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Rain Millsap wrote:Good Evening Christopher,
My name is Rain and I’d like to offer my condolences for the loss you’ve been experiencing lately.
I felt alone for a long long time, my heart goes out to you and your loved ones.
I would like to take some time to share with you a little about myself, my journey, and my vision that has only began coming clear to me over the last year and I am now 26.
I too was a cook for a time and although I had a passion for it, it turned out to be a very unhealthy environment for my mental health at that time as I had a lot of self work to do. As I mentioned I used to feel utterly alone, my family members struggled with anger, alcohol, and drug abuse and it left me with more then one scar, however over the last 3 years I’ve embarked on a beautiful journey of self healing, forgiveness, and have been inviting joy back into my life!
It is through this journey that my vision, my true life purpose has been coming clearer to me.
I’ll be honest I have little to work with to make this vision manifest, but I have so far cultivated the things I need before all else... Self Worth, Love, Family, Support and Determination!
My vision is The Rainbow Explorium. I’ll dive into details below but in short: Our Mission is to create a space that is both recreational and productive using recycled and reclaimed materials as our primary source of building materials. We will then present this space to the public in a way that is educational, sustainable, inspirational and beneficial to all!
The best possible outcome for this project would be for us to acquire a piece of land that has been devastated either by fire or outdated farming practices and to rejuvenate it using permaculture techniques. We would also erect several greenhouses that would demonstrate other various horticulture techniques. Most of the food we grow will be donated to local schools and food assistance programs, while a small portion will be used by the explorium.
My partner and I are currently starting up a mushroom garden that will serve as one major part of our three part plan for generating income. We will sell them online dehydrated, jerkied, and marinated, and fresh to locals and nearby restaurants.
The second major part will be creating products from recycled plastic using machines created by Precious Plastic! We want to start with gardening equipment and work our way into water sporting gear.
Third our space will be available to rent for events such as weddings or music festivals! This means we’re going to need a BIG KITCHEN! Although I do love cooking, If I’m managing all this I’ll unfortunately not be able to be in the kitchen as much as I’d like, so I’ll be in need of a good CHEF TOO
Above all else we hope to create a space that cultivates community and brings all people who are passionate about sustainability together in a way like never before. We hope to generate enough income to assist micro AND macro level farms in switching from outdated methods that devastate our land to eco-friendly sustainable horticulture methods.
To get us up and going we plan to launch a kickstarter early next year. We want to offer an AMAZING prize to the top three donors however this will require us to have contracts written so it will take a little extra love and care. I am currently creating tons of content in the form of emails and videos to send out as soon as this launches to create a lot of excitement around our project. I’ll be reaching out to all kindS of people including farmers, recyclers, and celebrities because I believe EVERYONE wants to be a part of this. And even if they don’t, I’m still going to find a way to make this happen!
We are a family of four and would hope to have 3-5 other trusted individuals living and working onsite as well as open our doors to volunteers. Perhaps more later on, but that really comes down to the size of our property and our success rate.
We currently live in Nevada and I have a day dream property out by Pyramid Lake, but by no means we are not set in stone for our first location so that is a discussion we’d be willing to have with you as well as any other questions you may have.
If you’d like to learn more please email me anytime at rainbowexplorium@gmail.com, I look forward to learning more about your visions and dreams!
Love Always,
Rain
Dakota Miller wrote:Gay and single.
35 and starting to think I'll be single forever.
Just kidding. Grumpy cat is my spirit animal. grumpy I have always been. even as a child my uncles would get mad at me for having a "smart mouth". It took me years to figure out I'm not a bad kid. It's just my nature. As such you learn to live alone. Which is odd since I like having a friend around all the time. just not a lot of people. especially not a lot of annoying people. I'm convinced I'll meet my beloved partner for the first time at the grocery store at 5 am. I'm early to bed early to bed early to rise, really early. people are the silliest in the evening. Also waking up at 4 am gives me a few hours of blessed silence and isolation I can't get during a busy day.
I'm two years away from buying a permie farm in nw Arizona. I figure I'll create a shade forest with wild forage and live simple life. Grow enough food to send to my family harvest by mail.
Dave Burton wrote:I’m enjoying the Bootcamp; I think that we’re doing good work. In my opinion, creation can be a slow and repetitive process, but, I think it is worth it in the end when we can look at something and say we did it! For example, I kinda became the designated whitewasher, because I had the patience and gentleness to make the limewash really express its beauty and character! I applied many layers of limewash inside Allerton Abbey slowly and methodically, and now, that room is a gorgeous pretty white!
At the moment, I have peaso, cortido, sweet potato pickles, carrot kimchi, bean paste, mint chutney, and peach chutney going. Many of these are extended ferment duplicates of ferments I’ve tasted and tried at earlier times. I’m letting some of the duplicates go 1 month and some go 3 months or more.
Rene Nijstad wrote:We've been facing existential questions to answer. Permaculture isn't really a thing here in Colombia, so that's not a good selling point yet. Funny enough focussing on a gay public did get us attention. For that we started a parallel website on www.ecogay.org
We'd hoped that some people would have joined us one way or the other, which also didn't happen yet. Our farm, when working it in the "permaculture" way, is too big for just the both of us.
So we've set out 4 different paths and we hope to figure out which one will work.
1. See if someone (or several people) wants to join us in a community kind of way, but with a bit of cash to invest
2. See if we can find an investor to help build out tourism options (building cabins etc)
3. Colombians may not be into permaculture at this time, but they love to spend weekends out of the city... We're about to start selling pieces of land to start a small gay condominium... Maybe that will work out. We can create a job as caretaker for ourselves like that as well. And tourism can still be added, our place is great for that.
4. If all of the above don't get any traction the remaining months of this year, we'll sell, buy something smaller and start again. That would be a shame, but we think we've reached the end of what we can do being just two guys on a huge mountain.
More on www.EcoGay.org
James Landreth wrote:I've been doing a lot of volunteer activism. I'm setting up a food forest at a Methodist Church on Sunday, and I'm moving towards doing a large interfaith project down in Portland with my bee club next year. Fingers crossed. Other than that, looking forward to fall and winter.
Dave Burton wrote:I joined the Permaculture Bootcamp, and I am having a great time! I'm enjoying trying to cook for many people and making fermented foods!