84 acre commune looking for people!!!

I've recently substituted the term "political views" for "moral views". It's far more descriptive and far less subjective. I understand that most of us fall into the category of "cattle and sheep". This is by design. The uber-wealthy who nurse at the tit of the military industrial complex would have it no other way. They pander to the ignorant and the uninformed by way of religion and patriotism (the last refuge of the scoundrels). We could have been off petroleum products 50 years ago, but then America's wealth would have been more evenly distributed. And we can't have that now, can we? What this country needs is a concentrated dose of Anarchy, but this will never happen until each individual declares anarchy on their own secure sense of "self"; The deconstruction of the ego.
By the way, I assume that I am "preaching to the choir". I realize that "carrots and apples" on sticks are far more appealing than "truth" on a stick. My weakness is loneliness. Since I left LA, I haven't really found any other people (gay OR straight) who give a damn about anything but pop culture or Jee-Zus. It seems that no one wants to "talk" anymore. The queers I have met here in Charlotte are as shallow as a mud puddle, and the straights are spoiled rotten. I done with casting pearls. I'm ready to go to work for individuals (gay or straight) who appreciate what I have to offer. I have paid off my debts, and at this point, money means very little to me. I'm an RN and a farmer. I can't live without good music, though. And I don't want to live without people. I work many hours, and don't care much for cyberspace, but I plan to post a picture as soon as I can figure out how. BTW, I'm damn good with mechanical stuff (tractors and cars) and I'm a fairly good with construction and electrical work. I'm also a great cook. (...goes without saying that I have much to offer with regard to health, medical issues and fitness.) take care, J.

 

Got a recent pic uploaded... j.

 

Inquirery:: If you are still looking for people, are there any other restrictions other than no extremeists in drugs and drink? Like age or health or gender or abilities,etc. Reason being if I lose my spot up here in the mountains I want to be of use to others, to give and take knowledge and return to the earth (from whence I came) and have the peace and quiet to write(finally) ...as far as MY qualifications in the "etc" department
are concerned I'm 57; fair health; female; milti-talented in many areas and
I only require minimum care...:rockon:

 

This would look great on my cuerpo de paz application!

 

Hey the names hailey. or kindly. im at the farm. and im having a very good time. i love it here. i am usaly on the road hitch hiking from rainbow gathering to rainbow gathering. but i think i might just stay here fer a grip. lovin u family. and everyone else on here!

Peace love and hippy hugs:

Hailey or kindly

 

So you guys have given up on the commune. (?) Jeff

 

Far from it.

 

Sweet !!

 

Hello again all. I've been living on the 8 Acres for 5 months now............WE NEED MORE PEOPLE....please. I am not the one to make the choices or ask permission, but I live and work here and do have a say about things. It's a great place to get out of the rat race, all you need is a good work ethic and nothing here is really hard. We're all laid back and help each other but there is just too few of us. I imagine as civilization an the system fall apart, places like this will be more an more sought out. There will eventually be a limit/ cap on how many this property can comfortably accommodate. I call it home and feel comfortable here.:coffee: I'm also very protective of the property owner, there have been a few show up, the kind I call "free loaders" that just want to get out of a "job" and responsibilities or just don't want to be responsible for themselves. Trust me, this is not tolerated for long. Be part of the solution or else you're part of the problem.

I see more land cleared soon, it's going to be so beautiful. I l have to grin when one of the girls talks about planting flowers, careful girl, Penny the horse wanders freely, horses LOVE to eat the flowers. There is the biggest wisteria vine I've ever seen in my life that goes up the tallest tree I've ever seen and can't wait till spring when it blooms out again. Pruning back the pear trees right now. My own craft, American Indian jewelry and crafts has been on hold due to the weather but new supplies and materials have I acquired so looking forward to the burst of motivation that comes with spring as well. We had a beautiful Holiday and a bounty of holiday cooking and fun..:eggnog:...... Again, I encourage new comers, a visit at least. Spring is coming, all sorts of potential:2thumbsup:. Peace out and love to all.

 

What a lovely welcoming post! I am in the UK with hope of coming to the US for a month to check out a few places for ideas inspiration and just general conextions with good people- I have a few kinda plans for when I am there maybe if I find myself that way il be sure to be in touch, will some of your collective be at the rainbow gathering in July? That would be a good place for you to get yourselves out there and meet new lovelies that are community minded-

 

hey i live near there
i will 100% show up
im trustworthy and will work and bring stuff like food
im in to nature like hardcore
my mind hurts staying inside and i live like 2 hours away i think

 

Well it seems I cant edit my initial post any longer, so heres a quick refresher as things have quieted down a bit and there still seems to be some confusion regarding the visitation process.

Hope that clears it up, but if not I can always quote myself again I suppose. :cheers2:

We should be in touch with a few people sometime this week regarding Visits.

P.S.

That is a possibility for a couple folks here, we'll see how the Summer plantings go but we're aiming to cover 5 acres with about 2' of Terra Preta and dig in a few large Cisterns (1 to 2000 gallons) to stock fish in for food as well as to provide nutrients for the gardens when we water with their fishie-poop-water which is a pretty ambitious project, though not one which needs to be absolutely completed this Summer, still the more the better.

P.S.S. Does anyone wanting to visit own a Backhoe or a front loader they want to bring?

 

Make sure you inoculate it first, mix it with compost/manure otherwise it will actually rob the nutrients from any plants you start.

Ideally, you need a pound of char for each square foot of garden.

 

Terra Preta is not simply Char by itself Dingo, no need to innoculate it, it's roughly a 50/50 mix of compost and char. The Char does absorb the nutrients as the organics break down but the nutrients are more than available for use by the plants.

I made about 200 lbs of the stuff back in 08', just char and forest leaf litter and mulch mixed up and it worked great for my tobacco, Buckwheat and Broccoli. :cheers2:

And it's gonna be allot more than 1 lb of char per sf. I'm not so much "Ammending my existing soil with charcoal" as I am simply making my own dirt here. Mostly because there is no dirt here, it's all freaking clay. Which is great as it gives us ton's of raw materials to work with for a ceramics studio and Brick making for construction projects, but I've never been very fond of growing stuff in it.

 

thats a shit load of tp man, what type of cooker do you have set up?

 

It is allot, but theres little choice if we want a sucessful garden given all the clay and a lacking of manure or a desire to use Miracle Grow.

As an example, one of our major crops here are Jerusalem Artichokes which are supposed to produce down past 8" but the soil past 7 is so dense we cant really dig out whats grown there easily. So imho, the best option is going to be simply scraping the clay up into a lowball raised bed setup and filling the pit with TP, ina ddition to that, the goal is to set up a big cistern by every garden plot to help with fertilization and irrigation. So first year out may not be ideal, but as the organics build and the nutrients stockpile in the TP, and the Acacia shrubs hedging the garden (Yea, still need the seeds from J.L. Hudson.) start pumping Nitrogen into the Compost waiting to get tilled in and providing us with more char material.

Gonna do the Char old fashioned style for now, just dig a number of pits (we have an area about a 1/4 of a fotball field scraped and nothing but raw clay in which to do this), fill with wood chips and small branches, set on fire, bury it, let it smoulder, come back in a week and sift out the char from the ash. (Have other uses for the potash, used for refining the raw clay mostly, and tanning, and soap making of course) Gonna' slake out the char to reduce the amount of ash in it as well. Theres about 10 acres of neighboring land which was clearcut and the Owner gave us access to the "leavings" which is loaded with chips, branches and bark chunks so it'll be easy to pulverize or run the disk over numerous times. Also thinking a 3' dia stump with some 1/2" lag bolts riddling the sides to help as a crusher (Pulled behind the tractor)

And I know allot of folks worry about the Ash fecking with the pH and so forth, but that's just gonna help break down the organics quicker for our needs and if it's still off, we have means to lower the pH (Evergreen needles by the ton.)

Of course now that I've got the ceramics thing in motion (30 lbs of Terra Cotta type clay slaked, washed and boiled down, next target is the tons of Kaolin in the creek.) I'll be building a more traditional charcoal kiln complete with retorts to catch the tar and other byproducts once the small scale brickworks is working. But thats all down the road some months after planting time or perhaps for next year.

One step at a time, for now its a simple mega-mound of small wood and a few big leaf raking parties in the woods. (We've also got some Horse, Donkey and Chicken shit to add but not nearly enough, hence needing all the leaves.)

Might not get the whole 5 acres covered this year, but I'll put money down we can at a minimum get one done and as we build the infrastructure to make Char and such more efficiently, we'll get more covered. Plenty of wood to use here.

:cheers2:

 

Use pigs to dig up the areas where you plant the JA.. the clay won't slow them down much, the will fertilize as they go and provide meat.

Even if it takes a few years to turn that one acres into good soil, you can be working on the others.

You likely already realize this, but if you are building up soil from scratch, you are much better off using raised beds (tires work great) so you aren't using 'soil' where you don't need it.

 

Fritz
Have you guys looked at the Foxfire books. They are an incredible resource, mostly written by interviewing old mountain folk. They have fantastic descriptions for soap making, shingle making, gardening, trapping, (moonshine), etc. and so many other topics that it's iimpossible to describe. My father had the books, and I remember reading them back in the late 60s. My roommate has the full set (many volumes) and I think I'm going to try and hunt down a set for myself. They are the best reference I've ever heard of for simple living; they usually provide pictures, sketches, and whatever else will help to follow the description.

 

Yep, we're in a flux point when it comes to the livestock we're gonna' raise. We've got two Pig's now but they're pretty much in a "Hospice" stage of life and Sam's pet's.

and I have been scoping out the tires in the area but you would not believe the endless, endless, endless supply of red clay we have here to use for stuff like building a quick 2' retaining wall for TP, but even that hard layer down at 7" will do just fine once I can plow it up into walls with the big tractor.
Every week I manage to gather a little more of the odds and ends I need to speed up the process of Washing it out into usable clay and not just raw and sand filled crumbly stuff. This week, I'm cutting off the bottom of an old grain feeder on which I'll be putting 3 halves of 55 gal drums to siphon off the slaked clay into and set a nice fire underneath, creating the ash for additional wood lye to wash the impurities from the clay and again, more garden char and boiling off the excess water of course.

And once the TP is down, thats the good soil right there, raking up the already composted stuff right along with the not so composted stuff and probably a bit of forest topsoil along with it. And add to that the Acacias, or at least some Bush beans for the nitrates and a crop and Buckwheat as a green manure and for flour and we'll have some pretty good stuff to grow in. Oh and the fish poop.

All boiling down to time, infrastructure development and logistics

Need to weld up the linkage from the Hydraulic piston to the front blade on the big tractor, but first need to fix the welder,,, then I can do the retaining walls around the TP garden and the Fish Cisterns,,, Fishterns as I like calling them.

It's a chore but it's a blast at the same time. Do what you love and never work another day in your life, or stick to a job you hate and toil miserably till you die.

Many Irons in the fire for the time being so it's a juggling act to be sure but things are smoothing out around here slowly but surely. http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?p=712446#post712446

 

Yea I've seen the foxfire series, some nifty stuff to be sure. But then theres Wagners handbook of Chemical Technology circa 1872 which covers everything, everything, everything from Soap to paper to fabric to gunpowder to petrolium to ceramics to dyes to metalurgy to the various ways of making Charcoal and also gathering it's byproducts to Wood gas generation (It was hot stuff back in the day.) and then some, good book for any homesteader / mad scientist to have on their shelf. And I have a few other titles around and online which fill the few existing blanks. The Wagners book is on Google Books in full vier format if you want a peek.