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rehusp: several artisans expressing their vision in seed and soil

 
author and steward
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I once expressed my ideas for husp.

Focusing on the part where we try to re-discover husp based on there being several different artisans each showing what they think are the best techniques, I like the idea of introducing this onto the land.

On top of that, I remember something from a few years ago where a guy really wanted to build a cob house. He just wanted a place to build one. Apparently, it is pretty common for somebody to build a tiny house and then they get to have a year of free rent living in the house. At the end of the year, the house would be entirely owned by the land owner. The guy told me about how he was hoping he could find a piece of land where the landowner would go for that, plus maybe he could convince the landowner to do two years.

Five years ago I moved onto a piece of land where I would have four acres to do my permaculture crazy. I paid rent. Once settled in, I started making plans for hugelkultur beds and was told that was not allowed. I moved out.

I proposed something to a local tribe. They were getting $2 to $20 per acre per year leasing out a lot of their land. I proposed that using this artisan technique they could get $200 per acre per year (in time). Set somebody up with, say, ten acres. At $20 per acre per year that would be $200 per year. For the second year it would be $40 per year. The third would be $60 per year .... and so on until it hit $200 per acre per year. This would be easy for somebody to get started with. As the land became more productive, thus leading to income streams, the artisans were more able to pay for the greater expense. If an artisan were to leave at any point, it is possible that another artisan could pick up where an earlier artisan left off.

Sepp Holzer showed me some of his plans for his projects in siberia. The idea is that a family would have 2.5 acres and be able to fully house and feed themselves on that. In time.

In the long run, the idea is to have a central community house and several satellite homes. Some people will like living in the community house and some people will prefer a bit more solitude. Therefore, some people might like 2.5 acres to live on and demonstrate their permaculture ideas. And some people might like to live in community and still have an acre or two to do their own thing.

So there once was a time when I very much wanted a piece of land in a community of like minded folks. I was out of debt and had a few bucks in the bank. I would have liked to made a go at it - but the opportunities seemed pretty non-existent. And when I finally found something, it turned out that I didn't know the land owner at all (they told me i could do anything i wanted - then after they had my money and I was settled in, they would not let me build even raised beds). I have 160 videos and 240 podcasts so people can really know this land owner.

I think there will be dozens of different arrangements made over time for different people living on this land. And I would like to start getting some feedback on what might be some possibilities. At some point in the future, I will announce what will be "the" program. Or maybe several different official programs. But I think the first step is to hear from folks that would consider this path - folks that were in the same position I was in five years ago: need land; don't have enough cash to buy my own; wanna get in on something with like minded folks; have a lot of ideas of my own that I need to project into the soil and see if they work .....

Anybody?
 
pollinator
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You need a short, concise, explicit list of do's and don't. A Paul's 10 commandments.

You have a lot of it in previous post, but I haven't seen things like controlling invasives and cross-pollination problems.

And dealing with water and waste HAVE to be COMPLETELY CLEAR (refer to Erica's bucket toilet comments).


 
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I'm thinking that nobody gets a couple acres to play with unless they can convince Paul that they have invested the time (and perhaps a bit of money to Scubbly) to listen to every last podcast, and that they are simpatico with what Paul has expressed in those podcasts. I see a lot of references to listening to the podcasts in Paul's posts re: TL.

I'm working my way through the podcasts, although I won't be moving to TL anytime soon. I'm a pediatrician who is the primary breadwinner for my family. I may do my own sort of small urban permaculture village, in Portland, but for the near future, I need to be near a job that utilizes my considerable investment in education and training.

Although, a short list of o.k. and not o.k. might lead to additional people being inspired to invest the time in listening to the podcasts. . .
 
pioneer
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Second that Julia. A summary/short list makes it easier to decide whether or not to invest quite a bit of time listening and reading and negotiating.

2.5 acres? 4 acres? Is the extent to-be-decided?
 
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I'm an old guy (more than 60), and I've been thinking about/planning to do a 5-10 acre permaculture homestead/underground house/chestnut orchard in Eastern Washington (where I can afford the land prices). I've got about $20K. But I don't have any kids, or even any relatives (at least, none that are going to outlive me), so (if) when I get my land & build my house & plant my trees and then die, I don't have any idea whom to leave the land to. If Paul's Farm was going to wind up as a Land Trust, or something like that, and I could do anything that Sepp Holzer and Mike Oehler would do, I would consider throwing in my lot, my acreage, et cetera, to be part of, or return to the Land Trust when I croak.
 
paul wheaton
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Julia Winter wrote:I'm thinking that nobody gets a couple acres to play with unless they can convince Paul that they have invested the time (and perhaps a bit of money to Scubbly) to listen to every last podcast, and that they are simpatico with what Paul has expressed in those podcasts. I see a lot of references to listening to the podcasts in Paul's posts re: TL.



This is the key.

And I would expect that if somebody were doing something that think might fall outside of my comfort zone, they would visit with me about it.

The idea of rehusp is that there is innovation, so I hope that people that follow the rehusp stuff will innovate and try new things. So I definitely don't want a carbon copy of what I would do. I hope that the rehusp project demonstrates stuff that I will add to my stuff that I had not considered before.


 
paul wheaton
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Jerry McIntire wrote:
2.5 acres? 4 acres? Is the extent to-be-decided?



I think it will depend on the person. Some people will want a quarter of an acre. Some people will want five acres. I guess it kinda depends on what they are up to.

I think that two acres on land that is in the middle of similar projects would be equivalent to 12 acres on land that is in the middle of conventional stuff.
 
paul wheaton
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A year has passed. Much has happened. Much is still happening.

And now the whole idea of rehusp has grown to be one of the most important things to me. I feel that permaculture is currently in a kindergarten stage. And I think that if we do rehusp at the lab, in ten years we will get to the fourth grade and the stuff we know/do now will seem so trivial.

What "can be" is overwhelming all of my thoughts. So often I try to teach what I know only to find that the people I am talking to didn't understand what I said. At the same time I am thinking that for any topic there are dozens of experiments worth trying, and it is rare for me to talk to somebody that understands the topic well enough that they can add ideas or debunk my ideas (thus saving me time and narrowing the list of which thing to try first).

Now, when I see a patch of knapweed, I think that that is the place to plant a permaculturalist. After all, there probably would be zero knapweed in the zone one of a permaculturalist. Further, I think knapweed just would not compete well in a permaculturalist's food forest.

I feel (and I want to emphasize the use of "feel" instead of "think") that my role is to be more of a person that incubates permaculture "art in seed and soil" than to do the actual art. (Although I have big, big plans for my own art too).
 
pollinator
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I love what you said paul. I may steal that kindergarten line for the meme thread.

I have tons of ideas that i just cant play with myself for same reasons you just said. No one understands what the heck i am talkin about and/or they just dont give a flying fishstick.
I cannot wait until i can at least make a gapper trip out to visit. Totally bringing like a folder of doodles of ideas (:
 
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Here is what I think…..

I am currently a permaculture student (with Geoff Lawton on line) and I have read hundreds and hundreds of pages on permaculture

I recently toured Mark Shepard’s New Forest Farm a few miles from my farm with about 20 others. Mark originally studied with Bill Mollison 20 some years ago and started New Forest Farm.
He has done amazing things with what was a burned out old farm with little top soil and huge erosion problems. Now he grows a variety of livestock, nuts and vegetables and is increasing fertility and productivity every year. (http://www.newforestfarm.net/)

At the start of the tour he talked about his work schedule (36 hours a day, 11 days a week ) and how his 5 year old son once asked ‘when are you going to come live with us, Dad ?’ and that it was tiring, difficult, frustrating, …..

He said he was talking with a guest from Australia in the past week who agreed that it was tiring and difficult but that that is what it takes. Mark then asked the man from Oz ‘why do you do it as well ?’

Mark held up a piece of paper with this written on it. This is what he said.

‘EATS THEE OOONLY WHY'’

And it is. My point is that Husp or something like it will happen because ‘it’s the only way’

Before I retired I was a field engineer. I repaired and installed high end laboratory analytical instruments. I had the opportunity to visit the research laboratories and production facilities at many companies (Monsanto, Pfizer, ADM, Abbott, Eli Lilly etc) and Universities (Univ of Wisconsin, Iowa State, Univ of Iowa, Northwestern) and a lot of hospitals and clinics.

It was an education. I remember going to the Soil Tilth Lab at Iowa State where I learned that the top-soil is being lost faster than it is being made with conventional agriculture (we cannot do that forever)

I went to Monsanto’s research facilities in St Louis. 30 years ago I remember seeing GM potato plants in the lobby of one building where the glass case was littered with dead potato beetles and the regular potato plant next to it that was nearly consumed by the same beetles. At that time I wondered what would happen to other insect that ate the potato plants or what about the birds that ate the beetles (or us for that matter)I installed and repaired instruments that helped develop BST.

I went to the Round Up plant in Iowa, where they make 100’s of thousands of tons of the poison every year. (world wide use is expected to double by 2017 to 26 MILLION POUNDS PER YEAR) I recently read that there are detectable and probably toxic levels of glyphosate in human mother’s milk.

I saw a production facility at drug company that had been on a crash construction schedule for months for a new antibiotic drug that was to be the next penicillin (only better, it could have saved millions of lives) they stopped the construction and cancelled the drug because the actuarial number crunchers said that it would not make enough profit

One of the take-aways of 35 years of working with 100’s of companies is that corporations are extremely powerful entities and that they are completely without any moral or ethical restraints. If they were a person they would be classified as a psychopath. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/psychopath) The world cannot continue to be driven by psychopathic corporations. This corporate paradigm will end at some point.

Something like Husp will replace it, ‘eats thee ooonly why’


 
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What about those of us who already have land and would like to put this plan into action?
Anyone interested in doing this?
 
paul wheaton
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Karen Crane wrote:What about those of us who already have land and would like to put this plan into action?
Anyone interested in doing this?



I think that is one of the primary functions of permies. Post lots and lots of pictures.

Or, if you want to have more artisans at your property, I think that can be done too. Although we are back to the problem with 20 people under one roof (although in this case it might be 20 people on one property): how do you keep them all from stabbing each other? My thinking, so far, is the podcasts - only a certain type of person would listen to all of them. Plus, after listening to all of them, people would have a pretty clear idea of what it would be like to live under my tyrrany.

 
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Karen Crane,

I think sharing your property is an awesome idea, another poster on another thread had been inquiring for possible tenants with a protected land agreement but just when her search started getting some momentum she stopped posting. Maybe she found the people she wanted, I know it sounded great right up till she posted

"What can't you do on the land? One thing I could never agree to myself would be marijuana growing. Since I am vegetarian, I would not join or start a community where animals are slaughtered. Those two things are my "non-negotiables" and everybody has some."



Sorry I like meat.

Here's her thread if you want to see who was interested in the land share idea: https://permies.com/t/19177/appalachia/share-Appalachian-permaculture-farm

Mike
 
pollinator
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Just a thought,Paul as I know you are in many ways immortal yet in an all important way you are not . What would happen to all those huspy folks if you were to die ?
( monsanto hit man , angry bear , tree on head, allergy to comfery .... whatever )

David
 
paul wheaton
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David Livingston wrote:Just a thought,Paul as I know you are in many ways immortal yet in an all important way you are not . What would happen to all those huspy folks if you were to die ?
( monsanto hit man , angry bear , tree on head, allergy to comfery .... whatever )

David



Excellent question. Arrangements have been made.

 
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Personally I am new to permaculture thinking and over the past 8 months I have been doing a ton of reading and studying on the subject.
I have introduced permies.com and the subject to my family members. Some are interested. Some are not. One bro and sis in law are so interested and have read everything I told them. My family has invited them to move from the big city and build their own home on our land. They accepted.
We have 4.3 acres down in the high desert in southeastern Arizona. We have given them 1.3 acres. They are supposed to start building this fall. We want to eventually buy the additional 67 acres across the street from us and get a whole community of permies here. I admit I haven't listened to all of Paul's podcasts but I have spent many hours listening. Don't care for the bad language but love the ideas introduced.
 
yeah, but ... what would PIE do? Especially concerning this tiny ad:
12 DVDs bundle
https://permies.com/wiki/269050/DVDs-bundle
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