Category: low-footprint living

(A macadamia orchard had its refrigeration / power knocked out in the hurricane and was seeking to sell 200 pounds of nuts right away. I felt inspired to buy the entire lot. This was a total investment of $1,400, which I expect to recoup quickly. Here is the Facebook post I made about it):

Hey Neighbors!
Do you like macadamia nuts? Did you know we grow macadamia nuts here in Florida? Yes we do!!

To help promote healthy food & boost our Florida farmers, I have just purchased a bulk quantity 200 pounds of macadamia nuts from Brackins Macadamia Orchard. (Located in Plant City which is about 120 mi from Daytona Beach.)

These nuts are absolutely exquisite!! If you have never had macadamia nuts fresh from the shell you are in for a treat!

I am offering these luscious & nutritious nuggets at my cost, $7 per pound which includes the transport! (Yes I got to meet the young farmer in person! She’s so nice!)

Bring your own cup, box, cloth bag, or other reusable container.

#EatLocal #SupportFloridaFarmers #FoodResilience

PS. If you found this post tasty, please follow/Like Brackins Macadamia Orchard‘s page to keep up with all their offerings! Also I suggest you join the group Florida Farm Finder – Small FL Farms are Kind of A Big Dill, to find the many other Florida farmers and ranchers who would be delighted to have you / your neighborhood / your congregation or school etc as a customer.

PPS. Visit my Facebook post to see a photo of the beautiful nuts in their pre-shelled state! So rich-brown and shiny-smooth!

From email from fellow members: “It just didn’t seem right to hold a plant sale when so many people have so much more on their minds.”

My response:

Hi Lovelies! I totally see the wisdom of not having the plant sale at <community venue> if there are going to be people trying to use that space to apply for FEMA assistance etc at that time.

That said, regarding people having things on their minds other than plants right now … Even as I type this, I hear someone running a LAWN MOWER. Yes, believe it or not. The turfgrass army does not rest even at a time like this. And you can bet that neither do the developers, who are wrecking Florida with garish waxy big-box plant “landscaping.” 

The mow-and-blow industry and tree-chopping industry do not give it one minute’s rest even in times of disaster. 

I understand if MEMBERS need to focus on other things right now. But we should not delude ourselves into thinking we are doing the public some sort of kindness by calling off our sale to some indefinite future month.

I’m also thinking of the members who were looking forward to getting plants out the door this weekend. Cultivating plants takes a lot of time and resources, and now members will have to keep their plants indefinitely.

I will do what I can to take plants off people’s hands right now. I’m looking into options such as renting a box truck to pick up plants from members, and take them and sell them at the Downtown Daytona Beach farmers market. Several friends and I have landscaping businesses and want/need the plants for our clients’ yards. If this turns out to be feasible I would pay the chapter upfront for the plants, and sell them at my leisure. 

Question: Anyone have a rough idea of the approximate total sale value of the plants? Roughly how much revenue have we made at our past sales? 

💚🌏🦋
Jenny Nazak

Postscript: As if to underscore the validity of my point, one of the big mow-and-blow contractors just now drove by in their pickup truck towing their “tree hearse.” (“Tree hearse” is what I call those monster trailer things that house the big ride-on monster mowers, blowers, edger/whackers, and that also are sometimes used to haul away precious biomass that the land needed to keep, and that always seem to be decorated with some green, leafy-looking logo and doublespeak name that belies their mission of barbering and manicuring the entire darn planet to death.)

UPDATE: Several other people from the chapter had great ideas. It looks likely we will be having a combination of virtual sale and perhaps a small trunk sale at the members’ meeting.

This grassroots action [small table with power-strip set up in front of my house, with extension cord plugged in inside the house] embodies the following principles of permaculture design (here I’m using the Mollison framework; one could also just as well apply the Holmgren framework):

• observation
• relative location
• redundancy
• small-scale solutions
• stacking functions

and the following ETHICs of permaculture design:

• care of the Earth
• care of people and other living things
• limit consumption; share surplus

… and possibly more principles too; this is just what I thought of off top of my head.

References you can check out if you have questions about any of the terms I have used in this post and want to delve more deeply:

• Introduction to Permaculture (book by Bill Mollison)
• Google; there’s lots of websites out there explaining the principles & ethics of permaculture design!
• I also recommend taking a PDC; there are MANY options out there: online and in-person; tuition-based, donation-based, and free 💚

PS. Initially I set up this little charging-station for people who still don’t have power after the hurricane, but I think I’m going to have it be an ongoing thing! Lots of people I see and say hi to each day don’t have places to live, and therefore don’t have reliable access to electricity.

#Solidarity #MutualAid #Grassroots #Revolution

Hi All! Power is back on at our place, so if anyone needs to charge a phone or make a smoothie etc come on by.

I’m happy for everyone that the electricity is back on, but to be honest if it were only me, I’d be pretty happy to have at the streetlights out permanently (or most of them
anyway)! I enjoyed such a gorgeous dark starry walk to the beach in the wee hours. The darkness was luscious and emphasized the moon and stars.

And in other news — while the power was down, the solar oven got quite a workout, using up food from our freezer and fridge! Bacon-wrapped chicken, bacon-wrapped burger; casserole of peas, potatoes, pastrami & onion!

Could this be the year that my fellow Volusians finally listen to me about solar ovens? (And rainwater collection)?

I have used a solar oven as my main cooking oven since 2006. Not just for times of disaster! The even heat makes the food taste extra delicious.

Stay safe everyone!!

Here’s a pic of our sun-cooked feast.

‪CAUTION: POLITICAL POST AHEAD.
If you prefer not to see my posts on politics and social equity issues, please adjust your settings accordingly. Or if you don’t know how to do that, send me a private message and I will set my filters so you don’t see my posts of this kind.

All views are welcome here. That said, emotions can run high when discussing controversial issues. Everyone choosing to participate in discussions on my page must be civil, respectful, not attacking, not condescending etc. If in doubt, please set your filters (or ask me to set my filters for you). Or, you can simply scroll past my political posts and just enjoy the variety of other posts I make.

Love you all!

*******

I wrote this and added it as a preface to my FB post about immigrants/Vineyardgate, and will probably use it as a standard preface for all “hot issues” posts I make on my personal page. If you like it you are welcome to use it on your own page; adapt as you see fit.

You are also welcome to use/adapt the following, which is compiled from comments I wrote in response to a couple of people who commented in a hostile or condescending manner. This verbiage emerged from my desire to find a more constructive way to handle “unfriendly” comments from “Facebook friends who are strangers.”

Maybe we can find common ground about something other than politics. You might resonate with some of the other posts on my page. And, I checked out your page and have found some great stuff! Will Like and respond as time allows.

And the following is in response to a comment from someone who’s a friend “in real life” (and a very kind person who has gone out of her way to help many many people, and animals too) but we have a lot of very differing views. She commented on my post, “You don’t wanna know what I think.” My reply:

I have a pretty good idea what you think. You and I have always known we have different views on many political, economic, and social issues. If you prefer, I can set a filter so my political posts don’t show up in your feed. <heart emoji> And, thank you for being a friend and a great person. Love you!

‪The governor of FL’s shipping people out of state is not only inhumane but short-sighted. And frankly, RUDE.

This occurred to me: If/when large numbers of Floridians become (for example) climate refugees & try to migrate to other states or countries, are we going to expect the people there to welcome us? ‬With each passing year, with increasing natural disasters and all, people everywhere are only going to become more pressed to migrate in order to adapt; we need to be MORE accommodating & flexible to migration, not less. It seems to me that it behooves us to be welcoming; we might well find ourselves in the same position someday.

“… To protect the people of Florida,” he says.

WHITEwash, more like!

Funny, I a white woman do not feel “protected” by this ghoul. #NotInMyName #UnpackWhiteSupremacy #DecolonizeOurMinds

Seriously our national mowing fetish is SO gross and noisy in addition to wasting resources. And he (because it’s almost always a HE, isn’t it — I love men just fine, but honestly sometimes those of you fellow caucasians who are equipped with Y chromosomes have some really annoying tendencies such as idolatry of large mechanized equipment) — And he hasn’t even started in with the edger and leafblower yet, which are even noisier and produce more fumes.

Oh yay now he just started with the giant outdoor noisemaker/vacuum cleaner, whoops I mean leafblower. Ladies, can you imagine if men were this obsessive and diligent about vacuuming floors or picking up socks?? 😂🥰

This is a HUGE vacant lot. We should be letting empty unused lots revert to meadow or forest! Maybe we even need to be incentivizing it, as heat-island effects from excess paving and deforestation continue to worsen.

#GrassKissers please PLEASE for the love of God/dess find a new hobby!!

Go fishing! Go to church! Or hey here’s an idea: PLANT SOMETHING USEFUL like fruits & veggies.

And while we’re on this subject, a note for those of you men who are pleading HOAs and codes as reasons why The Grass Must Be Mowed Period Always Forever Before Anything Else: We could use for more of you men to help with challenging the HOAs and other power structure, as opposed to continuing to uphold it. The powers-that-be will listen to you guys far more than they will listen to us women.

#LawnResistanceTalkingPoints #SaveTheBees #RespectTheWildflowers #SaveTheEarthDontShaveTheEarth #DEEPGREENlawnmemes

Here is a link to the one-minute vid; you might have to Friend me on Facebook to be able to view it.

Getting comments on the FB post already — interestingly enough, from men who rarely if ever come to my page let alone comment!

Here’s my response to one guy (who happens to be a friend):

Reread my comment. NOT man-bashing. You know me better than that.

And re fines and fees: Part of what I would like men to do, is help us FIX (as in dismantle) the fines and fees that support, nay actually REQUIRE, unfair, ugly, eco-destructive practices. Instead, too many of you keep upholding this nonsense. You make our job harder bc the powers-that-be won’t listen to us women the way they will
listen to you!!

And in response to a comment from another guy, re HOAs etc.: Yes sir I am well aware of that. Part of changing things is working to change THAT. Which I am, diligently, on many fronts. We could use for more men to help with challenging the power structure as opposed to continuing to uphold it.

tagging my eco femme comrades-in-arms Kris Tollefsen-Cunningham Elizabeth Lavette Wendy B. Anderson

and a special THANK YOU to the guys out there who ARE helping us challenge the sodgrass hegemony, and all other loathesome manifestations of colonialism and quiet creeping fascism Dennis Hamilton Mike Hoag William Mantz Alan McGill and others 💚

In response to an eco-minded friend who shared a link to a group about mowing with electric instead of gas-powered: Thanks! But you are right — I’m into manualizing, or having it done by goats sheep & cows (yes we can do that in urban spaces too — people have for centuries) — plus either keeping mowing to a tiny bare minimum or else eliminating it entirely. Batteries/electric are less noisy but bring more problems. And, same as gas-powered lawn-appliances, they perpetuate the legitimization of fussbudget vanity-landscaping that is wrecking communities and the planet. PS. I am getting my antique scythe sharpened this week — finally found someone who can do it!