Todd Gerardot

I kind of like the idea of spreading the books around using multiple avenues, although each method will provide a unique set of challenges and opportunities. I think we would reach more people if we distributed through different channels, but there will also be more time invested to figure out how to prioritize and reach these groups.

In-person events: I really like the idea of charging $2-3 per book with an individual or household limit. I think this increases the chance that the books fall into hands of people want to read it and will act on the solutions provided. This approach could also turn some people away if they don’t carry cash on them; perhaps a subscription to the dailyish could work if they don’t have any cash?

Libraries: I wonder how effective this would be. There are a lot of people that consume most of their information digitally and fewer people checking books out from libraries.  I think we would need a lot of books for this to be effective and distribution to the libraries could be complicated and expensive.

Book Reviewers: I like the idea of getting the books out to a bunch of reviewers. I think this would provide the best chance of reaching people that are lower on the Wheaton-Eco Scale.

Environmental Organizations: I think we could reach a lot of people that think they are eco and green, but the book would give better solutions that are currently unimaginable to them.

Celebrities: I’m not sure how effective this will be, but it could have a big benefit if several read it and promote on some of their social media pages. Getting that to happen might be tough though.

I realize that my rough idea could be challenging to pull off logistically for a large digital event. Perhaps a slightly better alternative to that would be to have a chunk of books, funded by myself and other interested permies, ready to be donated at in-person events that you will be speaking at in the future. This seems like it would be easier to pull off and might be easier to get the book into the hands of people that have not read it that live in cold climates.

If this is something that you are interested in, I would be willing to pay with your preference of PayPal, check, or cryptocurrency. If you would prefer a payment in cryptocurrency, I would do my best to get that to you in your preferred coin, although I am only a month in a half in to my crypto journey, so it might take a little bit of time to figure out how get you a specific coin (like Pirate Chain).

After listening to this podcast last night I had an idea that may help to get this book into more hands. First off, I will provide a little background, to not only show how this idea came to me, but also to raise some awareness of other people and resources that I have been learning from.

Since I have largely caught up on Paul’s podcasts, I was looking for some new podcasts to get in to. My brother introduced me to Unloose the Goose Podcast (unloosethegoose.com), which has a great cast of hosts with diverse backgrounds and includes Jack Spirko, John Bush, Nicole Sauce, Xavier Hawk, Sal Mayweather, Peter Quinones, CJ Killmer, and Curtis Stone.

Either through Unloose the Goose or some of the content shared by individual hosts, I became aware of “The Event” (2021.theevent.global). This was a five day online event with over 115,000 attendees worldwide with presentations in various categories including homesteading/permaculture, decentralization, community, health and nutrition, wealth and prosperity, law, health freedom, consciousness and spirit, and education.

There will be another event from January 26-30, 2022 called “The Greater Reset” (thegreaterreset.org). This seems similar to “The Event” that was listed above. Replays of previous presentations from “The Greater Reset” are available for free and replays for the presentations from “The Event” can be purchased on their respective websites.

Now, on to an idea to help get the BBW book into more hands. I believe that there are many people that attended/will attend the above events that have not found the Permies Empire yet, but they are ready for global change. Perhaps this would provide opportunities to reach other audiences.

In an attempt to get the BBW book in more hands, I would be interested in putting up a chunk of coin in order to give away books at one of these events in the future. I imagine there would be other permies that would be interested as well. The gifted books could include some encouragement to order extra books to hand out if they enjoyed it.

I think a bunch of gifted books coupled with several presentations from Paul and/or a permies panel at one of these events would increase traffic at Permies and could increase book sales too.

I know this is a rough idea, but I wanted to get it down while it was still relatively fresh in my mind.

I think that is a great idea! This may help me to plan out my upcoming adventure a little bit better.

I expect to spend some time in the boot camp in the future; however, I have no clue what that time line will look like. I am anticipating getting fired "soon" for refusing to play the vaccine game. I say "soon" because I work for one of the slowest and most inefficient employers in the country, in my opinion, and I can only speculate on how long the process will take.

When I was out in Utah, working a seasonal job, I had mice (or ground squirrels) chew through several of my wiring harnesses. My car would still turn on and run; however, It would not shift out of first gear. After failing to find anyone that had a car trailer, I decided to limp it into town which was 30 miles away. The downhill stretches were great because I could put the car in neutral and get up to 35-40 mph at times, which was great.

Not only was my fix expensive ($2000+), it also took close to 6 weeks to be repaired due to the fact that one of the wiring harnesses that I needed was on national backorder.  If that wiring harness took much longer to get to the shop, I was planning on riding back home for Thanksgiving with my girlfriend at the time and flying back for my car when it was ready, which would have been another expense to add to this ordeal. Luckily, I lived on site where I worked, and I had several people that I could carpool with when I needed to go into town.

Hi Lana,

If I was in your shoes, like a lot of the recommendations on this thread, I would try to find solutions that work for you and your beaver friends. I believe that there will be more benefits to finding a balance with the beavers and less work and inputs than it would be to try to remove the beavers and their dams.

I have had several jobs in which I was either removing small dams or opening up small holes in the dams to temporarily increase water flows through the dam. It seems to be that beavers are extremely hard workers and they will have the majority of the dam rebuilt by the morning, although I as making relatively small impacts to the dams.

If you do decide that you would like to remove the dams and beavers, depending on the population size in the area, I believe you would spend a fair amount of effort either trapping or hunting beavers to reduce their numbers as well the time involved in ripping out the initial and subsequent rebuilt dams.

Regardless of what you decide to do I wish you the best of luck going forward!

-Todd

It looks like Guelder rose, also called crampbark, that I have recently learned after reading a book on backyard medicinal plants by Matthew and Julie Seal.

They provided an easy recipe to make a decocted tincture from the bark of Guelder rose that had a number of uses if taken internally. It could also be used as a liniment rub for aching muscles.

I have not tried this yet, but I would like to try it for sore muscles if I find enough to safely harvest a small amount of the bark to avoid killing the plants.

I have some apple seedlings, one pear seedling, and several green onions on my windowsill at work from organic grocery store produce. I had the seeds in the refrigerator in a moist paper towel at work for 6-8 weeks before planting out. Several of the seedlings did not make it because they dried out when I went on one of my 10-day trips for work, others have been given out to coworkers, and I plan to plant a few out myself.

I also like to plant out and mulch seeds from my lunch if I find a good spot for them while I am working in the field.

This is such a great post Mike! Thank you for taking the time to do all of this research and sharing this compilation of ecofriendly baby gifts and supplies.

This could not have come at a better time either. I just had several friends each welcome a new tiny human into the world. I was happy to see this thread pop up in my dailyish email, thanks Nicole.

Now to send this thread to several groups of friends in hopes of spreading the infection.

Thank you Daron for managing this great blog. I just read several blog posts and the videos embedded for the 11 cold hardy perennial vegetables, salvaging native plants for your homestead, and all the tangents I found myself exploring.

Thank you for sharing another great resource to pull from, and thank you to the greenhouse-ish email for showing me the way to the Wild Homesteading site!