My search for the most ideal of what is possible

Fred Frank V Bur wrote:But I want to know if other vegans are content with being in community with others who are not vegan. Wouldn't all vegan communities be desirable? But maybe my hopes for what sustainable community that way would be does not attract others into discussion for it. I still want to keep trying.

If I were a vegan I would definitely want to be in a strictly vegan community.  I don't honestly see how a true vegan could live in a community with non-vegans and produce food in community.  I think non-vegans would want to use animal products in the production of food.

I practice a modified form of Biointensive and sometimes include animal products, but as originally conceived it is a vegan food growing system, using only plant-based materials to produce a vegan diet.

http://www.growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html

Except that microbes still do the grunt work of breaking down plant-based biomass. How is that different from using worms, or any other livestock?

-CK

Timothy Markus wrote:The vegans I know consume a lot of almond or soy milk or both.  I think that there are frightening issues with current agricultural methods for farming both of these, just like there are with all other 'state of the art' farming for meat, grains, etc.  I think you could have a sustainable vegan diet with a nut-based food forest.  If you ran an animal rescue you could graze them for their remaining lives, but that's still using the animal.  Maybe a food forest abundant enough to let a lot go to wildlife.

Seems like you can grow a lot of almonds in a food forest so that works in a permie system.  Not sure why grazing animals would be required.  I don't run animals (other than myself, who spends as much time as possible there) in my food forest and it generates piles of food.  It's open to wildlife, but they seem to mainly reduce the yield to us (so I just grow more).  If anything, I may end up fencing it off to limit some of the damage the wildlife do, this year they were extreme due to population booms.  I live in a wild forest and my fury neighbors are as interested in my food forest as I am.

I wanted to respond to the question presented about vegan, permaculture clothing. Apparently nettle stems can be processed like flax to make fiber, and it is warm enough to be traditionally used in the Himalayas:

https://nwyarns.com/blogs/northwest-yarns/know-your-fiber-himalayan-nettle
"Himalayan Nettle fiber has a hollow core, which results in interesting thermal properties. Fibers spun a little loose will create a yarn and fabric that will retain heat extremely well, due to the capture of warm air in that hollow core. Spinning the fibers more tightly will compress the core, creating a fabric that is cooling rather than warming."

I have a big nettle patch on my land and intend to try this later this year, as I am a (fair-to-middling) spinner, crocheter and weaver!

For shoes, i was thinking of wooden ones? Like Dutch clogs, or wooden sandals with socks, like traditional Japanese.

Meli Mot wrote:I wanted to respond to the question presented about vegan, permaculture clothing. Apparently nettle stems can be processed like flax to make fiber, and it is warm enough to be traditionally used in the Himalayas:

https://nwyarns.com/blogs/northwest-yarns/know-your-fiber-himalayan-nettle
"Himalayan Nettle fiber has a hollow core, which results in interesting thermal properties. Fibers spun a little loose will create a yarn and fabric that will retain heat extremely well, due to the capture of warm air in that hollow core. Spinning the fibers more tightly will compress the core, creating a fabric that is cooling rather than warming."

I have a big nettle patch on my land and intend to try this later this year, as I am a (fair-to-middling) spinner, crocheter and weaver!

For shoes, i was thinking of wooden ones? Like Dutch clogs, or wooden sandals with socks, like traditional Japanese.

These are some useful tips. I really would be interested in growing any useful fiber plants for material, Himalayan nettle included if I get such seeds and they would grow where I try it, possibly other nettle if it must be otherwise. Nice knowing you are a regular spinner, croucheter, and weaver, such ones are really a useful benefit to others. The idea for shoes can be considered, but not for me. I have already made myself independent from shoes, and have done so for many many years. I would need to just keep core temperature up enough and circulation is now great enough to keep my feet warm enough, the soles are quite tough as it is from this. There are benefits, really, and I could go on at great length about that, but it is only good to share with who it is that would be interested. I tend to just talk about choosing for vegan ways otherwise, and, being independent from civilization as far as one may go that way.

Interesting about living without shoes! There are many thorns and prickly things, and some very cold weather, here (below freezing) do you have those conditions too?

Meli, one of our members, Joseph goes without shoes.

As a child I went without shoes.

The feet adapt to conditions, especially cold.

Maybe thorny and prickly plants can be avoided until the feet are conditioned?

Meli Mot wrote:Interesting about living without shoes! There are many thorns and prickly things, and some very cold weather, here (below freezing) do you have those conditions too?

I have gone over twenty thousand miles walking barefoot, not all at once, but remaining barefoot while I walk, and having done so for seventeen years already. I learned to stay barefoot and adapt in my own climate here, where I would walk even when it was in the low thirties Fahrenheit outside, and being out there for hours. And more recently I went out of state, learning things for survival and was walking through snow with my feet exposed. Keeping the upper body with the core warm is important and circulation really takes care of it, I have much better circulation to my feet since going this way. And by now my soles are thick and tough, and handle more than what would be thought.

I am really anti-civ, while I won't use things from animals, I seek independent ways of living apart from civilization, knowing things cannot just go on continuously with civilization.

I have other places to communicate while I can still answer through purple messages here, one place I hope others interested can reach is where I speak and can answer others, on Clubhouse. You may join me as I hope  on Wednesday July 3 at 09:30 AM PDT for when we speak for "Living without altering our natural world". https://www.clubhouse.com/invite/zg8SZ7A0L6wDGa3XKG3ZpZGGbLdOHyVGWjz:ExsuTncXF_WOuy0h9Nph5JlpCBU0MrpyxmaSQZMusks

Chris Kott wrote:Except that microbes still do the grunt work of breaking down plant-based biomass. How is that different from using worms, or any other livestock?

It's an old comment, but maybe worth addressing. I think there are two primary differences.

The first, and biggest, is that they're wild creatures doing what they want to do and we're just living in synergy with them. Veganic agriculturalists aren't opposed to blue jays flying over their fields and fertilizing things, they're only opposed to owning controlled flocks and using them for that purpose.

The second comes down to the definition of animal. The vegans that I've encountered generally adhere to an almost talismanic distinction between e.g. plants and animals that (I think) stands in for neural sophistication. That is, most of the organisms we first think of when we think of animals -- cows, cats, people, snakes, trout, crows, horses, &c are probably capable of feeling pain and holding the preference to not be eaten. I am skeptical that bugs fit that bill, but I might be wrong and I'd rather err on the side of creating a moral and just world, so maybe I wouldn't eat or otherwise harness them. But I'm convinced that oysters are ethically vegetables and the vegans I've talked to about that powerfully disagree. Anyway, an awful lot of the organisms that people mean when they're talking about soil microbes aren't in the animal kingdom and are therefore fair game for vegans to consume or make use of.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Chris Kott wrote:Except that microbes still do the grunt work of breaking down plant-based biomass. How is that different from using worms, or any other livestock?

It's an old comment, but maybe worth addressing. I think there are two primary differences.

The first, and biggest, is that they're wild creatures doing what they want to do and we're just living in synergy with them. Veganic agriculturalists aren't opposed to blue jays flying over their fields and fertilizing things, they're only opposed to owning controlled flocks and using them for that purpose.

The second comes down to the definition of animal. The vegans that I've encountered generally adhere to an almost talismanic distinction between e.g. plants and animals that (I think) stands in for neural sophistication. That is, most of the organisms we first think of when we think of animals -- cows, cats, people, snakes, trout, crows, horses, &c are probably capable of feeling pain and holding the preference to not be eaten. I am skeptical that bugs fit that bill, but I might be wrong and I'd rather err on the side of creating a moral and just world, so maybe I wouldn't eat or otherwise harness them. But I'm convinced that oysters are ethically vegetables and the vegans I've talked to about that powerfully disagree. Anyway, an awful lot of the organisms that people mean when they're talking about soil microbes aren't in the animal kingdom and are therefore fair game for vegans to consume or make use of.

What I see of vegans (besides myself) in my limited experience shows variation on where lines are drawn. I already defined my boundaries and have come to just having edible things only from actual plants for food, and don't look at anything else as food, there would be no chance of being mistaken about eating something from some being with awareness that this cost, that way.

In my perspective I see sustainability in consuming from the bottom of what may be considered the food pyramid, or food chain, though it is more like what has a very broad base. So demand from higher up uses much more that makes greater demand on available land, resources, and water, and this is having effect on the future.

I would live if I find it possible to do so along with others valuing this way growing all that we can for all our needed food, medicinal herbs, and materials, and become independent of needs being provided for outside from that. I do need to find others who understand me speaking of these things, and I don't judge others in any case.

Anne Miller wrote:Meli, one of our members, Joseph goes without shoes.

As a child I went without shoes.

The feet adapt to conditions, especially cold.

Maybe thorny and prickly plants can be avoided until the feet are conditioned?

Sorry I hadn't answered this earlier. I have tough soles, having gone thousands and thousands of miles barefoot already in the last eighteen years since I started, I would still watch out and be as careful as manageable to not step on some prickly plants in the wild (like little cacti) which has still happened. I just can deal with it better than any who are tenderfooted, I will still have to stop and pick out what has gotten stuck in the sole. But alertness as a continual barefooter is much greater. I won't head toward areas where little cacti or other such prickly wild plants low enough to be stepped on grow so abundantly together. So I would not say they would ever be something to not avoid. Hard rocks, and bunches of sticks on the ground, are easier to deal with.

That I will grow all that can be grown for needed food and possible materials, is most significant. That is what I think those I would be involved with for that would be most focused on, and with that and some shared values we might be most compatible for it.