About Elbow First

Who is behind this

Hi, I am Seth. I run Elbow First by myself.

I spent about a decade in the trades, concrete, roofing, and remodels, the kind of work where a guessed measurement costs you a weekend and a wrong call costs you more. Then I spent years in software, including a stretch as the lead front-end and iOS engineer on PV Value, a solar-valuation tool built on the public Sandia income-approach methodology. So I have stood on both sides of a house, the framing and the spreadsheet.

These days I am doing exactly what this site is about. I have a small place, for now, with chickens, ducks, muscadines, and a flower garden. I am learning animal husbandry, food and fermentation, and home improvement hands-on, alongside a 3D printer and a real working setup with AI. When I build the bigger stuff, an off-grid system, the deeper automations, I will do it here, on the record, and this site will show it.

Why I built this

Every time I started a new project, I hit the same wall: scattered, half-right, keyword-stuffed how-to content, and a chatbot that only answers the question you already knew to ask. The hardest part of self-reliance is not the doing. It is knowing what is even possible, and who to believe.

So Elbow First is two things at once. It surfaces the projects worth doing, including the ones you would never have searched for. And it hands you off to AI to actually execute, with the right tool and a prompt that works, leaning toward local and private AI where that genuinely wins.

The honest part

Here is the thing I care about most. I am not going to pretend to be an expert on everything, because I am not, and you would smell it a mile off.

That is why every project wears a confidence tier. Scouted means we found it and it looks promising, but we have not vetted it. Researched means a human checked the sources and it holds up in theory, but we have not built it. Field-tested means I actually did it, on my own place, with my own photos and results. Proven means it has been refined until it reliably works for most people. The badge climbs as the work gets done, and you always know which one you are reading.

A concrete example: I have a real background in solar valuation, but the industry moved on and I am not a current off-grid expert. So the energy content starts at Researched, built honestly from the public methodology, and clearly labeled as such. When I put a real system on the ground, it graduates to Field-tested, and you will see the receipts. That is the deal, everywhere on this site.

What this is not

It is not a how-to blog racing to publish everything. It is not a chatbot. It is not a place that fakes reviews or poses as an authority it has not earned. When we point you to a part, it is one we would actually use, and we tell you when a link earns us a commission (it never costs you extra, here is exactly how that works).

If you build your own place, or want to, this is the reference I wish I had. Dig in.

Seth [email protected]