food pump club

A new thing we have never tried before.  

Six sessions.  8 people max.  Private, intimate.  

The idea came from Beau (although he said we should charge $1500).  He says that there are people out there where this format is the best way for them to learn.  Like 20 times better.  Or 50 times better.  When he described it to me, these folks find a book useless because the whole book just sounds crazy.  Or a movie, or a collection of videos ...  the content is too foreign and just sounds crazy.

So this would be you and seven others.  Information would be presented, and each person can, at each moment say "that sounds crazy" and we can sort out that bit.  Maybe another people will ask questions that will bring clarity to you.  And then, for each person, we can explore their exact property and their exact challenges.  Maybe with pics or with live video.


This is going to be about a style of gardening which is ....   apparently ...  rather unusual.    Acts of gardening to produce large quantities of food two years in the future.  Sure, there will be some food this season, and that's great.  But the real goal is to get to a food production system that requires zero effort other than harvest.  Foods become your invasive species.


My accidental food pump 20 years ago

In Seattle, I had a tiny strip of land between the sidewalk and the street where I built a garden.  Lots of food.  As I moved out, the new tenant ripped out my garden and planted flowers.   Three years later, I happened to drive by and noticed that the flowers were all gone, but my sunchokes, potatoes and rhubarb had completely taken over.  Zero care and still pumping out food.


What we will talk about

Eat what you grow, not grow what you eat.  https://permies.com/wiki/372363/Podcast-Eat-Grow-grow-eat  ...  growing what most people eat requires a lot of work, discipline and expense - all on a tight schedule.  Corn and wheat are examples of growing foods that need a lot from you, year after year.    If you want to grow these, we would do it off to the side and label it a "novelty garden"

The food pump garden is going to provide a majority of your food.  I think that most people will grow a large food pump garden and a small novelty garden.  The food pump garden will require zero care and will be able to be harvested through the winter.  A small novelty garden means a small obligation to harvest and preserve food in the fall.  And a small pantry instead of a massive pantry.



Cold climate.  A hard freeze in the winter.  I'm in montana, and we have a really hard freeze.  Maybe some folks where it stays below freezing a week (or more) each year.  Maybe some folks a bit north of me too.

6 sessions.  Each about 1 to 2 hours long.  Each will start with 15 minutes of formal stuff, followed by some Q&A followed by people asking questions about their specific situation.  Maybe with pics and stuff.  

We will create a private forum for more discussion and sharing of pics.  

Each of the six sessions will be recorded in case anybody cannot make a session, but these recording will never be public.

If this goes well, we might do more of this sort of thing in the future.

Zero spots taken.  8 spots available.  

I am powerfully curious to learn if this is something people are keen on doing.  

Are you going to organize meeting times around what works with folks who sign up?  I'm guessing people will need to know if this is going to work with their schedule, probably before forking it over.

Beau M. Davidson wrote:Are you going to organize meeting times around what works with folks who sign up?  I'm guessing people will need to know if this is going to work with their schedule, probably before forking it over.

That's what I was thinking:  once we have our group, try to figure out a schedule for everybody.

This seems like a great opportunity, and I have learned a lot about passive food production from Paul. If demand becomes high enough, I might consider expanding to 12. 8-12 being the ideal educational group size has a lot of research behind it in the Adventure ed field, where I got my masters with a focus on Wilderness Service Learning. I found it to be the ideal group size with the hundreds of groups I have led in adventure ed, restoration, and trail crew settings. It was also the group size anthropologists found indigenous people sort themselves into for hunting and gathering parties. Generally, 8-12 helps ensure everyone has a couple people they jive with while staying manageable for the teacher. You may have your own good reasons for keeping it to 8 though.

I would love to do this! ..... but the entire main reason for my interest in this sort of thing is to feed my family, and 400$ is alot. I cannot spend any money, even my seeds are free sourced. So I will have to scavenge what free info I can get, maybe some people who can afford to do this will share bits of information they glean! Very fun idea.

R Grier wrote:I would love to do this! ..... but the entire main reason for my interest in this sort of thing is to feed my family, and 400$ is alot. I cannot spend any money, even my seeds are free sourced. So I will have to scavenge what free info I can get, maybe some people who can afford to do this will share bits of information they glean! Very fun idea.

I think we do a really good job of putting out heaps and heaps of info for free.

Beau's point is that some people don't have the time to pour through all of that and will gladly part with something like $1500 for this sort of thing.  So we're giving it a shot!

Sounds like a great idea. Cut the price to $250 maybe? Also, some of us are just introverts that learn better hands-on. So, the books are nice, but not super useful. And small groups mean non-overwhelming amounts of people where we can be heard. Just throwing that out there.

I'm trying to think of the various categories of people for whom this would be ideal.

Somebody with a little plot at their disposal - could be theirs or someone else's, big or small.
Somebody who's enthusiastic and wants to put a lot of energy into setting something up now that will pay off big time for years with increasingly less energy input over time.
Somebody who would rather get awesome systems up now, while they're learning, rather than struggling through the bootstraps phase for the next decade.
Somebody who would like to cut their grocery budget in half in 2027, and by 3/4 in 2028.
Somebody who thinks the idea of spending more money on your garden than you would on your groceries is mind-numbing.  
Somebody who has some financial resources and wants to funnel them into resilient, meaningful physical infrastructure - for whatever reason.
Somebody who has very little financial resources and wants guideance to make thier little go a loooong way.
A ferd who wants to be more gert-y.
A gert who wants to be more gert-y.
Someone who's going into retirement and wants to make the most of the next season.
Someone who wants to retire early and wants to make the most of the next season.
Someone who lives too far away from a good grocery store.
Someone who loves tinkering in the garden and wants to level up and expand.
Someone who's downsizing from a huge farm and wants to pack the most growing oomph into their new, smaller space, with high energy efficience.


Who else might find the food pump club to be an ideal jumping-off point?

I’m interested in this format.  Hope it goes well.

I might be late, but I am interested. Is there still a spot available?

Derek Berry wrote:I might be late, but I am interested. Is there still a spot available?

We cancelled this project due to lack of interest.  

But there is now something happening with PIE that is kinda similar:

https://permies.com/pie

Derek Berry wrote:I might be late, but I am interested. Is there still a spot available?

Hello Derek!
Welcome to permies!

We are getting started this Saturday with Pie Club.    
It will be part garden food pump and other topics as well.

Pie is a monthly subscription to be in Paul's special inner circle group.
We will be diving deep into how to build your backyard food pump and many other fun permaculture topics.
Please come join us!   We plan to meet Saturdays at 10 Am Mountain time.
You can get Pie here:
https://permies.com/pie

Then you will have access to the Pie forum and you can join the conversation!

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks