"If I knew then what I know now....."

For me is fire protection.

double post

True wealth. Good work and summary.

if I knew then what I know now I would definitely not have remarried after I lost my love. then I wouldn't be in the city trying to figure out what I'm going to do and my little place in the country wouldn't be falling down. I would have been there and kept it up. ~Georgia

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Georgians

If I had known then what I know now...

I would have stayed right on the homestead after high school and been 20 years ahead of where I am now.

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~ Mike @ Solsikke farms ~

I would have spent my money on my dirt, instead of women.

I was a widow for 2 years. I was doing fine by myself. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have gotten married. I mean he's a nice enough person, but I should have stayed single, he hovers over me and I feel smothered.

Lol. Yes it did - but I dumped it at 5. Wish I'd bought it at 1.01, but the lesson it taught me was that I do not have the temperament to buy/sell individual stocks. I've done much better with mutual funds with steady investment...and not worrying about it except once or twice a year than the one or two big scores made (or missed) back when I was tracking everything several times every day. In retrospect, it was probably well worth the money I lost, just to learn that about myself.

"If I knew then what I know now-"

I would have ducked. Come to think of it, that coulda solved a lot of my problems.

But as long as we're wishing, I'd like to think I would have invested the time and money into outbuildings first. And that's about it. Because, whether it was good or bad, I'm not comfortable with changing anything else if it would mean I'd never get to know the wonderful young men my sons turned into.

No George Bailey effect for me, thanks.

I for one was glad I bought Ford when it dropped, wish I hadn't of bought GM (the old GM).
Wish I had of insisted my DH retired years before he did
Wish we had of moved long before we did
Like another list member 9/11 hit me hard as well, lost $$ and a job.

I have had folks ask me about reducing the mouse populations during this time of year when the temperatures begin to drop and the mice are looking for a warm place to spend the winter. With this in mind, I thought some of you creative types might like this method... you need a long piece of fishing line, a plastic spoon (or one you don’t care about any more), a plastic five gallon bucket and a touch of imagination will put a pretty good dent in the vermin population without killing your critters.
Put two-three inches of water in the bucket and set it near the edge of a mouse run or you can lean a board as a ramp to the lip of the bucket. Tie the fishing line to an overhead beam, checking to make sure it falls about two inches from the inside edge of the bucket/ramp. Tie the spoon with the peanut butter on the line and turn it loose, adjusting to be sure it is two inches from ramp/run/edge of the bucket. What will happen, if your critters will leave things alone, will be something like this:
A cute little beady eyed mouse, Walt, has put the children to bed and decides to take an evening stroll. He can’t sleep and a good walk always helps, not to mention sometimes he can find some kind of grub while on his way. As he skips down the little mouse trail Walt suddenly comes upon this wonderful smell. A smell so good in fact that he is almost levitated off his feet towards it! Unable to resist he continues on and suddenly, right before his eyes, there appears a whole spoon full of the most delicious looking and smelling substance he has ever seen!
At first he says to himself, “I’ll just jump out there and eat it all,” but the sheer volume of this brown paste tells him, “You’re going to need help to eat all of that!”
He quickly scurries back to his little home, where he finds Grandma is knitting little socks for the kids while Grandpa is kicked back smoking his pipe and sipping some of his home made ache-remover. Continuing on he finds his little wife, Spike, is nursing their latest batch of kids.
Walt quickly tells her about his wonderful find and the first thing she does is smells his breath. Still a little skeptically about her sometimes, over zealous husband because he drinks a lot, she pulls herself away from the kids (quite literally) to tell her mom and dad what her beloved had just told her. Then she quickly gets on the phone and calls her sister promising a possible free to go meal and asks her to come and sit with the kids.
Grandpa whispers to his wife, very loudly like any good drunk would do, “This guy is nuts,” and she shushes him.
Still giving their son-n-law the benefit of a doubt, although the last time he said something like this they got to where it should have been and found Aunt Bert had already been there and dragged the whole cheese laden wooden plate off into the sunset!
So they quickly tie little bibs on their fat little necks and follow their idiot son-n-law to “this great midnight snack” he has been babbling about! Soon they see this free meal on a string, and Grandpa, who’s drunk anyway, makes a bad jump and falls into the tall white swimming pool under it.
As the family stands there laughing at the bubbles coming from his pointed little nose, Grandma says, “Now dad, you watch this and I’ll show you how it’s done!”
She hops the gap and is hanging on to the spoon with one hand and eating the peanut butter like it’s going out of style! Seeing Grandma is really pigging out, both Walt and Spike both decide to jump and help old Grandma out with that delicious brown paste. Hanging on with one hand and eating with the other, they find themselves still snickering at the old fat man doing the back stroke down in the pool below.
They all three hang on the spoon eating and eating until they can eat no more, but yet they can’t quite make the jump back to the run from which they came!
Heavier, and heavier they become until... Grandma is the first to fall, dropping right on top of Grandpa’s head which draws a round of laughter from the kids… then in goes Walt and Spike.
Taking full advantage of the pool they all play a game of Marco Polo and just having a ball, except old Grandpa who is over at the edge of the pool floating on his back and taking life easy.
Meanwhile, from across the barn, the Glutton family watches as the last one falls and thinks they better hurry and get over there before someone else finds it and all that wonderful brown paste is gone! They go rushing over to the spoon... and on, and on, and on... until they all drown happily ever after!

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Wingdo

You got problems lol

I wouldn't have tried to build a house by myself. At least, not a 1700 square foot one!

I would have made sure I had more money available first. MUCH more. It's hard to build when you have to wait until the next paycheck to afford the next load of lumber. Even when you plan and plan and think you have it all figured out. It always costs more than you think it will.

I would have made sure I had help. I had lots of friends, but I had wrongly assumed that they'd enjoy building and creating a homestead as much as I did, and devote endless time to it. Not.

I would have spent more time really LISTENING to my grandparents when they were around and asking questions and writing down things.

I *did* put in the orchard first, and build the barn and chicken coops first. I'm glad I did.

I would have moved when my children were younger to somewhere I'd rather be. I stuck it out here because it was familiar and comfortable, and daydreamed of my "retirement" home being somewhere nicer. Now that I'm that age, I find that I don't want to move to a better place because my children and grandchildren are here. So I'm stuck here, too. If I would have moved when they were young, they would have settled near me and we'd all live happily ever after (LOL) in a warmer place.

All in all, I've learned to roll with the punches, and everything that has ever happened, good or bad, has at least been a learning experience. I don't know that I'd want to change too much if it means I wouldn't be where I am now.

I would've pulled the trigger.
I would've NEVER gone to the Ukraine
I would've NEVER started drinking
I would've quit sooner than I did

Way too much shade to grow a garden.

I would have avoided the circumstances that brought PTSD.
I would have told my dr to shove his meds where it doesn't show.
I would have still married the ex cos we have fantastic children.
I would have been nicer to my parents.
I would have told my family to buzz off years before.
I would have done so very much over and over again the same cos of all the wonderful people it brought.

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Dutch woman gone rural, clippity clop.

Re: learning about life in general- I wish I had figured out much earlier that just because I see a crowd laughing and partying does not mean that I'm going to have a good time if I just join them.
At every party I would end up looking for some peace and quiet to enjoy. Why could I not see that what was a good time for me was simply different and not to try to make myself join that crowd?

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For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

If I knew then......

I would quit worrying so much about what other people think.
I'd buy our 60 acres sooner.
I'd know that I should have given car racing more time and more money.
I'd know that I'm not really that good at racing around corners really really fast and I don't have that much money.
I'd grow a beard sooner.
I'd know how silly I looked with a perm, but how cool I was in my leisure suit.
I'd take more pictures.
I'd know that regretting the past is a waste of time. Just learn from it and move on.
I'd learn to play the guitar.
I'd know how to talk you into looking at our web site and buying our 3,500' house on 60 acres house - offgrid150.simpl.com
I'd know that 8-tracks wouldn't last. And then cassetts. And then CDs. And then...
I'd know that Colorado and Washington have the best brownies.
I'd know that I don't know.

(Wincing) I'd THINK about having a home built from scratch instead of moving into this white elephant with not quite enough land and new structural flaws popping up all the time. Right now wondering if the window screens are all so poorly fitted because they were hand made badly or if it's because none of the windows are actually square.... And in this cold snap wondering what our electric bills would be if the windows were a better grade or just even recaulked etc. (Too lazy and too allergic to put curtains over them all, and love the view when I can't imagine the $$$ passing out through them.

Of course with my growing sense that you just can't find proper workmanship- or that if it exists I would not be the one to find it- the home I had built might have just as many flaws.

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US Army veteran, military retiree spouse, and military; civilian; British NHS; and VA doctor.

I'd have upgraded fences from rusted old barbed wire to welded wire BEFORE buying goats. Even if it meant waiting a few years to buy goats.
I'd have had the house inspected by someone NOT friends with the sellers, so we'd know about the black mold and the rotted sub-floors before we moved in.
I'd not have counted on my teenage sons from my first marriage to continue living with us. Now they're back with their dad and I'm running an entire farm by myself instead of having their help as I'd planned.
I'd have bought a new tractor right away instead of old cheap ones that always break down just when you need them most. Now we can't get that new tractor til income increases or expenses decrease.

-Sonja

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Wingnut Farms
Nubian Dairy Goats
New Market, Alabama