Comments

Episode-2351- Zach Weiss on Creating Resilient and Abundant Homesteads — 4 Comments

  1. I’ve been spending some volunteer time recently in Chico and Paradise California helping victims of the recent fire there. Lots of people want to go back to Paradise and rebuild the area. But I don’t think most of them have a clue how to prevent a tragic fire like that from happening again 20 years or whenever from now.

    Do you know anyone who knows enough about that area of California AND about Permaculture to have some realistic idea of what needs to happen in these regions to keep fires out of inhabited areas? Is there any possibility of greening the forests of inland California to the point where the local climate switches and nine-month periods of no rain come to an end?

    • The change you seek will probably take more than a lifetime but is possible. California’s water problems have been 150 years in the making. The best you are going to do immediately  is devise a plan for  every individual home. Homes with green belts around them and adult trees trimmed up fared best. California’s politics are its worst problem because it prevents implementing many solutions in the name of environmentalism.

      • So much more could be done so much more quickly, but alas you are correct. The simple addition of large scale cisterns, as in on a town/city scale would do so much. Back yard scale would do so much as well, you already have the most heavily taxed citizens in the nation, give them tax breaks to put back yard cisterns in.

        Take some more of that stolen money and put in thousands of small ponds, parks, in road easements, everywhere there is catchment to work with. If there is any open ground with any flow across it put in infiltration swales.

        Those three steps could change California in a decade or less.

        But I agree, it will be a 3-5 generational fix.

  2. Thanks for having Zach on your program. I have lots of helpful information to use as I get started homesteading.
    Appreciate the  information on the grow light too, Jack. Thank you!