How to Sell Your Land Yourself and Move on with Your Life

There is no other single aspect of land ownership which more completely captures the imagination than the actual selection and purchase of the land.
Sometimes however, on the way to acquiring the ideal tract of land, many folks, for whatever reasons, wind up owning the less-than-ideal parcel that needs to be sold before real-property nirvana can be achieved.
Whether you inherited a piece of property that doesn’t mesh with your goals, discovered that you simply need to live in another part of the world, or even if you bought a piece of property and later just fell out of love with it, selling land, particularly in a poor market, can appear to be a daunting task.  The amateur’s first reaction is usually to list with a real estate agent and hope for the best.
Now, far be it from me to discourage using an agent.  This certainly is the easiest way and not necessarily the least profitable or most expensive, especially in a booming market.  In a less-than-booming market however, it’s good to remember that listing your property with an agent will subject it to comparison with dozens, perhaps hundreds of other listings, all competing with yours in features and price. Selling your property then, will probably require that a potential buyer finds it to be either the best he sees… or the cheapest.
If you have unimproved land to sell, you may also find that the majority of agents are more interested in selling more expensive improved properties where they stand to make much larger commissions (and get fewer ticks) so your five acres of woods may get short shrift when it comes to exposure to the market.  This wouldn’t be such a big problem were it not for the fact that these days, more and more brokers are insisting on exclusive listing contracts that obligate you to pay them a commission even if you sell the property yourself to the fellow next door.
That’s why you may want to tackle the job on your own.  These days, you can set your land apart from the crowd by marketing and selling it yourself.  Since the advent of the internet, it’s easier and more effective than ever, and the phrase “for sale by owner” has a particular cachet about it that buyers seem to like.  Many buyers assume that they’ll be saving the sales commission by buying directly from the owner.  Of course, you’re probably assuming that you’re saving the sales commission by selling it yourself.  Which of you is correct depends on how adeptly you handle your sale.

 Evaluating Your Land from a Seller’s Standpoint

The first step is to decide on your price.  The timid choose a price too low, and the foolish pick one too high.  What you want to do is find the right price that will yield a reasonably quick sale, but not generate a stampede of skinflints to your door.
To determine, or appraise, the value of land, you need comparables.  Using the internet, finding these is easier than it’s ever been, although there are also a few new pitfalls.
The best places to find your comparables are the places where you plan to advertise.  In a moment I’m going to recommend that you advertise on the internet, so you shouldn’t be surprised if that’s where I recommend you gather your comparables as well.
In choosing comparables, you want as many tidbits of information as you can find; that’s the primary reason why the web is the best source, because the people writing the advertisements there aren’t usually paying by the word – although you’ll find that they can still be infuriatingly vague.
Here are the basic things that must be considered when appraising land:
Size:  The fact that you find 80 acres, or 8,000 acres, selling for a given amount per acre tells you virtually nothing about what your 8 acres is worth, so ignore it.
Rather, classify your property somewhat like this: is it from 0 to 3 acres? 3 to 8? 8 to 15? 15 to 40?  Of course it can’t be all that cut-and-dried, but remember to only compare your rural property to others of about the same size – nothing has greater bearing on the value of unimproved land than size, except, to a degree, location.
Please note that I am NOT going to repeat the old saw about the three most important things to know about real estate.  Unless you spent your formative years in a cave, you’ve already heard it enough times to make you wish you hadn’t.
I’ll assume that, as an adult who can read and operate a computer, you already know that the price of your 40 acres in western Kansas has very little to do with the value of New York’s Central Park, but you do need to make a distinction between a property that’s a thirty-minute drive from a city and one that’s two hours distant.
I’ve found that most people draw an invisible line at a thirty-minute commute whether they’re commuting into L.A. or Buzzard’s Bluff.
Additionally, you shouldn’t compare land from outside your region.  West-coast prices aren’t applicable to West Virginia, and vice versa.
Okay, that takes care of the broadest measures.  Let’s assume you’re looking for comparable land to your forty acres in rural Tennessee, we next start to evaluate the features of the land.
Water: Lake or river frontage is more valuable to most people than a non-navigable stream, which is more valuable than a spring, which is more valuable than a pond, which is more valuable than no water at all.  Almost everyone wants water frontage, but not everyone is willing to pay for it.
Soil Terrain and Vegetation: Most small landowners will prefer a mixture of hill and valley, but level agricultural land is usually more expensive than hilly ground.  However, if your property is smaller, say less than eighty acres, there will probably be a better market for the mixed terrain that includes level bottomland and forested hills.  Likewise, the best overall market exists for small properties with a mixture of forest and meadow as opposed to all woods or all field.
Improvements: A modern water-well is worth more than it costs to drill.  In the Ozarks, for example, where the typical well costs around $6,000, I generally value them at around $10K.
Access: While few in number, there are still some properties that don’t have legal access – that is, a deeded access-easement, or frontage on a public road.  This is what is known as “landlocked” property, and it is of considerably less value.  If you see an extremely low-priced piece of land for sale, it may be a bargain, or it may just not have legal access.  Curing this can be fairly simple, but don’t count on it.  If it were an easy matter, it would likely already have been fixed.  In most cases, legal access will require a deed from the neighbor whose land you’re crossing, and folks tend not to like to sign deeds unless they get something of significant value in return.
Utilities:  Electric and phone. Check whether your comparables have, or don’t have, the same utilities that your property has.  If not, and all other things are equal, price yours ahead of those that don’t have what yours does, or behind those that have what yours doesn’t.
Buildings: This chapter is intended to address land-only sales.  Obviously, if your land has buildings on it, those can add significantly to the value.  If the buildings are of any value, that is, a livable house or a barn or shed in good repair, this may be harder for you to estimate or to compare with others.  About the best you can hope to do is to compare the number of rooms/bedrooms, the square footage, the general condition, and overall appearance.  If the buildings are of marginal value, give them appropriate ranking, however as advice to a potential seller of real estate (I’d tell a potential buyer something else) don’t discount that shack or hovel too severely.  A lot of buyers seem to feel somehow assured if there’s a structure of any kind on a property.   Maybe it seems less intimidating than starting with empty woods.  So if it doesn’t leak too badly, and isn’t going to fall down in the next few years, you may consider bumping the price up a few thousand dollars, or leaving it where it is so that the building provides another inducement to buy.
Finally after you’ve researched all your research and compared all your comparables, it’s time to decide on your final price.
Actually, this is the easy part: you bring all your comparables together and rank them – a spreadsheet like Excel is good for this.  Put the price of each property in Column A, the “sort” column, and a brief description of the features in Column B.
Now put yourself in a buyer’s shoes.  Right away, you can see what’s a bargain and what may be overpriced. The idea is to price your property as a happy median between the two extremes.

Advertising/Marketing

Now that you’ve arrived at your price, you’re ready to put your property in front of the world.  To do this, the first thing you need is a web page.
Now, I suppose you could HIRE someone to make a page for you, but frankly, if you can read well enough to get this far in this book, you’re perfectly capable of making one on your own.
Nowadays all of my favorite software packages come for the same price: free.  So I’d check out what’s available at tucows.com or software.com.  You can also make a tolerable web page using Microsoft Word (which probably came loaded on your computer) however, if you’ve never made any web pages before, you’ll probably also be needing  web-space to put them on, and you can find both web-authoring software and web-space available cheap or free with a little thoughtful web-searching.
Once you’ve got the mechanics taken care of, all you need to do is collect absolutely everything you can think of that will describe your property, which may include, but will not be limited to, a written description, lots and lots of photographs, perhaps taken in different seasons, information about the local area, last year’s real estate taxes, aerial photos, road maps and perhaps a .pdf or .jpg copy of the survey, if available.
Next, it’s time to advertise.  Depending somewhat on the type and location of your property, you can find a handful of free advertising sites on the web and you should employ these, preferably with a link to your web-page(s) if that’s permitted.   However, few of these free sites bring you enough traffic to help much in the absence of some uncommonly good luck.
That means, as it always has, that you’re going to have to pay for your advertising just as sellers always have, but take heart in the fact that you don’t have to pay nearly as much for national advertising as you did in the days of paper.  Better still, if you put a hit-counter on your web page(s), you’ll be able to keep track of how much traffic you get from each source. That will give you an idea of which ads are most effective.
Personally, I’ve had good experience with Google Adwords where you can set your ad budget to as little as one dollar per day.  (You may be able to set it even lower, but let’s get serious, you DO want to sell this place don’t you?  Adwords also coordinates with Google Analytics, which will tell you far more than you need to know about the traffic you’re getting to your pages.  Also provided are ways to see how effective the ads you write are proving to be.  LandWatch.com is another favorite source of mine which consistently supplies better-quality leads, that is, more serious clients, than Google and others.

Financing

Now it’s time for probably the toughest decision you’ll have to make about selling your property.  Do you want to finance the price, or will you only accept cash in full?
Perhaps I can help you out with that decision.  If you finance, you are going to have a LOT more prospective customers than if you don’t, and if you make the terms easy enough, you will have even more.
That’s not to say that there aren’t a few potential hazards involved in owner-financing, but in my view, the benefits far out-weigh the drawbacks.
At first you may think that owner-financing means giving up all the money you expected to realize when your property sells, but if you look at it from the long-term view, you’ll actually make about twice as much at competitive interest rates.
One of the first benefits of this is that when you collect interest on your sale proceeds, unlike an interest-bearing bank account, the interest on your land sale starts out as a large percentage of the payment and shrinks over the life of the loan.   So the first payments made to you largely go toward interest.
Moreover, even though you’ll not have a lump sum of money to place against another piece of land or some other big-ticket item such as a vehicle or home construction, you will have the guaranteed income to match your payments, or some such new purchases, including the interest.   You’ll also get to keep a lot more of the money you’ll receive, because you’ll only pay income taxes in small installments over the years, rather than all at once, which is likely to bump you into a higher tax bracket.
“But,” you’re probably thinking, “this ‘guaranteed income’ is only guaranteed by another individual — a human being just like myself and subject to all the same problems, foibles and weaknesses.  What if my buyer defaults?.”
That is a very realistic concern.
Here’s a system I’ve devised that works well for me:
To begin with, when I place my advertisements I make two assumptions: first, I assume that my buyer will want me to finance the sale, because this is the case about 95% of the time.
Second, I assume that my buyer may very well default, especially in the first six months, because this happens about 25-30% of the time.
These two assumptions prepare me mentally for the task ahead, and they prepare me physically to guide in the preparation of the documents I will use to consummate the deal.
I accept a no-down-payment deal — only the first monthly installment is required to cement the deal.  (I offer a discount for cash.)
The deal I make is that the transaction is governed for the critical first six months by a Contract for Deed.  That is, the title stays with me, if the buyer defaults, he simply loses his money, the deal is off, and everyone goes back to square one.
However, after the buyer makes his sixth payment, I give him title to the property, that is I make and record a Warranty Deed to him, and hold a Promissory Note and Deed of Trust in return as security.  Finally, as boiler-plate, I have the buyer sign a Quit-claim Deed back to me which is annotated to only be recorded in the event of a default.  This, in one stroke lowers my foreclosure costs from around $1,500 to hire an attorney to perform a trustee’s sale, down to about $27 to record the Quit-claim Deed.  Since I create all the contracts and deeds myself from standard forms, I save immensely on attorney’s fees.  Using this technique, I am prepared both for the long-term sale as well as, should it be necessary, a fast and easy foreclosure.

Preparing the Property

Finally, you need to get the property into shape to show it to prospects.  There’s probably not a lot you can do in this regard.  This being unimproved land, it tends to rise and fall on its own inherent virtues or faults.  The good news is that there’s probably not a lot that needs to be done.  I’d recommend though that you consider three areas:
1.  The Road:  The better the condition of the access road, the better impression your property will make.  If your land is three miles of bad county-road away from pavement, then I wouldn’t waste a lot of money making the access from the county road any better than the county road itself, but remember that you can do quite a bit to civilize a dirt driveway with a tractor and blade.   If you don’t have too much length to cover, there’s no substitute for a layer of 1” crushed rock (or larger rock in deep mud-holes).  One layer of 1” rock one lane wide will cost you about 75¢ per foot around my neighborhood.  Needless to say, if the property is on a road maintained by the county, or some other local government entity, and if this road has any work that needs to be done, this is an excellent time to complain politely about it to the wonderful folks on the Road Board.  Most counties grade their roads once or twice a year, but some roads that don’t get much traffic may be neglected if no-one complains.
2.  Clean Up the Junk:  If you didn’t do this when you bought the place, now is the time.  Other than buildings of value, get rid of everything that didn’t grow there.  This doesn’t have to be a major ordeal.  First check out local laws regarding what, if anything, can be burned at your location.  Nearly all states have laws against burning old tires and many forbid burning other items such as other rubber products; wire; treated, painted or finished wood; plastics; garbage; heavy oils; asphalt materials; building materials, especially those containing asbestos; paints; and agricultural and household chemicals.  Then, if you have anything combustible, and plenty of water and a way to disperse it, go ahead and burn what you can, but make absolutely, positively certain the fire is out before you leave.  “Out” in this case means cold to the touch.
You may be able to use, or otherwise recycle, part of the remainder, and the rest you can take home to add to your home garbage-collection schedule, perhaps over a short period of time rather than all at once.
3.  Bush-hogging:  To make the place look its very best, bush-hog any brush small enough to be cut.  If the place doesn’t sell quickly, do it every few weeks.

Closing the Sale

Now you’re all set to go.  When you find a buyer, and after he’s given you money and signed your contract, it’s time to prepare for the closing.
I strongly suggest that you be ready to get him to sign and notarize all the documents required at the very beginning of the deal, even though if you follow my suggestions, you won’t be recording most of them for six months.
Good Luck!

Reference: http://www.homestead.org/16-frugality-and-finance/how-to-sell-your-land-yourself-and-move-on-with-your-life/

Cutting Through the Mystery of Knife Types: Know Your Blades

Whether it be the kitchen, workshop, in automobile emergency-kits, or simply junk drawers around the house, shop, or barn, having a cutting blade close at hand is a must for rural life.

A few years ago, I penned a story about how to sharpen knives.  Getting and maintaining a good edge on a blade is an art form.  Even though I grew up in the country, my dad had no clue of what it took to get a knife really sharp.  His idea of sharpening a dull blade was a trip to the bench grinder.  While that would give him a temporary edge sharp enough to hack through baling twine or wiring on a tractor or truck, the heat from the fast-spinning grinding wheel took the temper out of the blade so any edge was short lived.

Many years later I had an impromptu run-in with an old timer who carried a small sharpening stone in his pocket and could work magic with it.  I set about trying to learn how to make a knife blade sharp enough to shave andhold an edge.

Over the next several years I learned that all cutting blades, like men, are not created equal.  Some have the natural potential to be sharper than others.  Before we get too technical, let’s first discuss the different kind of knives you might want to surround yourself with.

     Types of Knives

To make this real simple let’s break it down to two categories: kitchen knives and everything else.

I’ll start with “everything else” since that’ll take care of us where we live most of our life: out and about away from the kitchen.  These knives include what you might carry in your car or truck, in a toolbox, in the garage or barn, and, more importantly, in your pocket or on your side.

By the time you’ve spent any amount of time at all living in the country you’ll undoubtedly have discovered the benefit of carrying a pocketknife.  I’ve carried one since I was about eleven years old.  My wife carries one in her purse, and our college-aged daughter keeps one in her car and another one in her hiking backpack.  Our son, who has traveled the world doing mission work and spent much of the last several years living in different, unfamiliar environments, carries a folding knife in one pocket and a small sheath knife with a paracord-wrapped handle in another pocket.  While you’ll likely never find yourself depending on a knife to save your life, it still pays to have one within reach.

     Pocketknives

In mainstream America, you rarely hear people talk these days about types of knives, but in more rural areas you’ll still occasionally hear people refer to folding knives by type; they have names such as pen knife, trapper, stockman, jack knife, or, an old favorite, Barlow.  All pertain to folding pocketknives but that’s where the similarities end.

First, the term “jack knife” refers to any folding pocketknife.  It can have one, two, or three blades hinged on one or more ends of the handles.

A small, thin, folding knife is usually called a “pen knife” (think something small that a businessman might carry).  These might have one or two blades, long and slender.  If you think the knife got its name because it resembles a writing pen, well, you’re close.  The name was given to the small knife kept to sharpen quills for writing in the quill-and-inkwell days, long before the modern ballpoint pens.  Originally the pen knife had a fixed blade, but over time small folding knives were created and the convenience of carry dictated that the new options would be used as “pen knives”.

Penknife

A “trapper” commonly refers to a two-blade, mid-sized to large folder with both blades hinged on the same end of the handles.  One blade will come to a fine point with a slightly curved back edge near the end, otherwise known as a “clip” blade, while the other will be angled and blunt on the end, called a “spey” blade.  Of course, these knives became standard tools for fur trappers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are still popular today.

Trapper knife

A “stockman” is, in my opinion, the ultimate pocketknife.  They come in small, medium, or large sizes.  A main feature of a stockman is the three blades with two hinged on one end and the other hinged at the other end of the handles.  The blades include a clip, a spey, and a sheepsfoot.  A sheepsfoot blade will be a straight line on the cutting edge, but curved on the end from the back edge down to the end of the cutting surface.

Stockman knife

A “Barlow” knife refers a one- or two-blade knife with a tear-shaped handle with a sizable metal bolster on the small end where the blades are hinged.  While I own a couple Barlow knives, I tend to not carry them because of the ample size.

My first knife was a Barlow my dad gave me when I was about eight years old.  While writing this article I did some quick research and discovered that Barlow knives were first made in England in the 1600s.  According to the online “History of Barlow Knives” our nation’s first president, George Washington, carried a Barlow pocketknife.  And one of my fellow Show-Me-State writers, Samuel Clemons, a.k.a. Mark Twain, referenced a “real Barlow” in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (and Huckleberry Finn) printed in 1876.

Barlow knife

In the last half of the 20th century the single-bladed “lockblade” knife design became popular.  At first the thumb-operated lock release was integrated into the back edge of the handle.  More modern versions often have lighter skeletal-style metal handles with the locking mechanism as a spring-loaded flap of metal which holds the blade locked open until you push it out of the way to swing the blade closed.

Lockblade knife

The final type of folding “pocket” knife I’ll address is the multi-bladed tools that started as military-issued equipment and eventually evolved into the modern “multi tool” which became popular in the 1980s.  I had a U.S.  Marine surplus pocketknife as a teen.  Ironically, I saw one at a local flea-market recently and would have bought it if it hadn’t had such a hard life.

The high-end version—solely due to craftsmanship and a superior marketing plan—is the Swiss Army knife: the signature red-handled everything-but-the-kitchen-sink tool, complete with a pair of tweezers, a needle, and a toothpick.  Then, in 1983, the Leatherman company was formed and took the tool-based knife to an entirely new level with a pair of pliers integrated into their model.  The main downside to these utilitarian Jeeps of the folding-knife world is that they’re generally too large to be useful as a “pocketknife”.  But if you have big pockets, or can wear a belt case, there’s no doubt that a multi tool can be a homesteader’s best little helper.

     Folding Knives

If you thought there were a lot of folding knives to choose from, the fixed-blade knife market is just as varied.  While some have specific purposes or are better suited for different jobs, in most cases it comes down to simple preference; whatever feels best in your hands.

There are a dozen or more fixed-blade designs that can be found on the market.   But since I’m a user, not a connoisseur, of blades, for this discussion we’ll just stick with the basics.  These are knives I, or others I know, own and use in real, everyday life.  Most of these knives come in a wide array of lengths and thicknesses—and again personal preference will ultimately dictate which one you choose—so we’ll focus on blade shape more than overall size.

The “clip point” is, in my opinion, a great knife for processing animals.  We raise chickens, meat rabbits, and hogs, and I also hunt and fish often to put meat on the table.  With exception of an occasional hog or deer, I process all the meat we eat or store for later use.

For years, I used a clip-point Old Timer with a 4-inch blade.  It was a solid old knife and served me for many years.  When our son began hunting as a young boy I passed on that knife to him to use, which he still carries when afield today.  For the next several years I used a custom-made clip-point knife made by a friend and knifemaker.  Just recently, I decided to retire that knife and buy another small Old Timer for processing wild game and homestead meat.

Benefits of a clip-point blade is that it can be used for slicing in the traditional sense, but the narrow, slightly-hooked tip also makes it ideal for skinning and removing entrails.  The back edge of the blade is not sharpened so it works well to lift hide out of the way, while the fine tip is ideal for precision work around orifices, scent glands, and other areas to be avoided or approached gently.

Additionally, many thin-bladed fillet knives for cleaning fish carry a clip-point shape.

Clip-point knife

The next several knives to be discussed will follow a progression of how the tip of the blade is shaped.  You’ll see from the accompanying photos what I mean, as each blade mentioned will get more curved toward the point.

First is the “trailing-point” blade which, instead of following a straight line from the tip of the handle to the tip of the blade, has an ever-so-slight bow backward at the point.  I’m not sure of the original purpose of the shape of the tip, but can attest that it feels good in use.  Perhaps the most famous trailing-point knife is the fighting knife created for, and carried by, Jim Bowie.  The signature of a trailing-point blade is that both edges of the top are sharpened.

Another variation on the trailing point is the “modified trailing-point” which has a slightly thicker area of blade near the point.  This style has become very popular in recent decades for being a good skinning blade.

Trailing-point knife

A “straight-back” blade is simply what the name implies.  The back edge of the blade follows a straight line from the tang of the handle through to the tip of the blade.  This shape is often found in homemade knives, especially those made from old files or saw blades.  But they are also available commercially, and make good, solid, everyday knives to have in toolboxes, glove compartments, and as backups in backpacks or bugout bags (for those preppers among us).

Straight-back knife

The next progression in tip shape is the ever-popular “drop point”.  They get their name, again, quite literally because if you were to hold the handle between thumb and finger with the tip pointed down and release your hold the knife will land squarely on the point.

The spine of the blade runs straight from the handle toward the tip until the last small portion where it will curve downward toward the point.  The spine will not be sharpened, which makes it another good choice for skinning duties during butchering.

Drop-point blades are very user-friendly and utilitarian, which is why you’ll find the shape in many survival knives.  Not having the point flush or proud of the back edge of the blade makes it less likely to nick things you might not wish to cut.  The design also makes for a very strong, rigid blade all the way to the tip.

Drop-point knife

The next progression is a “spear point” design.  The edges of the knife, both spine and cutting, will have essentially the same shape.  In some cases only the cutting edge will be sharpened, but more often than not both edges will be honed for cutting.

The signature of a spear-point knife is a symmetrical blade where both sides are nearly equal and meet at the point, which is at the tip of an imaginary line which runs through the blade like an equator.  The place you’ll most often see the spear-point design is in throwing knives.

Spear-point knife

The final shape we’ll talk about is the “straight edge”.  Not to be confused with the blunt-ended shape of a straight razor, a straight-edge knife-blade will have a straight line for the cutting edge from tail to tip.  However, the back edge of the blade will curve significantly near the tip to meet the sharpened edge.

While you will find this blade design as one of the options in some folding pocketknives, perhaps the most recognizable example can be found in your kitchen butcher-block knife set.  The design is often called a “Santoku” knife, a Japanese name which means “three virtues” or “three uses,” a blade which will slice, dice, and mince equally well.  Of all the options in our butcher-block set at home, the Santoku is my favorite when my wife calls on me to chop vegetables for stews, soups, or stir-fry dishes.

Santoku knife

One last aspect to consider is the cutting edge.  Options include:

“Double bevel” where each side is ground at an angle toward the fine cutting edge, also sometimes referred to as a sabre grind.

“Single bevel” where only one side is angle ground and the other remains perfectly flat.  This is also called a chisel point.

“Serrated” where the blade has notches or other indentions in a row to create more of a saw-tooth cutting edge (which is common in kitchen bread knives, and some survival or hunting knives)

“Hollow ground” where both sides of the cutting edge have a concave grind ending at a fine pointed edge.

“Convex” grind is the most basic where both sides of the cutting edge are gently sloped, or rounded, toward the cutting edge with no definite angle to the grind.

And “double bevel” or “compound bevel” is one of the most common.  In this instance there will be a wide-angled grind leading toward the cutting edge, with a second more proud angle on the very last bit of metal where the two sides of the blade meet up.

You can learn more about the different angles and benefits of them elsewhere on Homestead.org, which I’ll reference and give the link to in just a moment.

     A Few Last Words

If you’ve already made that transition to the country, or you grew up there, then you’re well aware of the need for having good cutting blades around you.  I always carry a folding pocketknife, usually with two blades, minimum.  Just like how my wife likes to change the purse she carries from time to time, I sometimes mix it up and carry a different pocketknife.  But the two constants are that I’ll always have one of some sort in my pocket and it’ll always be sharp.

To learn more about how to get a knife sharp and keep it that way check out my story titled “Razor’s Edge Extreme Knife Sharpening” at Homestead.org.

In my pickup truck you will find a neck knife (small knife on a lanyard) with a modified spear-point blade.  I grab the knife off the rearview mirror where it hangs when I head out to hunt or do farm work on my remote property.  It’s great for slicing open bags of animal feed, cutting baling twine, or having as a quick blade to grab in case of an emergency.

Above the visor you’d find a drop-point Buck 4-inch hunting knife with a thin manufactured plastic handle and plastic or Kydex-style sheath.  Like the others, this one is razor sharp.  It’s primarily my backup in case I forget me Old Timer hunting knife at home.

I’m not what you would consider a “doomsday prepper”, but I do like being prepared.  So I carry a nylon bag in my truck which holds a rain poncho, some first-aid supplies, a folding shovel, a hatchet, duct tape, a small cooking-grate, matches and other firestarters (lighter, flint and steel, fire starter cubes), a 6-inch lightweight camp skillet, a small bottle of cooking oil, some other items… and another small folding-knife.  I have yet another small fixed-blade knife in my tool pouch in the truck.  With a propensity to drive older pickups and tractors, you always want to have a tool kit handy, and no set of tools is complete without some kind of utility knife.

Aside from my box of sharpening stones, steels, strops, and accessories in my workshop, I also keep a small, diamond sharpening-stone in the console and a ceramic sharpener in the door pocket of my truck.  I have a small, natural, Arkansas sharpening stone in my hunting backpack, and another small blade and hook sharpener in my trout fishing vest with my fillet knife.

Like I said at the beginning, I’m not a blade expert or even an enthusiast for that matter.  I don’t walk around with a big sheath knife on my side while in town, and I don’t have a bunch of swords or medieval blades displayed or sitting around in my house.  What I am is just a guy who grew up in the country, who still likes living in a rural setting, who spends most of his free time on the water, in the woods or afield either working or relaxing.  And there’s hardly a day goes by that I don’t find a need for a cutting tool.  And I suspect the same holds true for you, too.  I hope something I said helps you pick the most helpful knives for the jobs you face on the homestead.

Reference By: http://www.homestead.org/26-machinery/cutting-through-the-mystery-of-knife-types-know-your-blades/