God tells us to use what’s in our hands … our possessions, talents, time and labor. For roughly two decades I penned hundreds of stories about outdoors/rural living/homesteading/country living for a long list of national and international magazines and websites. Some were written under my name and some using a pen name. It’s something I found easy to do and was blessed with some ongoing success at it. I also wrote a weekly outdoor commentary for the local newspaper for about 15 years. And I’ve sold real estate for several years now, including full time the past few years.
As a way of tying my interests together, I launched this website (actually more like a blog site) as an outlet for me to share my writing while also focusing to some degree on my full-time gig … talking about and selling real estate.
The site will include helpful “how-to” stories about rural living skills and interests. I started off with a couple blogs about buying rural property. But watch for stories about using solar for power, off-grid cooking, knives and other tools, fishing and hunting, gardening, raising livestock for personal consumption and profit, and a lot more. While the first two stories were pretty matter-of-fact, I promise to make some stories a more “light read” with some (hopefully) enjoyable personal experiences about the subject matter littered among the helpful tips and tricks.
I assure you that writing the stories will not take me away from my very busy real estate business. I have hundreds of photos and dozens of partially written stories in reserve to pull from, and will be doing the writing in the evenings as I’m winding down. I find writing very relaxing.
The website is meant to be a tool for people wishing, dreaming or planning to relocate to a rural area either part-time or full-time. Part of the service I am constantly providing to my real estate buyers as we are out looking at land is guiding them toward resources about solar, water and sewer, getting land cleared and more. I’m often answering questions like “what kind of tree is that?” (I’ll be doing an upcoming story where I explain how to identify the common trees found in my region … the Midwest). And people sometimes want to know why when geese fly in a “V” formation that one side of the V is longer than the other? More geese! (Actually hardly anyone ever asks about geese, but they get a kick out of it when I throw that tidbit into conversation as we’re riding along.)
Bookmark this site and keep checking back for more stories. I get no revenue from page views, but simply hope that those with an interest in living the country life find the stories both helpful and entertaining. – Doug
Good to see you writing.