Feed the community

"So, what am I doing now?" you might be sighing while asking yourself..

Do you know the "Food Is Free" idea, movement, philosophy.. whatever you want to call it. That is what I am doing now.

Food Is Free

OK, that heading just took about 10 minutes, so please enjoy it for a while.

Now that you have done that, so what is Food Is Free? It is the idea of planting/growing/making/harvesting food, a lot of food, more food than YOU need and sharing the overflow. Trading with others with similar mind sets, and just giving food to people who need/want it. This is open to abuse, clearly, however it is based more on a honor system. The system of love, peace, happiness and all the other good feelings that you get when life is going well.

I know a lot of the people in my local area do something very similar, they have beautiful local gardens and are happy to swap/trade/give away things that they don't need, when they have too much food or want something else, they will take carrots from one person in exchange for lettuce, eggs, garlic, whatever, you get the idea. So this project is just like that, but bigger.

This is going to be a charity. I will be experimenting with a lot of different growing styles, foods, types, etc, and trying to get the best, the most, the biggest, healthiest of them all. I want to cover this 5 acres and make it an huge eatable forest. I know this can be done, however people do it on a small budget of only $15,000 (cough! ONLY), I don't have that, so I will be trying to do all of this on a budget of about $1.87, hand-me-downs, freebies, charity, etc. anything I can get I will try to use. I will be seeking the cheapest parts (but trying not to sacrifice too much quality), cheap delivery, cheap labor (if needed, and I know I have had offers from WWOOFers (www.wwoof.net) for this already!).

I have started a new Face Book page (www.facebook.com/FTCMurphysCreek) to start to raise awareness of what I am trying to do, why, when, where, all that good stuff.
It is titled "Feed The Community - Murphys Creek", Murphys Creek being the area (of South East Queensland, Australia), however I am hoping that it will spread. I have titled it this way for a reason, I am hoping that more people will start to do this kind of thing and just call is "Feed The Community - your town", and keep the movement going! :)



This relies a LOT on charity, the good will of people just sharing THIS page, the Face Book page, donating, giving, caring, the ad-sense from this blog, whatever. So far this "New Life" blog that I have started has had such good feed back. So many loving, caring people out there that are so happy to share love with (most of the time) just a stranger like me. So thank you to all of you. I am hoping to piggy-back from this (limited) success so far and launch the new idea.

I will be attempting to launch this on Kick-starter in hopes to raise money to start it off. What money do I need? Well, since the ground that I am on is very hard (clay) and has had a LOT of damage done by the old owners (burring rubbish (including plastics and metals)) I have decided to start the project off with an aquaponics system. This is not like the aquaponics system that I tried (this link), but one that is a lot bigger, a larger scale one. While I was making the previous one I was thinking about all the problems with the design, future problems, and how I could best use it, and that is when this project came to mind. I figured that I could only really do what I wanted to do by scaling up a lot, and that the food production would be a lot more than I needed. The idea of just using it to barter was the first idea, but I do like to give to people that need it, to help others, so instead of just being selfish and hoarding all my lovely organically grown veggies, I will share them with my local community.

So far the chickens are on board! Thanks ladies!

So what do I need right now? Well, not just money (in fact no money right now at all!), I am looking for parts to MAKE the aquaponics system, this includes water catchment (such as drums, barrels, tubs, sinks, baths, etc..) pipes (PVC, rural, irrigation, hoses, etc..) shade cloth, metal poles/star pickets, wooden stakes, pumps, pretty much anything. These don't have to be new at all. BUT! The one thing I really REALLY need first up, is design help. I need someone who might know a bit about aquaponics to offer some time (even just on the net) to helping me design this thing. I don't want to get a pump that is too big/small, I don't want to mess the water flow up and ruin everything.

If anyone wants to volunteer help, please let me know (email is fine, remove the ()  in the address) and we can start to chat about what I want, and what I need.

Until I get a design that will work, I will not launch the kick-starter campaign yet, otherwise I don't know how much money I might need. The money will go towards the buying of the pump, pipes, tanks, clay-pellet things, seedlings, etc..

Well, I best get off this and back into the real life, or nothing will actually get done! :)

Until next time, I hope you all have a great night/day/week/month/year/... and smile at the things that make you happy, ignore the negativity!