Bitcoin Mania!!!

Well, it was just a matter of time before I had to spout off on my two cents about the Bitcoin Craze! 

(Disclaimer: I’m not a Crypto-currency expert, hater or fanboy.  I see many great things in this technology and have spent some of my own time and money on it but I think it is prudent to always evaluate potential risks as well.)

PBS aired Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary “Eight Days a Week” last night and that got me to thinking.

What do the Beatles and Bitcoin have in common?  Well, there was a mania for the Beatles throughout the 60s and there is a building mania about Bitcoin (and crypto-currencies in general).  I looked up the word Mania and the definition said:

• mental illness marked by periods of great excitement, euphoria, delusions, and over activity.
• an excessive enthusiasm or desire; an obsession

I think the second best summarizes what I’m talking about here but the first definition should not be forgotten throughout the entire discussion.

I actually received my first Bitcoin in 2016 for free.  My friend Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast spent a lot of time talking about it and from listening there I learned a little about block-chain technology.  Well, at least enough to know when to take free money.  He had an affiliate Coinbase promo that would give you $10 just for signing up for BTC!

I usually hate free stuff because there’s truly no such thing, but free money was hard to pass up.  I signed up, funded an account with a monthly contribution from my bank account and cha-ching!, I made $10 in BTC!  At that time BTC was selling for about $550.  I forgot about it until a few months later when my wife checked our online banking account and asked me “Who is Coinbase and why was I giving her money every month?”  Uh oh…

Well trust me, explaining Blockchain technology to an irritated woman is not something you want to do after surprising your spouse with a secret heretofore unknown investment (MY BAD Sweetie!).  She’s smarter than me so she understood my lame financial explanation.  I did think it’d be a good idea to quit my regular monthly purchases of BTC  & ETH, in an additional effort show her I loved her and wasn’t supporting a girlfriend code named “Coinbase”.

I kind of forgot about it all until this spring when the ICO mania started heating up.  After checking my balance (Cha-ching-a-ling- dong!!), I then realized I should have freekin stayed on as Miss Base’s Sugar Daddy!…

Before any mania sets in, I’ll stop here and tell you how smart an Investor I am… I even took some profits!  DOAH!!  I should  have followed my own advice:

“Never Sell Ever”

If I’d only followed this advice, I probably would never, in my entire life, sold any gold, silver, stocks, ETFs, collectables, Dell in ’93, that Google stock in ’05, Etc.  Alas, I’m good with advice but bad at taking any of my own.  If I had every investment I’d ever bought today, I’d probably have more money and wealth than I do now, but maybe not a lot more (its really not much anyway!).

From what I’ve read, we’re just naturally wired to lose.  We have to rewire ourselves to win and I’m still working on that one.  People love winners and hate losers.  Exactly the opposite of how they’re wired.  Imagine that.

Back to Beatle Mania, I mean Bitcoin Mania.  Instead of talking about whether BTC or crypto is a good or bad investment, lets talk about how long a mania can last.

(Age alert spoiler).. I remember when the Beatles broke up.

I wasn’t a big fan in grade school as I was still listening to goofy kid stuff like Rockin’ Robin, but I remember the sadness in some people.  EVERYONE all of a sudden loved the Beatles.. again, for a while.  The next time I saw that kind of sadness was when Elvis died in ’77, thank you very muuch.

Bitcoin mania will end. It’ll be replaced or destroyed or something will end it, and when it does, people will be very sad.  When BTC is comparable to the Beatles, the mania could easily last 10 years or more.  I’d say the dot com mania lasted about 6-9 years or so.  I think the midpoint of the BTC mania is probably last year.  But what are the most likely risks to stop the mania?  Well, here is my short list:

• Technology
• Government intervention
•  Scammers

Technology: Anyone who really understands blockchain technology will tell you that BTC is not easily scalable as a widespread currency.   This has to do with technical crap I willingly admit I know little about.  Lets just say, there is better blockchain technology now that’ll do what BTC was invented to do.

Bitcoin was designed to solve problems. It was not designed as a long term, buy and hold investment, although the designer(s) built it to attain greater value to encourage more growth as its use expanded, it is not an investment.  So the problems with all technology will eventually catch up to BTC.  Other Cryptocurrencies will dominate the space BTC does today.  Don’t believe me?  I’ve got a barely used iPod I’ll sell you for 20% off original retail price!

Government: One feature folks seem to like about BTC, and all crypto-currency, is that there is an implied sense of privacy.  A decentralized block-chain is a hard thing to control or govern or hack.  I’m now going to say something here that is going to make a lot of folks mad.  Please don’t shoot the observant messenger here, I’d ask that you just carefully re-read the following a few times with an open mind.

You can’t hide from Governments because you are part of one.  Oh sure, you think you can have your bounty of BTC hidden in a paper wallet in your sock drawer and no one will ever be the wiser, but you are wrong my dear friend.

Try to see it from their point.  Your Guv works very hard for you.  They pass laws that give you better heath care, they subsidize farmers to get you super cheap and high quality food, they provide engaging political dramas for the media to report back to you everyday!,  they protect you from God knows what overseas and they even help pay PBS to create great programing like Ron Howard’s Beatles Documentary “Eight Days a Week”!

(Please note, to greatly simplify things, we won’t talk about where they got all the money to do all that nice stuff for you, but trust me, its hard work.)

Here’s another way to see it; If your poor hardworking parents had to slave away at extra jobs, work overtime, go without the basics of a middle class life all to help buy food, provide healthcare and protect you, their darling child, and then you entered an online  raffle and won $100,000, but you DIDN’T tell your parents, how do you think they’d react?

We’ll that’s exactly what your uncle is thinking about all this money flying around to buy invisible coins of no intrinsic value.  Here’s how he’s going to kill the mania…

In the next piece of legislation dealing with taxes (I think I heard of one coming soon).  They will slip in a paragraph somewhere in the back part of the 50,000 page bill. It will contain a new law or rule that inhibits your ability to buy and sell invisible money.

Poof, your parents just crashed your crypto party!  I think that’s whats going cause the next BTC meltdown and cool the mania a bit.

Scammers – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox  ‘Nuff said..

Go look at the BTC Chart from 2014 after this small-scale hack of one exchange.  If you think a lot of crypto-currency was held in exchanges and online wallets in 2014, what do you think the numbers are in 2018?? 

OK, so these are just my theories and given my track record, odds are I’m half right.  So I’ve framed the mania argument and suggested potential risks of purchasing BTC.  Now, to finish on a positive note, I’ll leave you with a true story about a sign that used to hang in a real estate agents office in Aspen, CO:

Dear Customer; We’re sorry but yesterday was the best time ever, to buy real estate in Aspen, Colorado.   The Second Best time to buy Aspen Real Estate is today…

Having visited and worked in Colorado, and after 25 years in the real estate industry, I can assure you the sign was completely accurate.

Cheers;

M.C.

Hey, I’m trying to do a better job reaching a larger audience so if you find my blog or Youtube channel remotely entertaining or informative, you could help me giving me a like or thumbs up or whatever they call it. You can also help by sending a link to my blog to someone else or telling your priest or just yell out “MIKE CENTEX ROCKS”  at the next PTO or little league meeting.  (Wait, scratch that last one.)

If you have an opinion on my blog Please post a comment and if you don’t sound like a looney or a troll, we can all have a friendly dialog!   You can always find me at MikeCentex.Com or on Youtube at Mike Centex LIFE! (No salesman will call)

Thank you!!

 

 

 

Coffee; Tea; or Ilex Vomitoria???

OK, Last Saturday, I convinced by lovely wife to accompany me to the Farmers Market where my farmer friend Jim was selling his hand grown veggies.  We saw Jim and his lovely wife Ara doing a booming business in custom salad mixes and hand grown micro greens.  My new favorite secret weapon of custom grown veggies is the “salad turnip”.  More on that later,

What most totally tweeked my melon at the market was something that is almost a local legend around these parts.

You can’t grow up in Texas without learning, respecting and understanding the numerous Native American tribes that inhabited this great land before us.  When I was a kid of single digit age I was an eager member of the YMCA Indian Guides.  Our adopted tribe were the Kickapoo.  My Indian Guide name was Little Dipper and my guide (father) was ..  You guessed it, Big Dipper.

We had pow wows and camp outs and tried to copy some of the many rituals practiced by real Indians.  But I always was fascinated by how the Indians learned to use the natural flora and fauna to nourish and heal themselves.  I was, and still am, in awe of these true native Texans.

I’m not so ill informed that I don’t know the true stories of savagery and terror waged by the native tribes against the Texas settlers of European descent.  But I also fully understand the settlers were no angels in their own right and the savagery was no more or less than what was practiced by the Romans, the early Church or our modern day terrorist-dejour.   So lets not quibble about who was innocent in the lens of history.  You and I weren’t there and  we don’t know jack caca about what really happened day to day.

But Back to the Farmer’s Market…  (Sorry… I so easily digress due to late onset ADHD).

As a kid I learned about a little known fact that there was one native plant in the entire United States that contained caffeine.   Yes, caffeine, the secret ingredient of a multi-billion dollar industry (Thank you Starbucks!).

Postscript; I love Coffee!  I love coffee so much that for over 30 years I have drank it every morning.  But not like most folks.  I drink my coffee black, without additions.   Just like the cowboys of the 1800s, I like my coffee so thick and black, it will standup  a spoon in the cup!  In College, the night before tests and finals, I’d drink multiple pots in order to stay awake and cram for tests and finals!   Yes, I’m a long time fan of caffeine!!!

I digress again, THE FARMERS MARKET!  Yes at the market I finally saw someone who executed on the plan that has been in the back of my mind for decades.  A true purveyor of the native pick me up drink of Texas known by the Indians as “The Black Drink”.  I found a seller of Yaupon Tea!

To those not familiar with the gulf coast of the USA, Yaupon may seem like a foreign plant species.  But to any young TX; LA; MS; AL; GA or FL boy or girl whoever spent a summer clearing land knows EXACTLY what Yaupon is. It is the devil’s shrub!  Tougher than a bois-de-arc fence post, immortal, recurrent and omnipresent in all wooded coastal environments.  BUT, it is also the secret caffeine beverage of the native American tribes who called the gulf coast home!!

SO, when the young man at the Farmers Market asked me if I’d like to try some I said hell yeah!  I simply was not prepared for what happened next.

The young gentleman provided four separate samples.  One hot and pure with no sweetener; one hot and sweetend with Honey, one cold, sweetened and served like iced tea, then one,  sweetened, cold with creamer like something millenials would pay $9 for if it had a white cup, lid and well known logo on the front!

Disclosure Notice:  I am not a big tea drinker.  I’ll go with sweet tea and BBQ and maybe a chicken fried steak, but that’s about it.  But this drink was so different.  The best I can describe it is that it bridged the gap between Coffee and Tea.  Its akin to a weaker coffee or a stronger tea.  But OH MAN was it good.  I instantly shelled out $18 for a 5oz bag of the Black Drink.   It had an earthy taste to replace the typical tannin taste of tea.  But it had the aroma of a gourmet coffee.

My 17 year old daughter is a Starbucks coffee snob so i wanted to get her honest feedback.  I fixed her a cup of hot yaupon tea with local honey.   She was stunned by the aroma and said it reminded her of a really strong chai tea.  She absolutely loved it.  Case closed!  This is a sleeper of a caffeinated product in a world where caffeine demand outstrips supply year after year.

To set the record straight, Yaupon is neither Ilex or Vomitoria.   The Ilex was the name given by the early settlers who thought the plant was an Oak (it is not an oak).  The Vomitoria came from the native American ritual surrounding yaupon where the tea was cooked up and mixed with ipecac-like herbs then drank in large quantities until the last brave standing who didn’t vomit was the winner and named the “Osceola”.  Reminds me of an old fraternity tradition…..

As the owner of scores of acres covered in Ilex Vomitoria, I’m tempted to jump into the market for this native American caffeine drink.   What do you think?    Is this the new American coffee replacement?  Have you tried it?  I’m really amazed at this native caffeinated resource.

I’m thinking about finding a joint venture business partner who is good with a machete.  I can provide the raw material, marketing and the machete.  Start clearing here and I will tell you where to stop!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you really know your Farmer?

Rarely a day goes by that I don’t see an article or news about small scale farming.  People tend to get all warm and fuzzy about the thought of hand grown produce, free of pesticides, herbicides, and a host of other bacterial contaminants that I can’t spell.  They love going to the farmers market in the hopes of actually meeting the prototypical, portly farmer in overalls, sitting next to his 50 year old pickup truck, selling you the best food nature can produce!

Well, I used to have the same thoughts so I started going to the local farmers markets.  There’s one in my neighborhood and one at city hall during the week, across the street where I work.  I went expecting to see people who work the land and take great pride in producing healthy, nutrient dense, all natural, GMO free food.

Boy was I ever wrong.   What I saw was mostly a plethora of prepared foods, dried snacks, coffee, smoothies, food trucks, nick-nacks and candy sellers.  I searched the area profusely and finally found someone with real live veggies and after talking to them, I found out they were a large farm that supplies grocery stores and they came to the market with stuff they couldn’t wholesale.  Chemical free?? not a chance buddy, the word they used was “sprayed”.  “We spray our produce to kill bugs and weeds”.  Oh Great, “can I have some more round-up with that zucchini please??”

Needless to say all my warm and fuzzy feelings were immediately crushed like a gooey cockroach!  I was actually pissed.   But that got me to thinking.  If there were too few purveyors of fresh chem free veggies, what was holding them back?  Why would folks go to the effort to produce and sell all these prepared products at a farmers market, but not take advantage of living in Zone 9a and growing the best natural food in the world?

What I found out is that it is simply not financially feasible to compete with large scale production farms by selling the typical produce that people are conditioned to purchase for far less cost in the grocery store than they could actually grow it at home.   This means that if people can buy organic carrots in the grocery store for $2 per pound, they’re simply not mentally able to purchase them direct from the farmer for $7 per pound, even if that means the local farmer sells at a loss.  Once again, economics rule the world.

However, I did learn that profits can be made selling local produce, but it had to be specialty and rare crops along with certain produce that folks can’t easily purchase in the store.   Especially greens, salad mixes, lettuce, Etc. because these items are more expensive due to the added harvest, washing, packaging and handling costs required to make them available in stores.

What’s so funny is that at the same time I was figuring all this out, a friend of mine was already starting his small scale farming business.  Jim and I met back in 2014 at a TSP workshop in Ft. Worth.  He’s a young guy but he’s highly knowledgeable in all aspects of growing, but primarily, this guy knows his soil.  He’d started developing a small backyard farm on a property he’d leased and unfortunately, that deal started to fall apart on him with an unreasonable landlord.

We started talking about him possibly relocating the farm to my property in central Texas.  While that discussion was going on, I invited him up to my place along with another friend of mine Steve, for a hog hunting trip.  (This place is over run with feral hogs and if we shot one a day for a year, we probably wouldn’t put a dent in the population!)

Jim & Mike

As it turned out, Steve lived on a large acreage property much closer to the city and he had a guest house he was considering fixing up and leasing out.  Jim and Steve were able to work out a mutually beneficial lease and that summer Jim went straight into developing part of the property into a chemical free produce farm.  What’s really incredible is how fast he turned the typical pasture dirt into an amazingly rich garden soil in less than six months.  I couldn’t believe it unless I’d seen it myself!

 

Jim’s farm is called TEXAS ECO FARMS and his first farming season started off this fall, with a Bang!  He’s selling out almost everything he brings into the local farmers market and at specialty prices worthy of such high quality food.  It really made me happy to see him prove there was profitability in small scale produce farming, if you understood the economics.

     Now this is what I expect to see at a FARMERS Market!

Whats even better is that I now have a local source of incredible produce available to my family and we purchase a box about every other week.  I actually discovered another valuable lesson.

Hand grown, chemical free produce lasts weeks longer in the refrigerator than anything you can buy in the store!  And that means you eat more and throw out less.  This actually makes the cost differential much lower and it actually means there really isn’t a significantly higher cost to purchasing high quality produce vs. low end store bought!

I realize that the one factor that makes it hard to profit from farming in high costs of land.  Land is expensive!  In order to service the debt on a piece of land you’d have to farm large scale to afford the land costs.  This is why so many farmers wind up in commodity farming.  The market price is set and the math can be worked out ahead of time.  Purchasing large acreage farm tracts lowers the cost per acre and specialized industrial tractors and equipment limit the labor costs.  Subsidies from the USDA and low cost crop insurance insure low prices on food staples like flower, sugar, corn, soy, Etc.  These are the only reasons produce is relatively cheap in stores across the USA.

All good if you want to produce corn or soybeans, but there are other economic alternatives versus commodity farming.  But to do this you have to limit the land and labor costs, and plant in condensed plantings on smaller land parcels,  Unfortunately, to profit, small scale farmers must also undertake the expense and effort of transport and marketing.  I believe that this could be done more efficiently if more people could find high quality produce near their homes or at farmers markets or even through farm delivery services similar to amazon.  Some suspect that the recent acquisition of Whole Foods Grocery, by Amazon, will lead to this exact model. Of course you still don’t know who grew it and how!

I’m committed to helping create more small, entrepreneurial businesses because I believe it diversifies the local economy and provides a more stable community.   I see small scale farming as a great way to create more agricultural options in the market place.  I also see healthy food as an investment in healthy people and we need more of that for sure.

I’m still interested in helping set up a small scale farmer on my property and am looking for the right person who understands the marketing, distribution and economics, just as well as they understand the growing of soil and quality food.  I believe I can craft a leasing arrangement that allows them earn enough to get through the start up phase with a low level of cash investment.  Once profitable, modest land payments can be tied to production, thereby, adding insurance in case of crop failure.   I believe there are also some great opportunities to barter produce for other assets like crypto-currency and create revenue from on-line and delivery sales.  Its all hard work but I think some still find that rewarding these days.

If you know of any farmer candidates who might be interested in an opportunity like this, please send them my way.  I’m willing to invest in the success of others simply because so many invested in me and my success over the years.

It’s a great way to build resilient and sustainable local economies and it is a wonderful way to eat great food from a farmer you actually do know!!

HEY!  I’d really like to know what you think!  If you like this post or the Blog in general, please comment.  If you like this kind of stuff, sign up to follow the Blog as I explore the varied hobbies, work and interests intricacies of Mike Centex LIFE!

Thanks, Mike

 

 

 

Why you should support Nick Ferguson

I first met Nick Ferguson in the Fall of 2014 at a TSP Fall workshop.  I’d heard about him being a permaculture guy who knew a lot about plants and raising animals on a homestead.   The class he was teaching at that workshop was about plant propagation.  It sounded interesting but I felt like the course was a little over-hyped with statements like “you can learn to propagate plants and build a sustainable and profitable business from your backyard”

We hear that kind of stuff all the time and I was a little skeptical.  When I met Nick he seemed a bit shy but that changed after I saw him teach.  The plant propagation mist system he showed us how to build was something even I, with two left thumbs, could build on a budget.  He showed us everything from how to take the cuttings, arrange them in the mist box, he even taught us how to graft fruit trees that day.   I have employed the skills learned from Nick that day and been rewarded greatly with a perennial food forest of food production in my back yard.  That one day learning from Nick was worth the entire $500 I paid for the workshop.

NICK FERGUSONS WEBSITE!

Once I started doing the math on how many cuttings one could start and grow into small plants and trees, and knowing how much that stuff sells for at even wholesale prices on Craigslist, I realized that he was right.  One could earn a significant amount of cash income by simply setting up a small nursery start operation in their back yard.

I’ve got a decent job downtown right now and I don’t have the time to commit to that type operation.  BUT, if I suddenly found myself without a job, Nick gave me a great small, part time business that I could start up on a shoe string and pay the light and grocery bill for my family!  WHAT IS THAT WORTH??

The second workshop I went to with Nick, he taught me how to basically turn a concrete parking lot into healthy soil.   OK really it was just dead, hard dirt, not concrete but you get the idea.   He took hard pan clay soil and turned it into deep, moist, rich earth in one year!!! WHO DOES THAT???

The things Nick does and teaches are sometimes so far fetched sounding, I think people just don’t believe its even possible.  But I’ve seen it myself and this guy is truly an asset to anyone interested in growing sustainable plants, livestock or nursery products.

If Nick lived in a major metro area like Houston or Dallas, he’d probably be making millions a year off a nursery, teaching and consulting.  But Nick is in central Louisiana developing his family farm into a prototype of what can be done with the techniques he teaches.  To feed his family, he generally has to travel long distances to do consulting.  My wife is a consultant who travels across the country every month, so I know how much that takes away from family and from home projects.

This summer Nick launched a Patreon program to provide his sponsors a more direct line of communication and so he can stay home more to develop his prototype small homestead operation.

Personally, up to now, I’ve never really bought into the whole Patreon concept.  It seemed kind of weird paying someone to create content or support their projects.  However; when I looked back on all Nick has taught me already, and when I consider what kind of productive and profitable systems he could create working more at home in his “Homestead Laboratory”, I realized that there is no better way to provide consistent reliable, financial support to someone who is developing cutting edge sustainable agricultural practices and technology that may completely change the way we look at businesses or farming or homesteading.

NICK FERGUSON’S PATREON CAMPAIGN!!

So that is why, albeit quite a few months late, I decided that the first Patreon sponsorship I’ve ever done needed to be for Nick Ferguson.  To me it’s kind of like saying…

“If you could have been an initial supporter of Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, would you have given them a few bucks a month to help them create the future faster?”  (Duh.. yeah..)

Well, I’ve seen Nick Ferguson perform some amazing miracles and I think by giving him more time to develop his homestead and do research, he’s going to make some breakthroughs that will change the way we grow things.  I plan to be one of the few to know about it first!

I’d appreciate it if you would check out his Patreon video and website and consider sending him a small regular contribution.

I’ve seen a lot of people ask for support but I can’t think of anyone I’ve met who deserves in more than Nick.  I promise you’ll receive much more from Nick than you’ll ever give to him.

Thanks,

Mike

 

 

 

Lost in the OCTO-shuffle

Somehow I always seem to recall that October is one busy month.

Maybe its because its my wife’s busy season with her business?  or maybe its because I instinctively look forward to the first cool breeze after summer blowing across my face or the first honk of migrating geese overhead, reminding me that hunting season is around the corner?  Well, I’m older and more jaded now so I realize it may be hunting season but I’m not likely to do nearly enough hunting with my schedule and big boy responsibilities these days, but I do think about it a lot.

My father was a Cowboy.

Well he really wasn’t, but inside I think he always thought he was.   From the time I could ride a tricycle we went hunting.  We hunted ducks, geese, turkey, quail, deer, hell, if it had fur and you could eat it we probably hunted it!  It wasn’t until I was older that I realized the whole hunting trip was a sham.  My Dad would hunt but that wasn’t really why he spent money on guns, ammo, licenses then drove six hours on Friday to the middle of BFE TX.

What he really loved was removing himself from the daily grind of being a CPA in the big city and getting out into the west Texas countryside, sleeping under the stars, drinking whiskey (scotch) at night, telling BS stories and jokes around a camp fire to his friends and listening to the coyote calls.

I think getting out there to hunt made him feel like the cowboys he’d watched on the big screen at the Heights Theater matinee in the 1930s.  He was always the first one up at 4:45am to get the coffee on and harass all the other sleeping campers with his famous chant “Wakey Wakey, Hands off Snakey!”  What an S.O.B.!!  It was 20 degrees in the cabin!

I hated hunting back then as a kid.  It was too freaking cold and dark and I saw no good reason you should freeze your ass off in the dark for two hours just so you can “Get a jump on Bambi”  I remember one year some fat lazy guy, who could never climb or fit into a box blind, shot the largest buck we’d ever seen right out the window of the camp cabin while drinking coffee!  I never bought into that early morning BS after that.  But I kept hunting with my dad.

At his funeral earlier this year I saw a few of his friends and business acquaintances we used to hunt with.  After the typical condolences comments, they could not wait to sit down with me to recount the crazy ass stories that happened with my Dad while hunting.

The Jeep killing story is still legend…   One year his business partner had brought out a brand spanking new Jeep CJ-7 Laredo.  It was a bad ass jeep and should never have come hunting with this group of wannabe cowboys.  After an evening hunt the guy went to pick my dad up and as he got into the passenger seat of the jeep with his 30.06 pointed downward (of course..safety first he always said) while emptying his magazine he accidentally fired off a round straight through the brand new transmission!  Uh oh…

We never saw a nice vehicle up at the hunting lease again, but his partner was a sport and found a Tonka toy jeep replica, had it mounted on a plaque with a deer tag attached and an inscription that said something like “Best shot of the season” with my Dad’s name on it.   Even this year, almost forty years after the event, it had a half dozen grown men crying with laughter recounting the story.

Good times indeed.  So I guess that’s why having my own hunting place was so important to me as I got older.  Its not killing a stupid deer I care about, its more about not letting the great hunting memories die and having an opportunity to share new ones with my family and friends.

There is something deep in a man’s soul that resonates with the primal hunting experience and I think that’s probably what the Native-american/Indians  talked about when they sat together around the camp fire at night.

Maybe it sounded something like this..  “Do you remember the time runs-with-two-bears shot his horse in the leg with that crooked arrow he made?  We all laughed so hard we fell off our horses too!”

Hell, maybe Dad was a Cowboy after all?

 

TSP Interview With Jack Spirko

Last Wednesday (9/20/2017) I had the pleasure of being interviewed by my friend Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast.  The topic of the interview was basically an update and recap of the events I experienced during Hurricane Harvey and the subsequent flooding of Houston.  We also talked about the CACTeam  efforts (Citizens Assisting Citizens) that helped victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Irma in Florida.  Rather than recap the interview, you can listen to the podcast interview here:   Mike Centex TSP Interview

I started listening to Jack’s Podcast around 2012.  The first few episodes I listened to I could tell this guy wasn’t the typical prepper-alarmist.  He was pragmatic and rational.  After a week or so I felt like I’d received such incredible value from his shows, I paid $50 and joined the Member Support Brigade.  That’s proven to be an exceptional investment.  Actually, Jack has suggested many actions that turned out to have exceptional ROI.

I grew up hunting and fishing in the outdoors like Jack did so I could relate to many of his topics.  I met Jack later at the first workshop I attended and from their I met a lot of the other folks you’ll hear regularly on his podcast.  I found all to be much more generous and intelligent than your average bear.  One thing they all had in common was that they worked really hard to develop and share what they learned with others.  I think over the past few years that enthusiasm has rubbed off on me and that’s a big part of what motivates me to try harder to help others and give back where and when I can.

I’ve had a few people contact me with feedback from the interview and I really appreciate all the positive comments.   I’ve also heard from a few folks who came across the podcast and have more questions and interest in preparedness.  I think that is great and I want to do all I can to help guide folks to the valuable preparedness resources I’ve come across over the years.

Before we start though, lets get past the White Elephant of Preparedness. 

The stereotype of “the Prepper” is like all other stereotypes.  There are some that may fit the description but most don’t.   Unfortunately, the greatest damage to the national preparedness mindset, and reason for much of the stereotype (in my opinion) was the NatGeo series “Doomsday Preppers”. 

If you’ve never seen it, count yourself as one of the lucky.  It is simply modeled like most other “Reality” TV shows and developed, produced and edited purely for mindless entertainment value.  The typical script was to take a real person who might know or have done things to prepare for unknown disasters, and then give them a single disaster scenario, then build the show around the steps they think one should take to prepare for that single disaster.  Then, the producers and consultants grade the person’s preparedness on a scale of 1-100.  What could go wrong?

It is pretty obvious throughout the entire process they wanted to focus on things that would shock (killing animals, blowing things up) and make the prepper look like a crazy idiot who should be mocked by all.  To achieve this on each show they used creative editing (look up Frankenbite editing).

I have friends who film and produce reality TV so I know the truth about the directing, editing and coaxing of characters behind the scenes.  I also know several people who were on the show and none were pleased with the final results.  I’m really impressed that Jack Spirko had the smarts to turn down an offer to appear on this series and I hope that people see it for what it was, simply another reality TV show devoid of much “Reality”.  Maybe it’s creators thought it was just supposed to be entertaining, but I wonder how many people avoided learning or practicing preparedness because they didn’t want to look like one of those idiot “prepper” types?  I wonder how many got flooded in Houston and had zero preparedness plans or preparations??

FEMA has a 32 point preparedness plan.  I can assure you that your congressman and senators have a detailed preparedness plans for all likely disasters.   It is written down and drilled on yearly.  There are food, water, and medical provisions set aside and even fall back shelter locations for them to evacuate to in the event of an emergency.  I’d like to think that, at a minimum, if a detailed preparedness plan is good enough for my elected representatives in DC, its probably a good idea for me.

Being prepared for unknown disaster events does not make you an idiot, but not being prepared most certainly will make you look and feel like one at some point in the future.

The question I seem to get the most is “where do I start”.  That’s a good question because most folks take a scattered approach and start buying this and that, guns, ammo, MREs, Etc.   It doesn’t really have to be that difficult.

The basic pillars of preparedness are Water; Food; Shelter; Health/Medical, Security and Sanitation.  The easy way to start is to just prepare to be self sufficient for a short time (say 72 hrs).  Now pack a bag or a backpack and assume you are going to be at the hospital with a friend for three days.  There may be food and water but there might not.

So a quart canteen or water bottle combined with a small water filtration straw device would give you all the water you need for 72 hours.  Water Filtration Straw.  Boom.. water check!

Food, well you can pack crackers, breakfast bars, nuts or whatever non-perishable food you have around and could keep long term in a backpack.  Or if you’re lazy like me, just order some of this stuff its good for years.   Emergency survival rations     So food for 72 hrs, Check!

Shelter: Now that includes everything from your clothes up to a tiny house but for 72 hrs we’re going to probably need a change of underwear, socks, shirt, maybe pants or shorts and a weather proof coat.  You should also have a hat for outdoor protection.  with this you’ll be fine for 72 hours in most environments.  You do own clothes don’t you?? Check!

Heath/First Aid – I’ve never found a first aid kit that had everything I thought it should, so I try to by kits with nice cases that’ll hold up, then I add my allergies, stomach, Etc. meds to that.  Here’s a decent starting kit First Aid Kit

Security is a deep rabbit hole filled with fears, opinions and realities.  So I’m going to make this easy for you.  You should be able to fend off a 100 pound dog or bear from your 72 hour kit.  For under $12 you can’t do much better than this Pepper Spray Protection

Sanitation simply means pack your toothbrush, washcloth, soap, and everything you’d take on a short vacation.  Also pack some toilet paper and plastic bags in case you have to go and there’s no facilities nearby.

Additional – I’d include a pocket knife, flashlight, some string, rubber bands and clothes pins.  A pad and pen to write with and whatever else you think is important to you in a 72 hour stay at the hospital.

So, assuming you already have a backpack, toothbrush, water bottle and some of the basic stuff I mentioned, you now have a 72 hour go kit for less than $50 and you are prepared for a local emergency or evacuation.  Now, do the same for each family member in your home and you have the start of a prepared family. 

So would anyone every really need a 72-hour go bag???  Yes, I needed one last month.  During Hurricane Harvey, a rash of tornadoes started hitting around the area.  My phone started ringing with an emergency alert tone and here is what I saw on it:

This meant that a Tornado had been confirmed and was near my location. Guess what my brilliant and beautiful wife told me to do?  “Grab our 72 Hour go bags and bring them into our shelter in case we have to evacuate“!  This is why its always smart to marry above your IQ and prepare ahead of time!

There are many other methods of disaster preparation, but I wouldn’t suggest any until you are prepared for a knock on your door at 3am and having a cop tell you you have 3 minutes to evacuate the area.   During the boat rescues after Hurricane Harvey, fire and rescue boats would move on to other houses if the occupants didn’t come out when they got there.  They rescuers are not going to wait for you to assemble your go bag.  You have to do it NOW!

Can you imagine how much more comfortable flood victims were who had dry clothes, food and water after escaping their flooded homes with a go bag? 

If you like this kind of information and find it useful, please let me know.  If folks want more information I’m happy to cover many more aspects of preparedness in more YouTube videos.  Here some topics that I have presented on, practiced, learned and studied since 1998 and easy topics for me to address in blogs or videos.

• Why you want a smaller emergency gas power generator
• Why solar power has very limited uses in an emergency
• You need an inverter before a battery bank and battery bank before a gas generator
• How to acquire and store a years worth of survival food for under $75.
• Why you need a network of reliable, preparedness minded people to survive a disaster
• Why you should have immediate access to a weapon 24/7.
• Why survival seed banks are a joke if you’re not a farmer or gardner
• The most likely disaster to impact you and turn your life upside down.
• How to raise a majority of your food in your backyard.
• Where and how to find land with the least restrictions on use
• Why you should own some real estate free & clear of any debt
• Why Fish are easier to raise for food than chickens, but you should have both
• How to live long term in your vehicle
• Why you should own a pistol before a long arm and a shotgun before a rifle
• Why you should learn to garden, hunt and fish NOW
• How I teach people to hunt who have never done it before
• Why you must have non-lethal self-defense options
• How to deal with people who are scared or afraid of firearms
• What’s statistically most likely to kill you, in order from 1-10.

As always, I appreciate your feedback, comments and likes/subscribing to my YouTube videos.

Thanks!

MC

Hurricane Harvey – A New Opportunity

It has now been almost a month since Hurricane Harvey came ashore in TX.  The newscasters and newspaper writers have exhausted their thesaurus of all spectacular adjectives to describe the hurricane and subsequent flood damage to the southeast Texas coast.

There are many who have been devastated by this unprecedented (for Texas) natural disaster.  I’m one of the fortunate ones who escaped damage or loss from the storm.  The moment I realized my family and home would be OK I subconsciously switched into help my neighbors mode.   I’ve been fortunate to work with a great relief organization who has a huge team that has funneled tons of relief supplies and aid to thousands of my neighbors.  I basically helped by letting them use my home and showing them where to go and how to get around Houston.  I spent a lot of time on the phone, meeting up with volunteers, buying relief supplies and emailing to facilitate logistics and that’s really about it.

I don’t feel like I did anything more than thousands of others who were here and elsewhere when the floods hit.  I didn’t risk my life in a boat to rescue people or brave a swift flowing stream to save someones family pet.  I just tried to be the kind of neighbor I’d want to live near if I was the one in trouble. Sometimes it feels like there are so many people out there who need help but we can personally only help a small number of them.  I guess that’s where having a team helps out.

Besides the satisfaction of being a good neighbor, I did get one other benefit from the Hurricane.   About a year ago I started my Mike Centex LIFE project. At the end of October 2016 it floundered completely.  It ran up on the rocks of life and stopped on the reef.  I mean, it wasn’t pining for the fjords, that bird was dead.!

I was just coming off an incredible 2016 Fall Workshop at Jack Spirko’s Nine mile Farm where I’d presented to a group of about 40 super sharp entrepreneurs, homesteaders and preparedness experts.  I was really pumped when I came home and had plans to break out some incredible videos on numerous topics.  48 hours after getting home I got a call that my Dad was in the Hospital.  He’d been struggling with dementia for over a decade and I knew his condition would not reverse itself.  For the the next four months things just got continually worse until they found a huge cancerous tumor in his stomach, that blocked his esophagus and finally, after 12 days in hospice, my father died on Valentines Day.

Needless to say it was heartbreaking and tough to go through that experience and frankly, I didn’t have anything positive to share with anyone.  That all changed in late August 2017 when my focus was completely diverted/distracted to the possibility of a major hurricane hitting my home.  Almost without thinking I just grabbed my go pro and headed out to video whatever happened.  Some folks later told me they enjoyed them and Steven Harris told me my amateur camera work gave it a higher degree of integrity.   I guess Harvey helped me get past my the loss of my lifelong hunting and fishing partner, enough to think of focusing on others more than myself.

It still seems silly sometimes but my goal and mission for Mike Centex LIFE was to simply share what I have and what I’ve learned with others who may not have had the same things or experiences.  That sounds totally bland and generic when I say it out loud, but in my head it made sense.  I don’t really know if anyone really cares or finds any value in what I offer but that’s OK.  Its worth at least what you paid for it and it is all done with honesty and good intentions.

I’ve been very fortunate and have found great joy in teaching young kids how to fish in our ponds and watch them land their first perch.  I’ve found even more joy taking adults, who have never had the opportunity to learn the true art of hunting, and teaching them to be safe and ethical hunters in just a weekend or two.   I’ll admit it, I’m selfish.  I enjoy the satisfaction I get in helping others who have a desire to learn and become better people.   I love learning and teaching new skills.  I like taking knowledge passed to me by many who are long gone and sharing it with those younger than me.

Hurricane Harvey has temporarily ruined many lives, but it gave me an open door to help people and it showed me it was more important to try to help others and make them feel good than it was to sit around and feel bad for myself.

So as weird as it sounds…  Thanks Harvey.

Mike Centex

First blog post

Do you always go back and look at people’s Blog to see how long ago they started blogging?  Do you really care?  I like to look at blogs and see how much time lapsed between Blog posts.  Makes me think I can tell how serious a Blogger really is.

Do you even like the word “Blog”?  I really don’t and never have.  I thought it was stupid and silly until I heard someone say “VLOG”!   I mean come on, your video didn’t get any more interesting because you called it something different!  What a stupid sounding name.

I mean really, whose job is it to actually make up the names for new internet jargon?  Is there a building and office with a guy sitting around going, “I think I’ll call this kind of video a VLOG!”

That reminds me, since we’re talking between friends and all, did you ever get confused with the whole Terminator movie series?  Sometimes I think about the first one and go “ok, so the dude from the future is the dad and best friend of the son from the closer future, but it was the son from the closer future that sent the dad back to the present so he could be with the son’s mom and make him”?

It just seems like there would be a conflict in the computer software or violation of Arkansas State law there…  I try not to think about it too much.

And what about SKYNET?  Did you know there is a real technology company called SkyNet?  Do you think they are going to make Terminators one day?  Do they have them now?  Doesn’t Stephen Colbert remind you of a cyborg?  That hair and the repetitive movements kind of give him away.  But I think he’s from Canada.  I think their technology is different from ours.  So maybe he’s made by the Canadian version of the US SkyNet?  I know this sounds silly but really, is it?

I’m old enough to have seen people laugh at Star Trek the original TV show with them walking around with goofy silver “communicators” but dude, what the hell are you carrying around with you everyday now??   See how this works??

They say you should live in interesting but this is just creepy!

OK, I promise all other posts will be more engaging and less sarcastic than this first post!