Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've been working for 8 years now and have the exact same belongings i had when i started out. I haven't wasted very much money on crap that just burns out because i wish to have a small bit of land with a sustainable house and be free of this age of industrial slavery! I haven't made it an inch towards my goal! does it seem screwed up to anyone else that it can take 20 years just get off grid and live off the land?! I'm not even talking about something crazy here! just a bit of land with a ferocement house with a few solar panels and an ap farm will set me back atleast 30grand! and that's if i do all the work myself?! Why does it take 20 years of hard work to live in a cement house with some lights and a fish pond?!?! To top it all off things are about to go to shit! I'm running out of time to get out of this blasted tidal wave of doom i see coming that my slave masters are brining upon themselves!

Oh and on top of that once i do break free I'll have nothing but fruits veggies and fish for the rest of my life no salad dressing no shaving cream no razors Limited to no communications and no way to replace parts Even if i slave away even longer and stash away some gold that wont last very long should i have to replace a solar panel

And that's just me! what about my family? we would all have to work for 70 years to be able to build even the smallest of communities

What's that? should of gone to college then? jee yah then i could have loans to pay on for the rest of my life on top of the rest of it and half the people i know that went off to college are worse of than i am working at a starbucks!!
WTF!?
ARRRRRGGGGG i'm going to bed so i can wake up and try to deliver things paying $3.40 for a gallon of gas!
FAAAAAACCCCKKK!

Mate, I understandyour frustrations.
1) Moove to Australia.
2) Save money and buy some land in Thailand.

3) retire:)

I've been working on that plan for 15 odd years , except I didn't have to moove here.

I've got the land , started the farm , built the dams,,,built a small house,,,,now I'm just waiting for a redundancypackage ( HAAA , no chanceof that) or for retirement time ( 18 years to go

Lottery / lotto is my only hope.

I'm in the u.s. farthest i could ever make it out of here would be mexico and some crazed druglord would just molest my fish and steal my panels Many many Americans would love to high heavens to be able to get out of here but it's very very very hard to do. Most of us can hardly pay the bills even if we don't screw around all the time. also if i already had enough money to jump country I'd already have enough to get this done here :/

I guess our version of Thailand(aka mexico) would be doable but there is a reason the fence is only hopped in one direction :/
The amount of guns and bears i'd have to buy to fend off lunatic natives would offset any benefit to moving there in the first place

"Lottery / lotto is my only hope."
sound like we are in the same leaky boat *hands out spare pails*

Come help me build Concord Ecovillage.

Fingers-crossed, one of the landowners we have been talking to for years just dramatically lowered his asking price for a nice 18 acre parcel on the edge of town. A Very Green Developer is Very Interested in us, and will run some numbers this weekend. The planets are creaking into alignment....but we still need good people to live in our little green community. It would be an easy sell to build a community AP system and have a few chickens and an organic veggie garden.

United We Stand.

Go Janet!!!

All positive thoughts heading towards you JP ...

LoomingCactus I know what you are saying!

I have a 5 year plan. This is year 1 and I hope that I will even have 5 years to make it happen! Before I start let me cover some history. I bought some land when it was cheap and not in a city. I built a small efficiency apartment type dwelling. It cost $4000 to build including doing my own septic (which I should have done composting for the same money). Then I got married, had kids and added 3 rooms on as I had the money. Now 10 years later I have recovered from marriage (other than Dr bills that come up) and can just now continue onward. Now the plan. It goes something like this. I have debt, I have expenses, I have limited income.
Usage of money monthly:
29% Sustainability Projects like Aquaponics
25% of my income goes to organic or otherwise natural food.
10% Minimum payments on debt (paying off smallest first & applying to next smallest)
10% Fuel Cost
10% Electric Bill
11% Car Payment
5% Misc Needs like clothing or extra milk ect

-With debt payed off (not counting car) I will be applying 39% towards Sustainability
Using that 39% I am building an AP system to replace 90% of our food, this is a couple years out. Once that is done then I can apply 59% of budget on Sustainability. Next, a cool tube system is replacing AC and Heat systems, lights are being replaced with LED lights and lowering electric bill by 75% bringing my budget towards Sustainability to 66.5%. Next a fuel plant is being constructed to fuel cars on self made e85 freeing up another 8.5%(from cat tails grown in our sewer on 1 acre) bringing the Sustainability budget to 75%. Installing solar cells will eliminate the remaining part of the electric bill bringing the Sustainability budget to 77.5%. At this point the car will be paid off bringing the Sustainability budget to 88.5% Then, I will save a couple years, do upkeep and perhaps build my earth ship or stove wood house. At the end of the run the 88.5% of budget will be "applied" to living retirement, that is to say I will work from home and only requiring 11.5% of my previous income to live well! And even if I keep working there will be no stress because I will not have to work that much to make it.

Now I know there are other planed and unplanned expenses like vacations, Dr visits ect ect ect, but I think you should be able to see my plan...

I will have eliminated most of my debt and by the end of this year I will have it all gone except one car payment and they can have it back if thing get that bad. There are TONS of sacrifices to be made and I think thats the sticking point for most people. Most will never be willing to live in a tent while they build a house, most would never take the time to learn and do it them selves because it would not be "professional" looking like the neighbors, and others live in cities with oppressive governments that will not let you do it your way, most will not give up their "safe" suv's comfort or their movies and packaged plastic goods.

At the end of my life I am not going to say I wish I worked more and had more stuff! No its the people and relationships that are important and if I live in a tent sleeping on a hammock then that would be better than having my comfort in a large 200,000 home with 2 cars and 3.2 kids playing "keeping up with the Johnes". The question is what do you really want from life and does the spouse approve? I'm lucky my wife and I are on the same page. LOL, its funny, I used to hate those dirty "tree huggers" and I dont even know where that attitude came from but it must have come from the same place that tells us we need all this stuff..

I am getting off the lemming train it a choice!

Hope the best for you Janet.

It takes some doing to get out of the rat race, but don't think it is just swinging in hammocks sipping Pinacoladas - we work a lot of hours - we love it, but we are busy.

Yes, it is hard work to feed your self and keep shelter and I dont mind working when all of the benefits go towards my families life vs being a consumer. Everything about the rat race is about making someone else money. As it stands I work non stop for what? To feed, cloth, and house my family. Well, I'd rather work on those things if thats all Im working/living for!

http://storyofstuff.ethicalbrand.org/

Janet, are you seriously looking for people for your ecovillage? I would have thought you'd be beating people away...

In truth, right now we're looking for people to DO SOME WORK FOR FREE!!! It is a little frustrating that the group has over 100 people on its Yahoo Group, and yet there are only a few of us who show up to meetings, organize guest speakers, search for land, research ordinances, etc etc etc. Apparently though, this is normal. Most people don't really think it's gonna happen until things firm up a little more. Once we get the developer and land secured, I suspect people will come out of the woodwork.

Janet - fair warning, there are a lot of talkers, not a lot of doers. Even after you get the ball rolling you can end up with leaches who just want everyone else to do the hard stuff because I guess they are special or something.

Giving people tasks early and when they don't complete, throwing them off the island, is a good tactic - if not absolutely necessary.

I personallly would make them walk the plank, but I have a family heritage to uphold...

The answer to your question is about 150 years old. Pay yourself first, invest, and compound. One day you wake up rich. (It takes a long time)

BTW, I'm a big fan of John Cummuta's debt elimination system.

Very true - use as little as you can stand for yourself and put whatever else you can into investments that are really assets. Assets are not things usually, but something that earns you money.

A home really isn't an asset in my mind - unless you buy somewhere that the value of housing is going up rapidly and plan on moving where housing is much cheaper. Otherwise, the increase in value in your house is offset in the money you have to have to replace it.

The goal is to get to where your assets provide for you - and whatever you make can go to buying more assets - or of course, aquaponics.

I imagine the majority are wishful thinkers and/or poseurs. The trick will be to get it done without someone or more than one person becoming or feeling like they are a martyr for the cause. To do that will require a real sharing of the load.

Maybe to weed out the poseurs you should require a deposit. Only serious people would put up real money. Or, to borrow a concept from fraternities and sororities, you could put them through a hazing ritual of some kind. People value an institution more if they have to go through some kind of hazing or trial or pay a price of some kind to be a member of the group.

Something like the rankings on here by number of posts may work to measure who has contributed more than others and so should have more seniority. That would be kind of like money or a kind of measured work unit (like money really). The truly useful people would probably reach a certain level of work units pretty quickly. Either someone worked like a demon to reach their level or worked steadily over a lot of time to reach it, and so should be rewarded by memobership.

I always thought that at our company when a programmer quit that the other programmers should surround them in the parking lot and beat the crap out of them. This would serve multiple purposes. One is that when you are trying to debug their crappy code some days or years later you can think back that at least you got a couple punches or kicks in on them. The other is that it would strengthen the bond of the group overall, and also that people would be hesitant to leave. We don't do it yet though...