Feeling Steemy! I'm Jared from Montana! And I stayed up all night writing this =) it's morning

My name is Jared, I am 30 years old. I live in Montana, US. I was born in Germany, and I love crazy people, especially the kind ones. There's something pretty audacious about Steem. It was just like BHWAM!!! I fucking exist!!!! I dig that, also PS I'm going to be swearing here, I'm rather fond of a good expletive. I really admire the grit there(imagining Steem!). Who knows what will come of it all??? But damn it's cool be here right now in it. I've been seriously enjoying some Lurking this week. And I've had this tender little sprout of a desire to jump in and make my very first post, but it's a bit scary. I'm going to really fucking go for it though.

You don't know, but in person, I am actually 1) sort of shy, and 2) humble (you won't be able to tell here). But I LOVE to write...and I don't do it very often. Also I love the internet. AND because this is an introduceyourself post, it's ALL ABOUT ME!!!!! So this is like the place to go at it as far as I'm concerned. This might be long...VERY long, just a fair warning. It's also going to have lots of pictures, because I love pictures. And I'm going to tell you about ME. So where we were? Ah, yeah ME!!!

It's the happiest, cutest, awesomest picture of me I could find. I think it may actually be my FAVORITE picture of me. Pretty much every other picture of me thats ever been taken is worse then this one, keep that in mind. Tell me I'm fucking adorable!!!! =)

I live in Montana, outside of Helena. Here's a shot from up the hill behind my house.

This is El ChanChan, el puma del norte, now...he's REALLY adorable. Horrible, shameless self promoter. Especially around dinner time.


It gets really cold here. This winter it was around -30f for about a week. El ChanChan was a street kitten in Pucallpa, Peru. My girlfriend, Sydney was adopted by him, you know, he took her under his wing, showed her the ropes.

Sydney! She's the coolest the person I have ever met. You could tell her she's adorable too, but she already knows it. Not humble like me. Sometimes we yell at each other, but mostly not. That salad was our very first road salad, it completely changed our lives. We never thought of salads as road food before that...now we've become quite adept at eating salad anywhere. Seriously, toss that shit in a grocery bag and mix it around. Who needs bowls?

We spent this last summer riding our bicycles from Seattle to Boston along the northern tier.

I've never been on a bike tour before. It was hard, and I'm very happy I did it. I wasn't sure I would make it...Sydney and her Dad wanted to go, it's been his dream for a long time, they're both into it...I'd never been on a bike trip in my life. We went through Washington, Idahoe, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. It was 4500 miles, we did it in 2.5 months averaging 82 miles a day(including rest days), our biggest day was about 150 miles trying to outrun a storm in North Dakota. We had 26 flat tires between the three of us.

1984 Trek 720's that were older than I am! Wisconsin had the most mushrooms. More random strangers invited us to stay at their houses in Michigan than any other state. Everyone in North Dakota was exceedingly nice. Fargo is actually way fucking cool town...who knew? My fastest clocked speed bombing a hill was 45 mph. Pennsylvania had more (and harder) hills than Montana or Washington. We camped a lot, drank a lot. I almost hit a deer at 25 mph.

Not that deer though, he's a cute little sucker ain't he???

Okay, onwards and upwards friends. Sometimes when I am listening intently to someone tell a story...I stop breathing. It's problematic. I'm actually fixing to make an Introductory EPIC. If you're still here reading, you've got endurance. I like things that were made to last.

Food is REALLY important to me. I LOVE EATING!!! I also like to feel good. I was going to write something here about how messed up our food system is, but you probably know all that. You all are perfectly intelligent folks, you got eyes and brains, and you know how to use them. Lets just get along to the important things. This is the stuff I GET DOWN FOR!!!

Sourdough bread

These are made with my grandfather's sourdough culture he's had for 60 years, says he got it from someone who rode across the united states in a wagon train with it. I've had it for 10. These loaves are pure sourdough, no bakers yeast, just slow rise bread, the old way. They're really yummy!! I sell them in town for $15 a piece

Raw milk (I've been drinking raw milk for 12+ years)

These ladies generously share their milk with me. They're very sweet, and have the most gorgeous eyelashes!!! This is what fucking organic valley, and dairy gold would like you to think their milk comes from. Only one problem. It doesn't. Whatever the fuck they put on their label, it has one purpose, and one purpose only. That's to make you feel good about buying it. But if you're buying it in a store, it came from here.

Those ladies live, milk, and die chained on that line. It's how it works, some of the smaller producers may have a bit of land for the girls to go outside on, but 50% of the milk produced in the united states comes from dairies that have 1000 or more cows. Between 1992 and 2012 the number of commercial dairies in the US has has dropped from 131,509 to 51,481. It is very clear that the mega farms with more than 1000 cows are much more cost-efficient than the small farms. It is also very clear that there is an ongoing trend for small farms to go out of business and for more big farms to start up.

Cryptocurrencies

but these days, who isn't into them? beh.

Drinking Wild Water

Been doing it for about ten years, I've only gotten Giardia once, it wasn't bad, and i was drinking out of a cow pasture, like when I looked down at the poopy brown muddy pool, pretty much every single cell in my body was like "YO! YOU REALLY SHOULDN'T drink that!!!!" I drank it.) This is where I get all my water, this creek. It's gorgeous, and I love it so much. In the fall all the pine pollen falls in the creek, and makes it very electric yummy tasting =)

Scavenging / Foraging

for food, from gardens, lawns, dumpsters, the side of a highway, whatever

Found this young muledeer on the side of the road....

That's the tastiest part, don't cook it though. I've eaten raw heart from deer, chickens, pigs, moose, elk, coyote, and cows.

I've been working on my pemmican bar recipe. These ones have dried currants, toasted pumpkin seeds, maple syrup, molido chile, cracked pepper, made from the meat we pulled off of that roadkill.

Fucking Flowers!

Flowers are TRIPPY. Those are shooting stars, a very Montana flower! There is this nature documentary called the Power of Flowers, Might be my favorite documentary of all time. It's all about how flowers have radically changed the surface of our planet.

Trust Jenna, she knows

Eating Bugs

They're surprisingly fatty, pulled them out of a bunch of doug fir while splitting firewood.

Women!

guys are alright, I guess.
Ladies, Mamas, Sisters, Girls =) I just have to say. The human race would be so MAJESTICALLY fucked without all of you beautiful amazing females. Your ideas, your intuition and intellect, experiences, your bravery and strength, and the depth of love and gratitude, I am generally in awe of all women, everywhere. And I'm so fucking happy you exist. Thank you for being here. I've been so blessed by wise and wonderful women who care about me, starting with my Mama of course. (no pictures of her, she'd kill me, and she could)

Sydney went to bed hours ago, she was like..."What's so cool about that Steem crap anyhow, come snuggle with me." And I was like, I can't, I'm all jazzed up and rearing full of energy to make my first Steem post ever! I can be one of those friggin cool people too!

You see how exciting this is?!?! It's like that XKCD

Except SOMETHING's RIGHT on the Internet!!!!! Does that strike anyone else, does anyone notice that nobody fights each on Steemit. Is that just me? or are we all high on the wave of fresh fertile crypto-financial lovejuice??? Or is something actually WORKING? Maybe I haven't been around long enough yet, surely the trolls will be on their way.

Build it and they will come

@daniellarimer @nedscott When do the trolls get here?? Surely they're coming.?
An uncensorable discussion platform, where everything said is permanently embedded in our future forever?!
WHY AREN"T MORE PEOPLE FIGHTING?!?? Or saying awful things to each other Seriously though, everyone's just GETTING ALONG! Maybe I should be more incendiary...

Did you see that coming??? :P Are you SMILING yet???? Did I get a smile???? OH YEAH!! YOU"RE SMILING!!!!!!

One last little thing, Sydney and I have been working on this all alone up in Montana for nearly two years!!! It's been SO MUCH WORK! We had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we started it. Shit's fucked up. I'm really excited to show you, because we don't get to show it off often, and I get so sick of it working on it, or procrastinating(oh, you're into that too huh?) when I should be working on it. I had no idea....building houses is HARD! Lol =)

I better go to bed. Thanks for reading =) I hope you enjoyed. I sure did.

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know."