J Blackbird

I'm grateful to finally be harvesting things from my first garden. I grew a little bit of every summer veggie I could think of (squash, tomatoes, okra, melons, zucchini, you know..), but the only thing I'm wondering is, what do you guys do when this fresh produce is Just Starting To Trickle In? I've been harvesting 5 ripe cherry tomatoes, and 2 okra, Every Other Day, but that's not really a lot to make a full dish of anything? But I want to eat it before it goes bad but there's not enough at the same time to make a meal of yet, so I've just been kind of eating them raw, or making tiny snacks. What do you guys do? Is there a better way that I can be handling these First Fruits? Or does everyone just have such big gardens that it's not even an issue :D ?

Oh wow, I hadn't actually considered that! I'm actually from Central VA, and now that you've mentioned it, you're right. A lot of activity happens in the valley and the mountains but not much close to home. Thanks for the response!

Hello again permies!


I was wondering you guys had any ideas of places that DON'T have a well-established community of people practicing/thinking about permaculture, and don't have resources such as permaculture guilds, PDCs, etc. available for local people? Bonus points if you think the local people would desire such institutions to exist. If these places don't exist --  great! I love that everywhere has permaculture. However, I have many reasons to suspect that is not the case...  I think we often talk about places that are great for homesteading, permaculture and whatnot, but for obvious reasons we often neglect the places that don't have stuff going on! Any help would be appreciated!

Thank you all! I appreciate everyone's responses to my questions which , reading again, were extremely vague! I reckon my real question here is, is the debt I'm accruing worth the experience and accreditation I'd be receiving from a degree, or do you guys think it would be possible for me to achieve my goals without one? I'm currently having difficulty paying for the college itself, and I guess I'm just questioning its' value in terms of my long term goals, or if my time would be better spent pursing something more like WWOOF/an apprenticeship/perhaps a permaculture design course/boot camp?

I will definitely be finishing out the semester, and if next semester is online-only, I am planning to take a Leave of Absence from school, so I can come back later when the timing/money is better! :)

Hello fellow Permies,

In light of recent events, I've been forced to confront decisions I've been making for the past couple of years, and am starting to wonder what my next steps in life should be.

I'm 20 years old, and am a sophomore in college, studying sustainable agriculture. I enjoy learning about farming and permaculture and am itching to get some experience doing it. In the future I want to homestead/have a permaculture farm.

However, there are three issues:

a) I'm going into more debt than I'm comfortable with getting this degree. I currently have 20k in debt and I'm expecting to have around 40k in debt by the time I graduate. I plan on working on farms after I graduate, but farm jobs don't pay a lot... looking at my potential debt to income ratio after I graduate makes me sweat...
b) In-person classes in college are cancelled at my school due to coronavirus and I'm really not gaining much from my attempts to learn agriculture in an online classroom setting with little opportunity for IRL applications. I understand that there's a chance that because of social distancing measures, classes may be online into the next semester as well... There's no way of knowing this for sure, but if it were to happen, it would be unfortunate.
c) I currently don't have much real world experience in permaculture or sustainable farming and I really would like to do work outside of a classroom setting! And I'm aware that programs like WWOOF and attra.ncat exist where I can learn hands-on stuff about permaculture without paying 12K a year like I am currently.

I was just wondering what you guys would do in my shoes. Also do you think it's worth it to get this degree?