Powered By Blogger

Total Pageviews

Monday, August 2, 2010

Investements and your future

Okay this is a Sportsmen blog site and not a investment site but I have been reading and thinking about a few things lately and today I would like to share with you some of my personal opinions I have gathered along the way. As a young man I was what you would consider a hippie sorta. I grew up in a beer garden (bar) that my grandfather built and my parents owned outside of a village known as Parsonburg,  When I was in the first grade my parents moved to a chicken farm in the village of Mt. Hermon. Directly across the stone chip road was a older man known to me as Mr. Sampie Perdue, and he did everything in the old school way. He had horses he would plow with and a forge, a corn crib and a cow for milk, chickens for eggs. he was a Baptist preacher, but I never saw him in anything but overalls. Our neighbors were a beautiful black couple that lived in a former one room school house that they had made into a home with a garden. I always called them Nana and Papa. My child hood friends were a couple of kids whose Russian (Ukraine) parents had escaped the Germans during the war, and a German family whose father had escaped the Nazi's.  My Mother and Father owned the chicken farm and I was expected to earn my keep sorta, by working alongside them in the chicken business. My father was a first generation Italian and my mom as American as they came. Her great grandparents were English settlers and Native Americans and was as Eastern Shore as you could get. So you can see I grew up in a VERY multicultural neighborhood of very back to the land type people from all over the world who understood the ways of their fathers and the rhythm of the land. From these people I learned the art of investing that I will share with you.
FOOD: I learned very early on that a few seeds could make a lot of really good food, and it was not tied to inflation, or the economy. If you had a garden you had a dinner, and not all of our dinners were meat and potatoes, my father cut meat for local farmers and I learned how to turn a cow into steaks when I was just a kid and how to turn a nonlaying chicken into chicken salad, but some meals in the summer were right out of the garden. So by growing a garden you are putting hard cold cash in your pocket, plus you can sell the surplus if you want or put it up for the winter. Plus you can trust this food that you grow, some horse manure in the very early spring, maybe a shot of lime and you have your own organic food supply.
SECURITY: If you have a larder full of fresh food you have security, a deer harvested during the season, root crops in the cellar and the pantry full of put up vegetables will hold you over till you can plant again. By keeping some heirloom seeds and not hybrids you can be assured of genetically sound produce, that you can save seeds from.
HEALTH AND FITNESS: If you are hitting the gym 4 times a week to keep that youthful figure, well you can cancel that membership and put that money in your pocket when you establish a garden. Pulling weeds is the best squat thrust exercise and the plants do not care what you wear, wheeling the wheelbarrow, shoveling manure, hoeing, and tilling are the best exercise and your body is designed to do these things. Believe me your body was not designed to lift 300lbs 5 times for 3 reps so you look good at the beach. So you do not have the time? Well figure what you spend time wise on driving to, exercising, showering, and returning to home, you could have a beautiful garden providing you with fresh vegetables, fresh air and exercise for the same investment.
PERSONAL REWARDS:  In the evening when you set the family dinner table with fresh fruits and vegetables that you grew yourself, a Venison roast you took off the farm, or a fat duck or chicken you know that you have done your best for your family, and you can rest easy knowing you have provided, the very best for your family.
Now Gardening is not for everyone and today the pull on you to provide the material things that we all seem to desire may not provide you with the time to be a full time gardener. But a flower pot of herbs on the counter, or a corner of strawberries can still bring to you the joys of playing in the dirt, and help you have a healthier lifestyle. Try it you'll like it!!!


                

1 comment:

  1. Biazzio,
    Were your Ukrainian friends related to the Bernitskis?

    ReplyDelete