Category: low-footprint living

The #resistance takes many forms!!!

I really love having a house on a conspicuous corner lot along a high-traffic street in the tourist area. Lots of people walk by. This blackboard has been a fun thing. Sometimes I forget to keep up, but usually I write some message on it. Last week it said “welcome bikers have fun and stay safe.” Then it said “we are all in this world together” — with a heart. This week it says “welcome Spring Breakers, have fun and stay safe” — with a heart.

Got the chalkboard from a church on my street — they were cleaning / getting rid of surplus, and this chalkboard was in it, and they didn’t want it! I couldn’t believe it but I was happy to take it off their hands! It was originally colored green, but as weather wore down the green surface, I bought a little jar of black chalkboard paint and painted over it.

Also along with writing the messages I try to stay extra aware during event weeks, keep an eye on people walking by and if anyone looks confused or dehydrated offer them water. It’s just in a drinking glass, not bottled, so that’s kind of a novelty for people too ha ha

#501House #porousproperty

PS. A couple of things in response to people’s very kind words.

• Some of my ancestors gave me a job to do, and the resources to carry it out. I am very fortunate.
• One thing about kindness that seems to still be a too-well-kept secret is that kindness never just benefits the recipient, it benefits everyone including the person doing it. So it’s kind of a self interest thing too. <heart> Making a net of care, it’s like an umbrella that protects everyone. Our society did not devolve into a low-trust society overnight, and we won’t re-weave it back into a high-trust society overnight. But every one of us who are adding threads to the net, each in our own ways according to skills and resources, is steadily helping with the progress. Thank you everyone for helping in your unique ways!

And I have done plenty of very bad and unkind things in my life, and even though i have done my best to make amends, the memories of what I thought it was OK to say and do to fellow humans and other fellow beings are still extremely shocking and painful to me at times. And, amends will be an ongoing lifelong task. And, beyond that, there’s simply a lot of joy in adding love & care to the world instead of subtracting it.

Someone in Deep Adaptation posted this chart showing how much food a person has to grow to feed themselves for a year. It’s a very individualistic doomer prepper mentality. And regardless of whether the numbers are correct or not, it’s not doable by most people as individuals or even small family unit.

My take:

Hyper-individualism is anti-adaptive. I have been urging our mayor and other city officials to retool our landscape maintenance practices so that we are supporting pollinators and wildlife, and growing food for humans, instead of toxic manicured landscaping. Whether people listen remains to be seen, but I will keep bringing it up.

Also we need to support our local farmers in the immediately surrounding rural areas. Instead of driving to big box stores and buying food from 3000 miles away.

I also talk to church pastors, school principals and teachers, and of course fellow residents. In many parts of the world that are not the rich global north, large amounts of food are grown in cities, towns and villages.

On a personal note: Several fruit trees in our little yard are fruiting this year for the first time. Major milestone! And of course because Nature is generous, there will be plenty of fruit to share with neighbors. I also share education and seeds with neighbors. And show people how to make use of food when it’s in abundance and needs to be cooked and preserved.

This includes not only fresh fruit & vegs we grow, but also food that comes through the charitable church-run grocery distribution system. Sometimes there will suddenly be pounds and pounds of nuts for example, to the point where the people who receive the grocery bags are just leaving them along the road. I am a famous one for scooping them up and trying to share, find recipes, redistribute. It’s a wild task sometimes.

One year the neighborhood was like flooded with cans of green beans. And for a while there were just massive amounts of canned tomato sauce. And the canned salmon, there was so much of that it was crazy. And for a while they were bags and bags of walnuts. Whole walnuts, not even in the shells. In other words a super expensive thing and there would be 10 or 20 bags, two pounds each.

Speaking of surplus food in abundance, which I was a few posts down. Yesterday I found an entire 2-pound bag of whiting fillets! Had been frozen, still cold-cold, just in time to rescue and put in the fridge. And today cooked them up in the solar oven with butter and garlic and veggies and seasonings.

The donation food is meant for low-income families. They pass out a lot of bags of groceries at the church. Unfortunately a lot of the food can’t be used unless the person has a kitchen to cook it in.

Can’t open the cans unless you have a can opener, and what will you do with a large bag of frozen whiting fillets if you don’t have a house let alone a stove.

So some people end up leaving part of their grocery bags along the sidewalk. If it sounds like I am a veteran of sidewalk rescue food, I am! The bag of fillets was inside of a big paper bag that also contained a can of beans, a can of tomato sauce, a pack of pasta. And some rolls. All of which I will use.

I will now separate the beautifully solar-cooked buttery whiting & veggie mix into portions, and either share with people who want to eat it immediately or freeze for later.

(I did also save back a couple of uncooked fillets and chop them up and put them in a bowl w vinegar, am doing a ceviche experiment in the fridge. At least I hope it will turn out to be ceviche, that’ll be my first time trying to ceviche with whiting so wish me luck! If nothing else I can finish cooking it the regular way.)

It was cool, some nice people passed by on their way to go fishing just when I was opening the solar oven and taking out the successful experiment. Sometimes the successful ones go unwitnessed except by me ha ha, and the less successful ones are the ones that get witnessed by others.

They complimented me on my yard and we ended up chatting. It’s good to be able to show the solar oven in action.

Update: And I’m eating some of the solar-cooked fish & veggies right now for lunch, and it is absolutely delicious!

Update after eating lunch and portioning the rest into jars: It’s still early enough in the day, and sunny enough, that the oven temperature is 350!

I just now filled the empty pot with chopped dandelion greens and water, and put the pot back in the oven to boil. I love to boil greens and then add sauces/seasonings that I mix up. And I use the water from the boiled greens also. Sometimes I use it in soup and sometimes I just drink it like a tea.

And bonus (for my lazy self): By boiling the greens in the same pot that I just used to cook the fish, it will make it easier to clean the pot at the end, since there won’t be as much “butter and fish residue” left in the pot as there would have been if I had gone to wash the pot directly after cooking the fish.

BTW the dandelion greens are delicious, I buy them (and many other fruits and vegetables) from a local small biz who buys them from local farms. Win Win Win!!!

Photos here.

What a difference seven years makes! When I moved into my house in March 2018, the picture on the left is what the yard looked like.

Since then it has been transformed into an oasis of fruit trees, perennial greens, places for the public to sit, solar & rainwater education, stormwater absorption, relief from the heat, housing for various friends over the years, arts & crafts, mental & spiritual wellness, community library, dune wildflower seed-bank, and much more.

The 501 house, my ultimate dream palace and work studio, is more popularly known as “jenny’s corner,” a title I got from Ms Anne Ruby and Mr Steve Miller’s name for the little environmental segment I sometimes share at the BNW and MNW neighborhood meetings.

Getting a variety of trees and other plants to grow in this yard involved a lot of hard work, experimentation, failure.

Many of the techniques I used, especially at the beginning, to get anything established on the chemical-treated, erosion-prone soil were learned from fellow permaculturists who worked in the Jordanian desert, Canary Islands, Arizona desert, and other extremely harsh climates.

Physical deserts — and social deserts — can often be rehydrated, with love and patience and the right tools and mentors. Deep grief can also provide fuel and inspiration.

Praise God/dess and Ancestors!!!

Comments I posted in response to Mayor Henry’s post talking about bike week, reporting that there had been declining numbers.

Tourism is a wonderful thing, and I always enjoy bike week. But that being said, a healthy city doesn’t allow itself to become excessively dependent on tourism. I noticed a lot of the really vibrant cities who attract a lot of tourists, are also cities where people love to live and raise their families. The more we keep striving to be more attractive to full-time residents, the better! A lot of it is just public relations; this city has so much to offer but a lot of people don’t realize it. We are getting better at getting more of the full word out, though! #DaytonaStrong #LoveOurCity

— PS. Just my personal take as a libertarian (I know a lot of my political views are kind of out there), and proponent of micro business, small business, all kinds of business. I think there’s too much micromanagement of small business. Not only during bike week, but in general. In the redevelopment areas we set the bar so high and strict, I think doing the opposite would be better. Open it up to all kinds of little pop-up shops, vendor stalls, year round. The brick and mortar will fill more easily as well, if we don’t hypermanage it so much.

On a related note, we need more benches and other seating in all of the major commercial areas. More shade, as well. People can feel when they’re not really welcome to linger. Lack of places to sit makes people feel like they have to be somewhere spending money every second, and can’t even take a rest before going onto the next shop or restaurant. When people sit outdoors, it attracts other people. I’ve seen it in cities everywhere. Our city is beautiful and there’s every reason why people would want to come here and spend time. Including we the residents ourselves.

— Sorry, not trying to monopolize this thread, but this is a lot of stuff I have already talked about in city commission meetings, and sent you guys emails etc. And I always share ideas from successful, expert organizations such as Strong Towns.

An overly managed city does not tend to be as economically successful as it might if we eased up a little on the control. We need to allow for a bit of messiness. I don’t mean ugliness, I mean we can’t be enforcing so much conformity — like we spend so much time and energy making sure everybody’s awnings are a certain size or the same color or something. And matching lamp post etc. If having everything matched perfectly made for a good city, then New Orleans and New York City and KEY WEST would not attract so many tourists in droves, as well as being loved by the residents.

Make no mistake, I love Daytona Beach. (So much that I actually adopted it as my home city. Since I did not have a real hometown.) I just want to see the climate become a lot more free for tiny businesses. Allow Creativity to flourish, as opposed to spending so much time and energy enforcing a rigid neatness.

Another negative for tourists on the beach side Main Street area, is that we lost our Walgreens. That was a major place where tourists went to get basic every day needs. Snacks, drinks, beach toys, souvenirs, information, etc. It was a loss for us residents as well. Of course we can’t control a corporate entity’s decision to pull out of a place. But we really need to troubleshoot these things when they happen.

— More: when places are empty, things like dirt and cracks seem to stand out more.

No place is perfectly clean, the great outdoors is not our living room.

But, the more we fill the empty spaces with storefronts, carts, trucks, permanent residents, a diverse array of native / water-wise vegetation … the more the basic everyday dust and asymmetry that every place has will recede into the background where it belongs.

We need to take a “probiotic” approach, so to speak, of ADDING/thickening, rather than an “antibiotic” approach of trying to eliminate every last speck of dirt and think that’s going to bring people in.

Of course we make reasonable efforts to keep things clean and tidy, but we need to put more effort into allowing and fostering creativity and uniqueness. Year round.

— (Responding to a fellow citizen who pointed out that we do not have a parking problem, as is popularly asserted.)

Yep!! I like what former commissioner Kelly White said one time. “We don’t have a parking problem in this city, we have a walking problem.”

I actually think the big vast sea of asphalt is a turnoff. People don’t like to walk across huge vast expanses to get to the fun stuff.

Back in 2015 I think it was, when I gave my talk at the inaugural “Elevate” speech event (my talk was called “filling our empty spaces” And it is still up there on YouTube), I mentioned that we could have a Daytona Beach parking app and that we absolutely must have more sharing of parking.

I would like to see apartments and shops built over the Ocean Center parking lot, so that it’s not wasted space when it’s empty.

On the note of walking, as a former pedicabber, back in the days when we didn’t have motors on those things ha ha, I am a huge advocate for creating a more open climate for pedicabs and other micro transportation. That would help people get around micro distances without having to walk. I do recognize that not everybody can walk very far, and also the terrain is not always conducive for wheelchairs.

In my Elevate speech I also mentioned “allowing an informal economy to flourish.” As long as it’s not something illegal, little carts and other creative micro businesses should be absolutely nurtured and encouraged.

I’m not sure what it will take to convince some of the old-line brick & mortar guys that food trucks will help them rather than hurt them. It seems like we have ample evidence from many towns and cities though.

People in various groups are worried about their 401(k)s. Mostly this is fellow Boomers and older; most younger people don’t have 401(k)s. 

I don’t have a 401(k) because I cashed it out a long time ago and deployed it locally. (For me, climate and the environment has always been a very large part of this choice. And now the political situation gives additional motive.)

And I recognize that not everyone will have the stomach for this but … Everyone who feels able to divest from Wall Street – the more the better. I realize many people don’t feel they can risk doing that.

Many people have huge portfolios and won’t want to cut them loose. Other people don’t have huge portfolios but are hoping they will grow and don’t want to cut them loose.

Hence I point out that many people don’t feel they can do that. Funny thing about prosperity, it makes us very risk-averse.

But, it would be a big bold step and it would have an impact. Imagine if everyone pulled their money out of their 401(k)s and invested in their local areas instead.

As I have often said, it’s a bold move and not everyone will be ready for it. But if you think about it, it’s only for a very very tiny moment in human history that we have had this attitude that we cannot live our life without amassing and hoarding a giant pile of money.

Fascism is a fusion of extreme corporate power and extreme authoritarian government.

Over the past few decades, we ourselves have fed the corporations more and more power, not only in our capacity as consumers, but also in our capacity as shareholders.

Note, I’m not saying grab the money and burn it, or spend it all on frivolities. I’m saying localize it. Pay off your mortgage. Pay off your kids’ mortgage.

If you still have money left after that, buy a commercial building in your town. Have a business there, or allow some young person to have a business there. Become a part investor in a local farm or other local business. Pay off your kids’ college debt. If you don’t have kids, help someone else pay off their college debt.

Invest in your continuing education too: classes and other training that will help you be more resilient all the way into old-old age. And will help your community be more resilient.

I’m suggesting invest locally and invest in the younger generations and future generations. And help loosen the grip of fascism.

(***The suggestion in this post is really for my fellow Boomers and older. Younger ppl, and Black people, it’s not my place to impose advice on you. I just want us to make a better world for you guys.)

And, response to a comment from a friend who doesn’t feel able to let go of her fund because she only has a small amount of savings and her body can’t handle doing landscaping work 40 hours a year the rest of her life:

I hear you. I am in the same boat as far as savings and all that. I am currently in the midst of applying for Social Security. To be honest, when I was in my 40s I was assuming this wouldn’t even be an option, I wasn’t even thinking it would be available once I hit Social Security age. If this is any comfort.

And one of my housemates, who is also in early 60s, just got approved.

But also, although both you and I do physical work, we also have work that we can do that isn’t physical body labor. Writing, teaching, art, etc., those things are lifelong. And, also an option might be continuing to do the gardening but taking on apprentices. Another friend of mine, my age-ish, is an arborist and he’s only happy when he’s actually climbing the trees himself, so for him the apprentice thing doesn’t feel like an option, but it might be for a lot of us.

Photo: one section of my bookshelf for the algorithm. And for your enjoyment.

Update March 11:

My friend, colleague, and co-author Laura Oldanie, of Rich Resilient Living, made this incredibly information-rich comment just now in the Socially Conscious FIRE group. I thought some of you might find this info extremely helpful:

I don’t know if this is the best way, but here’s a bit about what I’m doing instead of propping up and relying on Wall Street. I moved my money out of the stock market about 8 years ago. Because I no longer worked for my previous employers, I was able to move those employer based retirement accounts into a self-directed IRA. Similarly, self employed people can open Solo 401ks. SDIRAs & Solo 401ks allow you to invest in a much wider array of assets. A Roth SDIRA is actually the vehicle Peter Thiel used to jumpstart his massive fortune, but they can also be vehicles for making tax advantaged investments in the growing number of truly socially conscious investing opportunities that are percolating outside the stock market. I wrote about some of those in this blog post How I’m Investing to Save the Planet (https://www.richandresilientliving.com/how-im-investing-my-money-to-save-the-planet/) and this one on Social Justice Investing (https://www.richandresilientliving.com/a-crowdsourced-guide-to-social-justice-investing/).

There’s a bit of a learning curve to getting started investing through SDIRA’s and the whole process can be a lot more hands on than simply clicking a few buttons in your online brokerage profile. I’m not an expert in them either, but I did write this blog post about SDIRAs several years ago https://www.richandresilientliving.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=725&action=edit.

We can also expand how we think about investing and building wealth beyond directing our money into financial instruments. For example we can invest in useful skills or assets that can generate income for us. In particular, we need lots more people to be building the skills and cultivating the assets that will help us address our major social and environmental challenges instead of perpetuating them. And that’s just what Mike Hoag, Jenny Nazak, Eric Brown – Author, and I wrote about in our book Growing FREE (Financially Resilient & Economically Empowered) Building the Life of Your Dreams Without Losing Your Soul or Destroying the Planet. You can read more about our book here and find a free sample chapter to download – https://www.richandresilientliving.com/growingfree/

I believe there’s tremendous value in developing a much more holistic view of wealth and investing because money and financial capital are so volatile and fragile. As I think about designing my life to thrive now and in my later years on a climate challenged planet, I think about a lot more than money.

The last thing I’ll share is my recent blog post on Climate Change & Retirement Planning because whether it’s global warming, political uncertainties, or the whims of capitalism, there’s a lot going on that makes our conventional pursuit of wealth a lot less reliable and a lot less desirable (not that it was ever a good thing) – https://www.richandresilientliving.com/retirement-planning-and-climate-change/

Getting closer to ripeness!

With Bike Week being early this year, it’s not concurrent with the fruiting of our neighborhood loquats as it has been generally. I always associate bike week with yummy ripe loquats!

Because one of the mama trees is on a neighboring street and I would always go out during bike week and get a cup of those sweet little orange oval stone-fruit for breakfast.

That was when I had permission from the owner of that house. Then the house changed owners, and I never connected with the new owner — I just know they installed a ring camera after I was out picking fruit one time. D’OH!

Fortunately, this year my loquat trees that are babies of that big mama are fruiting for the first time ever! It’s such a cool mile stone and I’m excited about sharing with you! By the way, the leaves make a nice healthy tea. And loquats are always great for shade and privacy.

In the Permaculture world we joke that the landscaping industry popularized a useful tree by mistake. 😉