Farmin' in the HOOD --- VIDEO --- these families raise tons of food and have transformed the neighborhood...URBAN FARMING/ GARDENING

Tried posting about 75 links in one post last night; won an auto-ban.

Not going to try that again; anyone like to recommend a free posting site that won't truncate the links?

As for lye being some sort of wood product; here is the skinny on that: a crude way to get lye is to save your ashes from a stove burning HARDWOOD (why hardwood?) and to leach out the lye from the ashes. Never tried it myself and have only read about the process.

Lye is referred to as "caustic soda" and is somewhat dangerous in the pure form as sold in hardware stores.

So are lots of other things. Teach your children caution and to think before acting and let Darwin pass out the awards for those who fail to learn.

I am personally sick and tired of this nanny state.

ok twist my arm, but only cause you have a truly rocking thread.

The world is getting alarming!
but folks are sustainable farming!
Flowers grow
where junk used to flow
my ghetto is now quite charming!!

thanks - we all have something to learn from these guys who have been blazing the trail...

cool - the urban farming guys' facebook site!

These folks are not depending on the "nanny state" to take care of them!!

love that picture!!

subsistence farming - the career of the future?

Could be - but whether or not it is a "career" it is certainly something that people should not lose touch with = the connection to the earth and the ability to produce food from it for self and family...

I feel that this project has merit on many levels. I don't want to get into any racial discussions, but incidentally, if you watch more videos in this thread you will see a black man who is growing a million pounds of food on two or three acres.

This thread is not intended to be about anything other then people working together for a better, more self-sustaining world.

I appreciate that you took the time to watch the video and that you will perhaps learn from it and implement some of these strategies to the benefit of your own self, family, and community.

It's very uplifting and I am happy that you are enjoying it.

There is a lot of other information like this that people would enjoy and could use, so I encourage others to share what they have found on the internet or from personal experience.

I'm sorry that your hard work to post links for us resulted in an auto-ban. I hope you will re-post them in smaller batches so we can all enjoy them.

Suppose it's for some protection in the site - but I hate when my work gets wasted, it's discouraging. Thanks for your support and good intentions!!

Love it - thank you ! I loved the limerick thread = we need more stuff like that on here - to break up the doom and help us keep a perspective on things...

of course he did not, shows in his comment raising the flash like obama always does ah pfff whats up ya infected with the bs flag syndrome.

there is someone going around and one-starring a lot of threads. It's annoying - to see your information that you are trying to get out be flagged and get one star...

But we showed him (or her) - this thread now has almost 150 ratings and is just under five stars. This is information that inspires people and gives hope for a more positive future.

Thanks for posting! Enjoy the videos - pass it on!

Earthbag Evolution



[link to www.youtube.com]

Earthbag Evolution Part 2



[link to www.youtube.com]

N'Credible Edibles Food Forest Part1



[link to www.youtube.com]

So looked up quite a few things tryiing to get away from using lye in soap. There are a lot of websites and you tube videos that claim they do this, but in fact they're just shredding an already existing bar of soap.

It turns out that the chemical process of mixing lye with lard is call "soapification", The lye is what hardens it. If you do it right, the lye will chemically mix with the oil to form a soap that is non caustic. But the lye on it's own is dangerous.

There were some sites about making soap without lye, but it was gelatenous and gooey, and would disintegrate quickly with water.

There's a very informative video on how to make lye here:

[link to www.youtube.com]

Basically, it's a filtering water through ash. Any kind of ash will do apparently.

Also found this quite interesting:

[link to www.associatedcontent.com]

According to this, the way soap was originally discovered was from people having animal sacrifices. After they burned the animals and if it rained, the rain would filter through the ash and the fat of the animal would drip down into it. When the women were washing clothing downstream they discovered soap from it.

Pretty crazy.

Having said that, and now that we know how to make lye naturally and don't have to use that chemical compound, I thought this youtube video gave a great example of making homemade soap:

[link to www.youtube.com]

Try this: [link to www.esnips.com]

Irritates me that I misspelled aquaponics as "acquaponics" and never saw it until I made the upload.

Let me know if this works for you.

thanks for posting that - I like the lye guy!

Be really careful making lye - it's very caustic!

yes, it worked - thanks!!

That's a HUGE amount of information - I think I may transcribe it to smaller posts so that we're not reliant on that website for the links..

I have a new thread on mercury fillings I better go check on now...

Washing soda - Since supposedly washing soda is hard to find, I found this:

[link to www.mysuburbanhomestead.com]

"All you do is bake it (baking soda) in an oven for an hour at 250 degrees."

Pretty cool.

Baking soda is made from a chemical reaction and comes from mining. Looks like that would have to be bought. NO! But personally, I'd think a bar of soap would do just fine in a pinch.

But I thought I'd pass along that little trick to get washing soda as it might be helpful to some people.

I have so enjoyed this thread and the others like it. I've learned alot and remembered things I'd forgotten. Thanks for the time and work you've put into this. At the risk of turning my grandma into an "uncle", please be very careful with lye. Gram said they made it when she was "at home", because there was nothing else. They had to make it outside on a fire because of the fumes and it will give you very nasty burns if you spill it on you. She was so glad when she got married and moved off the farm and could buy soap. Then the Depression and WWII came along... My mom remebers helping(?) Gram make soap. She was really little then, so we all know what "helping" means, right?

Bumping so I can find it later:)

wow - great find!

From the article:

Not only that, but you can purchase large fifty pound sacks of baking soda from feed stores for around $15.

Presumably it will work for anyone.

So readers, just download the file to your own computer and put a link in your bookmarks to where the file is located on your hard drive. And if you don't understand how to do that go out on the street and find a teenager to show you how.

That's better than bothering to put all that into 25 or more posts to this thread.

If anyone finds a dead link or knows a better related link I will be updating that file in the next few days as I find time.

... and with that... be back later or tomorrow.

I want to try it but I like the soap I buy and have quite a stockpile of soap for now.

But it's something people should not lose touch with- like candle making - anybody have candle making links? I know they used to make them from tallow - beef fat.

How to Make Soap Using Goat Milk



[link to www.youtube.com]

[link to geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com]

Well I think we got this onto the Gerald Celente Trends Blog...

Cool! Thanks guys!

Bump the thread if you feel like it - add more videos - etc.

I have to go run errands but I will keep up with this and am waiting for some replies regarding the expatriation possibility...

Urban Farming - The coming trend
Urban Farming - The coming trend Nice initiative...learning how to be self-sustaining is a huge one.... Awesome! Great work guys, I think you're entering history books right now!(or major Wikileaks articles at least) Love seeing what is happening in that community. Its amazing what a few people pulling together can accomplish. Fantastic and inspiring project. It can be done. This proves that it is not necessary to leave the city to create an off grid, self sustainable food paradise. This is the way to turn the cities into paradises and Spaces of Love. I hope this grows to all the cities! We don't need intruding government but people working together!