i never used them though..but my wife's oncle does, and he is very sattisfied! i should get me some of those, i think you can find them in indian or paki shops...

Well, after adding my part to the cocaine thread... this got me thinking

Should we continue to use any drugs? Do we need them?

Because it is not only cocaine destroying ecosystems. I can imagine the process of producing MDMA and the other RC's, even big pharma, doing allot of damage too.. How about LSD? DMT? Artificial lighting they use for growing the cactus we order online? CO2 because of the transportation of sacred plants?

Im lost... but i do want to be honest.

EDIT: where does your nafta come from? how is it produced?
how honest are you?

We will always have some or other impact on earth, we arent going back to being caveman, so answer must be somewhere in the middle.

I think if someone is buying hundreds of small packets of ethnobotanicals being shipped half-way across the world every two weeks and choosing the most exotic species that need most artificial lighting, that is indeed very unsustainable. But if one strategically buys a certain bigger quantity of ethnobotanicals once in a while, favours local varieties when possible and avoids over-use, I think its much better.

Thats why growing your own ethnobotanicals when possible is another important part to this whole puzzle of trying to be sustainable.

Extracting with food-safe chemicals and reusing solvents is another part of the solution. I dont use naphtha anymore, using anything to do with petrochemical makes me think of oil spill, barf...... limo and reusing, all the way!

^of course i wasnt asking you in particular
but thank you for your honesty

it is the old good vs bad discussion
in my opinion things get much more balanced not by judging (like you have truth)
but through compassion. i wont blame anyone for being human. nobody chooses to be born..

we will reap what we sow

Good point about the air drying clothes, Banana.

You sound depressed, Virola, chin up! I'd personally like to have a couple of children. I'd give them a fun childhood learning to farm, hunt, fish, shoot, fight, drive, do yoga, meditate, manipulate, play instruments, computer hack (if I can learn myself), laugh love and play, all necessary survival tools to make them best equipped to lead a good and happy life come what may. I'm personally not going to be put off replacing my DNA just because the ignorant majority herd is growing too big and gobbling more than their fair share of the resources. Everything changes.

Here is a good, well written article on what it will take http://www.arts.unsw.edu...ing%20Env.17.8.2006.html

To me if one wishes to be fully sustainable using some type of judgement on all action is needed. Weighting your input and output in all regards, on as many levels as our mind can fathom. Does drug use have impacts-of course but it is up to whom to decide that the positives out weight the negatives? Life itself damages the body so balance must remain to some degree to the side of destruction to be able to have new growth. Balance is all and good but is motionless-lacking in forward momentum. In my opinion life/ being sustainable involves accepting the cycles, learning how to do things better and always be mindful of your actions.

I have to say-I love this thread!

I freaked out a few years ago and now I'm mostly off grid. I sold my home and left Seattle for a small 8 acre farm in SW WA just north of PDX.

I eat allot of eggs from my harem of hens. I have a dozen layers. I sell the excess eggs, 3 bucks a dozen.

I have a half acre garden, and I built allot of nice raised beds. I grow just about everything you can find in the produce section of the supermarket. Its all organically grown. I also grow about .25 acres of winter squash, Hubbards and Acorns. I grow .25 acres of corn.

I have cows but I dont eat meat. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with em. The herd is growing by two every year. They are pure bred Angus.

With the cows and chickens you can imagine how much composting I do. I have about 4 acres of pasture that just kinda sits there. I dont do anything with it. Oh! psilocybe semilanceatta can be found in abundance in the pasture in the late fall.

I fish the local rivers here from time to time for salmon I do pretty good.

I dig for Razor clams and Oysters in the fall.

I usually harvest an elk and or a deer every fall with bow and arrow. The elk are in shooting range of my property quite frequently.

I have a small orchard 8 apple trees two plumb trees two cherry trees and a pear tree.

I hunt forrest grouse in the fall.

My house has a hand dug well, the water is plentiful and delicious. I'm on septic. My goal is to be 100% solar powered within the next couple of years.

I shop at allot of yard sales. I like buying used whenever I can. I have a 13 year old that is benefitting from this emensly. This is the life he knows. I believe he will pass it on.

I pick hundreds of pounds of chanterelles mushrooms every fall and dig almost as many truffles in the fall. I pick allot of wild berries.

My wife and I can and Jar and dehydrate and store what we can.

Grow some world class buds.

I heat my home with wood.

I used to make my own wine and booze til sobriety kicked in. Still have allot put away.

I can skin a buck, I can run a trout line, and a country boy will survive.

I have noticed the same... Been seriously depressed ages ago. Can tell you this isnt (just) depression.
Cant put my finger on it. But its got some ups and downs to ride for sure. Started about a month ago hmmm.

Growing pains i think. Thats a good thing right?
Pls be patient my anonymous friends...

I shall clear up. soon i hope lol
hope i wont offend to many in the mean time...

btw Ice House Shaman, you are a courageous man. hats off for you

Very cool, Ice House, very cool. You're living my dream! Magic shrooms and truffles really??? Wow. That's smallholding in style.

Hope you feel better soon, Virola. Maybe you're bored... I start getting morose when I stagnate. I prescribe doing something completely different (and maybe reading that book I always tout, Feeling Good by David Burns MD!).

Ice House, indeed awesome! Congratulations for all the effort!

I wish you the best on your path

Cool hand Ice House Shaman.

I began juicing fruits and veggies about a year ago. My juicer grinds anything I put through it to a very fine, slightly moist consistency; perfect for vericomposting (worm farming). The nutrients that don't make it into the juice aren't wasted and get fed to the worms.

The worm castings are excellent fertilizer for the soil garden, and when the worms start to outgrow their beds they get fed directly to the perch in my aquaponics system; much healthier and environmentally friendly than any store bought fish food available.

So....the worms feed the fish, the fish feed the plants, plants feed the juicer, and the juicer feeds the worms.... sustainability.

And once the worms start reproducing they really take off! Pretty soon I'm gonna have to retool my entire aquaponic system to keep up with their growth rate, hopefully I'll be able to feed the fish an all worm diet and double my grow bed space. Aquaponics FTW!

Grow your own vegetables, spices and fruits to decrease your costs on food.

Grow herbs and plants to make your own soaps and cremes.

Keep chicken and grow them some corn to eat. Eternal supply of free eggs and meat.

I really love this site, Permaculture for Renters, helping us "landless many" make reasonable changes around the home. Also, this PDF of the Master Conserver's Handbook has a ton of great information.

Ice House that is really inspiring. Something like that is one of the potential goals my wife and I have for the future.

If you don't mind me asking, are you able to support yourselves with your farm w/o the need for outside income or do one or both of you still maintain a job outside of the homestead? Also when you bought the place how did you manage it financially? Did it compare at all to the cost of buying a new home (possibly more or possibly less?)

Regardless wow, very inspiring to me. We a while ago made the decision that we will either be spending our time in a nice urban area where we can get away w/o a car and can walk everywhere OR moving out to the boonies and being as self-sufficient as possible. Non of that in between stuff like the suburbs (uggh). We haven't had a car for over 2 years now and manage just fine. We have a Scooter that we use occasionally, but typically we just walk or use public transit. It is nice to be in one of the cities in the us that actually has decent public transit.

A lot of good stuff in this thread that I don't need to add to. The drying clothes idea is great. We have a pretty small place with only a tiny outside deck, but I think we could probably at least do some of our drying outside and still have room to maneuver .

Have to fully support the canning foods. We share a local farm share with some friends that is way more than we typically can handle ourselves. My wife can's and freezes whatever we can to not waste any of it and to let us have good veggies during the winter. We currently have something like 12 jar's of tomato's waiting for us (crushed, sauce etc).

Some super small things that I do of the top of my head.

Don't grab 5 sheets of paper towel drying your hands out in public. If you really need the towel grab one sheet till it is satured. Typically I just shake and use my clothes. I don't understand why people grab so much towel.

If anyone in your family drinks soda get a soda maker. This is a huge savings in plastic. The soda actually tastes pretty good and there are some natural soda's you can get. My wife loves it for Carbonated water. We use a "Soda Stream" which isn't very expensive at all.

Buy most of you music in MP3 format. This one was hard for me. I have been a crazy music lover (both listening and creating) for a long time. I had amassed a huge collection of cd's. I really enjoy being able to sit with a cd and go through the linear notes outside a device, but I just can't justify it anymore. Sometimes I do buy some vinyl of stuff I reaaaaaaaaly like to have as I love vinyl. I have trouble with this, but I am doing a lot better. Luckily they now typically come with a code to download the mp3's.

I like to try and pay attention to what I am doing when out in public areas to make sure I am not auto-piloting bad behaviors that make no sense (like the drying hands thing). Just be aware of what you are doing.

I concur with making a wholesale shift to digital media. I only ever buy physical media (CDs, DVDs, dead tree, etc.) if it's absolutely the only way I can support the creators of the work. Preferably the only way recorded information enters my home is in the form of electrons down a telephone wire.

I've sharply reduced my refuse levels since starting vermicomposting. I only have a 50l worm bin but it eats up an amazing quantity of kitchen and paper waste.

Currently I'm using a few handfuls of worm castings to brew up a bucket of bacterially-dominant compost tea, which will be spread on my raised veg beds and ethno plants about the house.

This is our first season growing our own food. By next year I intend to have a 2000l aquaponics system up and running in a large greenhouse.

Chickens and guinea pigs are also appealing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0BTctUfPvI