What is this all about?

Yes, Daniel. What is this all about?

Well that's a hard question and what I have to offer as answers raise more questions.

First Question: What exactly have I been doing?
First Answer : For the last two and a half months I have worked at nine different farms/homesteads/ranches/retreats for one to two weeks each, through the WWOOF program. My goal was to see how different people live successful sustainable lives in harmony with their environment. I also planned on finding a place to stay and work until at least winter(October/November). After that maybe it would be a nice fit with the owners that I might stay longer, maybe make some money. Or I might go back to Israel and the Permaculture community there. Or WWOOF in Australia/New Zealand.

Second Question: How has it been so far?
Second Answer : Hard. I don't think I've ever felt this kind of loneliness before, the loneliness of the traveler. Its true that since high school, I moved around alot. Kibbutz, Yeshiva, living with my parents, living in a tiny room in washington heights, an abssorbtion center in Israel, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv, Two Kibbutzim in the deep desert near Eilat, and an educational farm in Modiin. And it's true that through it all I haven't "kept in touch". Every time I moved somewhere, I changed and became someone different, no longer identifying with who I was and the friends I had made. Especially since I stopped being an observant Jew. But now, I get somewhere, just start to get to know the people, and then leave. It's hard. And it's not like I've been running away from these places. They simply weren't good fits for me. I have a vague vision of where I want to be, and it's not on a socially awkward hermit's homestead.
It's not on a five acre ranch where three acres are devoted to two dressage horses.
It's not large property in the middle of a redwood forest, that has no permanence, because everybody's a renter.
It's not a row cropper(though the Bernier's in Sonoma County were probably the nicest hosts I had, and their practices are pretty darn sustainable compared to conventional farming, and they are active in their community, a beautiful community at that.)
It could have been Oz Farm, a CSA, Apple and Pear Orchard, and Retreat in Southern Mendocino. They have a happy, young, and small growing community, plenty of space(450 acres) mostly forest, and a river runs through it. Lots of potential and room for projects of my own. I suppose I left cause I didn't want to work in their mono crops of annual vegetables. I was always envisioning polyculture vegetable beds in between the rows of trees(alley cropping) rather than separate. My permaculture education has taken me way beyond simple CSA's. There was also the owner of the farm, and the manager of the farm, two seperate people and I felt that there wasn't a common vision between the two.
It most definitely isn't stuck in the middle of the woods with a aging lesbian beatnik hermit who spouts permaculture this, and community that, but at the end of the day lives alone, likes it, and has the ugliest, emptiest, stupidest homestead and gardens i have ever seen.
It's not a majestic 140 acre retreat center, though a part of me really wanted it to be. But they were having me do housekeeping and I was unwilling to continue to toxic cleaning products cleaning their lodge, washing windows, etc while the wwoofer I came with worked with the owner, in the owners office, the two of them in matching swivel chairs doing research on their macbooks for a solar panel array they are going to put up. It sucked. Plus I just plain didn't click with the owner whatsoever.
It's not a Meditation Center with a religious orientation. Everything about this place is cool except for the religion thing. The last thing I need right now is to find a new religion. I have a religion already and it's hard enough as it is dealing with that one, thank you very much!

Question Three: So it's hard, and you haven't found what you are looking for. What exactly are you looking for?
Answer Three: I could list things, elements that I would want to have wherever I live. Compost toilets, Food Forests, Natural Building, Aquaculture, Swales, Alternative Energy, Family and Community, Art and Music, No gasoline, chickens, ducks, geese, deer, sheep, goats, rabbits, horses, donkeys, hundreds, thousands of herbs and medicinal, useful plants. And maybe that is what I was looking for a place where all of these elements are in place and work harmoniusly together in a Permaculture designed system. So I could see it with my own eyes and know it to be true. I've seen farms each with a few individual elements, but never all of them, all orchestrated by Permaculture design. So I guess that's what I was looking for. And I realize now, that I should have looked for farms owned by Permaculture designers, not just anybody. I even had fasults with the educational farm in Israel cause though it had many sustainable elements, it too was not designed through Permaculture.

Question Four: So what have you learned?
Answer Four : When I want something, I need to be clear about exactly what it is I want. Then I can put together a plan to make it happen. What I want won't just lie in front of me in the middle of the road waiting to get picked up. To find something, I need to know what it is. I need to think about what it is I want, and why.

Well done, Daniel