BACK ON MY FEET

I'm finally getting over being sick, my housemates convinced me to go to a doctor. I got antibiotics for my sinus infection, and all is well in the world.

What about everything else? Well life is difficult sometimes, especially when it concerns change. So settling in to a new environment, new circle of people can be tricky. I've been living at the Talent Homestead (I prefer the name New Talent Homestead but nobody's buying it!) for three weeks no. And what have I accomplished? Well fist off, let me remind you that I've been sick, and that I've also been taking advantage of the fact that i have a place of my own and can do what I want, no WWOOFing, no schedules. Ok, I haven't done that much. I've already gotten some work, putting up solar panels, and painting a house that is going to be part of a Cohousing project here in Talent. I just lined up a few day work in Portland(that's weird!) helping plant stuff for a urban food forest. I've also applied for a couple of jobs to be a caregiver for older people. Let's hope I get some steady work!

In terms of my own projects, things are going slowly. I could start growing Oyster and shitake mushrooms tomorrow, all i need is the spawn(usually bags of sawdust thick with white strands of mycelium). I'm trying to find the most local source of spawn, and so far the closest I've found is 223 miles away in Corvallis, which is on the way to Portland so I can pick some up when I come back from there. Buying locally isn't just about supporting the local economy. it's also about finding someone who has mushrooms and mushroom spawn suited for this climate. Kind of like saving seeds with vegetables. I want to start growing mushrooms indoors ASAP, which doesn't really require this local spin, cause I can control temperature and humidity artificially. But I want to sheet mulch the hazelnut orchardand other areas on the property and inoculate them with spawn of different mushrooms as well, and it will be more successful the more local the varieties are. I could look for people with spore prints(basically a piece of paper set underneath a frshly picked mushroom which drop thousands of spores onto the paper) and create mushroom spawn of my own. It's not rediculous, but can be tricky because everything needs to be sterile if the mushroom that i want is to grow and not some other household mold. i want to play around with making mushroom spawn, but for oysers and shitakes, i think i'll just buy a couple of bags for about $25 buck each. I should be able to grow a lot of mushrooms with those mixed into coffee grounds and sawdust(both of which I can get for free) and then afterwards I can spread the spent mixture into a mulch of sawdust,wood chips, wood shavings,straw, more coffee grounds, newspaper, and cardboard outside and hopefully this spring we'll get tons of mushrooms!

My housemate Karen is going to be mapping the property. I know i said I was going to do it myself, but hopefully I can help her do it and learn from her. All that i want to do is hindered by the fact that by nature, i am a pretty lazy guy and have wasted years of my life watching tv and movies. Though i made a promise to myself that from now on, I'll only watch movies with other people, it's still hard for me to get up and do the things I need to do. When I'm working for other people, I easily prove myself in terms of getting a lot done all day long. But building up the motivation to do my own projects is still very difficult and something I'm trying to work on this year.

The Journey Continues

I'm sitting in front of the wood stove in the living room of our new place. The house is already half furnished thanks to my housemates, who have lots of cool stuff. We already have a dining room table, chairs, a futon for the living room, all the kitchen stuff we could ever need. Great, now that's all settled, now what? I'm a little under the weather right now, I have an ear, nose, and throat thing, which has drained me of my energy. So I'm taking it easy for a while. I got some work yesterday with my housemate Grant. He's putting up solar panels for my friend Chuck. It was fairly straightforward, like building an erector set, only trouble is, I never had an erector set. So i felt a bit stupid, not knowing how to use a wrench, but I pick things up fairly quickly. I could have got more work today, but I feel so weak. I worry I might have Mono, but I hope that it's just a cold+stress. I'm hoping I can find more work too, I have some options to check out.

Then there's the garden, if we want to get our winter garden in, it's got to happen now. So we've got to get some beds made. Anne and Grant have a couple of raised bed frames at their old place that we can use. We just have to get them up here, fill em up and plant them with all sorts of leafy greens, and garlic.

The list of projects keeps growing:

Start growing all kinds of sprouts
Build a Cob oven
start collecting coffee grounds for future mushroom projects


Now I'm writing from the Ashland Food Co-Op, where it's snowing outside! Yay! I'm picking up my bike from the bike place, where it got a tune up. Today I become truly mobile. There's a bike path all the way from my place in Talent to Ashland, even to Medford the big city. Ashland is really bike friendly. Even the buses have bike racks on the front. They don't have those in Israel yet!

Hitchin' to Reno for Halloween

Most cool people around these parts either stick around Ashland for the scariest night on the Calender, or head to the bigger cities like Portland. Me, I'm headed to Reno, Nevada, to see my friend Kat. We met a few months ago at the homestead. I'm sure I'll have a ghoulish time.

Ah, hitchhiking! One of the greater way to feel truly free that I know of. The act of sticking your thumb out on the side of the road says that you don't need a car, don't need anything at all to keep you going. You just need a ride. And seeing as how everybody is driving these huge cars and SUVs, with only the drivers behind the wheels as cargo, couldn't you see fit to a little bit of company while going whereever you're headed?

Reno is five hours away from Ashland, so wish me luck and that I get the perfect ride. From here, to there.

HOME, SWEET HOME!

"The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems to create the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. This form of agriculture seeks the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and nonmaterial needs in a sustainable way."

Yes, that's right, I've found a place! It's a four bedroom house with wood burning stoves, two full bathrooms, one and a half kitchens, on a decent sized property, including fruit and nut orchard, greenhouse, two hops to a creek, at the edge of Talent, Oregon, 3 miles from the center of Ashland. I'm ridiculously excited.

My roommates are three really cool grownups(over 30), one is an all around handyman, the other two woman are great gardeners, all of them students of Permaculture. Another gentleman has a shop on the property where he does wood working, round timber stuff etc. So I'll be surrounded by skills, and hopefully I'll pick up a few myself this year. It's great to know that I'll be in a place with lots of support for the ideas and projects that I have.

List of projects of interest:

The gardens- This one is the big one. I am going to be mapping out the properties sectors like sun,wind, figuring out what plants will go well with the trees and vegetation already growing there. How can we utilize the perimeter fence to grow food. If we want some chickens, where should they go? I'll be going into more detail about Permaculture design as I progress.




Gourmet and Medicinal mushroom cultivation- The orchard is a great spot for that. Just a layer of sawdust, compost, coffee grounds and straw then inoculate the whole thing with a msuhroom spawn, of varieties like oyster, shitake, crimini/portobello.
This is also a big one for me. I need to do lots more research and talk to people. I really want to make some money from this, selling mushrooms.

Worms- This one's easy. Vermicompost, having red wigglers, turn organic waste into beautiful nitrogen rich castings. It's just a couple og boxes with holes. Easy peasy.

Microbrew- Yeah, Yeah! Let's make some beer! Also fairly easy.

A Hard Night's Day in Ashland

I spent the day biking to town to look at two different housing options, one of which looks really great. A working single mother lives with her 8 year old son right in town in 3 bedroom house with an average sized backyard. There's a studio room behind the garage, which would be mine. It has a bathroom, shower, fridge, and hot plate. Pretty basic. But what makes this place appealing is that she is looking for somebody to help her watch her son when she's working. Walk him to school in the morning, pick him up in the afternoon. Some babysitting every now and then. I could stay there for free, no rent, and grow food in the backyard as well. That's amazing.

Tomorrow I am going to look at another option, a house 3 miles north of Ashland, on a property that belongs to a woman who is very active in the Permaculture scene here. I would be sharing the house with some friends of Chuck, the guy who I wwoofed for in Ashland two months ago, all of whom i met before, and are really cool and into gardening etc. The property already had a greenhouse, a workshop, and other things that make it garden/permaculture ready. There would be rent and utilities, about $300 altogether, which is a good price for the area, but it would mean I would have to find enough work to pay for it. Which is reasonable. I can probably make $600 a month fairly easily. I just don't know how yet. We'll see.

We all had dinner tonight here at Chuck's, all of us interested in this house. Chuck and I made lasagna, and the others brought greens for a stirfry and lentils and chips and salsa. And I had a bottle of really good beer. And fresh apple cider which they made two days ago. So after that, and a good nights rest tonight, I should be ready to meet whatever challenges wait for me tomorrow!

I made it, I'm here, in Ashland, Oregon. Now what?

Finally, after a bus to New York City from my hometown of West orange, NJ, a weekend with my friend Rueben and his Upper West Side Jew Scene, another bus to Boston where I spent the night at my friend Diane's, a flight to Denver, another to San Francisco, and one more to Medford, Oregon, I got picked up by my friend Chuck, who I wwoofed for the last week of August, and drove back to his Farm outside of Ashland. Phew!!

I'm staying in his barn which he just finished renovating, really nicely I should add. The upstairs has a kitchen, bathroom, and plenty of space, not that I need much right now. Just a place to put my sleeping bag down, a desk to do internet stuff, a fridge for some food...

Tomorrow, oh tomorrow, things start to happen. My to do list:

Visit possible housing options- I've got a few places to look at. Three are really promising. One, a professional couple has a house in town with some outdoor space. I talked to the guy, they do massage and other body treatments along with clowning for kids. He says it's a really cool house, and they sound like really nice people. They are really keen on improving the outdoor spaces, gardens etc. I could probably get the rent reduced based on how much work I put into the gardens, which I would do anyway.

The second is a single mother and her 8 year old son. Also a house in town, similarly interested in having a garden. She also needs help watching the kid, and I could reduce the rent by babysitting, which is awesome.

Third, and very interesting. This morning I got an email from Chuck's neighbor and friend, who I had met in August. She, her partner, and Karen, who used to live at Chuck's are looking at a place in South Talent, only six miles north of Ashland. It's a house on the property of a woman who's very active in the Permaculture scene here, already has some gardens, a green house, hoop house, workshop, orchard. Just needs some TLC. I like the fact that it's people i already know, who are really keen on doing Permaculture stuff too.

There are a couple of other options, but they are further away from Ashland than I'd like. I need to be within biking distance of town, social activities, educational activities, etc. I don't have a driver's licence, and i don't have a car, so bikability is key. Which brings me to...

Get a driver's license- About fucking time! Yes, I'm 26 years old and I've never had a driver's license. Truth is, I never really needed one, didn't lead a lifestyle that called for it. Now, with an interest in providing for my needs, including access to resources(i.e. organic material, building materials, plants, supplies of all sorts) and the ability to transport them back home, along with a desire to visit lands for possible purchase, and to just visit people, places, and events, having a license, and possibly a vehicle make a lot of sense. So I'll go to the DMV tomorrow and pick up a study guide for the written exam.

Open up a local bank account- I have some funds which I want to use for some of my projects this year, including growing mushrooms, and I also want to get a credit card so I can begin to build a healthy credit score. When it comes to buying land, I've always thought that I would never get a mortgage, despised the idea. And it's very possible that I won't have to, if i can get an interest free loan from my family. But if that doesn't happen, I will have to make a lot of money in the next couple of years, which isn't entirely impossible, or I can get a mortgage. The USDA offers loans for purchasing houses and land in rural areas, which is exactly what I'm looking for, to the tune of 1% interest up to $250,000. That figure is much higher than anything I'm looking to purchase, especially if I go in on some land with partners. So a 1% interest loan of $100,000 is more than manageable, right? So build up your credit, Daniel Kra. Get a credit card, use it, and pay it off every month. I think I'm up to the challenge.

Sign up for some free health care- The Oregon Department of Human Service is having a lottery to pick people to recieve health care benefits. All I have to do is sign up, if i start making enough money to afford rent, food, and a private health care service, I might switch I might not. I might not even get it, who knows? But I got to try.

Find payed work- I thing this will probably have to wait until I find a permanent housing situation. Sure, if someone offered me to do a day's work for pay I might take it, but my Number One priority is to find a place to live.

Well, it's 12:30 in the morning and I've got a big day ahead of me, so good night and please send some postive vibes my way!

On the road again

I'm riding on a bus right now, headed to Boston. The foliage along the highway is gorgeous, shades of orange, and green. And you wan to know something interesting about me? It's when I'm traveling, when I'm on the move, going from one place to the next which is the story of my life, that I truly understand how I could be terribly happy spending the rest of my life in one place and that it could be any place in this whole world. If only I will give myself that oppurtunity. That time hasn't come yet, but it's coming soon, I feel it in my bones.