Thursday, October 4, 2007

A Message from the Earth Masters Program

Plans for 2008

The Beginnings of the Farm Fairy Village

This year we are going to be putting most of our large group classes on hold while we begin to lay out a Farm Fairy Village Demonstration Site. With this exciting work in progress our weekday and weekend classes will have to be limited. The Farm Fairy Village is a compilation of many simple living methods all rolled into one: a miniature hobbit village on six acres in Yellowpoint. We will be attempting to gradually create our own food supply, eat low on the food chain, support the earth with a low-power approach and experiment with many of our own favorite appropriate technologies.

Earth Masters small group and One-on-One instruction, in many subjects, will still be available to those who are really serious and keen to BE the change. Please call and make arrangements and attend as you would like. Multiple approaches are possible. Once we have your available schedule, we will arrange an interning instructor to work with you or a small group to enable your ultimate exposure to what you want to learn about the most. Join us in experiencing bicycle power creation, raw foods, solar cooking, and many of the little things that can create a much lighter, tiny footprint. Journey, with us, into the natural building, farm fairy homestead, self-reliant (in progress), food secure world. An outline of the material you want to cover will be drawn up and, as your time allows, you will begin to explore your chosen areas of passion.

A short chat over the phone will result in any arrangements with us at very reasonable cost. We want to help make it possible for ANYONE to learn more of the ins and outs of DOING life sustainably, anywhere! We certainly don't want enthusiastic people to miss out on gaining more fabulous life skills that could effect important change on our planet, and possibly even save many lives. If we have what you want, we will be sure to make arrangements at a price that works for you. If cash is not possible, we will consider ways to barter and trade in whatever gifts you obviously have abundant to your universe.

We're building a village! There will be a whole lot that can do to help.

Our Wish List is here and please feel free to add a suggestion or offer whatever seems reasonable ... or not. We'll take any sincere person or offer into our hearts. We WANT you to have this experience. Come and learn or help us build this opportunity at the Farm Fairy Village!

Monday, September 3, 2007

Entering the Farm Fairy Kingdom

It's always good to start with someone who knows and can point you in the right direction. I just recieved an email message from Rusty Oxydado (who is on the BC Primitives listserv). I really appreciate the help. He suggests, "you really don't need to be schooled to learn how to make a shelter in the wilds, you will find a way, you may need to learn how to get food, and what to do with it when you get it, I think you will find a lot of information through the homesteading groups." Try HeartForHomesteading@yahoogroups.com or for wilderness survival, try - http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/index.php.

I've dreamed and thought about some of the ins and outs of doing this for years, but was stuck working in the big city, then the small cities, then the smaller communities and now rural life... Living the Experiment on 6 1/2 acres to begin. My goal is to live with as little power or footprint as possible and I've dreamed up all kinds of theoretical ways to do this, but now is the chance to prove that it works. (or some of it anyway)

I'll always be boiling any relative successes down through more and more 'pure goal' ingenuities: starting from the rather cushy, but much safer end, of course. I can always jump off the ride to safety at any point, so it seems a very cushy life, right now. I've got this theory about living on less than a hundred dollars a month and I'd like to be at zero, so instead of eating the sprouts, I want to grow the seed. I want to provide my very minimal power to a tiny earth cabin, by cycling my bike generator and with small amounts of tiny sticks burned in two little rocket stoves (all of these things I've yet to build) as needed, but they will come.

I've collected the clothes (for all four seasons) that will last me all my life (with a bit of stitching here and there) and have experimented with only turning the power on one day a week throughout the winter... so, so far so good... so now here we go with Day 3 of actually living with the impending winter (of course I still have obligations in the city and so can only live it a few days at a time for the next few months, but after that, it might be more of a full time thing, with only minor excursions back into town). The computer is part of the experiment here and the landowner gives me opportunity to come in from outside to make our posts for things on our working group site and to answer emails (I have a backlog of other work to finish off before I start posting these village-related items, a diary for our interns, but there's no rush.) I'm just so excited to be doing this.

I'm loving every minute of it. Here I am. Living the dream. Hasn't sunk in yet. But I can't tell you how happy I am to be here!

My deepest gratitude to the Nature Kingdom and all who have made this possible.

Cheers for this moment, and much to come...
: )) Wezley

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Holy Economy of Power!

Hi,
Wow!

Have I ever discovered the way to make my body sing! Holy health benefits, Batman. I've been eating raw sprouts (I muscle tested that I should start learning to do this at 40% raw foods per day for the first 6 - 9 months) for a couple or few weeks now (time is a blur).

Last week we calculated that our new 32 bin shelf unit (collected, for $10, thru recycling and from our friends at the local health food store when they were replacing theirs) could hold enough sproutable foods to feed 5 people for a year! Here's the kicker, though - the same amount of dry food can feed 30 people for a year, when it's sprouted! Now that's an equation that HAS to be part of our experiment. (They say the vibration of the raw foods will raise the vibration of the cooked food, as well, so load it up, mix it together, pile it on top. It has to be good for you.)

Mind you, all of those 30 people would have to be used to eating raw foods and feel quite okay with it. There's likely to be a decent adjustment period. I have to say, however, that if you're doing the adjusting, it's remarkably easy to "feel normal" while just adding as much sprouts as you like to your already cooked - and I know it's healthy, local and organic - dinners, lunch and breakfasts. I find burritos are the way to go and it seems beans and brown rice are cheap, filling and adaptable enough to make the transition feel harmless - and very yummy! I love burritos, can you tell? And I wouldn't want to give up oatmeal, either.

So, now, the Experiment has to include - growing each of those sproutable crops or those that are nutritionally substitutable - the ones that will grow here locally on our wet West Coast, or that I can feel reasonable comfortable that I can grow alone, given a year or ten of trial and experiment (I'm not going to say, error.) My goal is to eventually to be able to grow enough food to keep 30 people alive and comfortable. Don't ask me where this goal comes from. It just seems like something each one of us needs to be able to do or at least understand, in case the time ever comes when one has to pull out such skill and use it.

My DEEPEST thanks, to Brian Adam Williams, our raw foods chef, who lately got me into this. I've longed for such a diet and am feeling more and more comfortable with this as the right way to live, for myself. I've objected to cooked foods, one way or another, throughout my entire life, post 2 years old, and now I think I might like to believe that this is the reason why. My body doesn't want so much of this cooked food business in it! I'm eating less, feeling more of a sustaining energy all day and rarely ever notice when I'm getting hungry (after the first few days). I'm down to eating twice a day. (And that happens on its own. Brian only eats once.) And I don't really notice it, but I sure notice the extra time and the endurance and new sense of calm that it brings with it.

This will help a lot, with where I have to go... living the experiment.
: )) Thanks SO much, Brian. I love you a lot. You're SO appreciated!
Tally ho, Wezley

Saturday, September 1, 2007

What will we use... Creating this Village from Scratch

Here it is. Day 1 - The start of our Farm Fairy Village demonstration site - Living the Experiment - test modeling.

I don't know what's to become of this, but I know we have a lot to build. We've discussed in general some of the things that need to be developed, most of it appropriate technology that we will need to make our lives work, so I thought I'd share some of the resource links that were sent by Eroc, following our EM (Earth Masters) Bicycle-powered Electric Generator workshop, put on a few weeks ago with Sally Bedford and our Oteshite interns, John and Antoino, who were here for the summer (and are now gone and are dearly missed).

Eric (the name his parents liked better) says... "Below follows several links that relate to our bicycle power workshop and some of the other ideas brought up regarding water and appropriate technology...

First is David Butchers site on pedal power, I personally think he has one of the better designs.
(http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html)

And of course the wonderful things happening at CCAT with there great pedal powered innovations is a real inspiration. (http://www.humboldt.edu/%)

The infamous pendulum pump of Veljko Milković. (http://www.veljkomilkovic.com/rucnaPumpaEng.html)

The rope pump (http://www.demotech.org/d-design/designA.html?d=43) we talked about and a page on traditional water pumps (http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Po-Re/Pumps-Traditional.html).

And some sites you should visit cuz theyre awesome...
PESwiki (http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page)
Appropedia (http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia)
Demotech (http://www.demotech.org/d-index.php)
and Keelynet (http://www.keelynet.com/) - a great site to keep up on the news of the day.

Dont be shy, follow these pages back and you will come across a great wealth of information that will blow your mind.

Enjoy, Eric

(I really love this signature quote that he uses...)

Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you."
~Pueblo Blessing ~

Here are some Bike Power & AT Links

Here are some earlier links from Eric...

Surfing the web I came across several sites on pedal power generators, seems to be two major designs- an exercise bike type model and one that works off of an existing bike. Ill give you this one website that links to the rest - http://www.energyplanet.info/Pedal_Power/

I also came across some neat ideas for self watering plants(container gardens).. DIY earthbox plans using old rubbermaid containers, Ill report on that...

(Eric suggests these links instead, now that he's looked through the one above.) Here is my list.

1 - http://www.stewardwood.org/resources/DIYcyclepower.htm

2 - http://www.scienceshareware.com/pedal-power-build-your-own.htm

3 - http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html#DIY%20Plans

4 - http://www.humboldt.edu/%7Eccat/pedalpower/

5 - http://www.webpal.org/webpal/b_recovery/3_alternate_energy/bike/bike.htm

http://www.appropedia.org/Systems_construction

Micro-irrigation Search Results
http://www.appropedia.org/Special:Search?ns0=1&ns1=1&ns2=1&ns3=1&ns12=1&ns13=1&ns14=1&ns15=1&ns100=1&ns101=1&ns102=1&ns103=1&redirs=1&search=micro+irrigation&searchx=Search

Terracing
http://www.appropedia.org/Living_with_the_Soil_8
http://www.appropedia.org/Living_with_the_Soil_9
http://www.appropedia.org/Traditional_Field_Crops_9#Water_management

Traditional Hand Plough, made of wood
http://www.appropedia.org/Original:Donkey_plough

Practical Action - Technical Information - all topics
http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/
as below...

Farming / Homesteading Blogs & Info
http://www.farmstart.ca/
http://heartrockgarden.blogspot.com/
http://tinyfarmblog.com/
http://www.backwoodshome.com/article_index.html
http://www.appropedia.org/Pkb7%27s_gardening_tips_from_the_Arcata_Educational_Farm
http://www.fallsbrookcentre.ca/agriculture/index.htm
http://www.farmfolkcityfolk.ca/

Rock Garden Plants
http://home.howstuffworks.com/rock-garden-plants-channel.htm

How to Plan a Rock Garden
http://home.howstuffworks.com/how-to-plan-a-rock-garden.htm

Garden Product - ideas
http://www.mastergardenproducts.com/lograisedbed.htm

Wilderness Survival Forum
http://www.wilderness-survival.net/chp1.php

Wild Food Plants & Recipes
http://wildfoodplants.com

Archives of Horticulture Info
http://www.hort.wisc.edu/mastergardener/Features/archives.htm

Wild Fermentation
http://www.wildfermentation.com/?source=wisefoodways.com

Saturday, August 25, 2007

shoutouts to global warming

whoa...i better get this load off my mind before it melts away like a smog induced mirage. well, we have finally returned to big city. yes, big city has many sushi places. speaking of which i never got a call back from teh sushi restaurant i applied at in nanaimo, or any other sushi restaurant i applied at in my life for that matter. hmm. i wonder why.
thats about all i can think of that i like about big city at the moment.
let me take you on a trip into the past. me and antonio spent three uneventful days on the greyhound bus getting to toronto, but just getting on the bus was an effort in itself. we departed from sooke by bus to get to the swartz bay ferry on the morning of the 19th cuz it was raining like a mofo, and i was just not in the mood to bust my knee sockets for 100km, then sit in my own slop of sweatiness on the bus ride to toronto. ferry. bus to airport. bike to station. all took way longer than expected (sumpin like 6.5 hours). our goal of catching the 6:45 bus out of vancouver, while still realizable had one minor flaw. that being that the courier office needed to ship our bikes back home closed at 5pm. we arrived 20 minutes late. fortunately the bus was "full" anyway (whatever that means) so we were stranded. its so lovely having wonderful friends you can count on to offer their floor to you, and Matthew Carol and Elissa Smith are some of such friends. very wonderful and cuddly friends who sheltered us from the lurking dangers of the big wet west city for the night. next day despite pre-planning we ended up running around sweating anyway while trying to get our bikes packed and onto the bus along with lots of trail mix for the journey ahead. whew. relax. ahhh.
sooke was also a wicked good time spent with the lovely leah and her lovely parents, eating lovely salmon freshly fished, taking some lovely leisurely bike rides, picking lotsa lovely berries, and just enjoying ourselves. can your parents adopt me leah?
the look on her face was priceless when we pulled up to her house at 9pm (after pseudo-stalking her address from teh phone book). it was my first day riding over 100km, just. from ganges on saltspring island, along the lochside trail, to victoria and the galloping goose to sooke. the goose is one kickass trail. flatter than roadkill.
the same cannot be said for saltpsing island, further enforcing the hilly reputation of the gulf islands. getting there was an easy 50km ride from cedar, the crew being the usual 2 suspects accompanied by our brutha in bikerly brawn, brian williams. we camped out at really cool farm (http://www.ecoreality.org) habitated by equally cooool hosts Jan and Carol. We went on a tour of the place to learn about all teh coooool projects that were in teh works such as the cooooooool veggie oil run van and the biodiesel production area. thats what got my toes a-tingling. for the rest of the two days we got put to work real good like good farmer boys diggin', hoin' and tractorin' up a storm and were provided with lots of yummy food and a wonderful atmosphere to live in exchange.
well...thats about it. hope the next batch of interns have as much fun as we did. until next time, here's john and antonio sayin'...keep your stick on the ice...ka-boom-boom-psshhh ka-boom-boom-psshhh...ineverplayicehockeyanymorecuztheresnowinter...ka-boom-boom-psshhh, oh yaaaaa...globalwarming!!!

Friday, August 10, 2007

tales of the homeless homeboys

interns log: blogdate...umm...i have no clue. but time is running out. it seems like so long ago that i updated since it has been a time filled with noteworthy events.

shortly after moving out to cedar we decided it as time for a much belated trip to lasqueti island. it was about an 80km ride from cedar to where we eventually camped that night, which was a nice refresher from our oteshing days. we made a stop at a wild patch of black berries by the side of the road and ate as much as we could and then filled up our tupperwares too. a stop at rathrevor beach was the perfect picnic spot, complimented with pb&h on a tarp like the nice couple that we are, then we made it to french creek to catch the last ferry of the day to lasqueti.

upon our arrival we realized that we had very little water, and nowhere to stay for the night. the only remedy to the first problem was to buy small 750ml bottles because there was no free drinkable water to be found, and the remedy to the second was found by biking around the island until we found an abandoned house with a nice view of the sunset on a bay.

the next morning we checked out the saturday market and bought some yummy things to tide us over until the fireman's fundraiser picnic in the afternoon where much yummy food was had. we met darren and lisa (from the bike generator workshop) and her sister there, then antonio smoked some unmentionables for the first time and became so incapacitated that he could not move and we had to hide and camp in the yard where the picnic was held.

the next day we just lounged around on the beach for a while then biked to squitty bay and camped there for the night all the while eating lots of pb&h augmented with some canned fishies. we just caught the 1pm ferry back to the big island but not before meeting and chatting with this cool guy named robert at the free store who had wrapped his bike frame in birch bark. it was BC day (i dunno what this day is celebrating exactly...maybe the greatness of BC?!) so everything was closed, including the sushi place we were dreaming about hitting up for the past few days. we just pigged out on black berries again instead. gotta love free roadside food.

here's antonio taking over...

So then we came back to Nanaimo with empty PB&H containers, sticky sweat-layered skin, and extremely stinky clothes. We were all ready to sit around the next day and do nothing, but we got a hold of this awesome natural builder, Adam Perry, and we repacked and another adventure was on the way.

We had to get from Nanaimo to Victoria where we would randezvous with Adam - so we left our bikes behind for the first time in a gazillion years, stuck out our thumbs, and hitch-hiked for the first time on the island. it was awesome - we never thought two homeless-looking guys would get a ride, but i guess we're just that cool! =D (The trick is to raise your thumb up high and confidently, and to smile the shit out of your face).

Then we got a drive to Sooke via Adam, and got to work on a really awesome natural building. We spent two days smearing horse poop on the walls, and by the end of it all, our wrists and elbows were about to disintegrate. But we got a lot done and our plaster looked kick-ass! We expected to work for nothing at all, but being the always-fortunate punks that we are - we were fed yummie foodies, had super cute energetic twins to hang out with, and at the end (since we did such a wicked job), were paid! Grooovy baby...

After chilling after a long day's work, talking about macho manly things, and drinking our nice, cold, V8's - we decided that our job there was done. We paid a short visit to Adam's friend in Victoria, laided on some hammocks, drank some tea, and had a good 'ol time. With our happy-tanks full and back muscles relaxed, we headed home in the quiet of the night under a sky full of...RAINCLOUDS! F*CK!!!

now we've got another weekend cobbing workshop and a trip to saltspring island to learn about biodiesel to look forward to before heading back east. whew!

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

the loaves and fishes were made plentiful

After a week of putting all of our effort into becoming experts on producing power with a
bike, it all finally came to fruition. By thursday afternoon we had a working DC electricity producing, bicycle powered generator...which was none too soon because we had a workshop to give on the topic less than 48 hours after that. Thanks to the ingenuity provided by myself, antonio and sally (our eletrician guru friend), we came up with a an awesome setup which will hopefully soon be decribed with images. Unfortunately, some time between when the generator was working and the morning of the workshop, our power generating source (a car alternator) died on us, leaving only an AC generating model which sally had thrown together at the last minute. AC is the type of current we use mostly in our daily lives, but the disadvantage is that it cannot be stored directly in a battery, unless converted to DC for storage and then back into AC for usage when coming from the battery (conversion results in power loss and is very inefficient, and also involves added cost for inverters), so it must be used right away when it is produced. So while this AC model did manage to produce enough to power a light bulb (in a rather strobe-like fashion) it is not really the feasible solution we are looking to implement in a sustainable lifestyle. Me and Antonio are going to try and perfect our model upon our return to Toronto in just a few weeks.
The workshop went quite well despite this minor glitch, with about 20 people coming out to Gabriola Island on a beautifully sunny day. The next day we set up shop at the Mount Benson festival and allowed people to ride the bike to produce their own power to turn on the light bulb, and we talked about Earthmasters and other power producing stuff. This generator model had its own share of problems too, but hey, not bad for a first try.
Now we are pretty much permanently moved out to the building site in Cedar (with all our
gear and uber party tent) where we will be for the duration of our time in BC. Its a nice change of pace from the somewhat sketchy confines of south nanaimo. just trees and quiet out here. me and antonio even went for a ride into ladysmith today, as it is now our closest city centre, to check out the scene, and got there just in time to catch the 6pm showing of Transformers for $5 each in a cozy theatre about the size of a large living room. Now we're stuffed with more yummy food provided by our host to top off yet another yummy day. no thorns.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

...and then the floods came

“Let The Drummer Kick” by Citizen Cope has been in my head ever since i saw a routine by a pair on "so you think you can dance", so this is a recommendation to readers and a reminder to myself and to download this song when i get home. back to business...

it has been a busy week once again, which was further complicated by the fact that it has been raining for longer than i can remember, and our tent leaks. nuthin a wall of towels can't fix. progress is being made on our building site in cedar. slowy. a stall for our composting toilet is almost ready, as is a solar showering area. its really cool because it has been woven into the surrounding underbrush. i'd take a picture, but unless you see it in 3d, it just looks like a bunch of sticks. so me and antonio have been shuttling back and forth doing this and that, but also getting our pedalling fix. oh, and i just eclipsed 2000km on my oh-doe-meter the other day since i left toronto. i was distracted by a beautiful sunset as we were riding back home, and neglected to stop and have a celebration by the highway side. aside from the building project, we have also been hard at work trying to figure out how to build a bike generator and scavenge the parts in preparation for our workshop in a week. amazingly, we found a beautiful red (hand-me-down) bike behind one of the local grocery stores which we claimed, cleaned up and are now putting into service as our soon to be electri-shyon genera-shyon sta-shyon. the stand for said bike was also recently built with much care (in the rain with power tools). we are now just eagerly awaiting the arrival of a alternator in order to turn our pedalling into power. but all that stuff was temporarily put aside for the weekend in order to learn about cob building first hand. we really got our hands dirty (and feet, and just about everything else) while attending a workshop on how to build cob structures. i am pretty pooped after spending the day dancing about on top of sand and clay, and then smashing it into a wall-like shape. the workshop was brought together in partnership with the mudgirls (www.mudgirls.ca) and earthmasters. And there will be more of these workshops to come in the coming weeks. we've also been offered jobs working with one of the premier alternative builders in this area named adam parry (www.hobbithomes.ca), which is wicked awesome, and i can't wait to take him up on his offer...when we get the time. aloha yall.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

...let there be shelter

another exciting couple of days. its hard to keep track of it all. it guess it was 2 days ago there was some serious sun happening here in nanaimo that broke all kinds of temperature records. it was over 40 celcius and of course me and antonio were outside walking around and getting well lost. We eventually made our way to our destination, although a little bit late and sweaty for our meeting with Ian. Ian took us on a tour of his house pointing out, explaing and answering about all of the energy saving and other interesting modifications he has made, including a composting toilet, solar hot water heater, PV energy system, heat exchanger....tres. cool. it was nice to see all the stuff that we would eventually want to implement in the future in our own lives or on our test building site in cedar, happening and working in our own backyard. the rest of the day was spent melting and trying to do as little as possible.
The next morning we biked out to the work site. It was about a 20km ride and the weather was perfect. we explored the site to figure out what we would build and where, set up a tarp that was the best looking tarp setup i have ever been proud to be a part of (you would be proud charlotte), started building an outdoor shower, and were provided with yet another wonderful meal by Pauline before biking back home at 9pm. we slept well.
this morning's meeting was with an electrician regarding the planning of our future bike generator, and the workshop we will be holding teaching others how to build one. we don't know how to build one yet. so the afternoon was spent scouring the city's bike shops trying to find someone who did. no luck yet. but we did find a cheap deep cycle 12 volt battery.
and finally, it seems we may have another member of our team named eric, freshly returned from lasqueti island. more action to come shortly.

Farm Fairy Village