They say that a fool and his money are soon parted...
This is often the case. Far too often in this world selfishness and greed consume people until others are simply seen as opportunities to be taken advantage of. If you've ever been taken advantage of, then you know the feeling. It's a very common problem the world over these days.
Personally, I'm done with taking advantage of people. I love being opportunistic and seeing value where others don't, but I'm not going to try to talk someone out of something that they feel is valuable. Sure, I'll let a giver give a gift and bless me, but I'm not about to try to swindle. Thankfully, it seems that a lot of people aren't exactly excited about the things that I am anyway.
OPPORTUNISTIC FIGS
Three months ago, a neighbor pruned his two fig bushes and was going to throw the cuttings away. Thankfully I caught him in the act and he was more than happy to let me clean up his mess and take the cuttings. He already has his two bushes and is not interested in any more. He knows that these cuttings could make hundreds of more fig trees, but he's not interested in that. To him, they have no value.
To me, I see free food for my family and possible some home-based income as time progresses. Did I take advantage of the person? Not even close. In fact, I actually helped him by cleaning up the cuttings. Did I take advantage of the situation? Absolutely! And that is what I mean by being opportunistic.
OPPORTUNISTIC CEDARS
On my homestead, I like to view everything as serving some sort of purpose. From rocks and trees to wild edibles, it all serves a purpose. Many may not care much about it, but to me, everything that I can use on my land is one less thing that I'll have to buy. Since the cedar trees here can negatively affect apple trees, I plan on removing the cedar trees from my land. If you saw this video that 
Additionally,
When my neighbor 
Not only that, but the goats will actually strip the bark off of the cedar trees while I prepare to use them. By the time that I get around to building what I'm going to build, my animals may have taken care of some extra work me too! It's interesting that they too can help out and get what they want from a situation while helping someone else in the process!
OPPORTUNISTIC ROCKS
One more recent situation that we ran into was that at some point in the future this pile needs to be moved. It's basically a dump pile of concrete and rock that provides some habitat for snakes and such. Since I've got some uses for the rock, I offered to start getting that moved out of the pile. That way, when it comes times to move the rest, there will already be less. Also, since I know that the folks around here don't care for snakes and since I have a really good suspicion that there are some in there, I can "help" again and not only save them the trouble of encountering snakes, but most likely spare the lives of those snakes in the process and have some wild-man 
We've got a lot of uses for stuff like these rocks moving forward, and soon enough I'll have more to share. I just wanted to share this "opportunistic" mentality with you all and inspire you to be encouraged to take advantage of situations, but still refrain from taking advantage of people. I think that if more people behaved this way the world would be a much better place. After all, one man's trash is another man's treasure!
As always, I'm and here's the proof:
proof-of-an-opportunity
Until next time…
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