Chapter 5

How to Turn a Gold Mine into a Goldmine

Prosperity Mine 2014 -- Paydirt area on the lower small stream -- there are two on the 40 acre property.

First of all, you have to have a gold mine somewhere. This is a photo of the Prosperity Mining Claim in Nevada County, California. Note that it's a nondescript general photo of the small stream on the property. There are no identifiable reference points in the photo -- that's because I don't intend to give away the location of the mine, because I don't want swarms of city folks blasting away at the bedrock out of sheer greed.

If you're taking minerals out, notably gold, lead, silver and iron pyrites, along with several of the heavier gemstones such as garnet, which is used to make carborundum polishing compounds, you have two basic choices, once you've located an outcropping or gold ledge -- go with heavy equipment and blasting powder, or take a little at a time.

Here's the thing -- gold mining by itself never pays more than survival and a tiny bit extra for sex, booze and camp supplies.

Oh, yes, when you mine full-time, you live there, either in a tent or an expensive home built right on the claim site. Of course, if you give up the claim, you lose the house, unless the claim is patented, and that's a whole ball of wax right there. I'll explain:

You can get a working claim right below the Jurassic Gold Ledge for about $150,000 these days. You'll be able to eke out a living day to day from the mine if you have an exposed ledge or outcropping, but you'll never get that $150,000 back out of the mine unless you find some sucker willing to fork out that amount for the same privilege of sweating out a livelihood from the dirt.

Working the mine will cost more than you think, because you have to satisfy the BLM -- that's the Bureau of Land Management. You will also have the Environmental Protection Agency on your back and in your face ALL the time, and Federal Agencies, because they are SO INCONSISTENT, will drive you nuts and wish you hadn't ever got started in the first place.

It's their JOB to discourage exploitation of mineral resources, and they do it well. Somehow, the Federal, County and City Agencies manage to find the most unpleasant and slavishly robotic zombies available on the job market, and then send them up to your claim to harass and annoy you until you slink away with your tail between your legs.

You will be visited and monitored by several more Federal, State and County Agencies, all interested in various aspects of your mining operation, unless you're merely panning, in which case, nobody will give a damn what you do, as long as you don't pollute the river while doing it.

Health Department, Fish & Game, Internal Revenue Service, you name it -- everyone and anyone in government will be highly interested in any gold mining operation of any size whatsoever, and that includes private mines as well as corporate ones. It's about money, but it's also about the environment.

That means that NOTHING goes back into the river or stream once removed. You have to know how to work within that law, or you can get into serious trouble, meaning much more than merely being closed down. In California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado, you're going to have to keep your environmental nose clean or else face serious consequences.

Cell phones don't work up there, not so you'd notice it. You'll need a pair of CB walkie-talkies, good at a distance of about a mile. There's no heating, no gas, no water and no electricity up there, and the altitude will make you cold and dizzy. If you work the mine 12 to 14 hours a day during the mining season, from March 15 to August 15, you'll be thoroughly ready to face civilization again and have a hot shower or steaming bath whenever you feel so inclined.

Soft bed and air-conditioning, heating and lighting become precious when you've lived without them for several months of the year.

The advantages of living and working at the mine are clearly not comfort. Mining can be draining, exhausting and thoroughly disappointing, if you're not hitting enough color to make it worth your while, and even if you're pulling out an ounce a day -- not bloody likely until you're an expert ... make that a LUCKY expert -- you eventually will tire of the grind.

There's a better way to make a GREAT living from a gold mine, and you can enjoy every minute of it! Only work the mine when you WANT to!!!

You need to make the mining operation strictly VOLUNTARY, meaning you don't HAVE TO pull an ounce of gold out of the ground every day just to keep your financial head above water.

That means you'll have to make money from the mine IRRESPECTIVE OF THE GOLD YOU FIND, meaning that the amount of gold you pull out of the mine won't make any difference in your income, and that's something hard to grasp, to wrap your mind around the concept and GET IT.

One way to make the mine pay without regard to the gold that comes out of it is to put a restaurant and tour on the property, which means tons of careless visitors wandering around looking to find a "FREE" nugget on YOUR gold claim. Okay, scratch the restaurant idea, unless you want to allow visitors to pan gold at the river, which works as a visitor attraction, but increases your exposure and risk, which means more money into liability insurance and less gold mining for you.
Another way is to build a mushroom farm inside the perfectly temperature controlled mine environment. The temperature is PERFECT for mushroom growing within a few degrees, and easily kept at an ideal setting. Shitake mushrooms and Chicken of the Woods are the two types I'd start with.
How about a wine storage service? Again, the temperature is perfect, but you have to know how to turn the bottles and you need a really good insurance plan should anything go wrong, go wrong, go wrong.
A Professional Recording Studio would be great in there, because you'd have a NOISE-FREE environment, no trucks, no trains, no rumbles and squeaks and squawks and squeals with which the recording engineer has to deal, and the quiet space will be appreciated by musicians, who can raise Cain without disturbing the neighbors -- there aren't any.
How about using the mining claim as a workshop space? That brings in some income, albeit small, to cover the cost of maintaining the claim.
Gold Mine Theme Park would be a financial disaster. Better to build a mine somewhere in the middle of a large city mall, with panning troughs in the front window and a little HOT PASTIES stand with the meat aromas blowing out into the walkway.

There are other plans, all of them weak and ineffective, inefficient and insufficient to bring in the amount needed to justify the work you put into it. At the ISHTAR FESTIVAL this year, which always takes place at the Easter Holidays, we'll be exploring an alternative to working a goldmine that you might never have considered possible, but I'll show you how to make it work.

You can work the gold claim whenever you want to, and be certain of always getting enough gold to make the jewelry you intend to sell to cover the cost of vacationing on a gold claim every year, and maybe even a couple of bucks extra for textbooks and movies.

That IS the plan, yes?

All you need is a GUARANTEED way to make money from the gold claim to justify spending many glorious and spiritually rewarding quiet hours searching for gold. With my PLAN "A", you have just such a guarantee.

I will show you how to work the mine at leisure, whenever you feel like it, without becoming a slave to the mining operation. It's easy, simple, and you won't live like a sweat-hog, and you can make plenty of money doing it the FUN way.

Chapter 5

How to Turn a Gold Mine into a Goldmine

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