Alexandra Malecki

Tereza Okava wrote:As it is, I can't believe people aren't beating a path to Wheaton Labs for the chance to have a place to live AND learn stuff.

I'm really surprised as well.  Yet, it is a radical leap out of the system.

Thank you!! =)

It's been over two weeks since I've returned from my last trip (and my last post). I've been catching up on the unpacking/cleaning, processing and preserving of my harvest (including 44.9lbs of sunchokes from my GAMCOD hugel and 240+lbs of apples harvested from my friend's farm), putting my garden to bed for the winter, saving seed, making medicine (fire cider, garlic honey ferments, rose hip syrup, herbal oil infusions), decorating and undecorating from Halloween, sharpening all of my knives to prepare for Thanksgiving, a variety of other house and kid stuff, and did I say cleaning and cooking?

I've needed some time to also decompress (more like rewire my brain to not think about BBs all of the time) and think about our next steps. Believe it or not, I didn't use to take photos of everything I did. I use to prefer to leave my phone on a dresser unattended to for days (to the annoyance of others) but after the last year and a half I now carry it everywhere so that I can take photos. As I've been going about my day-to-day I STILL find myself taking photos. I figured I’d share a few photos:

We opt out of the commercialization and sugar for halloween. I kind of look at trick or treating like a way to giveaway stuff we don't want. "Choose your fate"

We didn’t have many visitors but the highly fragranced soap (that I didn’t know how to get rid of) was most popular and the apples were also more popular than the candy. The candy is pretty stale, likely many years old (I do that intentionally to make it gross). Hey, I had disclaimers!! Meanwhile, we chose to watch Spiderwick and Goosebumps as a family instead of going door to door.

I took a picture simply because it was one of my favorite moments. I love when my kids want to cook with me. Here, my son is pickling cucumbers, my daughter is processing apples, and I’m making fire cider (and giving them assistance):


Speaking of apples, we harvested over 240lbs of apples! The kids and I have been processing as many apples as possible. Dehydrating, sauce, and vinegar with the scraps. Very little actually makes it to the compost bin.


This is a photo I took purely because my brain is still in BB documentation mode:



This is a photo of the SKIP progress poster that I mounted on the wall to keep my family engaged in the SKIP process. My kids voluntarily drew their vision for our future home. I love them (referring to the kids but also the art). Time to take it down:


Months ago, I made a whipped tallow butter and I made so much of it that I gave it away to everyone and I’m honestly surprised by how many people are asking for more! One of my friends wanted to learn how to make it so that she could gift it away for the holidays so I invited her over and we (including my daughter) spent an entire afternoon weighing and measuring, reading the “Herbal Vade Mecum” for the herbs I grew or foraged that we each wanted to add to our personal blends. Next weekend we’ll spend time together again to whip the infused carrier oils into the tallow that I clarified from my friend’s goat (named scroto baggins, thank you scroto!). This photo is of our blends after a 12hr infusion at 180deg:

It makes me happy to share and do these kind of things with friends.

It’s that time of year to make garlic honey ferments, I like it on its own and added to other medicinal concoctions like fire cider. I use is to support the immune and digestive systems:

Then there’s putting the garden to bed and saving seed, here are some examples:


I like making seedballs out of everything and will make more seedballs by next Spring.

It’s been helpful to stay busy to keep my monkey brain calm and to not obsess over planning for the future. At the moment, we’re waiting. Waiting for an Otis/Otessa to reach out. Surprisingly, no one has reached out to me since I hit the PEP2 milestone. We’re still hopeful that we’re on the right path.

I did the university path. I graduated in 3 years and had 2 full academic scholarships. I also had internships at an Engineering company every summer (2 out of 3 summers I also had a food service job on top of my internship). I graduated with <$7000 of debt that I was able to pay off within 4 months (meaning I didn't pay interest on my loans) after graduating. A BS degree in Mech Eng really paid off for me. I was able to save for a down payment and afford my first house plus rental (I purchased a duplex but I don't advise getting an FHA loan because fighting to refinance to a conventional loan was nearly impossible -- though I was successful) when I was 22 which was really helpful for building equity in the real estate world before prices for an entry-level home became out of reach for my peers. Honestly, I look around at my peers and don't know how they're supposed to make it, forget about the future of young 20s right now. A lot of my peers don't have kids and opt to travel instead of saving it because their forward outlook is so dismal. Most people I have these kind of conversations with have accepted that they will continue to work until the day they die. This is the new norm.

If someone were to have told me that SKIP was an alternative to college back when I was 18, I would NOT have considered it. I needed financial stability and independence to improve my circumstances. Plus I knew nothing about permaculture or gardening or the presence of toxic gick everywhere, etc. Also, there's no guarantee that someone will just fork over everything to someone they've never met - that wouldn't haven't worked for 18-year old me.

Things are so different now than they were when I was going to college. I use to peddle my kids' college savings accounts amongst family and friends during gift-giving events. I stopped peddling it a few years ago and my husband and I no longer contribute to it. My husband (who has a MS in MechEng) and I both feel more strongly about our kids going to trade school/apprenticeship rather than college. There are so many reasons we feel this way. Mostly because we see the impact of AI on our industry and we see the low caliber of applicants during hiring events. What's the point of a degree anymore? Of course, that's a generalization and there are exceptions.

Another tangent: my husband and I had a conversation with a freshman (family friend) who's going to a prestigious University near us. Her experience at this University only reinforced my desire to deter my kids from considering getting a degree. I'd rather not go into the details but the most troubling aspect was rampant drug access/use.

There are probably a dozen other reasons why I don't wish for my kids to get a university degree that I won't dig into.

----

Anyhow, the point I want to mention here is that the target audience for the bootcamp and SKIP are people who haven't made a college commitment yet. Once an individual goes the college route, they incur debt and it's unlikely that they'll make it out of there with as little or less debt than I accrued. I'm not sure if this is the demographic of people going to the bootcamp and it doesn't appear that it's the demographic of people doing SKIP.

I'd like to know how to create a pipeline to high school students to encourage them to go the unbeaten path. How many high school students know what permaculture is?

wow, thanks for creating this! I also have wonderings about how much of the remaining coals are considered biochar. I think I need to do more research.

Looking at the Amazon product page, it says it’s made out of PLA + PBAT + Cornstarch.


Feel free to look up what pla and pbat are made of. To be clear, they must be broken down using specific commercial composting methods. Otherwise they won’t break down. This study on microplastics present in the ocean reports that “ a much larger quantity of plastic fragments/particles were formed in all aquatic environments from PBAT than from LDPE (low-density polyethylene).”


To make this simple, I’d say no since pla and pbat are products of the plastic industry and they’re referred to as plastic. The end of life cycle of this product is also troubling.

It might be assumed that the jenkins list would have to be done at wheaton labs since... where else is there an official "willow feeder".

However, add coat hooks to a willow feeder is also in the jenkins list and there's currently precedent for someone doing this in a place that maybe could be a willow feeder but not officially? who knows. The BB doesn't require you to prove that it's a willow feeder. I recall looking at this BB submission and passing up on it to allow someone more qualified to evaluate:  https://permies.com/wiki/156725/pep-greywater-willow-feeders/Add-Coat-Hooks-Willow-Feeder#2932468

Rebekah Harmon wrote:I'm including detail on this meal because I know most of you would feel lucky to eat this permie food at my table with me. I'm proud of it! Or at least, I was.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:Yeah, I'm giving up, sadly. I suppose the last hundred meals could be meals I make myself, three times a day. 😞

My heart breaks for you. When you cooked for the Garden Master's course, you made the most delicious, nutritious food!! I definitely felt lucky to eat your creations! I get your burn-out, cooking for a family that doesn't FULLY appreciate how much work you put into the entire process of feeding them day in and out. I'm talking the procurement (sourcing, growing, hunting), the planning, and thennnn the cooking. It's so hard for highly nutritious whole foods to compete with convenient, highly processed alternatives.

You've been doing SO MUCH food prep that it's also easy to see why you have burnout.

I hope you continue to put in the good fight. Not necessarily for the BB but because you know it's better for your family. Maybe you need a heart to heart or accept feedback on what your family members can handle or not? My personal approach when nothing else works is something more like: you're going to eat it and like it but if you keep complaining then I'm only making this for the next week. I'm not proud of it but I also have an extremely low tolerance for complaining. Anyway, hugs to you.

Are you pursuing PEP?  This will be a central repository for Otises to shop for PEPpers (or SKIPpers) that have successfully completed at least 60BBs.  To see a list of all the participants, here's the Leaderboard.

Some day this may be automated to sort the list based on how far along in the PEP program you've gotten.  For now it will be a bit clunky and manual.  To get your name added to this post, add a reply with a paragraph about why you're doing PEP, if you're looking for property, where that property would need to be for you to be happy, size of property, etc so that Otises can determine if you might be a close fit for them.

PEPpers:
PEP2:
Mike Haasl
Alexandra Malecki PEP 2 Badges

PEP1:
Opalyn Rose PEP1 & 22 Sand Badges and details below
Rebekah Harmon PEP 1 Badges
Cheryl Loomans PEP 1 Badges

BB60:
Ashley Cottonwood
Edward Norton
Luke Mitchell
Kevin Harbin
Inge Leonora-den Ouden
L. Johnson
James Rhodes
Raphael Blais
Nikki Roche
Patrick W Kelly
Tina Wolf
Tim Norton

BB100:
Joy Hancock

Note: if you're looking for a place to practice your PEP skills, check out this thread: Locations to do PEP

Today's the day! Yippee!! I'd like to officially request my PEP2 badge!

Requirements:
1 Wood badge:   Rocket
7 Straw badges: Natural Medicine, Foraging, Food prep and preservation, homesteading, Community Living, Tool Care, Gardening,
14 Sand Badges: Woodland Care, Greywater, Animal Care, Metalworking, Earthworks, Dimensional Lumber, Textiles, Oddball, Nest, Round wood woodworking, Plumbing, Electricity, Natural Building, and Commerce.

100 BBVs: I have certified 102 BBvs to date

I quit my corporate job in March 2024 and committed to completing PEP2. At that time, I had 20 BBs that I had completed for fun but had previously given it up because suffering through an early rejection made it not fun. When I committed to completing PEP2, I knew that there would be many challenges that I'd have to get through. No matter what. There wasn't a choice to give up because my husband and kids were counting on me. Speaking of family, my husband and kids are the best. They have been my greatest supporters. They've literally rooted for me and helped me when things were challenging. They've hustled to get photos for me, read the requirements for me when my hands were full, and, honestly, countless other ways. My name is on here getting the glory but my husband and kids have been along there with me every step of the way. I think, in many ways, I wouldn't have made it this far without them to motivate me. The hope of getting to move to a homestead is a shared dream that we all have.

I've undertaken the PEP2 goal like it was my full-time job. Okay, maybe less like a job and more of an obsession since I also worked most evenings and weekends. I've kept metrics on my progress, assigned time estimates to completion, kept to my timelines, and created many smaller, achievable goals along the way. I've printed updates and posted it to our walls so that my family could also take part in celebrating every row that we crossed off! I've also declined many, many other opportunities so that I could stay focused and committed to this goal. I also want to point out that I have had the luxury of not having to worry about bills, feeding my kids, acquiring all of the tools and materials, travel costs, incidentals, etc. My husband and I have looked at this process as an investment for our future. I feel fortunate that I have the resources to expedite my journey to PEP2. I strategically picked my Straw and Wood level badges to expedite my timeline. I picked a path to PEP2 that prioritized my timeline and assessed feasibility. Going the rocket wood level route wasn't my first choice, I much prefer to garden and grow food but I prioritized timeline. As intimidating as it was to do the rocket wood badge, I also knew that it could give me and my family a pathway to a future livelihood. I hope to make rocket heating a family business in the future.

I can also say that my life has opened up new, unforeseen opportunities because of SKIP. It's forced me out of my comfort zone, connected me to new people I otherwise wouldn't have made connections with, given my family (and myself) new experiences, and so many more delightful outcomes. I committed to SKIP in part because I wanted to feel confident that this city gal had what it took to homestead. I feel that I've accomplished that goal and now feel certain that I'm ready to change our families' lifestyle. I'm excited, emotional, and hopeful for this next part of our family's journey. I hope it's lovely and that I can give back to those after me.

I'd be remiss to not also acknowledge all of the permies staff that have seen me through this journey. I'm grateful to each of you and the care that you have in other humans that you don't know and, even more than that, each of the individual parts you play in making the world just a little bit better. Many thanks!!

As much as I have looked forward to not doing SKIP any longer, it turns out that each of my kids plan to do SKIP when they grow up. I'm so proud of those little monsters I created. I think this is enough blubbering for now. I guess I'll be continuing to post the next parts of this SKIP journey

Thank you, Nancy, you’re so kind!

Today I plan to meet my husband to camp at a place that I call heaven on earth. It’s midway between my friend’s farm and home. It’s been far too long since we’ve been back there so, for me, it’s a perfect way to relax, recharge, and celebrate!

600 posts? Funny, that is coincidental and feels like a lot and a small amount at the same time!! I have even more to celebrate now ;) thanks Mike!!