I am a traveling salesman of sorts so I bought a new car with a hitch recently planning to build a tiny house to pull behind it. Well... undue stress of payments and disillusionment with modern western culture has brought me to a new perspective: I am wondering if nomadic living via horse drawn showman carts, romani vardo, tiny house, and or simple wagon is the answer for some people (like me) to take part in back to the basics fostering of a healthier world e.g. permaculture al a sustainable nomadism.
After long thoughtful study of my truck I realized I was wasting my gas literally I spend 6000 a year on gas and that going up, so I considered hybridization of my vehicle through numerous methods but I realized in the end and that was that the most green and tranquil mover while being arguably the most efficient is the horse. After considering wood gas, I saw the need for machines to harvest the wood so that was out, steam? Again wood. Various alcohols, inefficient destructive molecules that harm gas tanks making new cars even more complex. Electric? Not good for hauling. Biodesiel? Noisy smelly and lacks in aesthetics. When it comes down to it the horse eats what's in front of him and turns it straight into forward motion. Nothing else does this!
I find that nomadic travel via horses is the healthiest thing for humans and our world's ecology if you're going to travel so I took this even further and developed an idea for an entire almost closed loop horse and carriage tiny house: what ever the horses eat gets pooped out well in cities with scenic carriage rides normally this gets bagged in a diaper basically and thrown out but what if we take this and dry it in a solar dehydrator. With the dried manure we burn it in a wood stove used for cooking and hot water production. As for the hot water first the wood stove converts water to steam the steam powers a generator for our electricity needs and an auxiliary electric motor to lessen the burden on the horses possibly allowing slightly increased speed for longer durations from the horses, and then is condensed to hot water for tap. A composting toilet will replace conventional chemical toilets and lighting will be provided via gas lamps running on gas from a humanure manure gasification unit using an electric element, along side this aladdin oil lamps and regular oil lamps could augment this running off of ethanol. As for cooling a swamp cooler or steam jet cooler would be proffered.
As for the permaculture aspect a rabbit hutch and chicken coop designed into storage compartments on either side between the front and back axles will provide some of my meat and a well designed green house will produce ample food for occupants with the waste going to the animals. An aquapinics system will be used for the garden with water being recycled from the urine of the horses and the compost toilet plus rain catchment, filtered and then fed into the aquaponics system.
Now with this I find that this would work best if convoys of maybe five to ten of these could be cooperated because food production and such works best on larger scales so conceivably a convoy could be self sustaining only requiring maybe horse feed if that because preferably wild scavenging and then stock piling could take care of the horses instead of needing to buy feed. Also there are safety in numbers especially with slow moving caravans. With this though there are so many questions to look at so I'm all ears in opinions thoughts and would a mobile commune of sorts really work? What about living roof garden or window boxes? What about solar power for added push with the electric motors?
