Today is a happy day for my people!

As many of you may already know, my family desires to live a simple life and to find ways for me to make money from home so that I can be present in the lives of my wife and children on a daily basis. It is this goal that caused us to give up on the American Dream and never even try to care about "keeping up with the Jones'." Now, thanks to Hive account@sagescrub and Hive account@homesteaderscoop, we've got one more opportunity.

The Hive account@homesteaderscoop was the idea of Hive account@sagescrub and it has opened an entirely new option for steemit homesteaders to share what they've got in exchange for STEEM, SBD, and even USD. I've been blown away at how easy it has been to become a vendor on the Homesteaders Co-op site and also how quickly the Homesteaders Co-op has progressed. At first it only accepted SBD and prices were listed in SBD. Then STEEM was added and the prices were in USD value, but now even USD is accepted, which basically makes the site open to the entire world, rather than just steemians.

To begin offering seeds, herbs, and homemade items online was a goal that we had, but I often struggle with new things and can be easily discouraged. @Sagescrub and every who's helped with the Hive account@homesteaderscoop has made this incredibly user friendly and because of their hard work, the Pepper Family Homestead shop is now open!

THE "PEPPER FAMILY HOMESTEAD" SHOP

As many of you know, I like being friendly and even generous, and plenty of steemians and others I've met online have already enjoyed growing plants from seeds that we've saved here on our homestead. Now, anyone who wants pick some up can have that same opportunity. At the moment, because of various rules, regulations, and customs issues, we are only shipping within the United States, but we'll see about expanding this as time moves on.

At the moment most of the items that we offer are seeds that we've saved. For years we've been saving way more than we need, and now we can share them with others in an easy way through our Homesteaders Co-op Store. Saving these seeds has always been a family affair and even the littlest of our children get involved and help out. The same care and effort that we put into securing and preserving our personal supply of seeds is the same that all our seeds receive, because they are the same seeds.

We only want to be able to fully back our items with complete confidence, so germination tests are done on each kind of seed prior to offering them in our store. Ideally, we'd had 100% germination on everything, but we don't live in a perfect world. Thankfully, many of the kinds of seeds did reach 100% germination, so obviously we are excited to offer those, but the personal cutoff for us is 75%. If at least 75% of any given seed do not germinate in our testing, then we simply do not offer them in our store. The germination rate is listed in the description for each type of seed. Also, when packaging our seeds, the quantity of any with lower germination rates will be increased to compensate.

Besides our seeds, we are also offering two "herbs," dehydrated Toothache Plant Flowers and dehydrated Ghost Peppers. I classify these are "herbs" because they are basically used in a similar way that herbs are, with various medicinal and flavoring capabilities. As we continue to develop the store, more items will be added, but at the moment we have ten varieties of seeds as well as these two items.

We try to keep our prices low enough that they are a blessing to others, while still being able to help our family and make it worth our time and effort. Basically, items ordered from the Pepper family Homestead should be viewed as investment in our family, and yours. It is also our goal that after ordering any seeds from us, you'll be able to learn to save your own too, so you never need to buy them again.

THE PEPPER FAMILY HOMESTEAD STORE

Above is the link to our store. Many other excellent homesteading vendors from steemit are already open for business too, and the site is extremely easy to navigate. I wanted to open shop this year, and managed to get a lot done yesterday, so I'm pleased to make this announcement today. Please at least check out the Homesteaders Co-op site and take a look at the items and vendors. Also, consider shopping there first to support some steemians before making purchases from random strangers.