calm preparation. Teach them that when you have to get up very early for a field trip, that you make sure you have your socks and underwear clean and found the night before, and that you go to bed early so you don’t end up tired and half dressed in the morning when you really need to be getting out the door to make it on time. Teach them that when you have company coming for dinner at the end of the week, that you plan the menu early, get the shopping done, and prepare as much of the meal ahead as you can so you don’t get bogged down with prep chores when it is time to welcome the guests. Teach them that having extra on hand means you can feed unexpected guests without fuss, and that if Dad or Mom loses a job, that you won’t be hurting for food during the time between the last paycheck and the first unemployment check, and that the decrease in income won’t kill you because you have enough food on hand that at least you won’t starve. Not starving is a good thing. Not scary at all.

44. “Once I Get Rid Of All My Debt Then I Will Start Thinking About Prepping”

    If you have food on hand, it is easier to get rid of debt, because you are not tied to having to choose between paying the bill or buying the full complement of groceries. Even a little extra on hand can make it easier to pay off debts. Try the shopping less often trick – you’ll be amazed at what that can accomplish!

45. “My Relatives Already Think That I Am A Nut Job – I Don’t Need To Make It Any Worse”

    If they already think that, then you have nothing to lose!

46. “If People At Work Find Out That I Am Prepping It Could Hurt My Career”

    Ummm… yeah. No employer likes an employee that actually thinks ahead! If you go all overboard and stockpile flamethrowers and grenade launchers, and stuff your mattresses with packets of soy protein powder and dried spinach, sure they are gonna question your fitness for duty. Wise preparedness doesn’t attract attention.

47. “If There Really Was A Good Reason To Prepare They Would Tell Us About It On The News”

    Sure, just like they told you about the rampant inflation, and about Obama signing the NDAA. Never mind that what they ARE telling you is reason enough to prepare.

48. “People Have Been Predicting Doom And Gloom For Years And It Hasn’t Happened Yet”

    Yes it has. It just hasn’t happened to YOU in a way you identify. It isn’t doom and gloom that makes a person prepare. It is the certain knowledge that life has its ups and downs, and it is smart to prepare for the inevitable downs.

49. “The United States Is The Greatest Nation On Earth – There Is No Way That It Could Collapse”

    See #33.

50. “I Don’t Plan On Becoming A Card Carrying Member Of The Tin Foil Hat Brigade”

    Nobody who is ever planned to be. You get that way when life derails you and throws you so far off the track that you can’t find your way back. You are less likely to end up there if you DON’T prepare, than if you do!

If you need more help with preparing in smart ways, you can talk to our friend Greg, over at SelfReliance.com, or check out our farm site at MicroFarmLife.com.

In the last six months, the cost of groceries has increased so much that it costs 1 and 1/2 to 2 times the amount to get the same groceries today that it did six months ago.

But there is no inflation. We know this because our government tells us this regularly. So… we know that something is wrong with HOW we are shopping. It is my responsibility to balance the grocery budget, and keep it from increasing.

I can reduce the amount of vegetables that I buy. At the rate that prices are increasing, this means in six weeks I will have no more money for vegetables at all. This is ok though – if our family has problems with muscle weakness, poor concentration, and persistent obesity, it won’t matter. This is expected from the average American, and conforming to the norm is better than being a radical non-conformist.

After I’ve eliminated vegetables, fruit is the next thing to be decreased. We will then develop problems with our bones, immune system, and eyesight, and our ability to heal will decline pretty rapidly. But that is ok too. If we are unemployable because of health problems we’ll no longer be listed on the lists of unemployed people, and that will help the nation, so we’ll be doing our part.

The next thing to go would be eggs and dairy. Of course, this will mean severe problems with our bones (we really don’t need calcium, we’ve been deluding ourselves all this time), and it won’t matter that eggs are one of the only foods from which I absorb certain nutrients. But dairy is expensive and prices are increasing very quickly, so obviously it is not essential to our wellbeing. The painful and persistent symptoms this causes can be mis-diagnosed by any competent physician, and they can prescribe a pill for us – the FDA has approved “safe and effective” medications for everything after all.

We’ll then have to eliminate meat. Protein is overrated anyway, and weak muscles, infertility, low energy, are GOOD things! There are too many healthy people having babies in the world anyway, and the human race is merely a blight on an otherwise perfect world, it is better that nobody reproduces. We can do without meat, the government already said so, and we know they are always right (even when they are wrong), so we should just shut up and trust them! If the symptoms become too difficult to deal with, we can get an anti-depressant easily from any doctor.

We’re down to grains now. Of course, without vegetables, fruits, dairy, and meats, our bodies will have NO ability to heal itself, and we’ll undoubtedly have plenty of digestive problems, further inhibiting our ability to absorb the incomplete nutrient complement from grains. We won’t be able to afford whole grains for long, so we’ll have to switch to white pasta and white flour, and white rice. Rapidly increasing prices mean that we’ll have to decrease the amounts over time, but that’s ok too, since America is full of obese people and everybody needs to eat less (the fact that a nutrient deficient diet from processed foods causes the body to go into crisis mode and creates persistent obesity is just a myth so don’t worry about that!). It doesn’t matter how healthy you think you are eating, it is still too much, too high in fat, and too high in red meat, sugar, and junk food. So eat the enriched white flour products that the government has said are just as healthy as whole wheat and shut up.

If we collapse from nutritional deficiency, Obamacare is there for us. They can prescribe medications to mask the symptoms and we can suffer from chronic illness until we die a painful death. If we die young, so much the better, there won’t be enough money to pay for our Social Security when we are older anyway, and it will save on medical costs in the long run. We’ll be doing our part to better the general welfare of the nation by kicking off sooner anyway.

So cheer up, America! There is no inflation! The rising prices are just a means of encouraging you to do your part to effect necessary change! And change must be good, after all, the President promised change, and we got it.

Good food, in a healthy variety, isn’t really needed, and malnutrition and the subsequent illness are positive influences on the nation!

Aren’t we blessed to live in a country with no inflation?

A recent survey shows that more and more corporations and small businesses are including Content Marketing in their marketing plans and strategies. It also shows that the number one barrier to successfully implementing Content Marketing in a company is the lack of writing talent within the company. Smart marketers now have an opportunity to capitalize on this lack in two potential ways:

1. Because so many companies are challenged where writing is concerned, those companies who DO have good writers on board have an opportunity to naturally take the lead. We have told our clients for the last 5 years that the most valuable skill a business owner can have, is the ability to write well, and this survey bears that out.

2. Good writers should smell a niche that is in need of filling. Good writing is valuable, and companies who know that will pay well for good writing.

So… that said, let’s get into two definitions, to help you know how you can take advantage of one, or both, of these opportunities.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is marketing through the use of articles or images with descriptions, videos, etc. The easiest method of that, and the most attractive to search engines at this time, is articles. This does NOT mean submitting articles to article directories – that strategy is outdated and a useless effort now. What it means is building content on your own website real-estate, in ways that help it get seen on a broad platform. Simplest is to either create a blog which links to your website or feeds into your website, OR, embed a blog inside your website (with RSS feeds and pinging). Then you feed the blog into Twitter, and feed Twitter into FaceBook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, wherever you have a profile set up that accepts Twitter status feeds.

Content Marketing can take place through a newsletter also, but that is less powerful long term, unless you archive the newsletter in an openly accessible manner on your website (so it becomes part of a search marketing strategy).

Content Marketing is dependent upon GOOD WRITING. PLR articles DO NOT COUNT. EVER. They fail on all counts. So, let’s define good writing.

Good Writing

Good writing is original. Always completely original. It is written from the heart, and it has a personality. It is never clinical and written to be sterile and opinion-free. It has a distinctive perspective. It gives something valuable also – that may be helpfulness, humor, a story, etc. But it gives something that makes the person go away feeling glad they read it.

Good writing is never “500 words long”. It is however many words are needed to accurately and enjoyably address the topic. Editing for length removes the personality, and that is DEADLY. For this article, if I had only wanted to make a basic point, I could have written a conclusion after the third paragraph. But I didn’t want to just say what was happening, I wanted to make it clear just what makes it work, and HOW to use the opportunity well. Two different lengths, for two different purposes.

Of course, if the intended target market has the attention span of a flea, then by all means, keep it short and light. But if you want to appeal to people who think, make it the length it needs to be to do it well.

Helpful writing always has the “ah-ha” factor. The key to making the instructions work, that you might not find elsewhere. Something that makes them say, “Oh, NOW I get it.”, or “Hey, I can DO that!”. In this article, we didn’t just say there was an opening for good content writing, we define what that is, so anyone reading this can know not just WHAT to do, but HOW to do it well.

Good Content Marketing finds an angle that no one else has covered in quite the same way. It answers the questions about your business or product line that your customers are asking over and over – and it answers them in a way your competition is not doing. In virtually EVERY industry, there are things that the industry would rather not talk about openly. If you do, then YOU get all the traffic that is seeking those answers (and it can be considerable).

Good Content Marketing is engaging, and FUN. Perhaps one of the best content marketing articles we ever wrote, was for a dealer in Antique Carpets. The article was titled “Your Very Own Magic Carpet”. The article made an antique carpet instantly appealing, by playing on the hidden thought that nearly everyone has in regard to an Antique Oriental Carpet.

If you can get inside the head of the potential customer, and write things they enjoy reading, and WANT to read, then content marketing can be an ongoing, perpetual form of very powerful marketing, because once an article is written and posted, it goes on working for you permanently.

Many companies now realize this, but do not have the skills in-house to do the writing. If you can hone your creative skills, there can be decent money in writing articles. Well written content articles start at $50 each, and go up from there. Way up. But don’t expect to charge a boodle if you don’t have the reputation and track record to back it up!

If you happen to be on the end of having to pay for articles, then do what you can afford, and hire someone who writes things you ENJOY reading.

Content marketing is, without doubt, the most powerful method of online marketing that we have ever encountered, in more than 12 years of building and marketing websites. It isn’t likely to go away any time soon, so it is worth investing in.

When we talk to a client about branding, the response we get is often “Oh, I have a logo.” But a logo isn’t branding. It really isn’t even the START of branding.

Branding is far more comprehensive. It is as much an emotional thing as a visual one. It includes all of these things, and probably a few more that I haven’t thought how to articulate yet:

1. The logo – yes, this is part of it. A very small part.
2. The business name. More about HOW you do what you do, than WHAT you do.
3. The business slogan. It sets a mood, and sends a message. It may not say anything about the product. Think about top brand slogans. Coke’s slogan isn’t “brown fizzy sweet drink”. And Nike never says “shoes we’d like you to think are really cool”. And McDonalds would never say “assembly line hamburgers”. Their branding is the attitude. Our logo is “Come in from the cold”. Not a thing about web design… but a message about how our customers feel.
4. The way you write your content for your ads and website. The very style of writing – is it formal, casual, humorous, warm, professional, etc?
5. The way your website or ads are laid out and organized. Again, all of this sends a message which should be consistent with your branding.
6. The names you choose for your website links, your products, the variations for your products, etc. Are you going to call them “small, medium, large”, or are you going to call them “teeny, well fed, enormo”.
7. The way that you market, and where you market. It should be consistent with the branding and primary message you are trying to send.
8. The packaging and presentation of the product. More than just slapping a label with your logo on the package, the entire package should echo the branding mood, including the wrapping, label layout, and other materials.
9. The way in which you interact with the customer, from how you answer emails, to your signature line, to the way you answer the phone or the way you dress when you meet them in person. All of this is part of your branding.

So in order to create good branding, you really need to know what the primary message IS. Is it a sense of fun, a sense of helpfulness, a sense of comfortable conformity, or a sense of being on the edge of losing control? All are appropriate for various products and target markets, and you want to be sure that YOUR message fits yours. Then EVERYTHING you do in relation to presenting your product becomes an extension of that message.

Branding is, in a sense, defining a personality for the business. When it is a likable and consistent personality, people respond. When things are disjointed and don’t quite coordinate, they feel like they are in the presence of someone who is either deceptive or who has a mental illness – neither impression is a good one for persuading customers to trust you with their money.

When we work with small businesses that have a single owner operator, we find that the business owner is the single most important influence on branding. The personality of the owner is what will determine, to a large extent, the messages that are being sent, and to whom. Usually a business owner can’t even articulate these things. But if a professional service provider pays attention to the business owner, they can quickly determine what those messages are, and how to best present them. Because with a very small business, the owner IS the business, so you are really trying, in a way, to capture the brand of the OWNER.

If you are a small business owner, make sure that your branding carries through your entire business, through everything you present to the customer and all of your interactions with the customer.

But most of all, have some fun with it! Branding, done well, is great fun, and a terrific creative project where you get to think about appropriate and enjoyable ways to include your messages in everything you do.

Automation is the bane of our existence. We ask for help from any company out there and we have to ramble our way through phone menus that drive us nuts, or support menus on the internet that have everything but the option that we need.

Gotta love those menus that pre-determine your needs: Would you like to make a payment? Would you like to check your balance? Would you like to speak to a sales representative? No option for talking to a real person.

No, I want to speak to a human being because your system screwed up my account and I want it fixed.

But they didn’t give you that option, so you are effectively shut out.

Automation gone bad. Big companies can sometimes get away with it, because they are the 800 lb gorilla, which is gonna be there even if you don’t like the way they automate parts of their business.

For a small business, that would kill you! People expect a person to answer the phone – or at least an answering machine with a real person promising to call back. Small businesses are EXPECTED to be personal.

Making the leap from “I do it all myself” to intelligent automation as a business grows can be tough. There’s a single rule though, that can make it far more effective, and help you avoid the pitfalls before you even reach them.

I say it a lot – so you may have heard it before. But I’ll repeat it anyway for anyone who may have missed it:

Automate the NON-PERSONAL aspects of your business. Keep the PERSONAL stuff PERSONAL.

Smart automation is a win-win, because it automates repetitive tasks which SHOULD be automated, saving you time so that you now have the ability to DO the personal stuff yourself. Plus it makes the results MORE CONSISTENT, and your product or service becomes more predictable. Higher quality results, not lower quality.

If you get it backward though, and just try to automate the thing you feel is taking up the most time (which it actually may not be), and it happens to be a thing that requires personal attention, your whole business appeal gets messed up, and you degrade the quality of service to the point of disaster.

Another important point, one that I have not said much before, is that when you do automate, especially if that automation involves customer interaction with the automation, make sure there is a REAL PERSON who is still accessible.

I don’t mean a support que or online chat. I mean that if they want to pick up the phone and call, or email you, that someone on the other end answers who is familiar with your product or service, and who KNOWS THE CUSTOMER. When a small business tries to behave like a big business, customers leave. The one major selling point with small businesses is that people really LIKE it when they feel like the business owner knows them. So having access to a friendly and helpful person who has a vested interest in the business, available on the other end of the phone or email is essential.

The last point is one of economics. Weigh the cost-benefit of every investment in automation. There is no point in investing hundreds, or thousands of dollars to automate a task that is not a money maker. I don’t mean that every task needs to generate revenue directly, rather, that if you have TIME, and no SALES, then investing in something to speed up operations is dumb. Increasing the efficiency of production only helps if you are making sales.

When you get to the point where investing in automation IS smart, because you could EARN more if you had the time to do so, And then you want to look at your operations and see where a smart investment would increase revenue enough to pay for itself and then some. Some types of automation never will pay for themselves for small businesses, other types are a no-brainer when you reach a certain sales volume – and those are the ones you want to implement at the right time.

Don’t get caught up in hype, or think that just because everyone else has it you have to have it too. A local NRCS office with a staff of four people, charged with managment and disbursment of grants in the amount of $50,000 per year, with a fairly low volume of traffic in the office or on the phone, spent $164,000 to install an automated phone system. This, when they had a receptionist, and KEPT the receptionist on the payroll once the system was installed. Bad move. They feel they can do that because it isn’t their money, and they don’t have to show a profit, or even any kind of justification for the expense. You can’t afford such stupidity – you haven’t got other people to suck it off of to pay for it.

Automate smart, and it will pay you back, and your customers will continue to feel they are getting what they need. Do it wrong, and they’ll wander off to someone who understood better than you how to do it intelligently.

How many times in the last two years have you heard people tell you that if you are going to market online today, you HAVE to use Twitter and FaceBook? How many times have you heard people extolling the virtues of those two platforms for marketing a business?

I’ve got news for you. EVERY SINGLE PERSON who says that is SELLING something to do with Marketing on Twitter or FaceBook. They have motive to tell you that.

The truth is, Twitter and FaceBook are both VERY POOR marketing mediums. They both violate one of the most important rules of marketing:

Put your message in front of an audience who is likely to be interested in buying what you are selling.

People on FaceBook or Twitter, for the most part, are NOT THERE as consumers. They are there to party. So unless you are selling Red Solo Cups, it isn’t going to be a highly effective method for marketing.

There. I said it. I expect I’ll get a storm of denials from people who are selling FaceBook and Twitter marketing services. But my clients generally agree with me, and they are real business people, selling the typical products and services around which business in the US largely revolves.

Five years ago, we were able to tell our clients to go to forums and sites where people congregated who were interested in the general topics around which the client’s product or service revolved. For us, that meant we would go to small business forums, and we’d chime in with helpful information regarding website and marketing. We gained an entire client base this way. Literally hundreds of good, solid clients came our way through this means of marketing.

Enter FaceBook and Twitter. Exit most forums. The business forums simply dried up. They went away, and NOTHING came in to replace them. Oh, some people may disagree, but the few that are left are lethargic at best, and pretty much a waste of time.

You can spend and awful lot of time talking to nobody, with the illusion that someone is listening, but it won’t help your business grow. And right now, you have the choice of participating in old forums where nobody IS, or participating in new social media where EVERYBODY is talking, EVERYBODY is there, but nobody is LISTENING.

So now we have a disappearance of an incredibly effective marketing tool, and the replacement of it with a social tool. Sure, you can reach a LOT of people on FaceBook. But they are NOT targeted listeners. They are there to party, and if your marketing messages interfere with their party, they’ll just tune you out. They have short attention spans, and are looking for distraction, not for practical help in their lives.

FaceBook users are basically two types:

The ones who are addicted to it. They use FaceBook as an online party, where they go to simulate real life. They want distraction, and they want things to keep moving. They have NO attention span, they do not want to have to act on ANYTHING, and they like freebies. They are quick to subscribe to pages – in fact, most of them have SO MANY on their lists that there is no way they could ever keep up with them all. They are equally quick to forget what they just subscribed to, and to turn it off in their feed.

Those who use it for business, family, or friends, to keep in touch, but who limit the amount of time each day that they spend there. They are going to unsubscribe from anything that wastes their time, they won’t be there to be marketed to, and they’ll skim over things and get to the stuff from people that they know. If they KNOW you personally, they’ll sometimes leave your page feed visible. But if they don’t know you personally, they probably won’t even subscribe.

If you get past that, and actually get subscribers to your page, the chores have only just begun. You can post to the wall on that page, and you can work at getting more and more subscribers. But that isn’t the same thing as getting CUSTOMERS. Because most of them do NOT want to listen to the sales pitch. They want you to bring the drinks to the party instead. And if you do, they MIGHT like them enough to buy them later – but most of them won’t. Most of them will just go looking for the next free drink instead. And you’ll have to give away a LOT of drinks just to sell a few.

If you HAVE a FaceBook page, you have to post things to it on a regular basis, or it won’t help you sell anything. Posting ads won’t be effective, your prospects will ignore them. Remember, they are there to party. The big companies hold contests, do giveaways, and are constantly offering “fun stuff”. They aren’t exactly bringing drinks to the party, but they are bringing pencils and a fun little word puzzle. Cheap stuff. Lots of it. An endless flow of trivial little bits of distraction for an audience with the attention span of a gnat.

For a small business, keeping up with a constant stream of that kind of thing is EXHAUSTING! Especially since the return is so low. And the return IS low.

When we ask our clients if they are using FaceBook or Twitter as a marketing tool, most say yes. When we ask them if they have ever made a sale that they knew resulted from FaceBook or Twitter, they say no.

As a direct marketing tool, they are pretty much useless for 99% of businesses in the US. Oh, don’t comment with hot denials unless you are using FaceBook and Twitter for a business that is NOT involved in selling services related to FaceBook and Twitter, AND you can verifiably show that you are GETTING active customers or clients from them.

So what is the answer? Do they have a place in current marketing?

I think they do. But it is not in having a cute and active FaceBook page, or in posting to Twitter every half hour with your latest product. Honestly, those two things are probably nothing more than a waste of your time.

Both can be used in developing relationships. Every once in a while, a conversation will allow you to share your expertise, and at that time, it may benefit your business. But this is weak, and circumstantial at best.

The real reason to USE them for business has to do with search engines. They now index websites higher if they are mentioned on FB or Twitter. And they also rank sites higher if they are LINKED to a site mentioned there. I do NOT recommend trying to game the system here – but if you are smart, you can use it in natural ways, to cover a lot of ground with a few simple tasks each week.

1. Create a blog. Post to the blog one or two times per week. It does not matter WHAT you write, as long as it is YOUR writing, and NOT someone else’s. It must be completely and totally unique and original. The more interesting it is the better. The more it relates to your lines of business, the better. But there is NO NEED to have a separate blog for each topic, that will just make you neurotic because it will be too much to keep up with. One good solid multi-purpose blog is sufficient.

2. Feed your blog into Twitter. This will create a post automatically every time you post to your blog. But it will also give you the ability to feed your blog into ANYTHING that accepts a Twitter feed.

3. Feed Twitter into FaceBook and LinkedIn. Just feed it into your FaceBook profile. A FaceBook page for your business isn’t really necessary, and it isn’t even helpful for about half or more of business owners (you have to have a purpose for it if you want it to be successful). Now your blog goes into FB and LinkedIn, automatically.

4. Feed your blog into your website, into the sidebar, IF the topics you cover on the blog are relevant to the website. If they aren’t, then skip this. This does NOT help your search engine rankings! But it does provide a way to make use of your content to inform your website visitors. It can also increase calls and emails if you put the feed right below a Contact Us box, with a phone number, and a link to your contact form, because recent blog posts indicate that someone LIVE and REAL is behind the site, and it encourages people to call.

5. Link your website to your blog – put it in the blogroll, in a category called Related Sites, or My Websites, or something like that.

6. If you have more than one website, you can interlink all of them. Again, just create a box called Related Sites, or Our Other Websites, or something like that, and put a link to each site in there. Put this box on every page of the site, at the bottom of the left or right sidebar, or in a box at the bottom of the site. DON’T hide the links, and don’t put them on more than once.

This combination of tactics really works. And unlike the pre-Twitter/FaceBook days, it is actually fairly quick. It used to take a year or more to see significant results from this. If you do this now, then Google will pick up your blog post from Twitter within hours, and the blog will benefit every site linked to it. You can see an increase in website traffic to a linked site within 2 weeks.

The great thing about this system is that you basically set everything up, and then just post to your blog. Sure, it also helps to promote the blog through blog directories, where they also pick up the feed to your blog, but basically, with the exception of posting to your blog on a regular basis, it is a “set it and forget it” marketing method.

Content marketing is still the most powerful and stable marketing method online, and this system gives you a means of using a single effort to its maximum potential, in a way that is fairly simple to do. Not only that, there is absolutely NO backlash or negative effect to it. Search engines LIKE it, you aren’t manipulating ANYTHING, you are doing it all open and above board. You are helping your customers through helpful and fun information, provided through your blog, there’s no pressure sales, no sales pitches. Just good stuff, that people and search engines LIKE, being presented where people can either read it or not.

Now that, is smart marketing!

So what the heck does that mean anyway? Polyculture means more than one culture -  and in farming, it means you raise crops and animals, in a synergistic environment that BUILDS on itself, instead of CONSUMING.

If you delve into gardening books, you won’t get far in most of them before they start babbling about soil building and the sad state of a garden that is left too long without adding some kind of chemical fertilizer. The books that are aimed at vegetarians are the worst – they tell you that the best you can hope for is a 90-99% sustainability in a farm that tries to sustain itself with crops alone. They tell you to plant “green manure” crops, and till them under, to help replace lost nutrients. They tell you that you’ll “just have to” put on some kind of chemical fertilizer to make up the difference, and they say it in sort of an apologetic way, as though they really tried but there is no alternative. They’ll sometimes make a brief mention of animal manures, as though they are something shameful, or they’ll make a derogatory remark about them, and then move on as though they have been satisfactorily dismissed and now they can get on with the business of REALLY gardening.

And it is all hooey. Complete and utter tripe… garbage… balderdash… manure! The myth of 99% maximum sustainability is just that – a myth. On both ends.

First, because if you use plants alone, you can’t even achieve that, in spite of what they say. You can, at best, achieve perhaps an 80-90% sustainability. In other words, you are going to lose 10-20% of your soil fertility per year, and have to replace it with something besides just plant derived matter.

Second, because there is NO limit to the sustainability and soil building factor. If you choose polyculture farming, and add animals to the mix, you can achieve higher productivity per acre, and you BUILD soil at a rate which HAS no limit.

Of course, if you overload your land with too many animals, the land is decimated and becomes barren. So, ideally, you have a balance of animals and crops. And the simplest way to do that, is the most natural way… the way things used to be. Just grow ALL the crops that the animals eat, on your own property – and use the animal wastes to fertilize those crops. This achieves the highest degree of sustainability, and results in an enhancement to the soil of between 2 and 10% per year. It gets better and better, the longer you do it in balance.

• The plants feed the animals with hay, grain, legumes, and veggies, and you with fruits and veggies.
• The animals feed the plants with manure, and you with meat, eggs, milk, etc.

The garden and fields produce abundantly. The animals are healthy and produce better when fed crops raised without chemicals. The land is rejuvenated and vibrant. You and your family dine on the healthiest and freshest foods in the world. And it is all done without chemicals.

And all this happens on LESS land than it would take to sustain the same life with just green crops. Let’s illustrate:

It takes about a quarter of an acre to provide a vegetarian diet for a single person for a year – this assumes INTENSIVE cropping in a single growing season (it takes about half that if you practice year-round growing). This includes green manure crops to provide fertilizer – about half of your space has to go to producing green manure. It takes more than that for factory farms, which do not use intensive growing methods, and waste far more space, in spite of the fact that they do NOT provide space for green manure, and they use chemical fertilizers.

Now, there is a book out there that claims you can produce the “food” for one person on a vegetarian diet in about 4000 square feet per year. But he does not include grains or legumes in the amounts necessary. He just includes the vegetables and fruits, and a token amount of beans and peas. So his assumptions are different, and do not include what we are including. But the same rules apply – what he does in 4000 square feet can actually be done in less than half that space.

Ok… so how about if you take the green manure crops, and replace them with rabbit forage, and three rabbit hutches? You can now grow all of your vegetable and fruit needs, and you can grow all of your rabbit food, in about a SIXTH of an acre, instead of a quarter of an acre. You use the rabbit manure on the crops, so the crops produce better than they could with green manure alone. So far, win-win. And we haven’t even taken the reproductive abilities of the rabbit into consideration, and we haven’t even provided you with meat to eat yet.

So, if you start those rabbits reproducing, the equation gets even better… Let’s start breeding them – assuming 2 does and one buck. They’ll produce enough rabbit for you to eat one rabbit per week – very likely more, if you breed them about every three months.

It will take a little more crops to produce the meat, because you’ll have to feed those babies until they reach butcher age (at about 9 weeks). But those babies will also produce more manure for the garden, which means your soil fertility can be further enhanced, and your crop productivity can increase a little more. And since you are now eating meat, the amount of crops you need drops by about half – and the amount the rabbits need is less than that. So you now have the ability to provide for your needs on about an EIGHTH of an acre (about 5200 square feet), using intensive single season cropping. If you use year-round cropping, you can do it on about a third less – around 3200 square feet, including the space for the rabbit hutches. And you might just have some extra rabbits to sell. This means you could do it in a 50X60 foot back yard.

If you add in chickens, it gets even better. Now, you can feed the chickens on the garden waste and on redworms, grown in the rabbit manure. Chickens help control the harmful insects in and around the garden, giving you increased productivity across the board. They also provide you with eggs, So your needs for vegetable, fruit, and grains decrease a bit more, and your health improves with the variety. And of course, they put additional nutrients back into the soil, making anything they take out, completely replaceable. But since chickens eat so much that neither you, nor your rabbits can eat, they’ll make your garden more efficient just because more of the food in it gets eaten. Your garden gets healthier too, because you no longer have to use pesticides.

There’s a funny thing about chickens. It seems that if you have enough hens to make sure you have eggs through the winter, you are going to have way too many eggs through the spring, summer, and fall. Traditionally, the “egg money” from the farm was the mother’s spending money, to use for the things that her husband did not think to budget for. People do still buy farm fresh, naturally raised eggs – and if you raise those chickens without commercial chicken feed, but with foods you grew yourself, your eggs will be of unbeatable quality, and the egg money will be pure profit. If you choose the right breeds, they’ll also reproduce – giving you additional meat, or chickens to sell.

The equations are not quite as attractive once you get into raising larger animals -  but they are not as distorted as people think they are. Properly managed crops and fields can easily produce more than we assume they can – astronomically more. Of course, natural pasture is easier to manage, and it is simpler to just let your cows, goats, and sheep graze without having to intensively manage the crops for the fields. But if you chose to do so, they could be fed abundantly on very little ground, with nothing brought in from outside.

Humans are, and always have been, omnivores. The human body was designed to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and animal products. When animal products are tainted with chemicals from modern production and preservation methods, they become a means of carrying higher amounts of toxins and poisons into the body – hence the supposed “harmful” effects of animal fats and some other products – it isn’t the animal product at all, but how they were produced that is causing the harm. But when you produce them yourself (or get them from clean sources), they improve health and longevity, and strengthen the body and the immune system (the Weston A Price foundation has information regarding health benefits of butter, eggs, pork, beef, etc). Polyculture farming, then, provides a means to supply humans with optimal health, and it provides a means to enhance our stewardship over the land, putting back what we take, using less land to provide for our needs, and to responsibly care for farm animals.

Polyculture farming works because it is the way nature intended for us to provide for our needs. A truly synergistic environment, where you stir the pot, and it bubbles up with way more than you put into it.

Who doesn’t love luscious veggies and fruits in the wintertime? And we all have visions of dollar signs dancing in our heads when we think about buying them in the winter. We see those same dollar signs when we think of growing them ourselves, in a greenhouse. Because you’d surely have to HEAT that greenhouse, to get good stuff in the middle of winter!

Some common misconceptions about greenhouses lead most people to feel that it is too costly to buy one or build one, and too costly to operate one, and that the results are even then, so chancy that it is not worth the investment. They feel that it is not worth having a greenhouse when it is only used to extend the season by a month or two on either end of the gardening season.

Those ideas are completely false! A greenhouse can in fact, reward you through the entire winter with good things to eat, and it can do so at very little cost beyond the initial investment.

Actually, the truth is that many vegetables can be grown in a greenhouse, or even without a greenhouse, in the middle of the winter, in every state in the US. Even Alaska. Ok, not ALL of Alaska… but some of it.

There are two factors which make it work:

1. Don’t try to grow tomatoes or strawberries in the winter. If you do, you will need heat. Don’t try to grow heat loving plants. This will only cost you huge amounts. Choose plants which naturally do well in the winter. There are a bunch of them, and you can grow them in a variety of ways, even if you don’t have a greenhouse, in most areas of the US.

2. Protect your crops from the wind, and use coverings that help hold warmth. Many plants can stand temps well below freezing if they are protected from wind. As long as your area gets enough sun, you can probably raise crops successfully in an unheated greenhouse.

Now, lest you think this is some sort of radical new idea, or hype that just won’t work, let’s give you a little history…

This is traditional gardening. This is how people survived the winter in the middle ages. It has been practiced for centuries, and still is used prevalently in France. Just look up the definition of the term “bell jar”. The art was lost to the US, partly because of the market culture that developed here. But it still works here, and has been proven to work even in Maine.

You don’t really even need a greenhouse. You can do it with coldframes, tunnels (plastic over wire hoops), or even floating row covers (lightweight fiber cloth) in milder climates. In severe climates, you use a combination of methods, to give two, or even three layers of covering – a double walled greenhouse or tunnel, with a row cover directly over the plants.

It really works. We have seedlings coming up right now under a floating row cover. It is about two months too late to plant a winter garden in Oklahoma, dipping well below freezing several times a week now, yet our plants are thriving – we decided we’d rather plant late and have small crops than none at all, and it looks like we won’t have cause to regret that decision.

So what did we plant? We planted mostly things that do well in the cold anyway. Crops that were developed to grow in the winter, or to thrive in colder temps.

We have planted a mesclun mix, two varieties of lettuce, and spinach. We have cabbage, broccoli, beet, collard, dill, and some other greens to plant as soon as the walls are onto the greenhouse. I also planted alfalfa, which we’ll let grow a few inches tall, and then harvest for the chickens (it is worth it to me to keep some crops in the greenhouse for the animals, because they give us other food that we need) – I’ll do the same with wheatgrass, which grows well in cool soil.

There are other plants that grow well in cool temps also – peas, arugula, endive, raddichio, miner’s lettuce, corn salad, and many others. I don’t happen to care for the pungent ones like arugula and endive, but look forward to trying corn salad.

This kind of crop will grow well without any heat at all, as long as it is given sufficient protection. In the event that you feel heat IS needed, you can use raw compost (fill the floorspace between your planting pots with compost, or put it around the outside of the greenhouse), or a small woodburner (even a small fire will keep things above 15 degrees until the sun comes up, which is all that is needed). When things get cold, just add another layer of protection – row covers over your plants inside the greenhouse or inside the coldframe, or a coldframe inside a greenhouse, etc.

These techniques keep the investments that you make constrained to primarily reusable items, instead of pouring money into the cost of heat. Most things will germinate as long as the soil gets warm at least for part of the day, and does not freeze. They do germinate and grow as seedlings better in the late summer and early fall than they do in the winter. But as long as you can meet that criteria, they’ll even do it later than you thought. They’ll just do it slower.

Plants grow more slowly in the winter than they do in the summer. The cooler it gets, the slower they’ll grow. That means they’ll consume less moisture also – so you won’t need to water often. When you do, you’ll want to make sure the water dries before the temperatures drop too cold at night, because it can cause more damage if they are wet and then the water freezes.

The real key to making it work, is one that we’ve been trying to infuse into everything we do in our farming efforts: Work with nature, not against her. When you do, you are letting nature do the majority of the work, while you just nudge it along to reap the harvest, instead of fighting against her, expending unreasonable resources, for a mediocre result.

Once you get winter crops growing, you’ll be surprised at what you harvest. Often, the plants are small, but they taste wonderful. Nothing beats the flavor of sweet green cabbage leaves, pulled from young cabbage plants in December. You’ve never tasted tangy flavorful cabbage like that – not a hint of sulfur in it! If you try it in the springtime, you’ll be sadly disappointed, because that flavor only comes from cabbage that is grown in the cold.

So if you want fresh veggies in the wintertime, don’t think that they need to be shipped in from Chile. You can grow them in your own back yard, if you select the right veggies, and protect them in the right way.

Of course, you may spend a WHOLE LOT more on salad dressing…

I have a thing about deceptive advertising, and deceptive promotional practices. Lately the news media has taken up the drum for various causes, and is using age old deceptive practices in the reporting of the news.

The latest one is in jobless numbers. “Jobless claims fall for fourth straight week”, the headline said.

Makes it sound like fewer people are claiming unemployment benefits, right? Wrong.

Turns out this is only the number of NEW claims that has declined by a very small amount (about 1/1000 of 1%). This means that the RATE OF INCREASE has slowed some. That is all.

Then they reported the numbers of continuing claims – and stated that the difference between this time this year, and this time last year, is good news. Down 2 million! Of course, there is no mention of the fact that in the last month or two, claims have simply run out for millions of unemployed Americans. Further, the number does NOT include people who have moved from initial benefits to extended benefits – so it isn’t even a true number on total people receiving unemployment benefits! They don’t release those numbers. They only track the initial claims, and the initial continuing claims!

So, with partial numbers, they are crowing that jobs are returning. There is no differentiation between people who got jobs, and people who moved either into extended benefits, or simply dropped out of the unemployment benefit pool altogether, but who still do not have jobs. And overall jobless rates have always been inaccurate anyway, because the only people who are counted are those who are registered with state employment agencies as actively seeking work – if a person has given up, and is not reporting weekly, they simply are not counted. Further, temporary JOBS are counted, but temporary unemployment is NOT.

Census jobs are skewing the numbers also. They have nothing to do with the economy, they occur every ten years on a planned schedule. They are very temporary jobs, and will have no lasting effect, and do not in any way reflect any positive economic change.

It would be like measuring sugar consumption in the US by measuring the number of bags of sugar sold at the grocery store. We could say that if the sale of bagged sugar fell in the retail markets, that sugar consumption is down, while ignoring sales of all other packaging of sugar, and ignoring increases in the sale of soda, cookies, candy, etc. It is disingenuous, and deceptive.

I get the feeling that the media is trying to tell us that things are better so that we’ll believe what they say, regardless of what is really happening. The amount of deception over the economy is appalling, and is happening across the board, with numbers being falsely labeled. Somehow, the media thinks that if they tell the American people often enough that things are fine, that we’ll believe it, even when our neighbors are still struggling and losing jobs, and even though our own jobs are in peril, and our businesses are facing unprecedented challenges.

I’m not a “doom and gloom” kind of person. But right now, we have to be realistic about what is happening. You cannot stay prepared and make sensible decisions when the information on which you need to base some of those decisions is false.

There are people who need the help of kind neighbors, and by being prepared, we can be givers, and not takers. Deceptive reporting is not helping anyone to achieve that goal.