Allan Babb

"Burra's Hearth Soap"

Million dollar idea right there, lol.

While you're weighing stuff, have you also thought about weighing the ash(or 5 gallon buckets for volume)?  Less cleanup might also be a selling point.

With Nature doing Her thing, perfect wind turbine property sounds like perfect fire sector property, while perfect hydroelectric property sounds like the perfect flooding property.

Love Mortise & Tenon.  I've had a subscription since the start.  It's a great resource for hand tool woodworkers.

Thank you Fatima.  I'll take a virtual look around.

Hello everyone.  I'm recently retired and looking to move out of Southeast Louisiana.  I can pretty much move anywhere, but New England is calling me.  I particularly like Vermont, and have visited several times.  While I've spent most of my life in the New Orleans area, I originally came from the northern part of the UK, so I'm not ignorant of snow.  One of the problems of being able to move anywhere is that I have no reason to move anywhere specific, so I'm having a problem settling on a single location(or 3).  What I'm looking for is a deciduous woodland on at least 10 acres.  I want to set up a woodworking shop for personal use, and I'm leaning towards a managed woodland coppice.  I prefer hand tools, so we're talking green woodworking with some carpentry thrown in.  I'm not all that interested in modern tools, and Vermont's collection of 2nd hand tools is one of the big draws(I suspect most of New England is that way, but hurricane hit gulf coast has slim pickings).  

I'd rather hang out with pagans than christians.  I won't be going to church on sundays, but you might catch me at a fire festival.  I'd rather hang out with liberals than conservatives(though New England conservatives seem to be a better breed than the ones down here...).  I do like a drink every now and again.  I do like a good burger.  A real butcher would be nice(especially one that can make bacon and/or sausages like the UK/Ireland).   A blacksmith that knows how to make tools would be great(I seem to remember a blacksmith by a huge store/mall type thing).  Farmers markets would be nice.  Since I'm up in age, closeness to a hospital from my inevitable first heart attack would be great(or good ambulance service).

I have no problem with owning a home in town for the winter, and relocating to the land once the land has thawed.  But I need to settle on an area first.  So my questions are:

Which areas are permaculture friendly(ie: lax building codes..on the land, I understand building codes in towns are usually for a good reason)?

Which areas to avoid completely?

Thanks in advance!

You're looking for an intentional community, or something along the lines of a Transition Town.  Another place to look for answers to your local question may be in groups that do things like tool libraries and the such like https://www.shareable.net/  It will require people to work with each other either way you go about this, and that goes completely against the values of the dominant global culture.  You can't sell 15 lawnmowers to a family/clan that shares stuff after all.

James Landreth wrote:I feel like part of living this lifestyle is breaking down current values and returning to or creating new ones. One example of this is turning lawns into food (valuing life, biodiversity, food, etc more than trends and aesthetics). Another might be going out of your way to produce something for yourself “the hard way” so you don’t have to buy it and contribute to an unethical production process.

I have faced near relentless criticism for living this way. I’ve received praise too, which is nice, but another subject. A lot of the criticism I’ve received has been about dressing (I dress comfortably and second hand) and other personal aesthetics. It’s hard. I don’t shave as often or neatly because of time and energy, I don’t care if clothes match, etc. Oftentimes I brush it off and continue about my business, but lately it’s been hard not to dwell on.

What are your strategies for coping with this? Do you turn to other permies and like minded folks when things get hard?

To put it into perspective for you: the current global culture is killing the planet by turning life into profit margins.  So, why would you want to be commended by people living in that?

If you just want to see how deep you can go before you hit rock, then a pipe probe may be all you need.  There should be some ~60".

Alex Apfelbaum wrote:I see a few aspects that may give Permaculture a bad image to some people :

- It's seen as "unscientific" : A lot in Permaculture is based on the effects of inteconnections within a whole system, that makes it the oposite of a typical scientific experiment where you isolate things to pinpoint specific factors and results. Permaculture is also about trusting nature, the scientific mind doesn't like that.

Ecology is a (relatively) new science. Ecology and permaculture are very close cousins. There are a lot of people who don't have a firm grasp on science, or have kept up to date since leaving school.

- There is a "new-age/hippie/hipster/alternative/callitwhatever" side to Permaculture that attracts a certain kind of people who may not be taken seriously by the average professional farmer.

Yeah, I feel this vibe sometimes too. But I'm no hippie, I'm not a hipster. I might be considered alternative(and likely callitwhatever).

- There are no big corporations and celebrities endorsing it, no marketing, no big brands. In effect it doesn't really exist in the global media world, so how can it be serious ? (some people think like that.. sadly)

It is unfortunate that some people think this way. There's also nothing of real value that actually gets advertised these days. So this might be for the best.

It really depends on the people you talk to, these three points can also be seen as giving Permaculture a good image !

I like to draw my own conclusions from the facts.