YEP I have been absent for most of 2025.

sasquatch91 · Sep 13, 2025 at 22:01

My grandma grew up in northern arkansas, izzard county (spelling). It sure is beautiful. I have been eying some places in shannon county missouri, doubt anything comes of it. Congrats on the homestead and the lady. What happened tonthe kampkrap name?

Thunder5Ranch · Sep 14, 2025 at 7:34

sasquatch91 said: ↑

My grandma grew up in northern arkansas, izzard county (spelling). It sure is beautiful. I have been eying some places in shannon county missouri, doubt anything comes of it. Congrats on the homestead and the lady. What happened tonthe kampkrap name?
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When I went to log in the T5R Name was set to be remembered and I just logged in with it. And in hind sight the Kamp Krap name is no longer accurate since Kamp Krap is a place in the past now Even changed the YouTube channel name LOL. https://www.youtube.com/@FarmerMike2025

johnbb · Sep 14, 2025 at 8:14

Welcome Thunder5Ranch your twin Kampkrap used to be here (ha ha )

Tempstar · Sep 14, 2025 at 11:24

Welcome back Mike. You were missed!

kissmybrass · Sep 15, 2025 at 19:18

Thunder5Ranch said: ↑

This is going to be one of my LONG post LOL.

Since deciding to sell the farm and relocate to a Free State, I decided to at the same time become a whole lot more obscure. Also I have been beyond busy sorting all of a farms worth of stuff in to different categories....... The Give away or Sell Pile, the Dumpster or Scrap Yard Pile and the I need to keep this and move it pile. I also had to have that all done and relocated by August 15th when we closed the sale of the farm. At the same time I had to find where I was going to move to and buy the new place prior to selling the farm so I had someplace to move all the Krap I kept. All total the move once it got underway took twenty two 7 hour round trips using every trailer I own.

I ended up landing in Missouri Ozarks at a pretty remote location in a maze of gravel and dirt roads at the dead end of one of the roads. My backyard is the side of a small mountain and my front yard is around 5 acres of the valley floor bordered by a small creek. Pretty much my perfect place for a retirement homestead.

I am totally and fully retired now And with the move completed and the farm sale closed up I can relax a bit and put more focus on the porch sitting.

In a few weeks I turn 57 years old and have been doing a lot of reflecting on my life and the choices and circumstances to brought me to this point. And I am not complaining even a little bit about this point in life. To be able to have mostly retired in 2020 at 52 and fully retired by age 57 owning everything outright with ZERO Debts is a good thing Now not everything that happened in getting from there to here was so good but that is life. And lets be for real the last 5 years from 2020 to January 2025 were far less than pleasant. I mean being widowed was not great and hey everyone needs a X girlfriend that tried to kill you with rat poison and yes dealing with the after effects of that poisoning were not pleasant. Fortunately I have mostly recovered from it and the perm damage from it is minimal and won't bother me too bad going forward.

The new place came with a nice little 2 bedroom log cabin and a in decent shape smallish 100 year old barn. After the move I decided to go visit a woman that I have known for a longtime in North Carolina. And well ended up spending a Month on the North Carolina coast. And well I did not come back and move into the Cabin alone LOL. Fear not she has no motivation or plans of poisoning me............Yet.......... At least not after 3.5 Months together day in and day out on the homestead

We have been deciding on what we want to do here and building it. MRs Thunder came with Rabbits, Ducks, and Muscovys so the first order of business was building a addition to the old barn to house our rabbits.

And then it was done Rabbits, Chicken, Duck and Lamb are going to be our primary meats going forward.

This for them time being contains the Rabbits and the Chick Brooder Cage that holds around 50 chicks at a time. I have a building kit for a 12x20 pavilion that we still need to build that will be the Chicken Coop in the near future.

But other things need to be done before we build the chicken coop. Like raising a area up and leveling it to build a new and larger barn!

I can move some dirt with that M5660 tractor and its box blade and big bucket I kept the Kubota M5660 and the Kubota BX25D with the backhoe.

In the process of digging out the mountain base for enough clay to raise up and level the barn building sire I dug out a pretty good size hole LOL. It ended up being about 40 feet across and 60 feet long and I managed to get about 5 feet down before hitting ROCKS. So we are going to buy a big pond liner and make this a pond to raise catfish or bass in to add some variety and fish to our diets.

And then then the new barn building site was ready! It is not going to be a huge barn at only 24x60 but it will meet our present and future needs.

We NEED FIREWOOD for the coming winter so we have been making it in between building projects from the scrubby trees I pushed out for the barn building site. It is not oak or hickory and mostly consist of cherry which is far from ideal firewood but if we get lucky and have a mild winter the 4 cords should make enough BTUs to get us through.

Yep I kept the Kubota RTV and its trailer as well More handy here at the new homestead than it ever was on the old farm.

And finally what we have been working on most recently is building a 12x32 addition to the back of the cabin for the Food Hoard and a summer/canning kitchen and laundry/shower/mud room. Right now the second bedroom has all of the shelves from the old place food shipping container and two of the 30cuft chest freezers. The addition is nothing fancy I basically build a deck and a low ceiling pole barn around it and then framed between the post with studs. It will also let us get the washer and dryer out of the bathroom and turn that space into a proper closet.

A whole new Journey for the last 1/3 of my life.

I finally broke down and bought a new truck. After doing a lot of research and deciding what would serve me the best I decided on a Toyota Tundra. I have had it about 4 Months now and it gets the jobs done. Picture is loading up the livestock trailer in NC with rabbits. Dealership in NC gave me $4500 more in trade for the Camry than I paid for it and the truck was $3500 less there than it was in the dealership I use in IL. and they had the color I wanted!

Life is good now days and we are going to keep her place in NC and go back there every 4 Months for 2-3 weeks. LOL I have no interest in living on the coast and dealing with sand, tropical storms and hurricanes. Also way too many people for my taste. And that pink/red stain on my shirt is one of those slushy things I managed to spill down the front of me LOL. Good to find a woman that actually knows what she is doing on a farm and homestead and we just have fit together with the same idea, goals and how we want to live. 18 Months ago when we first started talking we decided we were just not right for each other and a 1000 miles between us made us just a waste of time to be anymore than online friends that chatted now and then. Well that didn't work out like we thought it would Haha. Soooo when it came time for me to leave North Carolina and head back home to get the new life started here....... I was informed that "YOU AIN'T LEAVING WITHOUT ME!!!"

Well that should catch up everything I have been up to and doing since I dropped off the face of the Earth
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beautiful, every damn bit of it

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