Gregory Bruna

You actually look like you are doing great.  Nice garden!  

I'm going to make a comment and it in no way is meant to disparage you or anyone else on this forum.  I could have posted this on any number of posts in this forum I just happened to find myself on yours while I was ruminating on this.  I've been looking through these posts and it seems most of us, I've posted here too, have acquired land and find ourselves needing someone to share it with.  It can be tough since most of us are in a very rural situation which limits the number of people we interact with.  Especially like minded people, therefore this forum.  I wonder what others have done to connect to other like minded locals in their areas?  I know I've had trouble since I started building up my property, all the work it takes to build up our land/homes leaves us with limited time as well.

The dragon is mixed media, but mostly just paper mache.  The teeth and spikes are polymer clay, they eye I bought.  The process is long and tedious but the materials are pretty simple.  This guy was my inspiration and he sells a book on the process of creating these. papermacheblog

I don't really expect this to work but what the hell I'll take a shot.

Hi, I'm Greg, 59 yo male in central Missouri.  I have 120 acres of wooded land where I've cleared a couple acres and am still trying to get the house built to move into.  Wanted to build a straw home, but the high humidity and frequent rain storms led me to believe this would be difficult without a large crew to finish the home quickly.  Switched to wanting to build a cob home and ended up building a decent sized wellhouse/outbuilding/laundry out of earthbags to learn what not to do and learned I'm too old to be building anything larger out of dirt.  The joints just wouldn't take it.  Ended up building a concrete dome earth sheltered home.  Yea, I wasn't wild about the concrete either but I won't have to worry about tornados and the rocket mass heater I just finished should heat it no problem and it should remain cool all summer.  Still have a long way to go on the property but want to start an orchard, garden and a little livestock.  I'm not off the grid but I'm trying to reduce my footprint as much as possible and would like to work on alternative power for the property sometime in the future.  This could be solar, wind, biogas, or anything else I could come up with.

Enough about where I'm living and more about me.  I'm a classically trained chef with a degree in chemical engineering (worked as an automation engineer) and a long time dungeon master, the game type not the kinky kind.  I have more projects on my lists of things I want to build than I will ever be able to get around to so I just keep working on what's in front of me and don't worry about it.  Oh, I'm also a devout atheist who isn't interested in any conversion attempts and doesn't believe in non-science backed.... ahem.... stuff.  I'm open to new ideas and ways of doing things they just have to be based in reality.  I used to think I was a liberal until I lived in Seattle and realized I'm a moderate lefty.  My property is filled with deer and sometimes turkey and other game and I hope to someday fill my freezer but I just haven't made the effort yet.  I would never hunt anything I wasn't planning on eating and don't see the point of people hunting trophies.  I've always loved hiking and have visited most of the national parks in the western United States.  I've travelled a lot and moved around a lot but see that as mostly behind me and I hope to never move again.  I suppose I should mention that there will always be cats in the house but I wouldn't mind a dog or two in the yard.

Not sure what I'm looking for at this point other than intelligent companionship and help in the garden.  I'll do the cooking if you help with the dishes.

Wait a minute, who's what where?  I've recently moved to the Lebanon area (50 minute drive east of Springfield) and am very interested in getting to know others in the area practicing permaculture.  So far we have been trying to get a house started on our property but I'm all but ready to give up on natural building.  Seems too wet for strawbale unless the roof is up first, which is an option.  I'm about 80% done on a ~350sqft outbuilding with earthbags and it taught me that I'm too old to do a whole house with earthbags now unless I can get a lot of help.  Contractors here don't seem to want anything to do with natural building methods.  I mentioned wanting to have a rubblestone foundation to a couple contractors and they won't touch anything set on that foundation type.  But I have cleared a couple acres, got 10 hives of bees, saved all the logs from clearing the land for huglekultur beds and got our humanure composting beds set up.  I would love to see what else people in the area have set up and pick each others brain.  

It would be cool if there was a ferrous metal pressure cooker so an induction hob could be used.  All the pressure cookers I see for sale are made of aluminum.

Welcome Angi,

Learning how to can has been on my to do list for quite a while.  I've been looking for/at pressure cookers for a few years...... and I don't know what to look for!  What is big enough?  What should I look for in a quality cooker?  The ones I have found for sale were fairly pricey and I could never decide to buy without knowing more about what I should be looking for.

How did your build go?  If you aren't finished I'd be willing to come up and work for a couple days.  I'm looking to build a straw bale home in St Clair county and have a thousand questions to ask while we work.  First off, where did you find the bales!  I moved here expecting to be able to source straw locally but am having trouble finding a source.