thanks to your post here i looked up Sharewaste and am now a host myself!

as for me, i live in Western Colorado, USA - in the high desert. we get a ton of direct sunlight, it’s really hot in the summer and can get really cold in the winter - USDA hardiness zone 6b/7a. it is also a very arid land.

my setup is super basic, as lazy as it gets. i use a pallet compost bin that i made out of free pallets i got from the neighborhood, pretty much as shown in this link. we keep our kitchen scraps and i add to the pile generally once a week. we also add yard waste of our own, and that of friends and family and neighbors occasionally. i water the pile irregularly as i am extremely lazy, but i do have a water barrel set up nearby that, in the future, i will use to drip irrigate the pile, but that’s a next spring project now. something for future Andy; we hate that guy! ha.

we also are using chopped up leaf mulch as compost on a part of our back yard that we are turning from a dirt patch into a garden. this is sort of a compost-in-place situation, or a lasagna mulching situation. it’s not amazing, but it works; i grew potatoes in a wood chip mulch this year, so i am hopeful it will work next year.

this is my dream right here. my wife and i bought a “fixer upper” with bare dirt in USDA zone 6b/7a, and i dream of doing this. thanks for sharing!

dang, the bookbinding looks super cool! good for you. i am slowly beginning to investigate a partnership between my workplace (in the IT field, and we do a lot of ewaste recycling) and the local migrant center to provide them with a bunch of machines for things like GED, citizenship study, and communication.

good luck and good powerthrough!

i’d love to see photos!

for myself, i have been an unproductive lump for weeks due to oppressive heat in my part of the world. and also laziness, and internalized pseudo-Protestant work ethic guilt, and other stuff. but i do have some plans. i live in the arid southwest of the USA (well, extreme western Colorado but it’s effectively the arid southwest, climate-wise). i’ve got some potato plants that are growing which have largely been watered via a rain barrel i have set to collect water from our downspout in our backyard. i have three more such rain barrels which i plan to install.

my mother gave me a gift certificate to a local nursery, so we’re going to plant native/xeric bushes and trees on the west side of our house which is currently essentially bare and exposed to late afternoon glaring, hot sun.

we’re adding cellulose insulation to our attic in September, and once the heat has died down a bit we are going to finish covering out front yard in cardboard and mulch, hopefully in time to plant some winter cover crops. we also planted an apple tree last year that has survived the winter and the summer thus far.

lots to do, and little energy to do it with unfortunately. i’m feeling really depressed and shitty about climate stuff right now, which is why i made this post; i’m hoping i can get some secondhand positivity or enthusiasm to help me get going to actually do some of the projects i have in mind.

verdict: it was not terribly helpful. gonna try Hugo next. https://gohugo.io/getting-started/quick-start/

https://stripedspatula.com/gallo-pinto/#wprm-recipe-container-7474 was quite tasty when we made it the other night. also https://www.ruchiskitchen.com/vegan-spicy-peanut-noodles/#recipe. both good!

i don’t know if this link is great, but it’s one that i’m going to read and try to follow along with. https://stablepoint.com/blog/how-to-host-your-own-website

to answer my own question, i have planted two rows of potatoes this spring - my first garden that i’ve ever been involved with! and yes, two rows of potatoes is barely a “garden” but it’s a start. i want to grow food i will actually eat, so we planted an apple tree last fall and potatoes this spring. i am hoping to also do a three sisters garden this year, but we’ll see. i also potted a Scotch Bonnet plant that i bought accidentally online while trying to buy actual Scotch Bonnet peppers, ha! this will be great for the Nigerian-style jollof rice i make on weekends, and anything Caribbean inspired that i cook which calls for that specific flavor and heat profile.

i also started a Calibreserver based out of my home server setup, which will be accessible to the neighborhood i live in - i bought a domain name and am learning about what all is necessary to statically host a website. this is the first part of my dream to start being a community sysadmin for my neighborhood, where i can provide resources that are freely available to my neighbors, and we can all add content and features as time, skill, and desire allow.

finally, i have dusted off Laika, my old trusty two-wheeled steed. she belonged to a coworker’s husband who never rode, so i got it for free last fall! I have not historically been a cyclist so I am working towards it. I bought a rack i need to add to the bike, and hope to get some different tires. add in a trailer, and you have a great errand-runner, which is my goal here.

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/02cc0147-c4cb-450d-8e2e-2ef6e0902973.webp

oh yeah, the Praxis test! I remember that from back in the day when i was in school to be a teacher. that’s the subject-matter test, right? like, if you’re going to be a math teacher it’s the test that proves you can do math?

i’m no expert, but what we ended up using as mulch were wood chips from a tree we had to get removed from a fenceline. it seems to have worked for us.

that’s a good question! my understanding is that praxis means the practical application of a theory; like, for example, if you’re a socialist then praxis could involve sharing those ideas with friends/family, creating socialist spaces like community gardens or little free libraries/etc, or organizing your workplace. and it doesn’t just have to be socialism, though that’s the context i’ve heard it used in the most. for me, solarpunk is the theory and these practical application questions give me ideas about praxis. does that help? hope i don’t come off as too mansplain-y!

I’ve never heard of coffeeberry, but I’m intrigued! I’ll need to look it up.

for me, since i live in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau, i have hooked up the first rain barrel of the season to start catching moisture. my plan for this coming weekend is to lay down more cardboard and mulch on our front “lawn” to suppress weeds and allow for the growth of native cover cops we’re planting. i also got a decent gift certificate to a local nursery for Christmas so once they open, soon, i will be excitedly acquiring a Mormon tea bush for my native pollinators garden.

on a different front, my wife and i are practicing living with one car. it should be easy for us, but we’ve never had to think about some of the implications of the single-car life until now, so we are trying a practical experiment in February and March, and if we can make it okay we plan to sell our second car in the late spring or early summer.

it’s so handy. 99% of the time I use it to clean my glasses, but if I’m with someone who’s crying, if I need to clean off a screen, if something’s dusty or gross but I need to pick it up, if I get sweaty and need to wipe my brow, if something gets spilled and there are no napkins handy, etc I can use it. when my dad passed I got all his; he was a high school principal most of his career and carried one every day.

Ascent for business, Outback for pleasure, lol. the Ascent is the car I drive for work, the Outback is my personal car.

good eye! my own car is an Outback (2018) and my work car is an Ascent (2022).

I think it’s designed for outdoorsy stuff as it also has a firestarter component. but it definitely works well for basic networking stuff too!