Hello from Columbus, OH

Hi! My name is Br. Curt. I moved back to Columbus to be close to family after living in Phoenix, AZ for 26 years. Even though it colder, I am sure glad to be where there are four seasons.

I had to stop being a priest for an independent Orthodox church because of fibromyalgia and sciatica. Been taking morphine for pain for almost ten years. Nice thing is, since I moved back to Ohio and got into more natural eating, my intake is half what it was and next month I'll be going to a practitioner who will do acupuncture, body manipulation (not chiropractic) and dietary healing involving fermented foods. He's had good results and I'm looking forward to being drug free. My mind will probably work better then.

wofati is extremely interesting to me but I wonder about finding land that I can garden on and build such a house here in Ohio. I have Mike O's book and really enjoyed it. I like a man who says what he thinks in the way he feels like saying it. Kind of like Paul. I hope there are folks here from Ohio that are interested in simple living and using permiculture principals. Please excuse my spelling. Geoff is going to be giving classes on line now and I'm thinking of taking those if they aren't too expensive. Since I'm on disability I have plenty of time, so why not.

I hope to purchase land here within the next year and build a tiny wofati or tiny house on a trailer. The trailer house would keep me from having to pay attention to codes because it would be considered a travel trailer. I don't care to have electricity except for a small solar panel to charge my laptop and cell phone. Codes here probably will not permit me to have the type of earth sheltered home I want. It's not looking good anyway.

I've been reading as much of the posts as my back allows. (Sitting at the computer can get painful.) Enjoyed most of them. I'm pretty free and open minded and am not the typical Orthodox or Christian. That's one reason I ordained in an independent church. Studied Tibetan Buddhism for three years and learned a great deal to carry over into my life as a monk.

There's a lot to tell about myself, but I'll hold off for now. Just wanted to put a little info out there. I'm glad I found Permies and am looking forward to "visiting" with you.

Peace

Welcome to permies
You'll find loads of great info here; there's lots of members from cold Northern Hemisphere climates doing stuff that keeps them warm.
I've heard some pretty amazing stories about fermented food. And it's delicious!

Hello from Cleveland. I build things with mud. How's your adventure going?
--Uncle Mud aka Chris McClellan

Ohio has an extremely helpful law. Agritourism. ~Own land, do some farming/gardening, allow others to come on your land for farm activity, few usual governing rules apply to you. "Allowing" people on your land can be as simple as selling eggs to folks who drive in. If you are an Agritourism "farm", most basically, the only rules that get enforced are: Don't build structures withing 20 ft. of the neighbor's line fence. Have an approved septic system. You can otherwise build what you want, do what you want. Ohio Agritourism Law. Look it up. You'll like it. ---Suggestion. Get together with Chris McC and come visit here. We're in Richfield, 1 hour south of Burton, 2 hours north of Columbus. We're one of the oldest intentional communities in the U.S. We do organic/permaculture/biodynamic gardening. And we have one of the largest museums in Ohio. 1820 to 1900.

True story Jim, kinda, so you gotta be very careful in relying on it. We have an Ohio farm client who has been in litigation for over seven years over the details of the ag exemption. In short the county and the township building and zoning do not have jurisdiction over farm buildings but farms are still required to abide by the laws. Fire marshals (usually township fire chiefs) are required to verify that farms accessible to the public meet all building safety standards, which in the absence of county building inspections and occupancy permits can require the farm to pay for expensive third party inspections. Some counties and townships respond to the complications by ignoring farms completely. Others drag it through the courts. Both can be bad. The court case has sucked but so did the kid getting electrocuted at a different nearby farm a couple years ago because the power to an outdoor fridge at a local farm had never been inspected for proper grounds.