James Plagman

I am 38, currently splitting time between Philadelphia PA, and Mays Landing, NJ. I work in Tech, but I am working towards renovating a couple of houses (for potential rental income), and building out a roughly six acre permaculture garden that will hopefully include a number of small businesses like a market garden/orchard/cut flowers/apiary. I believe I share your view of the government. I would like to find someone who is interested in permaculture, gardening, value added processing, essentially someone looking to live a homesteading type of life style. If these goals/life style and living on the east coast sounds appealing to you shoot me a DM and I can send you a selfie.

Hey Jessi I am 38 m who shares your interest in a balance of urban and rural living.  I am currently splitting time between Philadelphia PA and Atlantic county New Jersey. I am a permaculture nerd working towards building out a little rural cottage, a south Philly row home, and a woodlot permaculture garden. I work in tech, I like Philadelphia sports, and I would like to get to know you better. Shoot me a DM.

Nathaniel Johnston wrote: I ran a small market garden in central Jersey and found that finding customers who were interested in chemical free local food was harder than expected.

Hey Nathaniel. Thanks for reaching out and sharing your experience and encouragement, I really appreciate it. I am curious to hear more about your market garden, like when were you running it (what years), what methods you used, what crops you focused on, and if you don't mind a more specific location like what town or zip code.

Hello Permies,

I am in the beginning stages of transitioning from 20 years of unfulfilling tech jobs in Philadelphia, PA to a more intentional permaculture way of life.  Last year I bought a roughly 10 acre "unbuildable" oak-pine woodlot near Mays Landing, NJ, and next month I should be closing on a little 636sqft cottage within biking distance of the woodlot. I am interested in finding like minded people in the South Jersey / Philadelphia area to bounce ideas off of, build partnerships with, and help out/learn from in any way I can. I have a lot of ideas, but I don't know anyone personally who shares my interest in permaculture. It will probably take me two more years to pay off the cottage, so the plan right now is to keep my day job and split time between Philly and the cottage/property. I am a person who looks for win/win/win situations, where I benefit, you benefit, and the land/wildlife/community/society benefits. If you are also a win/win/win type of person on a permaculture journey in the area between/around Philadelphia, PA and Mays Landing, NJ please reach out.

Right now the long term plans for the woodlot are to work towards turning it into a formal garden of mostly coppice and pollarded fruit and nut trees/shrubs, with a little market garden at the center.  I am interested in increasing/identifying useful plant genetics, so the first step is to clear the underbrush and thin out some of the existing trees. Then set up a little plant nursery (the EdibleAcres youtube channel is a huge inspiration and source of information for this step). I have started this process, and even jumped the gun and planted a couple of elder hardwood cuttings. The first round of plantings I am putting in are (hopefully deer deflecting) hedgerows of closely spaced Elder(flower/fruit production/biomass/wildlife), Black locust (flowers/fire wood/biomass/nitrogen/wildlife), Honey locust (fodder/biomass/wildlife), and Bayberry(wax/seasoning/nitrogen/wildlife). I am a little apprehensive about the locust thorns but we'll see how it goes. I plan on buying the trees/plants from a diverse set of geographically dispersed nurseries, and then using those trees to start growing my own seedlings to start the breeding/selection process from.  The goal of everything I do on the property is to proliferate life, and hopefully I can be clever enough to turn some of that life into enough money to get by. I am only on the first step of an endless path and looking for some local people to share it with.
 

Hello I am a 37 year old, 6'0" tall, 185lbs man with thinning brown hair and hazel eyes, I live in Philadelphia PA and I have 10 acres of fully wooded unbuildable land near Mays landing New Jersey.  I work in IT, but I am passionate about Permaculture.  I have designs to renovate my South Philly row home into a more sustainable/productive urban permaculture inspired home. While I save up money to pay for the home renovations, I have started to layout and clear land for a weekend warrior style hobby homestead / formal garden / labyrinth on my woodland in Mays landing.  Once I finish laying out and clearing roughly 0.5 acres of the land I plan on buying a completely off grid (compost toilet/rainwater collection/limited solar power) tiny house on wheels to put on the land.   When I am not working, clearing land, or researching permaculture I enjoy watching and attending Philly sports, especially the Eagles, Flyers, and Phillies. I also enjoy listening to both fiction (mainly fantasy) and non fiction(economics, history, philosophy, spirituality, nutrition) audio books. I don't use any social media and I am not a huge fan of the current mainstream culture in general.  I would like to find a fellow permaculture nerd that is interested in splitting time between "the city" and "the country". My preference is to find a woman on some kind of spiritual path who is interested in the art of homemaking (not housekeeping), bonus points if you have read and resonate with Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy. I am currently sober but prefer cannabis to alcohol. Pictures can be exchanged if desired after some written correspondence.  If any of this sounds like a fit or is interesting to you and you have questions ask away.