Hello, long time lurker and follower of OSE here. Glad to be with you all. I recently saw the distributive enterprise video, which called for a 'farmer/scientist to grow healthy food for on site volunteers.' Is anyone on the forum considering this opportunity? I am very passionate about permaculture design and sustainable agriculture, and have been experimenting with many different ways of sharing a connection with how we meet our needs, share nature's abundance with others, diverting waste streams back into the nutrient cycle (i.e. humanure toilets, kitchen composting, scavenging, foraging), and also creating comfortable outdoor social spaces. I would like to connect with others interested in working on site to offer our services in farming and permaculture design. Of course, I also want to expand my skill set by learning about the GVCS tech and using, for example, the microtrac in garden applications.

I am 19, left school at 15; for the past four years have been investing my time with purpose and autonomy, something which was very new when I left school. I was jaded at first. In school, the general assumption is the only purpose of doing any work is to get a good grade and to be rewarded for 'normal' behavior, and punished, judged, ostracized for 'abnormal' behavior. So I left seeking a different reason for living, because getting up in the morning and looking forward to a day of the former is not easy. I do not mean that my life is perfect, but at I am able to choose how my time is spent without fear of punishment. When I was 17, I attended a cob building workshop, and met a veteran carpenter who wanted to start a natural building business. So I have been working with him for the past couple years. We were invited to the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota reservation in SD to build a house with recycled shipping pallets. I was there from July to Thanksgiving working almost every day. Still lots of work to be finished this summer. Learned a lot about the Lakota culture and met some amazing people. Here's a video from a journalism class at SDSU.. I'm the white guy (wasichu) being interviewed. Aside about my time in Pine Ridge:

I was very excited at first about having the opportunity to teach others how to build from locally abundant or recycled resources. Our goal was to help a family in need on the reservation, and to demonstrate to others the feasibility, efficiency, and cost effectiveness of earthen and recycled building. The realizations came later. One, being that building relationships with place and people is of first and foremost importance when starting any project. But, we did not even know the culture or the people before designing the pallet house and embarking to SD. We were lucky to befriend the recipient family right away and get a roof over their heads before winter, but the problem is at a fundamental level of the design of the project. We are not empowering whole communities to educate themselves, only perpetuating a dependency culture that was forced upon the Indians. Building one house helps one family, but there is a ripple effect! Sure, I saw dozens of visitors' eyes light up with inspiration when they tried to shove the pallet walls, or when they knocked on an earthen plaster made with local cow poo, or felt the cool air in a slip/straw insulated home during the heat of the day. I realized that the key to empowering ourselves is access to education in the areas of meeting human needs sustainably. That is why I resonate so deeply with OSE's vision, because it is focused on open distribution, documentation, and development of technologies that all humans need to create nurturing, regenerative communities.

So long story short, I realized my partner and I had very different visions for the business and our community (we own land together where we planned to build a community). I am in between opportunities, just living at my parents' home til spring. In March I will be attending an internship at The Center for Community Empowerment, soon to be Living Roots Ecovillage. The owner of the farm assures me I will be prepared for any farming endeavors after the spring session. I would love to be of service at FeF!