pixelphoto McCoy

kelda as you know everyone on this planet s different. its what makes the word go round.
You will have to size up your friend for yourself to see if they are easily hurt by your comments.
Some people have tough skin and understand. Most people who do business fall into this category. They realize they arent going to be able to please everyone out there. And they know they cant do it the way everyone else wants.
Some people take things very personally and will feel hurt but generally these people dont do well in business for very long. If you can take personal criticism you wont last long in business.
I had a friend who had a short lived subshop. He loved to create his own mayo mustard and other condiments from scratch. He would tell anyone the wonders of his homemade condiments over any store bought. He loved his home made creations so much he put them on all his subs. (ONLY ONE PROBLEM) He insisted I try one of his wonderful subs. He put on his homemade condiments. I told him to leave off the mustard as I dont like mustard. He put it on anyway stating this was different it was much better than store bought that I would like his.
One taste later I made a gosh awful face and spit it out in my hand. Yuck that was terrible I said as I ran for a glass of water. He took it personal. He said your joking right? I said um no I told you I dont like mustard. I cant stand the taste.
Apparently he thought I was just being mean and continued to put his home made creations on all his subs. He last 7 months in business then went under due to low sales.

I can pretty much guess if it says Kraft or General Foods or Kellogg or (fill in the blank of large food distributor) That the food miles are many for ingredients and where it was mixed together and where it was bottled and came to my grocery store in my town. So its not that important to me to know the amount it traveled. I know it traveled a long way.
What I would like to se is what foods have Genetically Modified Ingredients in them.
This would give me the option as to buy them or not. I also want to know what percent of the item is GMO and what ingredient in the item is GMO.

I havent had any problems locally where I live yet. But the best way to support the local food movement is to buy from local farmers in your area. Supporting the small guy instead of industrial ag helps keep money in your local region and keeps a small family farm farming for many years to come.Check here to find local small farms near you.


http://www.localharvest.org/

oh p.s. check out path to freedom I would call them very self sustainable.
in a small scale sort of way.
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

I agree with you.
Sometimes people do need to get away from it all but then they need to come back and rejoin society as a whole.
Come back to the "messy world" as you so called it.
Besides coming back to the community look at what all you can teach others. Maybe you can make a small change in the neighborhood around you by showing others what it is you do and why you do it. Once others understand the strange ways of yours they will better like you and understand you. They may even take up some of your strange habits LOL
Good post thanks for sharing.

alexisavoire wrote:
The homeless, despicable as they are to many of us, are a group of citizens who live sustainably in an urban setting. Since charities do not provide for the homeless anywhere near what they need to subsist the homeless adapt and live admirably among us. They eat out of garbage cans, which recycles our wasted excess. They wear minimal clothing and their bodies learn to adjust to temperature extremes. They live without plumbing, water or electricity. They get by without an income or life, medical, dental or eye insurance. They travel long distances on foot or by thumb, on trains or rideshare. They live outside year round watching the seasons change, seeing the moon wax and wane, noticing the perseid showers, the comets, the strange and unusual, the warming climate, the northern lights deeper south this year and a host of natural phenomena invisible to city dwellers and house-rats. They survive on rice or bread, without coffee or chocolate, they consider a cigarette a luxury, and luxury an extravagance. They just as often travel with animal friends that are equally unwelcome in the civilized world or feed the birds, name the feral cats, notice the pigeons. They work odd jobs, collect recycling or panhandle for just the bare minimum. They own almost nothing because that is what they can carry.

They camp out on public land to remind us that public land isn't really permies, they light fires to remind us that the oldest way to heat ourselves is now illegal, they sleep in doorways and on sidewalks to remind us that coming and going isn't just about commerce, they squat in condemned houses to remind us that freedom isn't free and they show us that we need to remember that there is something lost when living and alive are separated into two different categories - one meaning to make money and one meaning to be in existence.

When Intentional Community is considered think about being homeless - it just means nomadic, or tribal. Sustainable means maximizing minimalizing. Minimal living is sustainable and if we are willing to pay for sustainable then we should be willing to approve of minimal. If we can admire the native ways of life we can admire the Urban Nomads and learn something about being less fastidious in order to be more intentional about waste and want. Doesn't matter how you got there, once you get grubby you are already closer to going green and being organic than you were before.

Heck I dont have medical or dental insurance LOL
My aunt didnt have water or plumbing up til she died a year ago she was 94 yrs old. She had a nice old country house. She would use a slop jar and a bucket to retrieve water from the creek. She was old in her ways and a tough old gal.

Squatting in condemned houses doesnt remind me freedom isnt free. thats called trespassing and nowhere in life are you promised a free house. Freedom doest give you the right to own a home. Freedom gives you the right to go out and work for it so you can buy one freely.

alexisavoire wrote:
It takes an intentional community to achieve sustainability. The inter-relationships necessary to establish sustainability and the energy needed to keep the exchanges balanced so that the whole project can continue to provide for each and every member requires an individual commitment to discomfort and the constant abrasion of a wide variety of concerns. It is easy for individuals in the community to lose contact with the reasons why they became involved in the first place and with the human factor in community - which includes being relaxed and having fun. Especially when the obstacles created by general society's resistance to intentional community as retro-revisionist (receding away from modernity instead of advancing toward it) are so numerous that they are nearly overwhelming when the community is just getting off the ground. The stress created by fighting general society while still having to refer to it to recover self-sufficiency can create an abrasive atmosphere among residents and diminish the commitment to the common ideal of sustainable self-sufficiency and eco-efficiency for spiritual depth. The intentional community then becomes a miserable experiment in personality conflict and ongoing failure with members leaving disillusioned and less likely each time to try again with a new community model.

Sometimes, rare enough to be exceptional, unintentional communities accidentally stumble into being a sustainable community - short-lived as those occasions often are they are a phenomenon unmatched in the memory of those lucky enough to be participants. Those rare freaks of circumstance are what all intentional communities are trying to achieve -the unintentional ideal. A beautiful thing!

I think I may have responded to another one of your post on here just a few seconds ago LOL
I dont normally like to nitpick but I see so many statements that we may have a difference of opinion on. This is what I have witnessed with intentional communities in my parts of the woods.
You dont have to have a intentional community to be sustainable. One person can achieve self sustainability on their own without any outside help.

every member requires an individual commitment to discomfort and the constant abrasion of a wide variety of concerns.

So we have to live in discomfort if we are in a intentional community? WHAT? Please!!! I would say that statement holds true for every living person on this earth. Everyone I know has a wide variety of concerns they are in constant turmoil with. People who live in New York City have to decide if they want to live there, fight traffic, walk to work, take the train, or drive, have a place in the country and have to drive further into town to work or live in town and pay more for rent but drive less. This is life! Living in an intentional community or not everyone has choices to make. Do I buy that new computer or do I wait 6 months till a better faster and cheaper one becomes available?
Why must they live in discomfort? They cant be comfortable in an intentional community??? I can have solar panels and wind power power my entire house and live comfortably. I would require no powerlines. there are people doing it today. Some live in million dollar mansions others live in shacks. both seem to be quite comfortable and living quite well and yet they are sustainable and comfortable and not in an intentional community. Some do live this way and are quite comfortable in intentional communities.


Especially when the obstacles created by general society's resistance to intentional community as retro-revisionist (receding away from modernity instead of advancing toward it) are so numerous that they are nearly overwhelming when the community is just getting off the ground.
I dont see any obstacles in todays society at creating a intentional community that is sustainable. lets see last time i checked you could still buy land, build homes on it, live on it, grow your own food(thats not illegal yet), have pets, etcetc. Granted you may not be allowed to have a cow in downtown (fill in the blank name of city) but they have agricultural land and rural areas for that you can buy land in that has little restrictions as to what size house you are required to build, what animals you may have etcetc.


Just my two cents worth.

Mortgage as a concept works against permaculture as a concept. Taking a loan from a bank to start a permaculture operation requires a lending institution willing to take a substantial loss on a "unproven, non-regulated and unpopular" form of production. Most lenders will decline. That means private donations that compromise the permaculture operation with irrelevant thinking from investors that live on the conservative side of investment (like most lending institutions) choosing investments they can control even if they have no insight (conventional insights into) into the nuts-and-bolts of the operation.

Why do we need a mortgage. What if someone already owns a piece of property as I do and many other people here in America do?
Unproven, non regulated, unpopular Not hardly. Its been proven over 30 years or more. Just ask Bill Mollison.
Non regulated ok its not regulated whats wrong with that to me thats a good thing. Selling of food is regulated however by your states Department of Agriculture and the FDA and the USDA as to what and how you can sell things and how you advertise it.
Unpopular not hardly its gaining momentum every year. This is the year of permaculture in my opinion. I have seen ad heard more about this movement in the past two years than ever before. Being green, permaculture, biodynamic, and organic are the IN THING.


Going into a shared housing situation to share expenses and work into and across a permaculture system produces a different model. One that is more a political model of Intentional Community than one of permaculture. Doing permaculture as a lone individual or family means cross-correlating non-permaculture requirements (land, mortgage, loans, modern conveniences, the regulations and licensing requirements, etc) with basic permaculture needs that make it hard to get a pure permaculture operation going. To keep a feasible model going at present requires compromises that undermine the strength and inter-cooperative-balances of a permaculture model. Also, the models available for use at present are relatively untested and largely incomplete or entirely theoretical. The bugs and problems that should have been worked out twenty years ago are still rampant in the few models that have been devised and the outside culture that permaculture is attempting to interact with - must interact with to keep itself going financially and operationally - has become even more glutted with requirements and regulations that make permaculture models the exception to the rule and therefore weighted with regulation the model inherently cannot shoulder if it is to work properly.

There you go with loans and mortgages again. What if people own the land. No reason for loans or mortgages then.
No where did Bill Mollison or anyone else say that permaculture was only for lone people or small families. It can easily be applied to major cities like NEw York. Many villages in Australia, Africa, and other places across the world are using permaculture practices and have been for some number of years now. theres nothing new about it and its all self sustainable eco system with very little if any outside inputs needed.
you say the permaculture models are untested thats simply not true it models natural life. And Some of the practices have been practiced well over 30 years and are very self sustainable.


The result is tiny operations that barely keep themselves going to avoid the huge farming regulations or "commune community" models that tend to degenerate over time into models of social experiment instead of models of permaculture.

This I may agree with you partially.
There are many farming regulations that are not geared for the small farmer. But things are getting better.
Im not a big fan of the old style communes but I do know some have been around since the 60s that are still going strong to this day. I for one wouldnt join a commune or intentional community but I respect the people who do.


If permaculture becomes a government project it goes the way of farm subsidies and over-regulation of production so it needs to stay small and local. But small and local today finds it nearly impossible to operate without massive monies and special dispensations for operation because permaculture models are not standard farming/production models and as such have difficulty organizing and operating in the present western climate of regulation toward globalization.
Well first I would say I never compete against large companies with lots of cash.
Keeping your inputs low and not requiring inputs to be brought into the farm by creating your own cuts down on cost of operation. I know farms whos only cost of operation is driving to the farmers market to sell their wares. Saving seed, building compost, growing animal feed, etcetc all done on farm so no inputs are brought in all cut down on operational cost of a traditional farm.




Globalization is something to think about in terms of the inability of small local farming models to get off the ground. There is a lot of dissension over this in light of globalization. The EU has excellent agriculture records, supporting its small farms and farming communities, and EU farming cooperatives (of various types) have been expressing concern over formation of the EU and globalization for some time. If we have no sustainanble permaculture models in place and we expand consumer-driven farming and production models into a global economy model how long will it be before we have depleted global natural resources? In terms of the production of pollution in direct proportion to expansion of models we are already concerned about at the local and regional levels how will we not lose at least half of our natural resources to pollution?

Globalization is the reason small local farming cant get off the ground. Absolutely not. I wouldnt want to sell my pears or (fill in the blank) to China or Africa anyway. The allure of small farms is making a comeback. Buying local where the farmer and customer actually know one another on first name basis is the IN THING. Being able to go out to the local farm and pick your own and talk to the farmer and see how things are grown is growing by leaps and bounds. Knowing it was picked fresh that day, that the farmer drove less than 30 miles instead of the average 1200 miles most food or produce travels means its fresher, riper, has more vitamins and nutrients, Less pollution was created to get it from point a to point b.



Sustainable resources is a common marketing term for Free Trade meant to try to handle these question but a resource is only sustainable if it is not marketed into overproduction that results in its complete depletion. Marketing models are the dominant agricultural and production models right now. Permaculture models are not market-driven (marketed through Advertising) but exist in a market-driven economy. As such, they are crippled for themost part.
no real comment here I could but my fingers are getting tired LOL

There is a post in here somewhere from someone who found a sitcom (Brit) called Good Neighbors they were recommending. That sitcom is from the late 60's and early 70's. Their permaculture model is still the most prevalent today,  a sort of cottage-industry model, and it is still treated with same contempt and derision as it was then by the sitcom couple's conservative neighbors. Almost 50 years of attempting to introduce permaculture and we haven't got far yet. There is another post in here somewhere from someone who wanted to start an intentional community/permaculture on her inherited property. There was almost no advice for her (for lack of knowledge, not for lack of neighborliness). She had nowhere to go and no one to ask for direction into getting something started. She never checked back in. That's why this post is so long, we still have a long way to go...

if you could collect bagged leaves in the fall and have a guy from the church how has a pickup pick them up and take them to the spot then you could till them into the soil making great organic mulch. That would speed things up

yeah tires are a petroleum product not a good idea.

The straw bales work fine and break down into great mulch later.
I have also recycled old cardboard boxes as cardboard is 90 something % cellulose (plant based material) it breaks down and becomes nice crumbley soil.
I put potatoes in bottom of cardboard box. Place straw and soil on top aged compost if you have some. Then as they start to pop up place more straw and soil on top of that. Keeping hilling them up and they will keep growing up toward the light creating more potatoes for you. At the end of the season turn over your pile and pick potatoes.
I also know people who grow them in plastic trashcans but then you are back to the plastic petroleum issue which i am not for.