If you can't eat it or something that eats it, what good is it?
Being of the mindset of a freedom and liberty minded individual, I am making all attempts I can to minimize my government (the department of making you sad - D.O.M.Y.S) footprint! I'll get to that in a minute... but first, another personality trait that I really like to eat, and I want to do my best to make sure that I won't run out of food if anything bad happens... and bad things to happen to even good people! Just ask Job...
Anyway, back to minimizing my gov't (D.O.M.Y.S) footprint... one way to do that is to minimize the taxes I pay. Now, what can I do to reduce my property tax? I can try to get an agricultural exemption! (I'm working toward it...) Can I reduce my income tax? Maybe I can start a business and claim a few expenses that I couldn't otherwise claim... I'm working on that too! But think about it a little more... how else does the DOYMS get money? Every single time you spend money, it get's taxed. Maybe not on food, for some states... but the person who works at the grocery pays income tax, the person driving the truck pays income tax, the truck had a sales tax, the fuel to drive the truck had a sales tax... etc. Get the point? I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of keeping it local...
Note - The Bible tells us to pay to Caesar what is due Caesar. I'm not advocating illegal activity, just working within the confines of the system to your fullest advantage!
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| Starve the monster! |
So that said, there are things that can be done to provide us better wealth without being taxed (at least not yet). Now to deviate for just a moment, lets talk about financial world views. There are some out there who subscribe to the Limited Wealth concept. This takes the opinion that there is a limited number of resources around us, and those who have only have at the expense of those who do not. On the other hand there are those who subscribe to the Unlimited Wealth concept... as do I. This basically says that there is as much wealth surrounding you as you are willing and able to create. So what does this have to do with Fedco Seeds? I'm almost there, I promise!
Being a subscriber to the unlimited wealth concept, I look at my backyard (and front yard - as the wife will permit) and wonder how I can utilize those resources to increase my wealth. Currently one goal is to raise sheep... time will tell on that venture. Another venture is my garden... I spend some money, time, energy and I get food in return. I could go to work and spend some time, money and energy and get a pay check, but that gets taxed! Instead, the garden provides me with organic food that I can eat! As of yet the IRS (DOMYS) has not yet figured out how to tax me on the produce grown in my garden - double win for me (food and minimizing my footprint). The same thing is going on with my fruit trees. Now I'm using a holistic management method (click to read my book review here) with organic spray ingredients, so I pay some tax on those, but nothing compared to the total value that I will get out of my trees when they start to produce! (I planted them in 2014-2015 with a few more going in each year.)
So now why do I mention Fedco Seeds? Well I was looking for some cherry scion to graft onto a piece of cherry root stock that survived when the tree on top of it died (it sent up a sprout, I can only imagine I cut a root when I put the T-post in) and somehow ended up on their site. What I found was some really cool catalogs you can download as a .pdf.
The orchard catalog is full of all sorts of great information that Ive not seen elsewhere in all my research! You can just click here to open it. Hopefully they don't get mad at me for posting it here, but one piece of information I thought was really cool was this recipe for using chives to protect your fruit trees! (If you guys are mad, I'll be happy to take it down... hopefully you are cool with it as I'm providing some free advertising... I hope to business with you guys in the future!)
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| Who would have thought? |
