I have been a customer of Uhaul storage and Uhaul rental vehicles for many years. I have had a number of occasions where I had to put things in storage or face losing them because I could not put them in a backpack or next to the couch I was borrowing from a friend. Over the years I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on storage fees and truck rentals moving things in and out of storage. So Much has been wasted in this process. I still have not found a permanent place to be and I still have much in storage about 2500 miles away. It is a challenge only when the things which are being stored cannot be replaced. In a storage in Hamden, CT, I have all of my family artwork, some original artifacts from around the globe, an afghan that would fit a king sized bed that was made for me by a dear friend now gone from this world and many of the tools with which a craftsman can seek gainful pursuits. Some of those things can be replaced but most cannot. I have easily paid for my tools seven fold in storage fees. If I had back every dime I ever spent at Uhaul I could easily buy a piece of land with enough forestry on it to build a weather tight shed large enough to house all of it and myself.
Sometimes I wonder if cutting off everything from my past is the best course of action but My family art is works done by those no longer living and cannot be replaced. Sentimental value is a big thing to address in this topic and I am sure there are voices on both sides of that choice with compelling reason to do or not do in regards to the original and irreplaceable works of family.
paul wheaton wrote:I didn't make the document, I found it.
I would also like to see this format greatly expanded.
The honey bee, amazing creature that it is, has purpose, and gets around. Works hard for the queen and has a unique place within the system of pollenation, and is much established as an important part of life for flour and fauna alike.
The bumble bee also pollenates but produces less honey, yet seems to have a bit of a weight problem,(you do the math), which is offset by the fact that it defies the laws of physics just getting around according to Urban legend, giving us all a warm (little engine that could) feeling inside, or at least those of us with a soul.
The yellow jacket is a carnivorous bastard who is protected and fed by the queen herself until it grows up to be a predatory bully among other bullies. Socially anti social bastards....yet, part of the great cycle of life.
Really, I know little about them all. I learned something today. Yay me. Thanks for the post.
From behind the wall it is only the sounds of encouragement or chastisement that one can hear. When the working tools are in their hands, the sight of working tools tearing down the walls is a long sought but ever present dream, perpetuated by hope and darkened by despair.
My dreams, as I have observed the dreams of others, are not only mine, but shared.
"We're all out of roofs. But we still have tiny ads:" I love this quote. It was at the end of my thread.
In my element, I can help with that....just sayin. I'm also a pretty good cook.
I would like to have an opportunity to help some ants finish up some projects while working towards becoming an active member of the community. I was humbled today by the efforts of one person there who has quite a handful and my immediate reaction is to jump right in and help. That feeling has been one of the things which keeps me going in life. The desire to help others. I do have goals but they have been pretty vague. They have been life long though; food, shelter, security, utility, community. Sometimes I get these five things mixed up and out of order, often collapsing efforts.
Food for thought.
What is key for strong homesteading within a community? (question is rhetorical only if no one feels the need to comment)
I am curious about the people in the community and what they are focused on.
Are there plans for a rocket stove kiln for pottery?
A rocket stove forge for working metals?
Finding a way to coax that river closer to the village via the use of a diversion pond and an aqueduct system.
Rainfall and snowfall collection ponds?
I wish I were walking the land right now.
I want some jerky. I like the food dehydrators that I saw in one thread.
Are there any Ants or Gappers who are archers?
So then I was thinking about a cabin i built with a really good woman when we were in upstate, NY
It was twenty two feet long, twelve feet deep eight foot tall rear wall and roughly sixteen foot tall front wall. fully insulated and sheetrocked. The whole front was lofted to have storage up out of the way, and would house a rain collection barrel.
Off the bottom of the barrel would be a copper line run to the stovepipe, drop down the wall from a T splitter, spiral up the stove pipe and the rejoin the cold feed parallel and continue across the wall to the sink area (or stub out the wall for a shower)where they would drop down and attach to a faucet. The barrel, being above everything would gravity feed both hot and cold running water with an adjustment on the hot coil for varying the temperature and the option to install a sleeve to cease heating the water.
This part of that dream never came to fruition. I always wanted to work out whatever bugs surfaced in setting this system up.
Converting it to fit a 55 gal drum in a rocket stove set up would be possible with the right design and placement.
I would love to experiment with this.
I would like an underground house ultimately, like a kiva only different.
Ok, that is my dose of random for the evening. I hope it inspires good ideas and good dreams of world domination through permaculture.
Glad I got that out. I have some room in my head now. Maybe I can have math back, or my sense of humor.
"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours."
I did sign up for woofers because it seems like a good opportunity to learn about farming and permaculture and meeting people who know their stuff but I was really fascinated by what Paul is up to up at Wheaton Labs. Plus, I am road tired and need roots. I just made that official today. I will be heading up there as soon as I get wrapped up here and schedule a bus ticket.
Hey there to all of the people up at Wheaton Labs, Gappers, Ants and others in between.
I am about to vacate my apartment with nothing other than two duffles packed with random, my new cheap, not so smart phone, a laptop with a dying fan and a fervent prayer I have the stuff to make a strong go at it. I have a couple of questions for Paul and all of you as well.
I have never used paypal before. Is the gapper fee considered goods and services or friends and family purchase? Goods and services, the recipient Pays a fee. Are you aware of the distinction and if so are you in this case considered friends and family? This question is more for the one who handles receipt of gappers and ants fees. Paul Wheaton I would imagine. ?? (ready to click send so.....)
Next question:
I am about to book a bus from Phoenix so I need to know if I can get picked up somehow from the Greyhound station in Missoula or is there a shuttle, tractor beam, transporter room or some other service somewhere in town I need to get to once I get off the bus?
Next question:
Should I plan on bringing food up from town? I have some money for the trip and the fee and will have a prudent reserve for some initial supplies once I get there. trying to travel light but also trying not to throw away things I already possess. Cutting losses and thinning things to necessity is tough sometimes. In other words, What can't I do without in the beginning of my stay?
Any feedback would be helpful.
A little about me. I have some building skills. I have some art history. I am musically inclined. (although I do not have my guitar with me) I want to learn about permaculture and ultimately become an ant and be part of the deep roots program. I currently cannot afford a new laptop so I am having difficulty with running it. I still have a lot of material to go through to be an ant but I need to save and earn as well so I can begin my first phase of survive to live, during which time I will be looking for opportunities to spend quality time getting to know all of you, adjust to the environment, and begin to integrate into whatever part of Wheaton Labs I am most suited initially.
My goal is to shift from survive to live to thrive. It may take some time to do that but I am willing to put in the effort.
Paul, I am still interested in coming up there in some capacity. I just read through this entire thread about ant village and I wondered about how the ants have set up things like having a mailing address. Do they have other homes or are they receiving mail to a P.O. box or did they just quit the grid entirely and head for the hills?
I am also trying to determine the best course of action for myself. I signed up with woofers and had been looking for Permaculture communities but I was looking back east because all of my tools, including my old hand tools which I have accumulated over the years are still in storage back in New Haven, CT. I have no current revenue stream or savings and I am not even sure I know what I could do at Wheaton Labs to make money just yet. I just have building skills and some art and music ability tossed in there but not really on-line savvy enough to drum up e-business. You guys make it look easy. Are ants teaming up at this point in their evolution to group think revenue opportunities to draw attention to themselves, their products or services, or to champion Wheaton Labs in any way, to bolster support for the whole team At Wheaton Labs?
I guess I want to know is if they have evolved into a community among themselves in a mutually supportive way?
Remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people. I was only born at Yale, I didn't attend the university.
I caught some ripples from the war front about boot camp in your secret mountain base.
Here is the quote.
"The Bootcamp program in a nutshell: work on permaculture and homesteading projects, get a bunk and some basic food staples. This is not an $8000 course (yet!). You pay $100, work, and then receive tickets to our events or even an acre of land.
April 2017: there are currently openings
Okay, you know what bootcamp is, right? It is when you join the armed forces and are put through rigorous and painful training in order to prepare you for war. Yuck. "
My question is............Are there current openings as of June 2nd? I need to retreat to higher ground and regroup. This sounds like just the right place to plant my tree.
I spent most of yesterday on this forum and continues to find really interesting things about what to do and how to do it. I am moving on in a number of ways because daily I have been saying no to everything else.
I am sure I will find a good place to start and I do expect that it will take a ton of adjustment but the effort is worth the cost of getting healthy and being better equipped to live fully in a whole health way.
Truth be told, I made a lot of bad choices in my journey and have had many people hit me with piles of should along the way. I am glad I finally get here to this "Place for gentle souls to learn about permieculture." I have every desire to be living in stark contrast to what I became conditioned to as a city person with no links to rural escape plans, but learning a whole new world at forty-six is a bit of a daunting task. So far, I have found, either on this site or through this site, some very good possible directions I could go in to break the ice with detoxing from Modern conveniences and getting out of the artificial pace of modernity and connect with real life, whatever the cost to my ego and lack of knowledge. I am discovering slowly as I watch the videos and read the threads That there are many things I need to know and many other things I will need to learn once I leap into it. I hesitate to ask a should question here because my autistic like brain might overload with too many suggestions all at once so I will not ask anyone what I should focus on first.........but....
So I am in Phoenix, it is shifting from summer to hell as I am told by locals and I am realizing I have never lived in the kind of environment where these things are happening. I am from Connecticut and I am not aware of anything like this there. I like the wwoofing idea and the intentional permieculture concept a lot. My question is about residence. I simply cannot afford to maintain a residence just for the sake of having a mailing address. How do people generally deal with that issue when making the shift to something Like a boot camp opportunity or permaculture coop or community?
Even having a tiny house on wheels requires wheels which need an address to register it to.
Remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. (self deprecation humor)
I was told when I was a kid that if I didn't know something I should ask...................yeah.
That was a really great experience. She was a trooper. She fell from a nest as a pinky from about thirty feet, and hit the lawn and rolled to the sidewalk. Helpless, on my birthday. I researched the needs, and raised her to release and was able to do so successfully. It was a deeply rewarding experience.
Thank you for spending your life doing what is needed to honor the Earth Mother. I have just joined this site and found your threads. I began learning much later in life, after becoming sickened by being separated from the soil I used to play in. I never learned the things you have been working with since a few months before my own birth. I am now seeking out a thriving permaculture community to join to bring what skills I do have to help do my part.
That made me laugh out loud!!! Thanks for the feedback regarding my post gir bot! I will take some time to review protocol for discussion boards. Forgive me if I was out of bounds with the subject matter. If it is historically a sensitive subject I am fine with removing it. I am a newby to the community and I will edit my post if I can navigate back to it.
I went to the site but it basically says that you go spent a half a day helping and learning and they feed you and let you stay the night. I cant spend money on a membership that has no real opportunity to land somewhere permanently or at least for a big block of time. That was why I joined this site. to find a place that is established and looking for people to come and stay there and become part of it, not just visit. Thanks for the suggestion though, If i had the money to spend I would sign up and look deeper but I really don't.
The grass is always greener blah blah blah. Listen, I get it, I really do. Making rash decisions when under stress is often not a good thing to do. Usually emotions are running high when this happens to me and I usually do end up in a worse situation. Lately though, on the heels of losing pretty much everything that means anything to me, and still stuck facing the same bleak future which has always bothered me about our greedy money driven society, I am certain that I am not running away when I am painfully aware that I have been systematically excluded from re-entering that circus after being disabled for a number of years.
Life happens, often catching us off guard. I witnessed my condition beginning to stabilize a few years ago during a time when other events began to happen. Cancer, Not me, my mother. Pancreatic cancer. Then my relationship followed, then my home, the loss of friends, peer support, it was a long drawn out nightmare which put me at the mercy of whatever came along. Then my grandmother. Cancer. It was pretty quick. Then it was a rapid deterioration of my condition, shredding my self esteem, self worth, my ability to think clearly. I came to the realization that I had been walking around is a state of shock and hopelessness. That was two and a half years ago. Nearly every day since then has amounted to the same end result. No green. No Grass. I don't have the energy to draft a clever speech for a TED talk. I don't have a get rich quick idea. I have the same thing I had as a kid, a need for shelter, food, a family and community, and work suited form my ability.
I don't find myself on this website by accident. Five years ago I began trying to move towards a more sustainable self governed life with other like minded people. I want to grow my own food. I want to build my own shelter. I want to help others do these things as well. So badly that it makes me gut sick to not be able to find the place and the people and the opportunity to do so. I was once a very gifted craftsman, musician, artist and writer. These things begin to slip away when you lose your voice in the world. I am looking for a place to walk towards that is established. A community that is already doing these things. I do not want to do anything else but change my life by completely changing my lifestyle with a strong community of people who are skilled at living off their own powers and creative community spirit. I am sick, I need a place to do this because it is now the only thing that makes sense to me completely.
I am in Arizona, My tools are in Connecticut. My brother is in Pennsylvania, My daughter is in upstate New York. I have a good friend in Cincinatti, Ohio. Any of these locations hold a slight possibility for me but without a community there to receive me and give me something to do, I am not going to last long on my own.
Willing to travel with the clothes on my back and the skills that I possess, I just need the opportunity from a compassionate community.
?? (ready to click send so.....)