After the plunge in homebuilder sentiment as they are forced to face reality and the big drop in existing home sales, new home sales were expected to tumble in March (after already dropping in February – bucking the uptrend in existing- and pending-sales).
New Home Sales crashed by 15.4% MoM – the biggest drop since July 2013 – smashing the year-over-year comparison down 9.5%…
Source: US New Home Sales Have Never Dropped This Much In March… Ever | Zero Hedge
As a new gardener, I often found the task of growing prize-winning tomatoes and succulent melons very daunting. Can I say succulent melons here? Get your head out of the gutter! But growing and drying your own herbs, now that was a new task.
Gardening has never come naturally to me. But I learn and grow each and every year. I finally began to master tomatoes by the third year of gardening. But I’ve still never mastered the green bean. It’s easy to get discouraged when you’re gardening, but I’ve found one thing that I can never kill. I suppose I could if I drenched it in chemicals, but ultimately, they’re very forgiving. What is it, you ask? Why, herbs, of course!
Herbs are one of the easiest things in the world to grow and maintain. Drying your own herbs is one of the easiest skills to learn, and will come in handy often. Whether you’re drying them once harvested, making a tincture, preserving dried herbs into spice rubs, or simply hanging them until you’re ready to use them. There are plenty of ways to grow and preserve herbs on your homestead.
Source: How to Grow and Dry Your Own Herbs – Daily Prepper News
Lots of useful information, a good read.
The photo above is a salad without a speck of lettuce. Taken at Chacra d’Dago in Villa Rica Peru, home of an amazing biodynamic farm. -Ben
Sales of previously owned U.S. homes dropped in March by the most since November 2015, representing weaker demand that likely is going to get much worse in coming months as the pandemic bears down on the economy.
Contract closings declined 8.5% from the prior month to an annualized 5.27 million, the slowest since April 2019, from a downwardly revised 5.76 million in February,
Housing inventory picked up a little in March but remains down 10.2% YoY and at the lowest level for March in history.
“Based on what we are seeing at the moment, don’t be surprised if the sales activity could be down as much as 30% or even 40% in the next couple of months,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said on a call with reporters.
Source: Existing Home Sales Tumble In March, Face 40% Collapse, NAR Warns | Zero Hedge
The National Association of Realtors reported a stunning decline at the end of March. Hopefully, when we all come out of lockdown, there will be plenty of pent up demand.
Growing medicinal plants are a great way to ensure garden sustainability and more notably, have access to natural medicine when you need it most. When I introduced more herbs in my garden, I noticed it had a profound impact on the vegetables and fruits I was growing. It also encouraged beneficial insects and birds to visit my garden and this helped cut down on plants being eaten.
Because of this observation, I changed my focus from solely growing to eat and, instead, worked to create a welcoming growing environment. Not only were my plants healthier, but I had access to natural herbs to use for making extracts and poultices. The following are reasons I feel gardeners should adopt adding medicinal herbs to the garden.
7 Reasons Why You Should Have a Medicinal Garden
1.) have fresh cut herbs to use for natural medicine, you have access to the freshest forms of their healing properties. For example, what if you cut your hand and did not have a bandage.
Did you know that the sage leaf can be wrapped around a wound and used as a natural band-aid? Or, if the bleeding from that cut was so bad that it wouldn’t stop. Did you know that a few shakes of some cayenne pepper can help control the bleed? Or, if you have a severe bruise, make a poultice. It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to use herbal medicine.
2.) Calm your senses with medicinal teas. (Click to read more)
Source: 7 Reasons Why You Should Have a Medicinal Garden | Ready Nutrition
Read more at the link. Pictured above is Ephedra which is quite common here. Known as “Mormon Tea,” it’s said to be a wonderful decongestant. It must be simmered for at least 20 minutes prior to drinking. It’s quite stimulating, and should be avoided by those with heart conditions.
On March 10, my husband and I decided to list our home this spring—smack in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
This was not a decision we took lightly. Derrick and I had been thinking about putting our Chicago condo on the market for a while. Having lived in our two-bed, two-bath home for four years, 2020 was going to be when we’d finally “settle down” somewhere quieter and closer to our families.
Plus, we figured at the time that getting in on the spring buying season would be key.
On March 11, we emailed a local real estate agent, Paul Barker of Barker Group, who specialized in our Northside neighborhood and had sent us a marketing flyer last year. We made plans for the three of us to meet at our condo a few days later.
But that week, as things began to really get weird in Chicago—like panic shopping at grocery stores and sports seasons canceling—we questioned whether we’d need to meet virtually instead. Barker assured us we’d be fine, however.
“I need to do a walk-through, but we will keep our distance, and I won’t have to touch anything,” he told me. “Then, after I’ve researched and put together a plan, we can have a virtual meeting to go over the marketing strategies and pricing.”
The good news with moving forward as planned, our real estate agent told us, was that online traffic was actually up from the previous month. But with showing requests down, we’d have to up our game online. How? By adding a 3D virtual tour to our listing. Creating a virtual tour would entail hiring a specialized photographer and equipment—which our agent’s firm would provide.
Source: ‘Why We’re Selling Our Home During the Coronavirus Pandemic’ | realtor.com®
Click on the link to see what Realtors are doing with 3D virtual tours to keep selling during the pandemic.
Americans are panic hoarding plant seeds as the coronavirus outbreak confines millions to their homes, crashes the economy, and disrupts food supply chains. This has resulted in people questioning their food security.
A Google search of “buy seeds” has rocketed to an all-time high across the US in March to early April, the same time as supermarket shelves went bare.
Seed companies who spoke with CBS News said they have stopped taking new orders after unprecedented demand. George Ball, chairman of Pennsylvania-based Burpee Seeds, said the recent increase in new orders is “just unbelievable.” The company will start accepting orders again on Wednesday after it stopped taking new ones for several days to catch up on the backlog.
Americans in quarantine are becoming increasingly concerned about their food security. What has shocked many is that food on supermarket shelves that existed one day, could be completely wiped out in minutes via panic hoarding. Some people are now trying to restore the comfort of food security by planting “Pandemic Gardens.”
“If I had to put my thumb on it, I would say people are worried about their food security right now,” said Emily Rose Haga, the executive director of the Seed Savers Exchange, an Iowa-based nonprofit devoted to heirloom seeds.
Tip: When building up your disaster food stockpile, think about how you will use the foods in meals. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of foods you don’t like. Or you might end up with disproportionate amounts of food, like 30lbs of pasta but not sauce to go on it.
In my book Disaster Preparedness for Women, I show exactly how to plan a food stockpile so you can make healthy, balanced meals. The book also covers all the preparedness essentials so you are ready for anything. Get the book here.
Here are 11 tasty ways to use dried beans Try these delicious dried bean recipes.
1. Red Bean Pasta Sauce
Source: 11 Delicious Ways to Use Those Dry Beans You Stockpiled
Click on the link for 10 more useful recipes. You did realize that you’d have to eat all those didn’t you?
The fight against coronavirus has been likened to a war—some have even referred to it as “World War C”—and it looks like wartime Victory Gardens are making a comeback. Today, the goals are different but the interest in growing a little (or a lot) of your own food is still the same! Let’s talk about planting a Victory Garden in 2020!
During WWI, the National War Garden Commission promoted home gardening and food preservation. They inspired students—calling them “soldiers of the soil”—to help plant Liberty Gardens. When it started to look like the US and its allies would win the war, the name of the gardens was changed to Victory Gardens.
TYPICAL VICTORY GARDEN CROPS
Vegetables were the largest crop followed by fruits and herb gardens. About one-third of the vegetables grown during World War II came from Victory Gardens!
The Victory Garden was made of easy-to-grow crops, including fresh vegetables in season as well as root crops and hardier crops that could be stored during the winter. Here’s a sampling.
- Spring gardens: Carrots, lettuce, kale, onion, peas, radishes.
- Summer gardens: Basil, beans (pole, bush, and lima), corn and popcorn, cucumbers, eggplants, muskmelon, okra, peppers, pumpkin, both winter and summer squash, tomatoes, watermelon.
- Fall and winter gardens: Beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce, kohlrabi, parsley, parsnips, radish, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips.
Source: Plant a Victory Garden During Coronavirus Quarantine Old Farmer’s Almanac
“I don’t really think it’s worth it,” says Dahl, who’s losing about $5,000 in income each month his business is closed. “I don’t really want to pay four mortgage payments in one.” Dahl is one of many thousands of Americans who are having trouble making their monthly mortgage payments due to the coronavirus pandemic—or will soon, if the crisis drags on.
In the past month, nearly 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment as shelter-in-place orders, social distancing measures, and nonessential business closures went into effect.
Last week, economists estimated the unemployment rate was about 13%—worse than during the Great Recession. And those numbers don’t even include many out-of-work, self-employed, and gig workers along with those who’ve had trouble filing their claims because unemployment offices are overwhelmed.
The widespread misery spread by COVID-19 has left many homeowners scrambling to figure out how to pay their mortgages. Homeowners with government-backed loans—and even many without—are being offered up to 12 months of forbearance, doled out in 90-day chunks. But this temporary fix could result in another wave of foreclosures if additional assistance isn’t provided. Many homeowners could be asked to pay back all of those missed mortgage bills in one lump sum at the end of the forbearance period, a near impossible feat for many who can’t afford their payments today and don’t know when the economy will recover.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration say their borrowers, who make up slightly more than half of all buyers, are never required to make lump-sum payments. They also offer various assistance plans, some more generous than others. But even those homeowners will also eventually have to make good on what they owe, a hardship for those out of work. Those who can’t could eventually lose their homes.
Source: Mortgage Forbearance Is Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be | realtor.com®
As the coronavirus epidemic roils American society, it is totally upending the world of real estate. The realtor.com editorial team is tirelessly covering the impact of the pandemic on trends in the housing market, where mortgage rates are heading, and the outlook for home buyers and sellers. We’re also full of suggestions on what to do with your home if you end up cloistered indoors, whether it’s self-quarantine or sheltering in place. Here’s a quick guide to the stuff you need to know:
Source: The Coronavirus, Real Estate, and You: Our Coverage of the Pandemic | realtor.com®
Click the link for a comprehensive series of links to everything you wanted to know whether you’re a seller, buyer or just thinking about it. Really a useful collection of information in one place. – Ben
