Hello to all. Very excited to have found you all (thank you Jack) and can hardly wait to learn how to transform myself and my family from grasshoppers to ants. I am a 30+ year transplant from So. Calif. to the beautiful State of Washington. I am a husband, father of 4, and grandfather of 1. I work for a local Aerospace & Defense contractor. As a child I went from cub scout through boy scouts and into explorer scouts. We had gardens and fruit trees growing-up, but thought of it as a "chore". I ignored all the survival/self-sufficient knowledge I learned as a youngster from my 20's through my mid-30's. Sometime around the turn of the century, the lightbulb came back on and I've been slowly but steadily increasing our stores ever since. While I do have long-term storage, I was not going about this in the proper "needs based" fashion. I cannot express how lucky I feel to have found The Survival Podcast, SMB, and this forum. My tires have stopped "spinning" in the mud and I have managed to drop it in 4 low. I've got about 60 podcasts under my belt, all the videos at SMB (which have led me to numerous others) and my 6 raised-beds are doing pretty good for my first shot. Not to mention I now know why the 200 apples on one of my trees never got any bigger than 50 cent pieces. More is not always better. ( I now have about 80 apples on that tree) I now have a direction in which to head with a favorable outcome. I am looking forward to meeting you all and learning from you too. Of course if I have anything to offer I will be more than happy to do so. See you on the forum. ~Paine~
