Homeless Dinner at Memorial Park, 85 East Holly St., Pasadena. Starts at 12:30pm – 6pm.
This is the 11th Annual Event
Volunteers needed (servers & security guards) at 10:00 a.m
JDFC web site: http://www.jdfc.us/
New concepts in growing food in “bucket gardens” is totally relevant to today’s nomads. The discovery of growing food in buckets is not that new, but using the 2 bucket system means that your entire food farm is portable. Let’s face it, we need water and sunshine to grow food. With the 2 bucket system an entire food garden could be loaded on the back of a pick-up truck. The truck becomes the farm. A tribe or extended family might have several vehicles in their caravan and the addition of a pick-up truck means that their garden moves with them.
Let’s take a small tribe, anywhere in the world, but this is written for the Gypsies of the New Millennium right here in America. You may have several vehicles in your nomadic caravan. Maybe a couple of RVs, a few cars, a couple vans. In the hot summers you want to move to cooler climes. Why burn up in Arizona when you can go north to a nicer, more mellow climate for the summer? If you get a pick-up truck or a small flat-bed type vehicle, you can outfit it as a mobile garden. Plants don’t like to necessarily get moved a lot, but you are in your spring encampment in the southwest and it is starting to get hot. Your bucket garden is all planted and hooked up with the self-watering system that we will refer you to. The self-watering system means that you don’t have to even bother watering every day with this simple gravity system that connects a hose to all of your food buckets. Summer is around the corner, and the tribe is set to move north to some cooler digs, say Utah or Northern California. The tribe moves out, the portable farm in the bed of the pick-up truck goes with the caravan, no problem. When you get to the new spot up north for the summer, just make sure the buckets are secure, have water, and get a lot of sunshine where you park your pick-up truck.
The great thing about the 2 bucket system is that it works anywhere: on a rooftop, on a deck, on an apartment balcony, or in the back of a truck. Multiply your food supply by simply getting more buckets to grow more food. If you don’t have a pick-up truck available for your tribe, you can carry the buckets in your vans, cars, and RVs to move them. It is just easier to have a pick-up truck, because the food farm is in the back of the truck and is self-sustaining and completely portable. Once it is set up, you don’t have to load and unload the buckets just because you change locations. As you nomads know, sometimes you have to move out of an area and find another spot for various reasons. If it is windy or some other weather situation, the entire bed of the pick-up truck can be covered with a tarp. This could keep out dirt when you are moving, keep the plants warmer at night if there is a frost, and also keep out unwanted critters. A couple of dogs tied up around the pick-up truck at night will usually be enough to keep the possums and racoons away.
A few of the Gypsy Cool crew were sitting around a few months ago trying to formulate a method to have a nomadic food farm. What we came up with at the time was to turn the bed of a pick-up truck into a garden plot, in other words fill the bed with garden soil. Further research led us to the amazing 2 bucket system. We feel this is much better. The individual buckets can be changed quickly and different plants put in them. The self-watering system is simple and fantastic, and works even on the move.
Although some of us are idealists in many ways, we are aware of certain realities. We think it would be hard to grow enough food to totally live on in the bed of a pick-up truck. But it can certainly augment your foraging with some fresh vegetables and tomatoes. You will have to continue with your skills at foraging, dumpster diving, fishing, and possibly hunting, as well as purchasing some food products. But you can live better and a little cheaper by taking your food farm with you wherever you go.
So how do you build the 2 bucket system?
1. Google it on the net.
2. Check out the information at Yard Eats.
3. Check out the great info at Global Buckets.
4. Go to youtube.com and search for videos on bucket systems.
5. The youtube channel of jwwm2 has a lot on the bucket system,.
Start building your buckets today!
Some of our greatest authors also loved the desert, a good example is Erle Stanley Gardner the great mystery writer. Mr. Gardner loved the desert and often went on long expeditions, even down to the Mexican bad lands. He also wrote some riveting books on “Hunting Lost Mines by Helicopter”, and books on exploring Baha, Califonrnia. There was actually a Gardner museum up in Ventura at one time, but the web site seems to be down, maybe the museum is gone. For a while it was in an old library bus, packed with Gardner memorabilia, and the bus would show up at schools and downtown Ventura during festivals.
Here’s a fan site that lists all of Gardner’s books on his gypsy travels: Erle Stanley Gardner Bibliography. You can see all the cool books he wrote on desert camping and exploration. I have read many of them and they are all great. Gardner really made a production out of his gypsy travels. He usually had his “cast of characters”, old friends, who traveled with him. He also brought his secretary and dictated some stories while enjoying the desert. Might as well turn that sand into some coin while you are at it!
Oksana Marafioti’s parents performed in a traveling Romani ensemble until she was
15, when they moved to America. Growing up, she saw the Mongolian deserts and
the Siberian tundra, watched her father get into bar fights with Nazis, learned about
sex by sneaking into illicit movies, and endured the hostility of school bullies. What
little Oksana and her sister, Roxy, knew of the United States they had learned from
MTV, subcategory George Michael. Not quite prepared for the challenges of
immigration. Marafioti cracks open the secretive world of the Roma and brings the
absurdities, miscommunications, and unpredictable victories of the immigrant
experience to life, one slice of processed cheese at a time.
Oksana spoke at Vroman’s Bookstore August 7, 2012 on her family life as a gypsy woman.
Video of the talk:
Part 1 – Gypsy Woman Oksana Marafioti
A Dancer customizes her Dodge camper van with some cool stuff. Take a look. Click on photos to enlarge.
Last summer, after writing a story for Wired
magazine about people who fake their own
deaths, journalist Evan Ratliff decided to vanish
and invited the public to try to find him. While
he attempted to stay hidden for 30 days, he
was caught in 25, thanks in part to the digital
breadcrumb trail he left behind.
Join Peter Eleey, curator of The Talent Show
and Ratliff as they discuss data-mining,
surveillance, and other ramifications of a culture
awash in in information.
– Alexandra
and videos with your friends and colleagues.
Now Posted – Further Reading and massive bibliography for the classic new book Gypsies of the New Millenium. Check it out on the GNM page on the menu. You will want to save this bibliography and get to the library and start reading.
Cabela’s has lots of great stuff for vans and RVs, including portable toilets, some portable showers, and tons of misc. stuff. I wish they had a store in California, but they offer good mail order service, and free shipping for orders over $99, which you could easily spend buying essential stuff and bargain prices. Check out the website:
http://www.cabelas.com/home.jsp?WTz_l=Header
You’ve read the “Introduction”, now check out the first chapter of “Gypsies of the New
Millenium”. This chapter deals with shelter, living in a car, a van, an RV, a cave, a tree house in
the forest, a cardboard box, and other creative places. You will find this on the main menu bar
under “How To”.
Paulie