Monday, February 27, 2012

Self-Watering Systems

I'm leaving for a bit and need to figure out how to water my plants while I'm away. Here is my first video on a few different methods I'm going to try out. Stand by for results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYg5VRrraiA&context=C300dbdcADOEgsToPDskJk6jzPIzlLLgGreTmALp2i

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Making Contact?

I found a great blog out there and I will post a permanent link to it soon, but while its not terribly great reading, the raw information is really exciting. http://arkvalleypermaculture.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Home Home on the Range

Dear cyberneighbors,

It's an odd thing to be called to a less than conventional lifestyle. Sometimes it seems all-consuming. It's instinctual. Otherwise, you might not do it and it would turn out to be just another daydream. It must be what its like to realize that you're really a human, having been raised by wolves. One day you just stand up on two legs and start cooking your food and everything makes sense in this new context. That's what has happened to me over the last few years. I can't say that there was any one thing that decided me on trying to move toward a more substantial and sustainable lifestyle. Maybe it just takes a while for the meanings in your experiences to crystallize into a defining path forward. Maybe the signals from the universe only comes in fits and starts - or maybe our attention span does. My point is that my path forward is clear and I will try to document that path for you as I travel it. I know I have found similar contributions from the pioneers that have gone before invaluable so far, so I hope that this blog is useful to someone who stands up on two legs suddenly some time in the future.

If not, I'll have myself a pretty nifty journal of my adventures.

Let me start by saying that I'm not really into conspiracy theories or doomsday prophecies. I think mother nature will give generously most of the time and then have an unholy shit fit now and then just to remind us that we are actually quite tiny and helpless. We ourselves seem hell-bent on our own destruction, which has been demonstrated more often than any of us care to admit. Then there are those threats that loom out there that many people feel are somewhere on the periphery that we may not even understand fully yet. The problem is that preparing for anything in the future is desperately difficult and painful to think about, because before we can prepare, we must admit that we are mortal and that there really is very little between ourselves and annihilation.

That said, the odds of any of us dying because an asteroid hits our planet is pretty remote. Also, there's nothing you could do about it anyway, so why worry about such things? Frankly, life gives us a more than adequate supply of smaller disasters and surprises that can have varying degrees of effect on your life depending on the severity of the event and the preparedness level of yourself and those around you.

Here's the good news: Preparing for the small personal tragedies that happen in life will inevitably prepare you for the bigger ones, so getting your hands around the most likely (indeed, inevitable) situations will help you weather that 100 year blizzard or a tornado that takes out a whole town.

In advance, I'd like to give credit and appreciation to three groups of people. The first is my local Urban Homesteader Meetup group. These people are invaluable. They communicate amazing amounts of information incredibly rapidly and effectively and are an awful lot of fun to boot. Many of us are learning as we go and benefit greatly from each others' experiences and if you can find a group like this in your area, you would probably be much benefited from associating yourself with them. The second group is The Survival Podcast community. Jack Spirko and the TSP folks are constantly sharing ideas, support and community and are, again, an awful lot of fun. I have been listening to the podcast now for a while, but only recently started to post in the forums, which is where there's an awful lot of valuable information. I plan on becoming a member when funds allow. I'll be posting links to both sites soon. Community building is incredibly important. In our day and age, it has become increasingly difficult to have that sense of belonging and support as our society moves faster and faster and we have less time to lean over our neighbor's fence to ask about how her chickens are doing.

Which brings me to the most important group on my list - the one I hope to have on the other side of my fence soon: my family. I'm lucky to have been raised by two wonderful parents. My father taught me how to reason and to question everything, which has served me well in all facets of my life. My mother is the embodiment of nature herself. She's alternately covered in muck in her painting sweats and a beat up ball cap and an hour later, elegant and statuesque in a dramatic velvet gown ready to attend the theater. My husband has a hero's heart and loves me with a ferocity that scares me some times. He is kind, gentle and helpful, and while he doesn't always understand what it is that's got a hold of me on this topic, he is supportive and shows me he loves me every day with his willingness to follow this compass that he can't even fully see. This is rich soil, indeed, to grow the kind of life that will be beneficial to myself, my family, my friends, my community and the planet. Maybe someday even to kids of my own.

I've only just begun to learn and to plan, but isn't that always the best place to start? At the beginning?