You know you're a permie when...

You might be a permie if your son spills your magnesium citrate powder all over your counter, and you sweep it up....to put it in a jar to use as a garden amendment! (Thanks, Bryant, for your Vitamins for Plants thread!)

You know you're a permie when you don't even need a red pill to know there are no weeds!

When your husband tells your child, "Don't worry, we'll never move. All our fruit trees are here!"

(Of all the reasons to not uproot a family, this is the first one that comes to mind, LOL!)

When you're generally clueless about beautiful trees and plants if they're non-edible and don't attract animals.

When you see leaves all over the streets and wonder if people will notice you collecting them (for fear of looking weird).

wayne fajkus wrote:Your garden has weeds and you don't care

Oh, you care!  You can’t wait to see what you can use them for!

You might be a permie if ...

You wonder why nitrogen fixing fruit trees haven't yet taken over as major commercial orchards.

Your neighbors are digging up the black locust shoots in their yard and you, oh silly girl, are taking them home to plant.

You tried to get your county to approve a permit for your "exemplary system" of 'toilet water to drinking water' and they denied it. But years later you run into that engineer and he tells you with amazement that New Mexico is now requiring 'that crazy system you wanted to put in' for every new house built. You take some satisfaction in knowing a lot of permies are ahead of their time.

You know you're a permie when a friend calls and says "I saw some roadkill and I thought of you.."





PS I love this thread.

You're googling to find out which kind of winter squash has the MOST calories per serving.

You know you're a permie when: you tell your son's classmate that you got backyard chickens for a really shitty reason - you wanted their manure for your garden! (believe it or not, the teen-aged girl said in all earnestness, "That's not a shitty reason." The silence in the room was deafening.....)
.... and then your spouse finds out you've been transplanting dandelion roots to the chicken's paddocks. (the look of disbelief I got was priceless!)

Your neighbor thinks that yard waste pickup day is Wednesday and regular trash is Thursday.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Your neighbor thinks that yard waste pickup day is Wednesday and regular trash is Thursday.

Do you mean as a permie, there is no yard waste pickup? No regular trash either?

You must save that worm from drowning after the rain.

Your weekly trash amounts to less than a 13 gallon trash bags worth.

You've picked organic waste out of your household bin that a family member discarded. When they say that's disgusting, you say "but this will be excellent for the soil!".

You know you're a permie when:

You saved TP roll cardboards all winter and cut ends and folded and made starter pots for spring
You have about five ways to cut up and use 2 liter soda bottles for starting plants and useful stuff about the house and shop

Gallon jugs are so useful (water totes with top cut out, bottoms for pot catchment, open top for collecting/storing things with a handle, half height with handle for planting in, high cut for bottom container and top for funnel, the other half of pot catchment for planting out cloches (take the lids off for daytime venting and put back on for nighttime warmth) .... ) oh, and you can haul liquids around in them too. Just CLEARLY marker identify if they're no longer being used for water. [the cloche tops are PERFECT for getting your strawberries started in their bed !!!]

Arizona and Gatorade bottle flats are serious prizes for using for starter flats, so nice and deep.

[my suffering spouse watched me collect all winter, then in about four days use up all of them for spring prep....]  recycle don't discard... that's a permie.

Tim Kivi wrote:You've picked organic waste out of your household bin that a family member discarded. When they say that's disgusting, you say "but this will be excellent for the soil!".

When you're actually kind of excited to sweep up all the food mess your toddler made under her dining room chair, because you can add it to your compost!

When your  friends and family give you all their weird, sad edible plants, because they know that you will take and nurture anything you can eat!

(So far, I've got a peach tree, apple tree, aronia bush, raspberries, and Jostaberry :D)

When a friend brings a bag of moldy horse feed for the pigs and I use it to grow BSF larvae with instead. The pigs, chickens and goldfish get some daily!

Deb Rebel wrote:

Jon La Foy wrote:When you shower with a five gallon bucket to save water, and still try to see how little you can use to completely clean yourself.

I see you, and raise you: When you can wash and rinse 3" of hair with a 20 oz cup of water.

Or when you can wash body and hair with the water in a 64 oz Pace Picante sauce container - which is what you have used for 'faucets' and 'showerheads' around home for over 20 years.  Just the right size/weight that anyone bigger than a young toddler can pick one up and the handle is built in.  

You know you're a permie when you are eating an abundance of romaine lettuce every day while the commercial stuff is being thrown out because of e coli contamination.

When you look at the snails chomping your greens  and your revenge plan starts with googling “snail NPK value”.

You might be a permie if....

You were out picking some berries and peas, and spotted a squash, and spotting that squash made you super excited. You don't know what type of squash it is (you sure didn't plant it!). Everyone one else in the family is excited, too, and your family eats half the thing raw before you can get it through the door, and then you fry the rest up for dinner. So delicious!!!

You have surprise tomato plants sprouting up in your corn. You have no idea how they got there, as you didn't plant them, and you didn't grow tomato plants there before. But, you're super excited. And, since they're growing in your Three Sister's corn, you just wrap a bean vine around them and the corn to act as a trellis. Easy-Peasy!

(Seriously. I am SO EXITED to have a garden finally fertile enough that edibles sprout up all of their own accord. I mean, the radishes always did that, but I don't really like radishes. I have a squash plant growing next to my artichoke. I have no idea how it got there, but I think it's great!)

John Weiland wrote:....you skip adding nuts to your fruit salad this time of year cuz the fruit flies contribute enough protein.


....

😆

Nicole Alderman wrote:You have surprise tomato plants sprouting up in your corn. You have no idea how they got there, as you didn't plant them, and you didn't grow tomato plants there before. But, you're super excited. And, since they're growing in your Three Sister's corn, you just wrap a bean vine around them and the corn to act as a trellis. Easy-Peasy!

(Seriously. I am SO EXITED to have a garden finally fertile enough that edibles sprout up all of their own accord. I mean, the radishes always did that, but I don't really like radishes. I have a squash plant growing next to my artichoke. I have no idea how it got there, but I think it's great!)

I’ve got tomatoes sprouting up amongst my Three Sisters this year - how funny!

Tatyana Piven wrote:You must save that worm from drowning after the rain.

ha ha my husband is obsessed with this. He is the Worm-Rescuer..

Weeds have become a regular part of your diet.

For a stir fry you pick weeds first then the proper vegetables as an afterthought.

You're a bit worried to see weed numbers reducing, then reassure yourself that they'll probably grow back in some other spot.

You might be a permie if your five-year-old asks how the sun can cook things, so you watch a video about making a solar cooker and then your son wants to make one just like in the video, and even cook an egg in it, too. So you do!

(Having just made this out of stryofoam, alluminnum foil, and a box we had lying around, I got to wonder if there's a better way to make one that doesn't require stryofoam. Not so sure how I feel about heated stryofoam right near my food. Anyone have any easy solar cookers that don't need styrofoam, preferably with a video on how to make them that my son---and I---can watch?)

....When you go out to the garden and could care less about the wasps (until they sting you)
....When you refuse to go get leaves from the town dump because it could be contaminated
....When you buy canning jars every chance you get
....When you have unlabeled jars in the basement full of dried things
....When you pay good money for hay bales that aren't good for anything else

Ways I've figured out I'm a permie (so far)

When you turn down a shirt that's on sale and clearance because it has polyester in it, and you don't want to add any more microplastics to the environment.

Nicole Alderman wrote:When you turn down a shirt that's on sale and clearance because it has polyester in it, and you don't want to add any more microplastics to the environment.

I'll one up you:  When you won't buy anything that's not 100 what ever it was made out of. I normally only buy 100% linen or cotton clothing. And I much prefer the linen. I don't like anything with polyester.

How about this one:
When you contemplate all the things in your life that you have no hope of making or of replacing if you couldn't get them from your county/state/nation. Let's try the lowly porcelain toilet- anyone in your county make toilets? State? Nation? Could you get by without it? Yeah you could. What's the alternative? A compost toilet.

Wood floors- does anyone in my county make wood floors? Yeah I can likely find someone with a bandsaw mill and have rough sawn wood floors. Or I could just get by with a dirt floor.

Plumbing pipe- can anyone in your county make PVC pipe? Probably not. Can someone grow bamboo and make bamboo pipe? Probably. Would it be rational? Not really.

The dumbest things in your life and the most un-thought-of would be incredibly hard to replace without modern supply chains and most importantly, oil.

Ad infinitium. Do you ever really appreciate how hard it would be to replace or replicate your life with geographical limitations? Yet not more than 200 years ago some of the only things that came from distances that we consider 'normal' today would be spices from the Far East and silk.

Makes you really appreciate the knowledge that we collectively had once upon a time.

You know you're a permie when you plan your calendar every year for the first two weeks of November,  after the first dry weekend after a cold rain when the leaves fall, when the OCD suburban homeowners have piled their bags of leaves at the curb.   And you know which neighborhoods have the best leaves (red oak and sugar maple)  so you make multiple trips, stuffing the car to the gills and tying bags on top to put on the garden and in the compost.

Anyone have any easy solar cookers that don't need styrofoam, preferably with a video on how to make them that my son---and I---can watch?)

 You could make a double box and put dried sawdust in the gap between the two.

You know, and others realise, you're a Permie when:

1. You don't kill snails but proactively cultivate them to feed to the chooks. (I love watching their delight when they spy a fresh snail snack)
2. You plant bird attracting ornamentals and bird baths because every little bit of imported manure helps
3. Resisting the sneers of other customers, you purposefully buy the cheapest, crappiest, on sale 'vegetable' oil just to make White Oil.
4. Your family knows that Christmas and Birthday presents need to be garden friendly, so you tend to have a cupboard full of 'back-up' secateurs, gloves, heirloom seed packets, hoses and fittings; and, a year of organic growing magazine subscriptions
5. You look forward to that 100% cotton singlet, shirt, sheet, towel wearing out so it can be repurposed to tie up tomato bushes and snow peas.
6. You buy window curtains and bed sheets based on their future usefulness to shade plants in summer.
7. The second question you ask when phoning relatives is: 'how's the garden doing?'
8. The chooks aren't laying so you pick them up, one at a time, give them a physical and a good talking to, sympathise with their issues, listen to their feedback, then gently put them back down, confident that we're all back on the same page. (In my defence, chooks have been proven to be as smart as dogs, and people talk to dogs!)
9. Even the extended family brings their leftovers for the animals, compost bins and worm farms.

J Anders wrote:When you won't buy anything that's not 100 what ever it was made out of. I normally only buy 100% linen or cotton clothing. And I much prefer the linen. I don't like anything with polyester.

You know you're a permie when the 100% cotton or other natural fabric clothing you buy ONLY comes from a thrift store because you refuse to be a blatant consumer of new goods.

J Anders wrote:....When you go out to the garden and could care less about the wasps (until they sting you)

You really know you're a permie when you not only don't mind wasps in the garden but actively encourage them by building sheltered spaces for them to make nests amongst the vegetables. (Old cans turned upside down on 3' tall stakes are great -- they LOVE them!)

You also know you're a permie when absolutely nothing gets thrown away until it becomes clear that there is no possible reuse for it. (And then you remember that you can always throw it in your trash wall that you plan to build on the north side of the garden to extend your growing season!!! Yay!!!) By the way, old mattress springs (stripped of foam and cloth) make excellent pea trellises and I am now exploring a way to fasten them to t-posts and ferro-cement them to make solid walls as well.

Deb Stephens wrote:

J Anders wrote:When you won't buy anything that's not 100 what ever it was made out of. I normally only buy 100% linen or cotton clothing. And I much prefer the linen. I don't like anything with polyester.

You know you're a permie when the 100% cotton or other natural fabric clothing you buy ONLY comes from a thrift store because you refuse to be a blatant consumer of new goods.

J Anders wrote:....When you go out to the garden and could care less about the wasps (until they sting you)

You really know you're a permie when you not only don't mind wasps in the garden but actively encourage them by building sheltered spaces for them to make nests amongst the vegetables. (Old cans turned upside down on 3' tall stakes are great -- they LOVE them!)

You also know you're a permie when absolutely nothing gets thrown away until it becomes clear that there is no possible reuse for it. (And then you remember that you can always throw it in your trash wall that you plan to build on the north side of the garden to extend your growing season!!! Yay!!!) By the way, old mattress springs (stripped of foam and cloth) make excellent pea trellises and I am now exploring a way to fasten them to t-posts and ferro-cement them to make solid walls as well.

Well I hadn't thought of the old cans on stakes idea... maybe I should do that to encourage them to make homes in the garden instead of around my back door where I have to kill them because I don't use the back door all the time, and then they get mad when I need to use it! In your experience, do cans in the garden need to be screwed to the stake so they don't get bumped around or is it good to leave it loose so that they don't get agitated so easily?

I do buy all my clothes except for my 100% cotton t-shirts and my bib overalls on eBay. I still have shirts that are 10 years old and my collars have split open and they're getting holey. Need to replace them... but they're good work shirts!

Yes, thank you Deb Stephans for the idea about the cans for wasps. The wasps harvest the Cabbage Butterfly larvae, but I react *really* badly to their stings, so getting them to nest where I won't disturb them is important. I could paint the cans pretty colours that would help me see them also!

I think you know you're a permie when you see an idea or something new somewhere and immediately think, "I could do that/make that". Or if you see a problem and think, "I can make that work for me."

J Anders wrote:
Well I hadn't thought of the old cans on stakes idea... maybe I should do that to encourage them to make homes in the garden instead of around my back door where I have to kill them because I don't use the back door all the time, and then they get mad when I need to use it! In your experience, do cans in the garden need to be screwed to the stake so they don't get bumped around or is it good to leave it loose so that they don't get agitated so easily?

I do buy all my clothes except for my 100% cotton t-shirts and my bib overalls on eBay. I still have shirts that are 10 years old and my collars have split open and they're getting holey. Need to replace them... but they're good work shirts!

We stick pieces of old rusty rebar -- leftovers from projects -- in the ground and then just up-turn cans over the top. When the wind blows hard, they rattle and make lonesome sounds like signs hanging by one chain in a western ghost town. (Well, that's what they remind me of anyway. ) I think the wasps actually kind of like that because we seldom find a can without a nest. You do have to check carefully, however. I once had about a dozen wasps all come out to see what was up when I accidentally bumped one of them while picking blackberries. I learned a long time ago to resist the urge to run. Now I just make like a statue while they check me out. It can be a bit nerve-wracking, but they do eventually all go back to the nest.

I can one-up you on the clothes. I buy used then wear them until there is more light shining through them than cover. Then I go buy more used ones. I've had some shirts so long they look like Swiss cheese. Needless to say, to prevent arrest, I do NOT wear those into town. (I save my good 10-year-old shirts for my once a year town trips.) I also make sheets into shorts and tops or sundresses, and fuzzy blankets into house jackets and deep winter pjs. That's a Permie for you! By the way, try Swap.com for used clothing. Sometimes they have some pretty good bargains. And ... because this is a "You know you're a permie when ..." thread ...

You know you're a permie when you dumpster dive for scraps to feed your ducks and chickens and when the local grocery stores call you up to ask if you want to come by and pick up some meat that's gone beyond its sale date to feed your dogs. YES!

Deb Stephens wrote:

J Anders wrote:
Well I hadn't thought of the old cans on stakes idea... maybe I should do that to encourage them to make homes in the garden instead of around my back door where I have to kill them because I don't use the back door all the time, and then they get mad when I need to use it! In your experience, do cans in the garden need to be screwed to the stake so they don't get bumped around or is it good to leave it loose so that they don't get agitated so easily?

I do buy all my clothes except for my 100% cotton t-shirts and my bib overalls on eBay. I still have shirts that are 10 years old and my collars have split open and they're getting holey. Need to replace them... but they're good work shirts!

We stick pieces of old rusty rebar -- leftovers from projects -- in the ground and then just up-turn cans over the top. When the wind blows hard, they rattle and make lonesome sounds like signs hanging by one chain in a western ghost town. (Well, that's what they remind me of anyway. ) I think the wasps actually kind of like that because we seldom find a can without a nest. You do have to check carefully, however. I once had about a dozen wasps all come out to see what was up when I accidentally bumped one of them while picking blackberries. I learned a long time ago to resist the urge to run. Now I just make like a statue while they check me out. It can be a bit nerve-wracking, but they do eventually all go back to the nest.

I can one-up you on the clothes. I buy used then wear them until there is more light shining through them than cover. Then I go buy more used ones. I've had some shirts so long they look like Swiss cheese. Needless to say, to prevent arrest, I do NOT wear those into town. (I save my good 10-year-old shirts for my once a year town trips.) I also make sheets into shorts and tops or sundresses, and fuzzy blankets into house jackets and deep winter pjs. That's a Permie for you! By the way, try Swap.com for used clothing. Sometimes they have some pretty good bargains. And ... because this is a "You know you're a permie when ..." thread ...

You know you're a permie when you dumpster dive for scraps to feed your ducks and chickens and when the local grocery stores call you up to ask if you want to come by and pick up some meat that's gone beyond its sale date to feed your dogs. YES!

Sheesh. You can one-up me on the clothes. I seem to get fatter before I wear them out. But currently I'm well on my way to wearing out bib overalls though. I need to lose about 50lbs, could use some physical labor to do that with.  I'd like to be in the SW MO area. Maybe later this fall or next winter we'll take another vacation down there and take a gander around. I had a friend that I met on Facebook who's now over by Willow Springs, visited her in Mansfield on our last vacation. She had several tiny cabins on a rented acreage that she moved to Willow Springs onto a friend's property.  It's a beautiful area down there.

By the way, try Swap.com for used clothing. Sometimes they have some pretty good bargains

Swap was a LIFESAVER when I was pregnant. Most maternity clothes are NOT my style, and I was not about to pay $40 for a shirt I'd wear for 6 months. And, most thrift stores only had 2 or 3 maternity shirts, and they were usually not my size, and even if they were my size, they were not something I'd want to wear. I spent days--and lots of gas-- going from thrift store to thrift store trying to find shirts, and was unsucessful. But swap.com had 100s of shirts, and I was able to find 6 that I really liked (and a bunch more that I kind of liked). Since I only needed 6 shirts to alternate between, I just got that many and it was only $20 or $30, which is the same price (or less) than a new maternity shirt.