Suburban Permaculture

Permaculture is one of those things that I believe in strongly but have an irrational fear of. It all makes sense but I’m kind of paralyzed when it comes to getting started. I found a local (Eugene, OR) site that I need to explore a lot more. It has some great resources in addition to describing their own experiences. Be sure to check out their Painting Adventures link. I may have to do a separate post on that. Here are two before and after photos of a residence that was transformed through permaculture practices.

Sunroom before

Sunroom after

This site has some great information on cold frames, too. Here’s the link to the home page: http://www.suburbanpermaculture.org/index.htm

Bees

Backyard Hive

I have long dreamed of keeping bees and gathering my own honey. Even when I was young, though, I was put off by the “necessity” of killing the queen bee. It didn’t seem right. The older I got and the more I began to realize how intrusive and exploitative humans generally are in their in interactions with the natural world, I became convinced that killing the queen wasn’t really necessary. And the more I read about the decline of the honeybee around the world the more I believed man’s interference with the queens and the natural evolution of hives has a lot to do with it all.

Earlier this year I took a short Introduction to Beekeeping class. My instructor was a more or less “traditional” beekeeper but he did tell us about a natural movement in beekeeping and he told us of some resources. I would like to share some sites that I found that fits with my philosophy.

http://www.spikenardfarm.org/honeybees.shtml

http://www.biobees.com/ (many people have told me this is one of the best)

http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/main.htm

http://www.beeguardian.org/

http://www.backyardhive.com/

I currently have my house up for sale and don’t want to start keeping bees until I move. But this is something I am definitely going to get involved in once I relocate.

Fresh Start This Summer

Roasting Corn

I’m unemployed now, have my house up for sale, am living with as little electricity as possible (we’ve shut off the fridge, the stove, and most of the lights) and want to focus on helping myself and others become self-sufficient. We all need to work together to take care of ourselves, if that makes any sense. The focus of this country needs to change from the masses eeking out a living while working for a few huge, wealthy, wasteful conglomerates to a country of individuals taking care of themselves with a little help from their friends and neighbors.

Here are two of my other blogs. http://stuckincottagegrove.wordpress.com/

http://1421laurelhilldrive.wordpress.com/

My daughter and I are cooking (when we cook) outside on an open fire, in a pit we put together ourselves. All of our food is in bowls and tubs that are filled with cold water from our spring and with ice when we get into town and buy some. Keeping the raw chicken I feed our cats and dog cold is my biggest challenge. Luckily, they don’t have the same foodhandling requirements that humans do. We use LED lanterns and lights in many of the rooms in the house, I wash only with cold water and hang my clothes out to dry. We do have our computers running and our TV, which we use to watch DVDs on. We don’t have cable or satellite or anything. We have all of that hooked up to a power strip which we shut off when our “toys” are not in use.

I got some books from the library on hydropower. I believe that even the little bit of water I have coming from my overflow hose from the water tank should be capable of providing me with some kind of power. I believe in making everything as simple as possible. I am disillusioned with solar power and it’s complex systems requiring that people have their own power stations in their back yard. We need to learn to build more efficiently and live simpler. We need to live with less. My daughter and I have no experience with “roughing” it. We are not do it yourselfers or adept at building/constructing/tool use. This is our adventure. We would love stories of similar adventures and any advice anyone can offer.