I spoke about resilient communities at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Cooking for Solutions” event this week. It’s an unusually cool conference in that it uses ‘good food’ as a way to get leading farmers, fishermen, scientists, chefs, and environmentalists together in one place to explore long term solutions to global food production.…
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Survival training is both tough and challenging. I’ve done plenty of it and I’m glad I did. It provides you with a toolbox of tactics that you can use to get through a disaster. However, one thing I did learn by going through this training: survival is not something you want to…
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Here’s something that is important to understand: Resilience isn’t passive. You can see it in the words used to describe it. Plant, grow, and harvest food. Catch, filter, and store water. Capture, generate, and distribute energy. Design, collaborate, and make things. These words are full of vitality. They will mold your mind and…
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I’ve known the global financial system has been broken for years, but it’s much further gone than I initially anticipated. Not only has the system devolved into a mountain of toxic, incredibly volatile financial instruments called derivatives that nobody in the industry can seriously claim to understand, the core features of the…
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I’ve been experimenting with the limits of foodscaping. My goal is to convert my entire yard into a bountiful source of delicious food for the coming decades. Of course, I want to accomplish this in a way that increases its potential for success by minimizing the work and expense required to maintain it.…
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The weather this week was cool, dry, and sunny in my corner of New England. So, naturally, I spent lots of time outside, getting my mind and body in shape doing real, meaningful work to improve my home’s resilience (this stands in stark contrast to the make work people do in gyms). The bulk of my…
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Resilience doesn’t only improve your ability to withstand disruptions. If done correctly, it will improve what you eat. The Logic I’m in the process of sourcing a Concord grape vine I can utilize in my home’s foodscape. They grow wild locally, so the goal is to find a good specimen for a…
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What’s a resilient income look like? In some cases it’s very diverse. Here’s an extreme example. Sepp Holzer, one of my favorite farmers, runs a financially successful farm (seen below). It’s been successful for decades, even during tough times when other farmers went out of business while following government advice on…
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I spent a good portion of this week foodscaping my home. What is foodscaping? It’s the act of creating a landscape that produces food. I’ve found it to be both fun and challenging. In fact, it’s proven to be such a rich topic of exploration that I’m writing a report on it…
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“My dad had one job his whole life, I’ll have seven, and my kids will have seven jobs at the same time.” via Henry Mason/Seth Godin That quote is spot on. I’ve said pretty much the same thing at least a dozen times, but never so concisely. To understand this quote a…
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