COMMUNITY – TEAMING UP TOGETHER
WHAT CAN YOU DO, and HOW?
There are more and more people sensitized to the issues of how most of our illnesses and particularly almost all “modern” degenerative diseases are related to the way we eat. So directly related, in fact, that it is safe to say that one is a function of the other.
However, in the fragmented, hectic and mostly senseless way most of us think we have to live, time, and of course money, can often be an impediment. But it is age old wisdom that Union Begets Strength.
So why don't you consider teaming up with others? Start or join some grass root informal group of people aware of the issues, and wanting to do something about it, such as to start to eat right!
Teaming up to buy wholesale basic staples such as organic grains and pulses, flax seed, quinoa, cocoa beans, etc, can be surprisingly cost effective. This is truly nothing to be surprised at, when you consider that a package of what your local supermarket calls “bread” actually contains something like 4 cents of wheat and 2 cents of sugar. Some wonder how anyone can actually *eat* such a thing that more conscious people would actually be reluctant to feed to animals, but that is another issue altogether.
Buying co-operatively is a good way to start, but in the end, the real way to go is to have your own vegetable garden or “potager”, and to rely heavily on it for food.
There are many ways to achieve that goal, from Community Supported Agriculture endeavors, to of course the king of it all, creating and maintaining your own garden: 96 or 128 square feet, that is, three or four 4' x 8' (125 x 250 cms), intensively gardened, can feed a person for as long as the garden is productive. Which can be all year long in places such as Southern California and Florida, or even most everywhere if greenhouses and hothouses are made part of your dwelling.
If you don't have any surface available that could be turned into a garden (even a rooftop or a parking lot), then, team up with someone who has land! Or see if you can't get access to space set aside by the city or some specialized non-profit for local community gardens. Or try to find unused city lots. Or even, why not, consider “guerilla gardening” on public lands!
And if, for lack of time or inclination, you don't want to do the work to create a garden yourself, there are solutions too: Simply find up someone who will do it for you! This could be for money, or perhaps for some other consideration in some form of barter exchange. For example, some people are willing to create and maintain a garden in exchange for that unused spare room or in-law quarters you may have, as long as they get their share of the garden's production. And this is not just theory -- we know of several such people. Just be creative in your approaches. The only thing that counts is the result: A productive garden, and you eating more and more foods that are produced organically and sustainably in your own backgrad, literally or figuratively.
Another way to go is simply buy a Ready-Made Garden. [For the entrepreneurially-minded, there is huge business potential here. In fact, some of our members with the specialized knowledge are looking at the issue of perhaps patenting and licensing a whole existing methodology for the creation and marketing of Ready-Made Gardens. This actually includes gardening robotics approaches, at the cutting edge of the second oldest profession of the world, food growing, and of dot-com information processing and robotics. But this can also be done in the simplest ways, with no more tools than a pair of gloves, a hammer and nails, and a shovel. If you are interested by this entrepreneurial aspect, please contact us, and we will forward your inquiry.]
But in truth, why not do it yourself? Gardening is so simple, once you understand the basics: Soil is the primary key, light, water, air, temperature and location the other ones. It's as simple as that. To the contrary of what most people believe, the soil, even if it is the most fundamental consideration of all, being that air and light are a given, and that everyone understand that plants need some water to grow, contributes usually less than 10% to the weight of the harvested plant material, and often, less than 5%. The rest comes from water and the air, in the endless natural combinations of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen that constitute the foods that nourish us.
The only time when you really need expert input or advice is when establishing a new garden. If that part is done right, maintaining it is little work. Again, IF that part is done right... Otherwise, things might turn very differently! Just ask traditional Sunday gardeners about weeding...
So, why not team up locally? Pool knowledge together! Create crews that will install gardens on a rotational basis: It is a fact that if 10 people each pledge 10 hours to set up ten or more 4' x 8' raised beds, and do this as teams of 4 or 5, they will get 2 times and often 3-4 times more accomplished than if one person puts 10 hours of his own in his or her own project.
Feel free to use all the material on the present website to start your own local grass-roots movement. However, remember – do not modify it in anyway, particularly, do not alter the copyright notices that are also licenses to you and anyone else who so wishes to do so to use this material lawfully, and the “permalink” address of this page, which allows people to find the original material, so they can use it non-commercially as they see fit. Modified material is no more licensed, and thus, a copyright violation.
The easiest is for you to start your own local community blog, it's free on Blogger, Wordpress, etc. Create your own material addressing your own local issue (group forming, teaming-up for a buying co-op or to create a garden, etc), and for the rest, just link to the pages on the present blog and website, or reproduce them as is.
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WEB DESIGNERS - GRAPHICS ARTISTS – CODERS - SEO & MARKETING - Etc:
If you wish to volunteer to help us set up specialized websites and particularly complex portal sites using the present material and more, presented in a more graphic way, and complemented with multimedia material, we need you! Software such as like of Drupal or Joomla, more advanced forms of Wordpress, etc, is the way to go, so please contact us, you will be very welcome! We already have the hosting, and quite a few domains, all we need is your elbow grease! ;)
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