The Five Year Plan

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance
#1

Spider reminded me that we wanted to start this thread.

My five year plan:

  1. Garden more, hunt more, gather more.
  2. Learn more about gardening, hunting, gathering.
  3. Connect with locals and inspire them to hunt, gather, plant more.
  4. Purchase old-school, electirc-free equipment (such as pedal sewing machines)
  5. Learn more routes out of the city.
  6. Go fishing more.
  7. Make more friends.
  8. Store seeds & celtic salt.
  9. Learn to compost human manure.
  10. Collect rain water.
  11. Learn to live without electricity.
  12. Purchase small scale solar-power gear.

That’s all I can think of for now… it’s not really a “plan” as much as a list of shit to do.

#2

For me some of the things I thought of were…

  1. Learn more about local wild edible and medicinal plants and use them
  2. Practice friction fire methods with different local woods
  3. Work on daily flow with the Tao
  4. Practice more shamanic healing and journey work
  5. Learn more primitive hunting and fishing techniques
  6. Learn more about primitive food preservation
  7. Practice even more awareness expanding exercises
  8. Find others interested in Rewilding and share/learn from them
  9. Do extended outings in the wilderness with minimal supplies
  10. Become more involved in WAS community
  11. There is more I’m sure, but that’s all I’ve got coming up for now…
#3

I’m not much of one for 5 years out, but this year it’s:

  1. Start fishing again.
  2. Start hunting.
  3. Get a worm box going.
  4. Continue ‘permaculturing’ my yard. Including:
    Put in some currant plants
    Expand my perennial/self-seeding herb patch (planning on adding Thyme, Oregano, Dill, Lemon Balm, and maybe Rosemary).
    Build potato boxes and see what kind of calorie crop I can get
  5. Continue practicing w/ sling (and make bolas)
  6. Forage walnuts & hickory nuts from a nearby apartment complex
  7. Keep trying to identify as many plants in my area as possible
#4

[ul][li]find an accredited university to further my studies online (currently considering the U of Maryland’s online environmental management program[/li]

[li]follow the morels and generate cash for all these gatherings I want to attend[/li]

[li]follow the chantrelles, boletes, amanitas and other fungi to avoid having a job while attending online classes[/li]

[li]graduate with a b.s. in env. management and begin to bid on open contracts for environmental cleanup using ‘earth weaving’ magic[/li]

[li] get married, buy a tract of land, start a land trust, live work, and play with my friends[/li]

[li]journal my foragings, and make a little media niche out of rewilding[/li]

[li]apprentice with a gunsmith, go hunting for the first time in 10 years[/li]

[li]build a boat for better access to the fish[/li]

[li]form a music band and put out an album[/li]

[li]buy stock in sustainable technologies (most likely, stock in Interface Flooring, second-gen solar, wind tech, green energy web hosting, microhydro, and so on…)[/li]

[li]built it, so they will come[/li]

[li]help my mom get her little crafty business up and running (wild food canning, weaving, painting, beading and looming)[/li][/ul]

there’s probably more, but that’s a good list for me… plenty to work on…

#5

In chronological order:

Get Permie Cert: should be done on my b-day Aug 15th

Get EMT cert: should be done with basic EMT the day before I get married

Get married: Feb 23, 2008, honeymoon on a Thailand beach

Film “Night of the Scarecrow”, low budget horror movie starring friends and filmed at “my” house

Finish recording 1st album(only 13 years in the making!)

Retrofit the Bechet House with solar grid inter-tie system and rainwater harvesting

Start community garden near train station and homeless shelter; unlock food

Work on Louisiana coastal erosion problem with permaculture and mycology

Make 5th World Film; script is almost finished

Purchase land, permaculture and green build my home.

Have one child, start adopting more

Film “The Incident at Lab 17”, horror film inspired by H.P. Lovecraft

Retire to a life of my family and tribe, permaculture, and lots of buttsex!!

Tasks that are ongoing:

Build the record label, studio and film company to self-sufficiency

Get my black sash in wing chun kung-fu( been practicing for years, just never got around to going back to it)

Make a bulletproof, fireproof, thermal imaging proof, and now radar proof(thanks Penny!!) cloak

Build a muzzle loading rifle, a sword, a bow and a spear from scratch

Learn to use and build an astrolabe and a slide rule (Thanks Greer)

Engineer a foursome between myself and an Asian woman, an African woman, and a Latina (must not be from America. One can dream!!)

Propagate an anti-civ, rewilding mindset

Learn Chemistry (“Who needs technology when I have 6 kinds of fungus and seawater to make sulphuric acid with” Barry Ween)

ON EDIT: I left some things out

Survive for 30 days in the wilderness with no gear except a knife

go completely off-grid with my home (part of the ten-year plan)

learn to shoot left handed( I can pistol fairly well, but not bow, rifle or shotgun)

#6

jhereg,

I started working some with black walnuts last fall. There’s a lot of work involved in husking, drying and cracking, but they are really worth the effort imho. Here’s a site I found that offers some interesting ideas in how to process them: http://tomclothier.hort.net/page21.html

#7

TonyZ, what does earth weaving magic entail?

#8

I graduated from college in December and just finished a class I had an extension on. Live with the 'rents. Haven’t worked since October. I applied for unemployment but they won’t give it to me because I made too much in one quarter of the year and not enough in the others. I hope to screw around for the next month or two doing whatever it is I do…writing on forums, snuggling, cooking, reading, and of course practicing my primtive skills. Then I would like to get a job as a biostitute (biologist prostitute) doing plant research for the US Forest Service ( taxpayer supported timber company ). There is a one year full-time position with my name on it if the funding comes through. If not I’ll likely work a May-Oct job with the USFS or with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy that doesn’t pay quite as well.

My aim is to save money for a place of my own. A bit of land, a hunting camp, trailer, cheap house, whatever looks best. I could put my tipi up on someone else’s land (I put an ad in the paper once and so many people responded and declined even to take rent money), or live in a sailboat for the summer, or try and eke out a secretive living in the national forest, but I don’t really want to. I want a place of my own, even if it is just a base camp, where I can start planting things, cut down trees if I want, a place where I can put down permanent roots and not have to worry constantly about covering my tracks or what a landownder might think of, say, my humanure pile.

I only have about $3, 500 in the bank. Luckily I live in a place where real estate is reasonably priced and I will try to get a loan. I intend to apply for one as soon as I find employment. I have reasonably good credit history from using my credit card and years of student loans. On the other hand I also have debt from those student loans about $8,000 nearest I can figure plus interest. But it doesn’t worry me too much…So i’ll pay $70 bucks a month for the next ten years…if the Mayan prophecy doesn’t come true that is. Here are the types of places I am looking at:

http://www.northwestpahomes.com/Default.aspx?tabid=41&bc=2&h=1&lid=YyTJ6Vxddx0%3d&lndx=5&vw=dtl&rppg=10&digest=V8aUfJ4G5gUUIQKIqBFvhg

http://www.northwestpahomes.com/Default.aspx?tabid=40&bc=1,2&vw=dtl&qs=sp&h=1&lid=C89DSJPG0bA%3d&lndx=40&rppg=10&digest=l4le41hAQfWAbzQuGXsIxg

http://www.northwestpahomes.com/Default.aspx?tabid=40&bc=1,2&prpt=bld&vw=dtl&qs=sp&h=1&lid=4POmP3VarPI%3d&lndx=12&rppg=10&digest=S+GMu3sE3eVpXbkVFKHBlw

While it would be nice, I’m not overly concerned with having a ton of acreage. I would just do away with the lawn and pack my garden in tight around the house. The first link and the 3rd are both close to the national forest so I could “borrow” its land for most of my primtive needs. And while I don’t think I would prefer it because I hate noise and people watching me there are advantages to living closer to town in a house like the second…lots more diversity of edible plants for one. Around the neighborhood where I live with my parents live I can easily walk to yucca, hops, linden, dogbane, cattail, nettle, milkweed, daylily, meadow mushroom, blewit, chinese chestnut, black cohosh, wild cherry, poke, burdock, and on and on and on. Not so in the forest, not even close. An ecological house would be sweet and I’m always temped by the pretty pictures of them, but really I don’t need to build something new and if I bought property instead of a house I’d start out in the tipi, make a nice deck for it and maybe a wood fired hot tub and some outbuildings and see if that would do.

Other things for this year:
-Keep learning and practicing my primtive skills as always.
-I’d like to meet Urban Scout. I was going to go out to Portland around this time, but I don’t feel like it right now. (Sorry Scout. I hope you make it out east this summer).
-Cache stuff at all the rock shelters in the woods, create a physical/mental map of them, spend some time wandering from one to the next.
-Maybe canoe down to Pittsburgh to visit sis and friends. (I wanted to do this at age 16 but wasn’t allowed and no friends would go with (LOSERS!), so I did it anyway alone but my parents caught me and brought me back home after only a day and a night on the river so it’s sort of a dream deferred of mine).

Well that’s just my one year plan, but once I get a place the next five would probably be spent working on it, earning money (but hopefully not full-time employment), establishing a garden, guerilla planting of things in the woods and other people’s property, perhaps writing a book, getting married, having kids…

#9

Earth weaving magic is growing local, acclimated species to take take of pollutants that prevent sucession from taking hold, and letting nature do the rest. (that’s the short answer). Using a combination of fungi, bacteria, annelids, and arthopods, one could rapidly turn conventional soil into organic soil, decontaminate brownfields, and underbid most superfund contractors by an entire manitude.

#10

Rix, Thanks! That’s an awesome link! I really want to get my daughter to help me with it, she still doesn’t really “get” foraging (she’s 7). She’s starting to get into the habit of asking if you can eat such-and-such. She asked about acorns one day and I said, yes, you can eat acorns, it’s best to grind them and cook with them tho’. A week or two later, she comes home from school and tells me that her friends say you can’t eat acorns…

So, anyway, I want to get her more actively involved in it, and I figure the walnuts (at least the collecting part) are a good way to start…

Penny Scout, You are so much smarter than I was at your age!

#11

jhereg,

i definitely think nut gathering is a good way to open up a child’s mind to the possibility of wild foods. it’s a good “crossover” food. we eat nuts in civilization, we just don’t always understand how the get into our candy bars and trail mix. :slight_smile:

i was going to try acorns last fall, too. i got overwhelmed with how many walnuts i had, though. i think i ended up with 10 gallons of walnuts (still in their husks) just from gathering them in a park next to where i worked for about 15 minutes a day over a couple of weeks. and then i started gathering acorns which might have been easier to process, but the big pile of walnuts just keep looming in the corner of my eye.

i still have all my piles, so now i’m telling myself that i’m doing an experiment to see how long they last inside their shells and if any of them will be worth eating by the time i get around to them.

also, for getting kids involved, i think stuff that’s readily edible when you pick it is good for getting them hooked. i showed a friend’s son (with his parents’ permission and presence) some chickweed and woodsorrel this time last year, not thinking he was paying much attention. then his mom called me later in the year, saying he was out in their yard eating weeds, and lo and behold, he had correctly identified both plants in his yard and was having a good time eating them.

i think fruits are good “hooks” for kids, too. as are things that they can relate to like sassafras being what root beer used to be made out of. they can smell the familiarity in the root.

i think you definitely have to bridge the gap with kids sometimes, but fortunately, there are a lot of bridges out there.

#12

This year

  1. This summer grow food, take care of it all summer effectively, harvest it, and preserve it for the winter via dehydration. This includes carrots, potatoes, onions, beans, peas, brocolli, tomatoes and salad greens.

  2. Work with family and friends to build a small, straw bale cabin for my daughter, her husband and their three sons.

  3. Pour a foundation for our round cabin. Cut down trees and peel them to allow them to season for the next year. Gather rocks for the masonry stove. This is going to be a non-electric house for us. Which reminds me, I need to start stocking up on lamp oil.

  4. Continue seeking others to join us on this mountain who are attracted to the primitive living skills direction in life and want to live a primitive lifestyle. See if TonyZ’s mother would like to come live here. She sounds like a neat woman.

  5. Plant the 30 pinon pine trees and 50 native plum trees I have ordered this spring. Plant raspberries, asparagus and strawberries.

  6. Process the clay from our land and make some pottery. Learn how to fire it in an open fire pit.

  7. Help Bob braintan hides. Make leather. Make leather clothes. Decorate clothes with beads.

  8. Build a chicken coop. Buy chicks.

Year 2:

  1. Use trees to build timber frame for our cabin, build the floor and roof.

  2. Add more permaculture plants to the mountain, including chokecherries, nanking cherries and buffalo berry bushes.

  3. Continue and expand the garden to increase food production and food storage.

  4. Teach grandchildren skills in primitive living.

  5. Practice skills in making yucca baskets.

  6. Increase chicken flock.

Year 3:

  1. Finish cabin with straw bales and stucco it. Move in.

  2. Increase food production and storage.

  3. Continue permaculture expansion.

  4. Work with new community members in various primitive living skills projects.

  5. Build barn. Acquire two miniature cows. Acquire pigs.

Year 4:

  1. Increase food production and storage.

  2. Learn more about animal husbandry.

  3. Add more permaculture plants.

Year 5:

  1. Get my daughters to move to the mountain no matter what.

  2. Batten down the hatches and pray.

Snowflower

#13

hmm… I don’t think my mom would want to leave her brother and sisters, but maybe the wind might blow us on your dorostep for a short while… I am in the middle of trying to figure out where all the best mushrooms and berries grow…

#14

Minature Cows! sounds adorable. I’ve wanted a goat for a long time for the milk, but I’m not sure if I want to have to take care of it or find other people to take care of it when I am gone. Maybe it can just wander the National Forest with me. I reckon they didn’t think to make a rule about No Pet Goats. Question is, can I teach it “the routine of invisibility”?

As far as kids and foraging. Yeah wild foods are great for kids. When I was young I only knew sumac, wood sorrel, sassafrass, and indian cucumber, and of course berries, but I would have loved to know more. Once my cousins and I gathered a whole bucket of sorrel which we called “sweet grass” despite the fact that it’s sour…guess we were thinking sweet in the old fashioned English sense of “good”. We got a stomach ache from eating so much, which now that I am older I know is a side effect of too much oxailic acid.

My fourth grade teacher used serve us spoonfuls of maple syrup from her farm. I just remembered I did a presentation on edible plants in 9th grade. Teacher gave me a B, that bastard. My friend had a high school teacher that gave all the kids extra credit if they collected 1000 acorns each . And they had to put them in a bucket to check for floaters! Then he processed them all and the class had an acorn pancake meal. In college I brought in some acorn biscuits one day but somehow we got to talking about mealworms so that half the class ended up wanting to try my mealworm biscuits. Never did set em straight.

#15

Oh yeah, and add this to the plan: I would like to have corrective surgery for my vision because contacts suck in the wilderness and glasses only slightly less.

#16

That’s a big one for me too, Penny. For a long time, I figured I’d stock up on a forever supply of contacts and saline solution, but my eyes have been having some serious problems with the contacts. I am legally blind without glasses. Right now I have three pairs of glasses and plan to get a few more, just in case.

I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t have a pet goat that wandered with you in the wilderness. She’d be good company. Only, you couldn’t sleep with her, and might have a problem with bears, since goats are considered high delicacies by bears. On second thought - maybe it’s not such a great idea, lol.
Snowflower

#17

• learn how to wield sticks
• get medical aid
• get my rock and rabbit stick throwing skill up
• learn raw clay pottery
• learn water tight basketry
• learn skinning, tanning, and general animal processing for food and other usages
• run five miles with a mouth full of water
• tap an adult wild deer on it’s shoulder and laugh in it’s face
• spear a deer
• learn what is fresh and safe roadkill to eat
• increase my debris hut making skill and learn and make at least two other aboriginal shelters types .
• learn bow & drill and hand drill methods with lots and lots of various wood types
• learn stones
• flint Knapp myself knives
• learn edible insects
• be involved in a tribe or two or a whole bunch
• make a long lasting long bow
• catch fish with spear and my hand
• make gardens all around town
• make shelters all around town
• find wild safe food all around town
• be able to walk away from buying food from stores
• collect rain water and purify my own water
• build strong bonds with everybody around
• learn more martial arts
• give away some of my gear and supplies I don’t need probably to one of my tribal member or to someone like-minded.
• learn more fence jumping techniques
• learn more about bicycles
• make clothes from scratch
• finish my habitat restoration movie script and begin shooting
• sale all my collectibles
• enhance all my skills
• find more connections
• become more flexible
• learn my part more
• Try to continue to lower my harmful impact to Earth mother and father sky.

#18

I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do about my eyesight as well. It’s pretty bad, so Lasik won’t cut it. I could get “contact implants”, but it doesn’t sound anywhere near as safe and it’s $7G for both eyes. I’m tempted to just get several pairs of durable glasses…

#19

Hey Penny, Snowflower and Jhereg~ My mom was considering getting eye surgery. She talked with a good friend who had it done and they said in about a year their bad eyesight returned.
Have ya’ll ever heard of eye strengthening exercises? I hear they work really well. I make up my own sometimes to try to counteract all the bad effects of staring at a computer screen.

#20

my vision sucks hard, too.

i’ve heard of vision correction exercises–from and uzbek friend at first, so i kind of dismissed it off hand as communist propaganda: “if your eyes aren’t working right it’s because you’re not trying hard enough for the fatherland.” but part of me really wanted to believe in it.

i recently stumbled across ran prieur’s page on his eyesight recovery techniques. he seems to have had quite a bit of success with it.