Hello from Arizona!

Howdy everyone,

I am a new member as of tonight and wanted to take a moment to introduce myself while I have a handle on my shyness.

I've never joined a forum before, and I've lurked on permies for some time before deciding to give this a go. I'm excited to get more involved with permaculture and interact with people who have like-minded interests.

I graduated college in 2020 and have been traveling the country since then. As of now I live a semi-nomadic lifestyle, but my ultimate goal is to do what many people on here have accomplished and obtain a small piece of land to build a peaceful home. I also like the thought of making connections by helping people with ongoing projects and have minimal experience with more communal living that I'd like to expand on.

As of now I'd consider myself more of an experimental dabbler and am in the process of honing in on those skills I'd like to carry forward... I have a small background in research, some experience repairing small electronics, enough experience with animals to have started a somewhat successful house/pet-sitting business, and an academic background in sustainable horticulture, with growing hands-on experience to match that. I'm new to many things but have been passionate about environmental pursuits for as long as I can remember. I'm looking forward to diving into it all.

I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day/night!

Kelly

Welcome to Permies!

Congratulations on finishing college and getting some travel in too! I found both of those to be horizon broadening experiences.

If you haven't already, I recommend taking a look at SKIP (skills to inherit property) and the associated PEP (permaculture experience according to paul) program. Or maybe WOOF, if for growing your network if nothing else. Permies is good for networking too! I think if you're looking for something be it land, a car, a new job, etc, letting people know is a good start, and if you grow your network big enough, chances are someone can hook you up.

It sounds like you have a great skill set to start with. I wish I had university level knowledge of horticulture... alas.

Share your questions, experiences, and daydreams with us! Glad to have you around!

Welcome to Permies, Kelly! You've joined the best forum on the internet! As L. Johnson said, we have wonderful learning programs here. Lots of fun too.

Thank you so much! I appreciate the suggestions on where to start. There's so much to this site and I'm excited to dig in. Happy Halloween to you both!

Hi Kelly;
Welcome to permies!
While you are busy checking out all the cool things here at Permies, look into Rocket Mass Heaters!
In my opinion, they are the coolest thing of all!

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Kelly;
Welcome to permies!
While you are busy checking out all the cool things here at Permies, look into Rocket Mass Heaters!
In my opinion, they are the coolest thing of all!

I've become a bit more familiar with the concept of personalized heat recently. I'd read about heating people instead of places in this article from Low ← Tech Magazine and had the unexpected experience of needing to reduce living (and heating) space after running into some home maintenance problems in Minnesota this past winter. We attempted staying in a fixer-upper my mom owned to see if we could make it into something livable and within a month of moving in the oil furnace broke, the power in the spare rooms went out permanently (due to circuit issues), and multiple pipes burst as the temperature was well below zero (about -20F for much of the season). There were many other issues with the house and that's probably worthy of a separate post, but it was a learning experience to say the least.

We quickly learned it was much more efficient to stay in and heat just the one room out of three in the house and despite running an electrical heater our energy use as two people (including me working remotely from home) was a fraction of the energy used the previous year when my sister lived in that house alone and was only staying in the house for part of the day (commuting to and from work).

I guess this is a long-winded way of saying I have grown to appreciate the potential of Rocket Mass Heaters much more after getting a better idea of what they can help out with. And I've been interested in earthships for some time and always thought RMHs made for a visually-appealing design element in a house. Thank you for giving it a mention! I'm reading up on it now.