Can anyone point me in the direction of #disabled persons pursuing self-sufficient lifestyles? The #disability could be mental, physical, or other and the self-sufficiency could be from a #Permaculture, #Prepping or #Sustainability perspective.
Looking for social media accounts, books, blogs, youtube or people doing this kind of thing outside of modern socials that would be happy to have a conversation about it.
I'm disabled and pursuing community-based autonomous structures of social ecological sustainability.
I'm about to move into a trailer and do a work exchange on a permaculture site, which reduces my monetary needs a lot. Getting out of renting has been a big struggle, but one I think is way worth it.
I live in a house with 6 people currently and have bounced around communal houses for the past few days, always filled with disabled folks. We get groceries and cook mostly communally, pool money to hire helpers (friends) on cleaning/chore days, and we interface with other comm. houses, disabled friends, and friends struggling w/ housing or who don't live in houses. Try to support each other and our community.
Self-employment is also big in this for me too. My disability goes through flare cycles, so having flexibility is important. Some of my housemates/life partners and I are starting a cooperative apothecary. Helps meet our financial needs while also helping our community and increasing habitat and food for wildlife on our farm.
Regarding farming/permaculture and sustainable lifestyles, it is tricky being disabled. I think the community aspect plays such a central role for me because it allows so much flexibility and accessibility in roles and fluent abilities. Sometimes I can shovel gravel or harvest plants, sometimes I need to be inside processing herbal remedies or working on communications. And for some folks, they'll be in a role more often because they're great at it or it's what they can do (tho we definitely try not to push our mostly able-bodied friends into large amounts of manual labor). There's always a role folks can fill which is nice, and it's more fulfilling since it's for our community, for our survival, for the restoration of the planet.
I appreciate you posting this as now I want to write more/make videos about the intersection of disability and ecology, food, sustainability, community living.
@orbweaving@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic YES! I love what you've achieved and how you're going about it. Since becoming ill I now appreciate the value of community more and realise my old habit of doing everything myself was not the right approach. Over the last few years while being unwell I've raised the idea of renting out a room or two to like minded people that could share the workload of maintaining a house and garden but due to a few bad experiences my partner won't even entertain the idea. Which leaves me overwhelmed due to feeling like I'm not contributing and constantly battling to perform with the little energy I do have. I hope that one day she will understand my perspective and be willing to give it a try as I think there is so much to gain from shared responsibilities.
I've followed you as I greatly appreciated what you've written here and I'm excited that you're encouraged to write more on this topic. How can I make sure I get to read it?
That'd fit me well, the sustainability elements I'm pursuing include all 3 of those categories and even as I don't really view my autism as a disability, I definitely do view my spinal conditions as such, with my hEDS sort of being there to make things more interesting.
My front yard having a few nice spots now where I'm seeing an Egyptian Walking Onion & a Tiger Lily getting some shade from a Comfrey plant.
@BrahmaBelarusian@permacultre@actuallyautistic Thanks for the reply. Often perusing a sustainable lifestyle leads to more physical inputs to achieve that means. Is there anything you have done that enables your sustainability from a physically restricted perspective?
@actuallyautistic@permacultre@bananamangodog@mecfs I’m not there yet, but this is absolutely my dream. I have a tiny house where I rent the land and the idea is to buy my own land and have a tiny house community where we support each other. I have several friends who are single and without children with mental health disabilities. I hope I can make this happen someday.
@bananamangodog@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic happy to have a convo. I’m temporarily without permanent housing, but have had poultry & waterfowl livestock & experience with gardening, water storage, and pantry stocking. In previous living situation, also kept tabs on neighbors and knowing who I could make trades. I have a couple of autoimmune issues that limit how much I can do in a given day.
@dasparky@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic Hey. I'm in a similar situation health wise but am privileged in that I almost own my own home. If I didn't have an understanding partner that would be impossible.
Is there anything specific you think might benefit disabled people more when it comes to sustainability or permaculture? Often being more sustainable or living a simpler life comes with significantly more physical inputs; how have you adapted and what makes it work for you? (or anyone else reading this post feel free to also comment).
Pacing. Figuring realistically how much energy during the course of a day, week, one can afford to put out. Reprioritizing. Dishes are lower energy priority than watering ;-)
Low input growing: low or no till. Perennials, self-seeding annuals. Fruit & nut dwarf trees (easier to reach and prune). (cont’d)
1/x
Local trading & giveaways: Grow or raise what you love, and trade or give away excess. I sold some of our eggs, and gave away many. A local horse barn would load my truck with old manure for free. Another neighbor would bring over home-made tamales.
Volunteering land for permaculture classes: some instructors need land for projects (hugelkulture, rainwater redirection, planting small-scale food forests, etc.).
@bananamangodog@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic
4. Local services that can help: pre-illness, I used to volunteer with a non-profit group that would perform free veg planting services for schools, the elderly and/or disabled. Don't be afraid to ask!
5. Are garden allotments tough to come by? Offer a share in exchange for help. My FIL is too disabled to maintain his large kitchen garden, so a nephew does the work of growing in exchange for a harvest share.
3/x
@bananamangodog@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic (I've already messed up bullet point numbers, sorry!)
6. Along the lines of grow only what you love (or is easy!), also consider other services for trade or giveaway.
if you can afford one, keep a generator for community phone recharge and small fridge for perishable medications. HUGE during multi-day blackouts.
@dasparky@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic All very useful points you have made.
In summarising what you have said it seems to come down to "Share what you have and receive what you haven't in return". You seem to share excess produce, your land or space, tools and skills, and the number 4 bullet point 😁
@KitMuse@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic Absolutely, and I'm in the same boat really. My personal perspective is that those with disabilities (AKA differences the mainstream society does not cater for) are pioneers in self-sufficiency as in order to survive they have to learn to adapt.
As for other self-sufficiency: my household has a small food garden & a heat circulating fireplace. We also engage in resource sharing & redistribution of goods which is of help to folks who otherwise fall thru the cracks.
@thorncoyle@KitMuse@actuallyautistic@permacultre@mecfs I'm in the same boat with employment, although I'm working towards being self-employed. I did take out a business name etc and was ready to launch but realised I still couldn't put in the time needed to make it work. Having ME has been a real lesson in realising my brain absolutely does not respect the limited energy of my body when it comes up with ideas.
I also know of disabled folks who’ve kept spreadsheets of homes who had access to refrigeration for meds or could offer rides to safety during blackouts.
@KitMuse@permacultre@bananamangodog@actuallyautistic Stuff like water/food storage, filtration, etc, it’s good to get a little bit at a time. Before getting the water bricks, I’d fill jars and pitchers (now I do that along w the bricks). We got the simple gravity filter years ago.
Those look awesome. Since we have an abundance of them, we use tidy cats kitty litter buckets to fill when there's going to be an ice storm/winter weather since no electricity = no well/no water. We found out that they work really well for storing and transporting water.
@thorncoyle@actuallyautistic@permacultre@KitMuse Ahh ok, I was thinking they were some fancy building product that stored water and used the thermal mass too. For water storage I'm lucky enough to have 12000L of rainwater tank and numerous 200L barrels and a couple of 20L jerry cans for transport. We also converted the mostly unused swimming pool that was here before us into a pond and that's where all the garden water and chook food (duck weed) comes from.
We have a 100+ year old fireplace that is pretty useless for heat, and eats a ton of wood.
We invested in an insert that circulates the heat back into the house & alleviates most of the smoke that gets expelled out the chimney. A built-in electric fan pumps even more heat out. We can heat the whole house on very little wood.
(A metal wood stove with a manual fan on top serves a similar function.)
@bananamangodog@permacultre@mecfs@actuallyautistic Parkrose Permaculture might be a good YouTube channel. She talks a lot about ableism, and some of her children have various disabilities or are neurodivergent.
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