how willing are You to live experimentally?? and why?

...and how does your partner/mate/significant other feel about this?    Do they reign you in or encourage you?


Public topic I hope will inspire others to comment or take this in directions I hadn't even considered.

I was thinking about Paul's... I forget what it was called, how there's 10 levels of permaculture and people go from "wow thats neat!" to "you're crazy..." once you get like 3 levels away.

I think i'm one of the people willing to go 10 levels away no matter how crazy it seems.  I've just been chomping at the bit for more than a decade trying to get to the first steps in this.

I've got 'ants in my pants' when it comes to new ideas, sometimes I get enamored with possibilities like "what could I do with ____" or if something is made affordable which otherwise wouldn't.  Sometimes to the point of frustrating some people on this very board.  (pretty sure i've frustrated Mr John C Daley more than once cuz he's posted some wonderful responses that I haven't always gotten back to in a timely fashion, or at all not having anything intelligent to respond or answer with even if it made me think and change notes/plans offline)  


Other times I just find myself saying "...but SOMEBODY has to try this because IF THIS WORKS it would be THE ANSWER to so many of our global problems!!"  I'm willing to be a guinea pig and risk some discomfort and that's what this topic is about - willingness to live experimentally.  Obviously I don't want to die (from poor construction or something) but i'm more than willing to learn the hard way hoping I can either write a book about it, put on a workshop for it if I make it work, or share what I learn on youtube or something in the future.  


I'm really lucky because I have a girlfriend/hoped for wife-to-be whose totally supportive in my madness.  She lived with me for 7 years with no running water in a broken house we couldn't afford to fix and couldn't afford to leave and put up with it like a champ.  I talk about living in a house of strawbale or how we might convert a schoolbus to live in the first two years or how would she deal living on solar power with an ultra-frugal power budget and she's good with all of it.  She shares my single mind and goal of wanting to work towards "a house with no bills" which could also be called financial freedom in the country or a full homestead with no bills (everything paid for, energy neutral or energy plus, food neutral or food plus/excess, and beyond just self-sufficiency - producing something useful to trade at farmers markets or gift to neighbors) because we've both experienced more of the financial downs than the ups and don't have a super-optimistic view of the economic future of the US or the world under current global management.  >_>

We have a friend who hoped to live with us also interested in all the ideas from rocket stoves to running vehicles on veggie oil wanting to experiment, impliment, and then share with others what we learn once we have a chance to make it for real, who likes the idea of giving support to get support/finding solutions to share because we've all been the beneficiaries of other great minds (including talking about you Mr Paul Wheaton) who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible and just need others to also buy into some Great Ideas and live them and show others how to impliment them in their own backyards to start, and we hope someday our self to be the same kind of people pushing some boundaries and sharing what we learned with the world.

So that's some of my story and motivation... whats yours?


PS - bonus point, whats you're FAVORITE topics or permies ideas or 'alternative building and living concepts' that very few to no people even here seem to know about yet?  The ones where you can't shut up about them whenever you can inject them into a topic...  my biggest ones have been the passive annual heat storage/annualized geo solar plans, gabion walls/structures, and geocells/geotextiles - the latter pro builders know about but amateurs including me don't quite fully understand but I can sense the potential.

I have lived experimentally most of my life. From time to time I have re entered the mainstream as financial wants encouraged.  But, the majority of my adult life I have avoided the mainstream in roughly a 4/1 mix.    I am less philosophically committed (either pro or con), but it is more of an issue of this is what feels right. I like to get up early, grab a cup of coffee and take care of the animals.   I like to harvest vegetables in the fall and can them. And, I like the feel of sore muscles, back aches, and even insect bites.

Hi Brian,
I am really glad there are people like you. I tend to get what Jack Spirko calls the "Parsley disease". Where you don't make chicken noodle soup at all, because you are missing just the parsley. Instead of making it without parsley or substituting something else. When it comes to homesteading, I do lots of research and read all about people like you, and I decide what I think is the best solution. Then I realize I can't afford the best solution... so I don't do anything until I can afford to do it that way.

I'm working on it, but in the mean time, please keep experimenting, so I can learn from your mistakes :)

I love to experiment.

Our homestead was one experiment after another.

I experimented with biochar though I just called that ashes.

I experimented with plastic bottle ollas, just didn't know there was a name.

I experimented with raising goats, chickens, a pig, rabbits, cows, and horses.

Where we live now I have had fun experimenting with ferments and a lot of stuff I probably have forgotten.

Right now I am experimenting with growing plants in water.

Very much willing to. Apartment living is NOT for me. Guess where I currently dwell? I, my mind, my heart, my entire being, craves the old ways the slow ways the way we were meant to live. I am inspired everyday by the people already paving the way.

A sampling:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ8TzzdGuCw

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcdwDRNPzA&t=27s

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HiS2qQ9xEHE

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OUGQNVleOEo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CjYk7x9lZbQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V1UjbmksKYI

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8jTmGRyy4Z4

Anne, I’m with you! My whole homesteading adventure has been one experiment after another. Until I came upon permies.com, I didn’t know that my experiments had names……. non-circulating hydroponics, hugelculture (in actuality, my hugels are more hugelpits than mounds) , planting in the margins, food forest, etc. Apparently I’ve been toying around with permaculture for a long time before I knew it had a name. I still experiment to this day. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. I find myself constantly tweeking my methods.

Experiment it is learning. It’s fun. It keeps me thinking.

Inoni Laske wrote: Very much willing to. Apartment living is NOT for me. Guess where I currently dwell? I, my mind, my heart, my entire being, craves the old ways the slow ways the way we were meant to live. I am inspired everyday by the people already paving the way.

Inoni, welcome to the forum!

I agree about apartment living!

Though, while a person might be stuck in an apartment there are things that person can do to make a better life.

Such as growing plants, bokashi composting, living better than organic and so much more!

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Brian,
I am really glad there are people like you. I tend to get what Jack Spirko calls the "Parsley disease". Where you don't make chicken noodle soup at all, because you are missing just the parsley. Instead of making it without parsley or substituting something else.

Yeah my biggest thing is I just can't stop trying to figure out better solutions.  People will see me post 3, 4, 5, 6 contradictory ways of solving the SAME problem because i'm hoping to come back in a week and continue the most useful conversations, take notes on what sounds like failing directions or things I hadn't considered.

People say well why don't you have land yet, or why aren't you committed.  It's because my first level of experimenting has to be done in my mind.  I might have ten viable ways on the board (4-7 already figured out totally and 3-6 ones i'm still talking about) but I bare my frantic mind to the world trying to see if there is some stone left unturned, or some aspect of Strategy X vs Strategy Y I hadn't quite considered.

Ongoing poverty forces me to always go back over everything from zero again, "how to make all this BETTER or to get to step two FASTER" or realizing I need a strategy change.  Multiple times i've been sure for years I had to go in Direction C, only to finally revamp entirely when some parts of my thinking finally settle into place because i'm re-weighting things I already know, or realizing some uncontemplated benefit or problem.