Kevin Young

Mike Homest wrote:My favorite tree is chestnut.

Which chestnut species?

I am surprised Moringa has not made it on this list of favorites. I only started growing them (in south Texas) but I love how fast they grow and how much food they give (I blend the leaves and substitute for spinach in a saag paneer-style Indian dish).

Here is one that seems to be working well: https://www.dancingrabbit.org/ Has anyone visited?

Mike Jay wrote:When you're making char in a low oxygen environment you are driving off the volatile gasses.  In the rocket oven case, I think those gasses would exit the gaps between the door and the oven.  That might be totally fine.  But if they were ignited, it could give a nice bit of ambient heat, or burn your house down, not sure which?

So, if doing this it would be best to specially design the oven to have an air-tight door, but to have an exit tube for gasses. It would have to be a metal tube, but once away from the oven it could have some cooling fins or other apparatus and then hook onto a flexible tube and taken to a wood gas collection tank (thinking of this)

Just wondering--has anyone tried a rocket oven for making char? Since it is closed off and the fire is not actually inside the oven, it seems that you could cram the whole oven full of material and make a large amount of biochar all at once very efficiently. Having never used a rocket oven (I only heard about it with the recent kickstarter), I do not know if it is air tight enough to do this, nor do I know if it would harm the oven in some fashion. Thoughts?

2500 is the size of a large high school student body--still possible to get to know many people well, and as you said it gives the opportunity to offer services that would be difficult to provide at a smaller scale. It would be really cool to see something like this in action, and I would certainly consider buying into it. I would not want the uniformity of a planned community--maybe some guidelines to keep houses with a low carbon footprint, but allow more freedom in design and construction techniques (maybe have teams of construction people competing for best design awards). Now, . . . where to find 2500 people who all want to live in the same area while creating this community. If it could cost less than traditional housing options then people would certainly be more eager to consider it.

S Bengi wrote:It would be nice to have a nice little eco-village or eco-town.

This is obviously something you have thought a lot about!! That's a very detailed plan. With the proposed grid system and overall detail of plans I would put a different label than "ecovillage" onto your plan--maybe "sustainable agrovillage." While I like your ideas, the grid structure feels too forced upon the landscape. It would work very well in a flat landscape or if converting from a square mile of monoculture or run-down city area into this planned community.  

Emma Jd wrote:Did anything come of this? I'm interested if it did!

I'm interested too! 47 years old, married, 2 of 4 kids still at home, biology professor looking to move more fully into a permaculture, regenerative lifestyle. Currently in Texas, but prefer not to be, and am happy to look far and wide for the right opportunity. The easiest, culturally and logistically, would be for us to live in the western U.S., but I am a fluent French speaker, am conversational in Spanish, love Australia, and am happy to learn a new language or live in a new place. Would prefer someplace with wilderness close enough to easily visit; would also prefer 4 seasons and mountains, but am flexible. The biggest barriers are the logistics of the transition (the HOW), and really determining WHERE.

Dave Burton wrote:Expanding on this idea, maybe there could be a scheme like 95 people contribute $10,00 each or 950 people donate $1,000 each or some other variation or some range of people/money/time ratios.

I think this is a great idea. It then becomes a question of organizing the right group and determining how they will function. Some people may be able to contribute more financially while others may be able to go live there and donate work. There are all kinds of challenges to making this kind of idea work, but I would be interested in joining with a group of 50-100 people. Or, it could simply be divided into 1,000 shares and people are allowed to buy as many shares as they want (perhaps up to a certain limit per person), with number of shares held being proportional to voting rights or % of profits (unless there is a better way to manage all that). Shares could be bought and sold or traded however people wish. I think it should be cash only, so the entire property is bought outright. Whether the buyers establish themselves as a corporation or a non-profit or some other sort of group would have to be worked out. How many people would be living there and under what agreements would have to be worked out, as well as how to generate and use income, etc . . . so many possibilities, and so many logistics!

So cute! I'm glad I saw this Kickstarter and your Etsy page. Now I need a dachshund! And if I get the dog I guess iI will also have to learn to knit . . .

Kevin Young wrote:Now I just need 177 hours of spare time!

If I could have the wish of my heart, it would be to have the option on the streaming content to play it at 1.5X or 2.0X like you now can with YouTube videos. Much easier to zoom along at 2X and then slow down for sections where I really have to think hard.