In this thread, post what you’re working on! Guerilla gardening? eBiking? planting/pruning? Let us know!
I’m a little late to this party, but we’re working on homesteading / regenerating / solarpunking ~50 acres of central NY. Lots of foraging, gardening, a few sheep / goats / horses. Currently experimenting with letting volunteer trees grow sparsely in some of the large fields to see how things around them fare in comparison to full sun.
We generate more power off of solar than we consume, and have enough storage to last indefinitely (if uncomfortably in the winter) off grid.
We’re slowly learning to make clothes from raw wool to woven cloth, and have a 200yo barn frame loom just waiting for enough spun wool to set it up.
We teach like to teach and learn, so host folks who want to get their hands dirty. Renovating rooms in the house so we can host more folks!
We grow a garden and keep different animals for food, land management and company. We learn to run our place in accordance with natural cycles, minimal external input (no we are far from perfect or even close!), maximal well-being of all inhabitants. Which basically means we have the non-human animals shit everywhere, collect some of that shit and dump it into the garden, grow stuff, feed everyone, repeat. When we get our hands on a nice plant species or variety we try to propagate and keep seed. We work on integrating mycology into the mixture and I’m proudly spreading spores and mycelium to hopefully help the fire-damaged landscape. So basically we increase biodiversity where we are.
Online, I am finally learning how to leave the corporate internet behind again and help rebuild a net of the people. Started learning how to self-host and will use that knowledge to collect and disseminate knowledge online. I want to write descriptions of some of the things we do on the farm as they might be useful for future homesteaders, and am now setting up the virtual space to write, backup and publish comfortably.
I take my kid out into the outdoors often and we identify plants and mushrooms and learn about their uses. We play music together because the world needs good music always.
What I want to work on more is more contact with my local community (although I do see the non-human community as a community, I’m just not much of a people person in real life).
I have a small backyard tree nursery which I use to grow rare species I give away to friends and acquaintances who have space to plant them.
A lot of people don’t realize that climate change means species that we grew for shade historically won’t necessarily thrive in the future, and since we usually hope the trees we plant will live for 20+ years, we need to plan ahead. So I’m testing which species can be heat and drought tolerant enough to provide shade and other environmental benefits in the future.
Learning to make, repair and upcycle my own clothes instead of relying of badly made polyester fast fashion that doesn’t fit well. Also getting my fitness up so I can bike instead of drive which is difficult because I live in an absurdly hilly area.
Same for mending and sewing clothing. Except I’ve run aground a bit on my own perfectionism. I’ve somehow talked myself into making a pattern block for my butt so I can make the most optimal pants and shorts, but making a block is an Ordeal with Math involved and I haven’t had the bandwidth to accomplish it yet.
I’ve been working on a bodice block, I know your pain.