Keep planet earth green - Rural survival retreat farm offers opportunities

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.Our sites fatures are interactive with people that register, once registered you can add video, or other content to this web site best of all its FREE..our site offers information regarding how people are and will be dealing with the changing enviroment now and in the near future. How our lives will be affected and what are some solid solutions.

Rural survival retreat farm offers opportunities

We are Earth and Sky of Busy Rural Family Farm. We are located in the northeastern part of Washington State on an organic vegetable farm. We're offering survival retreats site and other opportunities in education at our farm.

We have worked together for 18 years and learned a great deal about food/energy self-reliance and sustainable living. We have our beginnings in researching and avocational practice toward this goal dating back to the 70s during the back-to-the-land movement and oil embargo days. Then, we were influenced by Helen and Scott Nearing (Authors of the Living The Good Life series of books and important contributors to the back-to-the-land movement via their many articles in Mother Earth News). The Nearings created and lived sustainable principles and methodically set about living solutions to modern day problems which we admired and have tried to emulate.

It wasnt until 1990 that we finally found our ideal farm and homestead and were able to move onto it and begin to establish the self-reliant systems we desired. Like the Nearings, we planned years in advance and implemented our goals step-by-step and paid-as-we-went (no debts on our land, home or car, no credit card debts, no debts at all).

Presently Sky works full time as a school nurse, while Earth was an independent auto mechanic who has been working full time on our farm for the last 18 years. This works out well in that Sky has the spring and summer breaks off from her school nurse job where she can help Earth on our farm during our busiest times.

Weve adopted growing techniques from Ecology Action http://www.growbiointensive.org/ . One of the important manuals we share with our students is, How to grow more vegetables then you even thought possible on less space then you can imagine by John Jeavons. Ecology Action has taken the sustainable and self-reliance gardening movements in directions which are providing many needed answers toward eliminating global hunger. Also http://1lion.bravepages.com/New_Visual_Pages/Raised-Bed-Gardening/Raised.html offered us a wealth of useful information on raised bed gardening.

We utilize primarily low-tech hand tools and manual labor in our growing methods. Coupled with the techniques we have gleaned from Ecology Action and their double-dug raised beds system, we plant intensively and in succession throughout our growing season, enjoying outstanding harvests. We've also invented a portable cold frame system with sheet plastic covers to extend the growing season for these raised beds.

Our raised beds are prepared for planting using a U-bar, and once established, these beds are never walked upon and never require tilling. The soil in our raised beds are always kept at peak fertility by liberal additions of manure, compost and rock powders as needed. We also practice crop rotations, cover cropping and intensive planting techniques and heavily mulch to keep weeds down.

The irrigation system used in our raised beds is T-Tape under mulch pressurized via well water with a back up gravity fed system from an uphill tank. Our gardens include 40 fruit trees with numerous blueberry and other soft fruits. We've special expertise with garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes and have successfully grown all types of vegetables adaptable to our climate.

We utilize two greenhouses attached to the main farmhouse...

1) Large Main Greenhouse is 33LX12W and has seed starting infrastructure with lights and ample space for potted transplants. In it is grown tomato, peppers & cucumber transplants the entire growing season from early spring into the fall...

2) Trellis Greenhouse is 22'LX8'W and has beds also used for tomato, peppers, cucumber and melons grown from early spring into the fall. We also use this greenhouse for over wintering our chickens.

If you want to see our farm infrastructures mentioned above, and pics of us, please go to http://tinyurl.com/6yspq4 and click on our photo on the left to open a slide show.

We're also working on the forefront of the back-to-the-land survivalist movement, and feel this requires people to be pioneers and take risks. We feel it is good timing to take these risks considering what is happening to the world's economies. We'd like to introduce you to some of our ideas for survival retreat opportunities we're offering at our farm.

Our number one opportunity is an idea we've mulled over for the last fourteen years. We'd like to set up a sustainable technologies educational center for teaching people the "how to" of food/energy self-reliance and the simplifying of their lives.

As this project matures we could...

...offer informal apprenticeships on organic gardening and sustainable living at our farm. We could take people from preparing one's soil and extending one's growing season on to seed starting, planting and harvesting for one's year round food self-reliance...

...offer instructions on how to preserve the majority of one's year around diet. We could take people through all the stages and steps of food processing and preserving such as canning, freezing, drying and root cellar storage, etc...

...introduce people to energy self-reliant systems. This includes learning how to live within natural cycles simply and within one's means using solar and hydro power, heating one's home and water with wood and solar, gravity feed water systems, etc.

Opportunity two is we are offering survival retreat sites for lease at our farm. This could be for people who want to live and work at our farm full or part time. And/or it could be for those who want to establish survival retreat shelters to live in when they came to get involved in our educational activities, for recreation or for survival emergencies. Lease prices would need to be worked out on a case by case basis depending upon the investment and commitments of the lessee into the farm, if purchases of shares in the incorporation aspects of the educational center was involved, and what farm products and services lessee requires.

Opportunity three is we have for sale additional acreage next door to our acreage with its own debt free deed available to a family or group who has the means to buy this land debt free from us and build their own home. This is 8 acres of unimproved land bordering our own. It is forested with a year around stream. We will sell this land only in a cooperative arrangement with covenants that reflect our mutual agreements to keep standards focused upon cooperation rather than isolation.

Opportunity four is we have purchased most of the building materials needed for a two story underground building for use as our educational facility, and for additional living quarters, but we'll need help in its construction. If you are a builder and can tackle this job full time from start to finish we'll offer the whole of the lower story to you and your family for living quarters in a long term lease. We supply all the building materials, you supply your tools and labor (by the way, we have a backhoe).

Opportunity five is open to a baker who would like to set him/herself to produce bakery products using a large old wood fired oven we have. This oven requires repairs so it would be helpful if this person or someone else had masonry skills. Retreat site included.

Opportunity six is for an experienced organic vegetable market grower who would like to establish a CSA on our farm. We provide the fertile fields, greenhousing, seed, tools and other necessary infrastructures; you provide your labor and management of the CSA. Retreat site included.

Opportunity seven is for a caretaker/handyperson (single person or couple) who owns a RV or other type of shelter. We're looking for a caretaker who is a jack-of-all-trades handyperson who would be willing to trade his/her part time labors on our farm for a survival retreat site on our land, and for organic garden produce from our gardens. We are bank account poor, but sustainability rich, so we cannot offer anything more except from what we have in abundance. This person could in the future become a full time employee of the incorporated educational center and realize earnings from survival retreat site members for labor on their sites. This position will become available in the spring of 2009. Applicant must provide his/her/their own RV or shelter.

Opportunity eight is several options we have available to those who will need emergency housing on our land. We have a spare bedroom in our home, a 20' tipi, and a 20' Travel Trailer set up near a year around stream. The trailer has all the conveniences...electricity, sink, water, refrigerator, propane stove with oven, wood heat, bed and furnishings, with a shower and toilet in an outbuilding next to trailer. These options are available to able bodied persons who are willing to work on the farm for their room and board.

Opportunity nine is for an attorney who could handle all of our survival retreat site leases and other legal and educational center legal needs. Retreat site included.

Opportunity ten is for a medical doctor who can provide medical services to all at this survival retreat. Retreat site included.

But why, you may ask, if we have it so together at our farm and homestead, are we inviting others to join with us? Simply stated none of are going to make it through the transitions this culture will be undergoing in the near future unless we team up and work together productively and harmoniously. There is lot of work to get done to make this transition safely. Join us.

Please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you are interested in any one of these possible ways we could work together toward survival in these deteriorating times.

Best wishes, Earth & Sky at Busy Rural Family Farm

PS All opportunities outlined above can only be secured on a first come first serve basis. Reservations would be impractical because of too many unpredictable variables. Also, we will give farm tours only after successful efforts shared in communication.