You know you're a permie when...

When you see a "you might be a redneck if.." meme, and think "hey, that might be a good idea!!"

Well, I won't be making THIS one...  but some are cool!



This one amuses me, one of my cars has it's muffler attached by a cut soup can that is hose clamped on, gasketed with tinfoil rolled carefully and poked into place, and then taped to death. I took it to a shop, they took it all off, messed with it for several hours, and reinstalled it, they couldn't do any better, it really wouldn't hold any other repair. I replace the tinfoil every few thousand miles.

Weellll... at least that "underwear tank top" is mostly cotton! Someone did a study about composting underwear - mind you that "someone" person has done all sorts of wild and crazy things.

When your husband asks you to clear up your collection of random files on the computer screen and you find yourself moving most of them to a folder called "weird homestead plans".

When you think nothing of potting up seeds and cuttings in the kitchen sink at 2 a.m. because you can't sleep.  Or because you bake dirt in the oven to pasteurize it. Or how during the winter the inside of your house resembles Costa Rica because of all the plants that had to come in out of the cold. Or when you keep buying big serving spoons for cooking but keep losing them outside because you need just the right size scoop for planting something.

You might be a permie when you wish another permie to have fun with their chores, and actually think they will, because you enjoy yours!

When you get a blender at your family Christmas present exchange game, and someone asks, "Are you going to make some smoothies."

Me- "No, I'm actually going to use it to make mushroom slurries."

Then they look at me really confused for a second, and then smile and say, "Oh, that's like a slushie right?"

And then I talk way too long about permaculture.

When you are making dinner, grab a bulb of garlic from the grocery store to chop, separate it, say "Whoa, NICE hard neck purple garlic with big cloves! Not cutting up THAT for dinner, that gets planted!" And go get another bulb of garlic to cut up. Too cool for dinner, I want more of that :D

When you're filled with joy at the simplest parts of everyday life...the sight of goats lounging around like giant marshmallows, spending time with happy animals, the smell of a freshly baked loaf of sourdough, the sight of the food in the larder and watching the helpful moulds grow on cheeses and cured meats, watching things grow in the garden and seeing the pumpkin vines start to sprawl and lots of other tiny details that change from season to season.

... you're writing a note to your daughter about Big South Fork and then the BSF abbreviation gets confused for black soldier flies.       https://www.nps.gov/biso/index.htm

You see a thread called spilled milk, and you think it might be about growing moss!

Roberto pokachinni wrote:You see a thread called spilled milk, and you think it might be about growing moss!

I have read in several spots lately that spraying milk on soil can help the beneficial microbes. Unfortunately, I suspect that only unpasteurized milk with be useful for that job. It would be nice to know, as I used to read, "don't put milk products in your compost" - which may have meant things made of milk rather than straight milk, but if I can just spray it on a garden bed, I'm good with that.

When you have a terrible time remember dates, but you KNOW the local conservation plant sale preorder date is coming soon, so every day you panic and check the calendar fearing that you might have missed the date and everyone will have bought the nodding onions.

Seriously, this is day 5 or 6 in a row that I freaked out and went, "Oh no, did I miss the date?! Did everyone already preorder all the nodding onions?!"

When one has got water usage during teeth cleaning down to zero.

You know you're a permie when you "give up" on permaculture...but you keep coming back for more.

Like a moth to a flame.

When you're sitting around the fireplace at a friend's house, and you wish you could keep the coals to make biochar.

Steve Thorn wrote:When you're sitting around the fireplace at a friend's house, and you wish you could keep the coals to make biochar.

Teehehe….there's biochar tucked into the soil at many friends' houses and at many locations I've vacationed at.  I wonder if anyone ever finds it and gets confused.

Greg Martin wrote:

Steve Thorn wrote:When you're sitting around the fireplace at a friend's house, and you wish you could keep the coals to make biochar.

Teehehe….there's biochar tucked into the soil at many friends' houses and at many locations I've vacationed at.  I wonder if anyone ever finds it and gets confused.

The biochar fairy came and left gifts!!

Greg Martin wrote:

Steve Thorn wrote:When you're sitting around the fireplace at a friend's house, and you wish you could keep the coals to make biochar.

Teehehe….there's biochar tucked into the soil at many friends' houses and at many locations I've vacationed at.  I wonder if anyone ever finds it and gets confused.

Haha that's awesome! It's like guerrilla soil gardening!

When it doesn't feel like you've made good use of a car unless it's packed to the brim with foraged food for yourself, animals, and garden on the way back from an outing.

Kate Downham wrote:When it doesn't feel like you've made good use of a car unless it's packed to the brim with foraged food for yourself, animals, and garden on the way back from an outing.

Or you've rolled at least 4 errands into one!

When you're organising a picnic and choose the picnic spot based on whether there's wild food nearby at that time of year to forage.

Greg Martin wrote:

Steve Thorn wrote:When you're sitting around the fireplace at a friend's house, and you wish you could keep the coals to make biochar.

Teehehe….there's biochar tucked into the soil at many friends' houses and at many locations I've vacationed at.  I wonder if anyone ever finds it and gets confused.

I've been mixing charcoal from our wood stove in with the shredded tree mulch I mulch our noisy duck* overnight shelter with. I'm trying just about anything to keep the air quality good as we've had such a wet January that their area feels "spongy soggy" when I walk on it, despite adding at least a little fresh mulch daily. I think they might be eating it though, as some of their poops are looking a little "grey"! I wonder whether the char is picking up good micro-organisms on the way through their gut?

*noisy duck - domesticated from mallards, they go "quack", sometimes *very* loudly, unlike Muscovy ducks who are pleasantly quiet.

When your child's teacher asks for donations of decks of cards, so you give them 12 decks of Permaculture Playing Cards

...When you think your email provider must be broken because you don't have 15+ emails from permies a day in there.

...When you have a folder in your inbox just for permies stuff, and you check that more than the rest of your inbox!

When you're staying home because of covid-19 social distancing/self quarantining and realize it's no different than any other time of the year because you homestead and farm, and never leave the house anyway.

James Freyr wrote:When you're staying home because of covid-19 social distancing/self quarantining and realize it's no different than any other time of the year because you homestead and farm, and never leave the house anyway.

Ha! Same thing here, 'cept I have to remember to wash my hands when I go grab the cash from the farmstand for egg sales.

We're working on some ideas for simple, clean sterilization for the returned egg cartons now....spraying with lysol just seems so, well, ugly, but March in Maine is not the time to be leaving things "out in the sun for a few days" ;)


You know you're a permie when you find yourself agonizing over how to cleanly (greenly?) sterilize egg cartons so they can be safely reused in the time of coronavirus

When your dreams get incredibly weird...
Dreamed I was canning stuff, to make it seal right I needed to make some wire bales, as the contents needed an odd amount of heat before they sealed, so you left the lids loose, baled into place.
I was canning tiny ads!
What DID I eat before bed?!

When you try to determine more ways to smother more lawn to grow even more food.

When you start looking at the squirrels who have become accustomed to stealing chicken snacks as potential easy meat and fur.

Tristan Vitali wrote:

James Freyr wrote:When you're staying home because of covid-19 social distancing/self quarantining and realize it's no different than any other time of the year because you homestead and farm, and never leave the house anyway.

Ha! Same thing here, 'cept I have to remember to wash my hands when I go grab the cash from the farmstand for egg sales.

We're working on some ideas for simple, clean sterilization for the returned egg cartons now....spraying with lysol just seems so, well, ugly, but March in Maine is not the time to be leaving things "out in the sun for a few days" ;)


You know you're a permie when you find yourself agonizing over how to cleanly (greenly?) sterilize egg cartons so they can be safely reused in the time of coronavirus

There are UV sterilizing lamps that might work. Much like leaving things in the sun, but for seconds instead of days.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:

Tristan Vitali wrote:

James Freyr wrote:When you're staying home because of covid-19 social distancing/self quarantining and realize it's no different than any other time of the year because you homestead and farm, and never leave the house anyway.

Ha! Same thing here, 'cept I have to remember to wash my hands when I go grab the cash from the farmstand for egg sales.

We're working on some ideas for simple, clean sterilization for the returned egg cartons now....spraying with lysol just seems so, well, ugly, but March in Maine is not the time to be leaving things "out in the sun for a few days" ;)


You know you're a permie when you find yourself agonizing over how to cleanly (greenly?) sterilize egg cartons so they can be safely reused in the time of coronavirus

There are UV sterilizing lamps that might work. Much like leaving things in the sun, but for seconds instead of days.

That would be a great option if we were on grid power, but our 300 watt offgrid solar power system is usually taxed as it is. What we settled on is simply a prolonged "carton quarantine". The first two cartons were returned yesterday and they've gone into an old plastic shopping bag to hang in the "sun room" for the next 14 days.

...so we've got quarantined egg cartons in reused "single use plastic shopping bags", hanging from the electrical conduit "ribs" of a simple plastic hoop house attached to an old camper-trailer in the backwoods. I'm not sure if that's more of a "you know you're a permie when" or a "you know you're a redneck when", but it's gotta be something !  Thankfully, all that kale growing in the "sun room", plus the seed trays starting various annuals and perennials tilt the scales a little bit ;)

Tristan Vitali wrote:

What we settled on is simply a prolonged "carton quarantine"

From what I've read/heard, porous material like cardboard cartons are much safer than either metal or plastic/styrofoam. Quarantining your cardboard cartons for 10 days should do the job! Sunshine, is of course a giant, low-cost UV light!

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the Covid-19 virus is no longer infectious after 72 hours on cardboard and paper surfaces, no UV treatment required.  That said, an abundance of caution is justifiable and warranted, but it sounds like your approach should be more than sufficient.

Here is the reference, which I believe is open access:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

When you realize you have inadvertantly taught your dog to go out of her way to preferentially pee on mulch, because you praise her each time she does because yay, nitrogen for the new garden... ( I have watched her jump into a raised bed on walks near when there is grass right next to it).

Let's just say I am keeping this accomplishment to myself in non permies circles.

It's spring! And all the neighbors on this little street are doing their first mowing of the season. I, in my futile attempt to camouflage myself here, am too. But not until I have made them sigh and shake their heads as I went through the yard, first with a shovel to transplant a bunch, then with scissors and cut everything I didn't transplant, and harvested the wild onions and onion grass, that they hate and tend to spray. Makes awesome chives! About 5 pounds in the oven dehydrating right now, chives till next spring! YAY!!

Bonus points for weirding out the neighbors, yet again.  :D

When your children have decided that their doll, Cindy, has her own forest garden in the woods, and they keep making more pretend gardens for her.

When those kids see you walking around with bamboo and ask "Are you making a garden? A fence? Planting something?" They know bamboo is for gardens!

When they see pictures of a castle and say, "I want one!" and your husband says, "If you save up lots of money..." and they interrupt and say, "No! I mean, we could build one out of wood. Like the one we're building outside right now."

When the dining room table is covered with seed packets, because the kitchen table is covered with flour for bread making and the shop table is covered with frames for the bee hives.

You know you are a permie when... You post this in this thread:

Pearl Sutton wrote:It's spring! And all the neighbors on this little street are doing their first mowing of the season. I, in my futile attempt to camouflage myself here, am too. But not until I have made them sigh and shake their heads as I went through the yard, first with a shovel to transplant a bunch, then with scissors and cut everything I didn't transplant, and harvested the wild onions and onion grass, that they hate and tend to spray. Makes awesome chives! About 5 pounds in the oven dehydrating right now, chives till next spring! YAY!!

Bonus points for weirding out the neighbors, yet again.  :D

And you know you are a snarky permie when....
You go to the local farm co-op, and look at the plants for sale, and notice "Onion chives" and half of the flat has been sold and laugh like a loon, that's the same plant the neighbors put work into killing, that I eat.
Eat your weeds! They are selling weeds at the co-op!! Right near the weed killer!
hehehehe... I'm totally amused.
:D

When your kids make you a heart...out of clothespins!

When you reeeeeeeealy want a fish tank to decorate the lving room, but can't figure out how to incorporate aquaponics into the tank cabinet.  So no fish tank.







I can't stomach more chores with no food reward, thanks Permaculture :)

You know your neighbors know you're a permie when they offer you a dead raccoon, knowing that you'll find a good place to compost it - yep, it's got a place of honor near the bottom of my new raised strawberry bed surrounded by punky wood - microbe buffet table!