This website is basically a live journal of an ecological education. For most of my life I have worked in technology or the arts or some combination of both and I have loved it. But over the years I feel myself be pulled to nature, to self sustainability and self reliance. These days seeing the wide variety of plants that can be grown easily is just as fascinating if not more so then the latest tech innovation. With the rise of A.I. and cloud computing it just seems that technology is quickly losing its humanity. I can promise I wont use A.I. to write anything for this site. It will all be old school, done by hand. Bad grammar and all.

As I dove in to gardening, farming, growing mushrooms, beekeeping, permaculture, restorative agriculture and sustainable architecture I learned just how bad commercial agriculture is and how devastating it is to our planet, and the topic just gripped me. Growing your own food is one of the most powerful things you can do. Getting closer and closer to your own food chain will give you a much better perspective on life and give you much healthier food as well. Due to globalization we can have food grown in one country, packaged and processed in another then sold in a third. What a waste of resources.

Our society has created a culture of isolation, of fear. The 24/7 news cycle spews hate and makes a lot of money convincing the average Joe that their neighbor is out to get them. We have changed from “citizens” to “consumers” and if you watch the footage on any black Friday you will see just how serious some people take their consumerism. I wanted out. I wanted to live a minimalist life, be in touch with nature and just breath. Surely life was more then busywork, certainly one can have value and not be “productive”. Isn’t sitting still and thinking worth something? Then I discovered “Ron Finley” known as the “Gangster Gardener” and his message really stuck in my mind. He is showing inner-city kids that are in extreme poverty how to grow their own food and escape the horrible cycle that poverty causes. Talk about empowering.

Can you imagine how little crime we had if every house and yard had its own garden? If there was simply food in abundance everywhere you went? Once I learned that grass is the most watered and fertilized crops in the world and that its not even native to North American I had a total shift in my thinking. A few years ago I set out to create a garden in the city that took less work then a traditional lawn, but would grow ALL of my food for the year using a variety of methods such as using mulch, cover crops and Ollas for watering. My second goal is that my urban property creates enough income from what crops are leftover that it pays my mortgage making the property somewhat self sustaining. All with less work then I would have done mowing and caring for a lawn. On this weird journey I have actually met my neighbors. People walk by all the time and talk to me as i’m working in the garden. People stop by just to see what i’m growing. My food tastes so much better and i’m substantially healthier. So I want to be part of the urban farm or cottage farm revolution. Lets kill that grass and plant native plants or plants for food. Lets do some guerrilla gardening and get plants growing in desolate urban lots. Lets take back our own future and health and stop letting giant corporations fill us with poison. This is a documentation of my journey in to a world of sustainability and self sufficiency.