Happy Sunday you beautiful radiant divine souls on Hive, and welcome to this Sustainable Living Curation from the ecoTrain community! There has never been a better time to start looking at all aspects of sustainable living, even if you live in a city! Some of the most simple aspects of living independently are more important than ever and can be done with a minimal amount of time and space. Did you ever try growing some tomatoes on your balcony or window sill? Or perhaps a small plant bed with lettuce and some of your favourite herbs and greens. It is so easy and once you have tried it you will never buy from the store again.. that’s if they are even available with our supply crisis happening. Anyone who has eaten their own home grown tomatoes will know anyway, there is no comparison on taste! Sustainable living is about so much more than just growing food though, and this curation post brings together some great posts from the ecoTrain community on so many topics related to sustainable living. Check out what our homesteaders are up to, what life is life, and what kinds of issues we face!
Its time for change, and its time for us to stop supporting these old and outdated ways that are digging us only deeper into a parasitic dependence. Join us and let us be free! This is why the ecoTrain is here, to encourage, educate and inspire others to start living in a way that makes sense for you and for our planet. This week i share a handful of posts from our community that touch on some of the many topics that we support and are so very relevant to the issues we face today. I hope you enjoy this selection, and thank you to everyone who shares these valuable posts with your personal stories and experiences. Keep them coming, it really makes a difference!
So thank you to EVERYONE who has posted this week, i hope you enjoy the curation posts below. Don’t forget to follow the people who's posts you like, and of course do drop a comment too.. It makes everyone happy to know that their posts have been seen and appreciated!
@solominer
Winter honey bee update
In late February I had the opportunity to check on the hive. Previous attempts it was either too cold or raining. During the winters in Georgia we tends to get warmer but wet days. Or dry but cold days, both are not really suitable for opening up the hive and seeing what is going on. Honestly I have not kept up with them recently, and did not supply them any sugar over the winter as I was suppose to.
February marks just about the one year mark with my honey bees, its been quite the experience. I think the most memorable part of the whole year was feeding the bees sugar water. It is wild just seeing bees emerge from the forest in the 100s just to get a taste of that lovely sugar water. @lovely.logic even had a bee visitor miles away from the hive seemingly behave like they do while at the homestead adding sugar water. For whatever reason some of the bees try to get into the car, probably because they smell bags of sugar. Well one bee tried to do just this while she was out and about in the town we are raising them in. No idea if it was our bee, but usually bees do not act that way in the wild. Or maybe her car was attracting all bees, wild and not.. haha who knows..
@trucklife-family
My Thoughts On Creating Community
Community takes on many forms. Perhaps one of the most important factors, is the connections we make and the vision we share. It is also something that changes and evolves over time. Bringing up things that need to resolved, things that we may have been avoiding in the past. It is inevitable, that we become faced with situations or experiences that trigger us and how we react to those , that will determine our growth.
Forming community, goes through different stages, as we learn where our place is, what our role will be. In the beginning we may try our hand at many different things as we find our most comfortable fit. It is a time when f exploring, both what we want and how we see ourselves achieving it. Because we have our own individual vision of what we want and then, we have the shared vision, from the community as a whole. Finding a balance between the two is what matters the most. Being able to meet your needs, whilst also meeting the needs of the community. Quite the balancing act, until you settle into the flow and it becomes the most natural thing in the world.
@steemmatt
11 Examples Of Items I've Uncovered On The Curbs And Left Out For Others To Take
Given that I live in an apartment with an exercise machine, drum set, and years of salvaged inventory I'm trying to sell, I clearly can't take everything I find back with me. Whether it's a cost/space decision, or simply that I didn't have the hands to carry them at the time, I still try to make an impact by leaving items prominently displayed away from the garbage/recycling piles that will be picked up within hours. I do this a lot with nice clean clothes and shoes for the homeless to take since they're often out late at night. I also do this with sealed new food.
My favorite story is when I found a nice $100+ faux fur coat in the cold. I chose not to take it because reselling clothes is difficult, and left it on a railing for someone to hopefully find by the morning. Well, as I walked away to the next pile, I looked back to see that a homeless man had magically appeared and was already walking the other way with the jacket on. Magic.
@inspiredbyhive
The Deadly Nature of Soots to Human Health and the Environment: Millions are Dieing Due to Particle Pollution, What can we do?
The nature of environmental degradation on human health is very overwhelming. Mostly the ones that comes from industrial waste and carbon. Industrialization has brought good to human lives as well as harm to human lives in general. At first people all over the world were happy about the industrial revolution but little did they know that it'll affect and endanger human lives.
Today's post will focus on soot and it's implications on human health. People all over the world have died and are hospitalized due to inhaling gas and other pollutants and the implications is enormous. Before we transcend into the topic of the day proper, lets look at what soot is.
@mrnightmare89
Small Village of San Francisco
In the Visayas Region of the Philippines, you can find more rural areas rather than urban areas. In one province of that region, there is only one City and that is Maasin. Then most of the places are rural, surrounded by trees, ricefields, the sea and you can say it looks like a forest but not a wild one. Most people rely on agricultural resources, like planting vegetables, fruits, rice fields, coconut trees, fishing, and some more. There are some people who are currently living here working in the offices but only a few. Well, establishments in every small village or town if not being developed can be counted through the fingers.
As I say, you can't have much of a luxurious lifestyle but living here is fun. The environment is fun to see, the people are fun to be with like most of them can be your friends without recognizing their names. Of course, most jobs can be heavier with a lower salary. Even so, you can tell that your body feels healthier from the whole day of tiring work. How about a quick walk while glimpsing what a rural area looks like in the province.
@generikat
The Flicker Haven Farm Files-Homestead Happenings!
It's been pretty chilly out. Like, when I went to do chores Wednesday morning it said -6 degrees Fahrenheit on my thermometer. Now, I actually adore winter and the snow, but when one has livestock to care for, any time the mercury dips below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, well, it makes one a bit tetchy. Okay, not one, I won't speak for other people, just me, it makes me a bit grumple-rumpled.
You see, I want the animals to be comfortable and I am a bit maniacal about water. I have my own well and an assortment of water faucets around the farm. They are all frost-free hydrants, but still, one (I) do not want to dig up a broken frost-free hydrant in sub zero temperature because of lack of attention to detail.
That means in order to avoid frozen water or uncomfortable animal disasters, hoses need to be disconnected, tank heaters need to be maintained, troughs checked twice daily, heated poultry waterers need to be inspected. The list goes on....These chores are even more intense once the temperature drops.
@rukeros
Roof and floor, eco-build update
Two of the main purposes of building a house/shelter are staying warm and dry. Out ancestors knew how to do this without the need of industrially produced material, mainly by organizing natural fibers and minerals in ways that were effective for the task. However, we didn't inherit this knowledge as much as we would like to learn such skills, we also want to have a place that can ease up the harshness of south Chilean winter... before winter arrives.
So, we've had to buy the usual roofing materials for low budget houses, such as OSB panels, pine wood structural beams, and zinc plates. The floor will be more in tune with the natural materials we enjoy, but we'll get there soon enough.
At the time of starting the roof we had many doubts, many ideas too. @choli's thought was the saying: the devil knows more because he is old than because he is a devil haha 😅 our close friends recommended a level and uniform roof so that we did not have problems with the rains, since we are a little close before these rains begin and there had to be a solution at the moment.
@anyelina93
What is Tire Derived Fuel, [TDF] and how does it work?
Hello dear friends of Ecotrain, I hope you are very well, today I want to talk briefly about a technology that although it is not based on a new concept, with new innovations in materials processing and carbon emissions capture is becoming an excellent alternative to solve two current problems, how to dispose of used tires and the growing need for fuel of humanity. Worldwide, 2 billion tires are discarded annually, in the United States alone 300 million tires are discarded annually, this means that all over the world there are huge mountains of used tires, and where there are not those mountains, tires end up in landfills or worse, polluting large sections of land, in dumps on the streets or in water channels, rivers, etc...
Tires do not degrade over time, simply being exposed to the sun causes them to release harmful chemicals into the air such as Methane gas, burying them does not eliminate the problem, as the chemicals in the tires leach into soils and waterways, which can greatly harm beneficial life sustaining bacteria, can kill plants, and even affect wildlife.
@rukeros
Helping out a family on their bioconstruction project
About a week ago, while watching Shingeki No Kyojin, we had a conversation about the nature of community and how hard it is to connect with other like-minded people on the physical plane. So we agreed that we should try and help others who are in similar processes to do their stuff and not only think of what benefits us in our projects. A few days later @fenngen 's mom shared us a call for help to build a house with cob in a neighboring town, and we heeded that call. Today we wanted to share with you a few pictures of the place and get those bio-construction imaginations rumbling (hehehe, get it? Rumbling. What? No more Otakus into permaculture around here?)
We hitchiked to Aysén, which is the nearest town to these new friend's home but after that there were still 25 km of rural road left, so we waited and they came for us on their motorhome which is an old minibus which they adapted themselves to live in. Sorry but we weren't too aquatinted yet to start taking pictures on spot. Maybe another time they'll allow us to show you what it's like.
@papa-pepper
A GOOD LOAD OF CEDAR FOR THIS TEAM!
My son and I did not have much time, but we made it worth it! Last night Monster Truck and I had about an hour until sundown. I need about fifty-some cedar posts for upcoming projects, and until I get them onsite, I can't get those parties started. We did not have much time, but we wanted to accomplish something. With some great teamwork we managed to pull this load in prior to sunset. I can't wait to get building. Enjoy the photos!
@flemingfarm
Grain, New Bed, Trailer - Monday
I was on the road before 5am yesterday morning on my way to town to pickup grain. When I left the farm it was cold but there was only a couple dots of snow around. As I drove towards town it began to snow and once I got to the first brewery it was snowing hard. It was really weird driving south into the snow. I dropped the 5 empty barrels and loaded up the 3 that were full. The light one went in the bed of the truck until the next brewery. The city streets were slick as snot already and I was quite happy to have 4 wheel drive. I combined the 2 barrels at the second brewery into one barrel and after sliding the barrel out of the truck I strapped them all down on the trailer for the drive home.
@emiliomoron
More green areas to combat noise pollution
Air pollution is not the only environmental problem that has detrimental effects on our health and the environment, noise pollution is a growing danger in cities that puts us at risk because according to the World Health Organization (WHO), this type of pollution is one of the environmental factors that causes more health problems, and not only affects people, also has a great impact and remarkable adverse effects on different animal species living near large urban centers.
And the recent report "Frontiers 2022: Noise, Flames and Imbalance" published last Thursday, February 17 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), highlights that urban noise pollution is becoming a major threat to public health, and is causing disruptions in some stages of the life cycle of natural systems.
@cloeetjuh1
Off the grid...
Hey beautiful people, I know it's been a few weeks since I've written something and I'm awfully sorry for that. I had what could be considered as the worst burnout I've ever experienced.. And I couldn't even enjoy the things that usually gave me relieve and allowed me to express myself, like writing. But I'm dealing with it and currently recovering. So just bare with me, as I'll be back soon with some quality content to share with you guys! I also just want to tell everyone going through this, to hang in there.. Be gentle yet firm with yourself. Be honest with those around you, tell them what it is that you can and can't do. Don't force yourself into situations and interactions that you do not have the energy for, because that will only make it worse.
@rem-steem
I have tried making 'Butterfly pea Tea' with my garden flowers.
Recently there's a huge hype about this tea. Not only because of the health benefits but mostly because of the vibrant blue color. By adding a few drops of lemon with the tea it turns from blue to purple! I have a blue butterfly pea plant on my balcony and thought why don't I try this at home. I wouldn't say I'm a big fan of herbal tea. But this tea somehow felt like worth trying. Because it gives a fresh not like other herbal teas. I wish I had a lot of flowers on my plant to make this every day. Let me share the process.
@ecoTrain
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