One Earth

What does the universe want you to have? If you live a modern life and close to any sort of nature at all, you already have many, many times more than what you need to get started growing your own food. You can become a homesteader anywhere once you realize that nothing on this planet is truly “wasted.” When we look at all the food from our stores that goes uneaten, unsold or spoiled too soon, or the rocks and sand and leaves and sticks and other debris that always seem to be accumulating wherever we least desire them, or even unwanted materials that could be considered “garbage” to almost anyone, like disposable plastic, broken containers, packaging materials – all of this is in fact a vital resource, what took energy from the sun to create and still now has the ability to do some work, or if not, to be transformed into something else that can. Now if we’re talking about building gardens of the perennial future you may want to clear your list of cutting edge equipment, elaborate built structures, or hi-tech management systems, and take a very hard look at what you already have. Until we're confident what the limiting resource(s) will be, it's a good idea to avoid unnecessary expenses in the beginning. Low-tech solutions exist all around you, ones that don’t suck a lot of time or energy to acquire and will be just as cheap and easy to replace if they ever stop working. In particular, any resources that are free and/or continually available to you without traveling too far will be especially important in the long run to lowering your energy and time investment and allowing you greater freedom to envision and grow a beautiful home environment that will enrich many generations to come. To our “value” and “thrift”-obsessed culture, this might sound reminiscent of the old “Doing More with Less" adage, but at One Earth we feel it's good to get out of the habit of invoking ideas of Scarcity. Instead think of it as “Doing more with more,” or “Doing more with YES”