A Complete Urban Homestead Tour | Communal Simple and Sustainable Living

Using permaculture design techniques and simple living practices, we took a standard urban/suburban house and transformed it into a sustainable homestead.

In this video, I give a tour of this house and property in the city of Saint Petersburg, Florida, sharing tips to how anybody living in the city can live a more simple and sustainable life.

My team and I lived at this homestead from January 2021 to June 2021. We lived here as part of a worktrade, improving the space for the owner of the land in exchange for rent.

Meet the St. Pete Team of Changemakers and learn more.

Transcript: The following is a transcription of A Complete Urban Homestead Tour | Communal Simple and Sustainable Living.

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Welcome to my suburban-ish, urban-ish sustainable homestead here in St. Petersburg, Florida.

My name is Rob Greenfield and a lot of you know me for doing some pretty extreme things. Whether it’s the tiny house that I built out of all second-hand materials, where I grew and foraged all my food for a year in Orlando, Florida, or the off-the-grid tiny house I lived in in San Diego, California, or any of my other projects. With a lot of them, I take sustainable living and minimalism to the extreme.

But today I’m excited to show you what I’ve been doing for the last six months at this homestead. Because what I’ve designed here is really designed to be very accessible. Something that you can do, something that you can adapt into your life. But, to take it a step further, this is a homestead that’s designed for either a family or a group of people to come together and do to really be able to live sustainably and really step outside of the consumeristic system to a larger degree.

The idea here is living quite sustainably in the city and it’s focused on, besides sustainable living, being able to come together to reduce the amount of money that’s needed to live. To live more communally connected to other people. And then lastly, to live in service to your community. That’s what we’ve been doing here for the last six months. That’s what I’m excited to give you a tour of today and share with you.

We’ll start by checking out the inside, then we’ll head back outside to the gardens and to all the outdoor good stuff. So come on in!

Minimalist Living Indoors

Now, one of the first things you might notice as I was walking through the doors is that it’s the middle of the summer in Florida and we have the doors open, which means the air conditioning is not on. And I’ve strived to live without air conditioning for pretty much most of my life. I will say that I’ve been really happy that we’ve managed to mostly avoid using the air conditioning, but we have used it some. We’re not trying to be perfect. As I’ve lived alone in these tiny house settings, I’ve been able to live kind of exactly the way that I want to. But, living in a more communal setting with a lot of people, it’s been a different situation, having to work and make things work for each individual person’s needs. But, with that being said, really amazingly, really happily, it’s almost July 1st and we’ve managed to use the air conditioning for just a small fraction of the summer so far and been able to use just the beautiful breeze that nature provides us as much as possible.

Now, another thing you’ll notice about this house is that it’s like your standard box of an American-style building. To me, honestly, this style of house really sucks the soul right out of me. So, I’m really working with what I had available to me and really working with what other people have available to them to be able to show this example of sustainable living in the city.

The next thing that you’ll notice around me is that it’s pretty minimalistic, it’s pretty simple. One of the themes that you’ll see throughout this place is that when I design things, I’m designing them in a way that is pretty clutter-free, pretty free on the mind. I believe in the saying “a cluttered space is a cluttered mind.” And what you’ll see here in this design of communal living is that things really flow and take care of themselves.

The Seed Library

So, this is the living space here. We just have a couple of basic futons on the floor, but I’m going to show you something over here. This is one of my favorite things: our Seed Library. We’ve just taken an old desk and transformed it into a library full of seeds. And we’ve got 100 or so different varieties of vegetable seeds here that I share with thousands of people through our Free Seed Libraries and our Free Seed Project. Here in our Free Seed Project, we’ve got all your basics, like chives, carrots, arugula, dill, herb mixes, flour mixes and kale. And we send them out to … this year we sent seeds to 10,000 people through our Free Seed Project, where they receive about 20 varieties of seeds to start their own wonderful gardens. We provide those to people who wouldn’t otherwise have funds or access to seeds. So, you’ll see that the theme of this place is really about designing a place where we can be of service.

Over here is our office area. As you can see, it’s pretty simple. Got a couple of computers set up. We do video production. We run our community programs. We had ten people living here during the first three months, as part of an internship that I was doing. This is the team, and during that time, we built ten Gardens for the People. We planted 30 Community Fruit Trees in the neighborhood. We sent over 10,000 free seed packs out. We rescued about 5,000 pounds of food via our food rescue program. And we also diverted about 500 plus pounds of food through our Community Compost Program, as well as volunteering a lot in the community. So, what you’ll see about this place is it’s really designed as a place to live simply so that we can live in service.

On that note, I’m going to show you one of the bedrooms, so you can kind of see the setup that we have going here. Come on in.

Communal Living Ideas

I’ve slept in this room. It’s a room that was a room that I was in myself for a little while and the idea that I want to share with you is this idea of more communal living. I’m not going to call it an ecovillage and it’s not an intentional community. It’s not to that level, but it is communal living, and the idea is the more that we can share resources, the less money we need to earn, the less we need to be focusing on material possessions and financial wealth by coming together. So one of the ideas that I want to share with you that this place represents and this place has been is, imagine if five of your friends and you get together and you share a house and maybe the rent is $2000 a month. Split that among five people, you’re looking at $400 each. Which means instead of focusing on money, you can be focusing on being of service, like to all of the programs.

So, you can see it’s pretty simple in here. We’ve got a couple of dressers. We got most of this stuff secondhand on places like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace and things like that. You can see some bunk beds here. Bunk beds are a really efficient way to go. Again, it’s simple living, but there’s so much benefit to simple living. By cutting back the amount of things that we need, the more we can take power back from corporations that are trying to sell us on this idea that we need so much from them and that we can’t get it by working together.

I’m going to show you one of the bathrooms right here. Pretty simple, pretty basic, and again this place is kind of, for me, sort of a fancy place. It’s not my ideal living scenario. Not too much different from your typical house. This bathroom obviously has a flush toilet in it, but outside we built a compost toilet and that’s where I have been going. I’m excited to show you that. And that’s something that some of the people in the house have also been using. So, I’m really excited to get outside to show you the things that I’m a little bit more passionate about relating to sustainable living.

Sustainable Food Practices

But, before that, I want to take you over to the kitchen because food is the center of our lives. It’s one of the main ways that we interact with the Earth and one of the main ways that we have an impact for better or worse.

Another thing to mention just before getting in the kitchen: this is our dining area. We had quite a few communal meals here. One of the really nice things about living in community is sharing chores. So, we have our chore sheets here where everybody has a different chore for the week and we share in these responsibilities. Imagine living on your own and having to cook every single night. Now, imagine instead, living with six or seven people where each person cooks dinner one night a week and you only have to cook dinner one night a week, and you all have a nice meal. That’s a benefit of communal living. That’s where you can drastically reduce the amount of work you have by working with others and living in community.

Now, of course, communal living has its own challenges. Sharing a bedroom with others has its own challenges because you don’t have your own space, but it’s all about balance. It’s all about asking what do you really want out of life? I think this is one model to be able to achieve a more sustainable, equitable, just way of living.

Most of the entire house was furnished second hand. We got this table, which honestly is too fancy for me, for 50 bucks, including all of the chairs, from Craigslist.

So, we have three main ways that we feed our household. What you’re seeing here is our bulk food section. This is one of the most sustainable and economic ways to feed a group of people or an individual. We buy a lot, all of our staples: our spices and herbs, teas, oils, nuts and seeds, popcorn, raisins, grains, beans, oatmeal and flour. We buy all of this in the bulk food section of the grocery store. There are many of these all across the United States. We bring our own bags and our own containers and we can actually fill them up. So, it’s a pretty much zero-waste way of obtaining a pretty good portion of our food. It’s also one of the least expensive ways to eat. The key is cooking. If you take the time to cook, it’s a lot less expensive. So, this is where a good portion of our food comes from.

Secondly, we started a food rescue program where we actually would pick up the food from a local grocery store that they would normally throw in the dumpster that’s still good, but they just … if you know about our food system in the United States, there is way too much waste. So we rescue that food. That’s the way we got about 70 percent of the food for the household, which meant eating very inexpensively while diverting food from the landfill. So, another fairly sustainable way to eat.

And then lastly, of course, growing some of our own food. Now, with this being a new project and starting here with no gardens at the beginning, it takes time to be able to do that.

Volunteer Transformation of the Garden

When we arrived, the place was definitely in a state of disarray. It had been overgrowing for years. There were tons of trash left over from previous remodels. And there were just tons of stuff that accumulated from the previous renters that had lived here. So, we had to get to work right away to transform the place and one of the things that we did was organize volunteer days. Dozens of volunteers came out and helped us transform the place. In exchange for their work, they got to learn how to transform their own place as well through permaculture, and they got to meet many like-minded people. It wasn’t just work. It was a community coming together for this project.

One of the big things that we did is we replaced all of the lawn, all of the grass, with mulch to turn it into gardening spaces and to turn it into habitat. We opened up space to bring in sunlight so that we could grow food and as much as possible we kept the organic matter on site in order to build soil. Within a couple of months, the place was transformed quite a bit. But with the focus on perennials, it takes a couple of years to really establish the garden. But in six months’ time, it’s pretty amazing how much we were able to accomplish.

This is a pumpkin, for example. We got some squashes as well. And not only eating from our gardens, but these are all mangoes that we foraged in the neighborhood. There’s food growing freely and abundantly all over the place and these are mangoes that would have gone to waste without us harvesting them.

So, we have a community fridge that’s part of our food rescue program. We don’t just feed ourselves, we actually fed the community as well through that program and I’m going to show you that.

Water

Before we head out there … just as important as our food is our water. In a lot of cities, the water is really polluted. It’s often pretty toxic. It’s important to have pure water — good, clean drinking water. So, we use a Berkey filter and I’ve been using these since my first tiny house in San Diego. I think they’re one of the greatest systems because you can just fill this with a pitcher from the sink and it is one of the best at removing impurities, heavy metals, and it also removes chlorine. It can remove fluoride as well with fluoride filters. So, you put pretty dirty city water into there – not dirty, but toxic – and it comes out as a really good drinking water. And they’re pretty inexpensive. There’s nothing to set up. So, this is something that I really recommend for living more sustainably and healthfully. Absolutely no need for bottled water whatsoever, of course. So, that’s a really important thing.

Speaking of water, we have our sink. I want to talk a little bit about some sustainable tips when it comes to water in the house. Now, when it comes to the water and sustainable living in this homestead, one of the things that I didn’t actually accomplish was managing gray water. And that’s as simple as changing the plumbing so that the water goes out to your landscape rather than to the sewer. So, every time you’re using the sink you can actually be growing fruit on your fruit trees. It’s a fairly simple thing. There are legalities around it, but it’s a very doable thing. But it’s one of the things that I just did not manage to do.

However, what you can do is, underneath your sink, you can simply unscrew the p-trap and put a five-gallon bucket there and then take that water and dump it directly into your yard. It takes no infrastructure or anything of that sort. And one really important note is that when you’re using gray water, whatever toxins you’re putting down the drain are going onto your land. So, the key is not having toxins. In this house, what we use is a biodegradable plant-friendly soap that can go right out to the plants and it actually feeds them, without toxicity. Even if this is still going to the wastewater treatment plant, you’re not sending toxic stuff to the wastewater treatment plant because toxins don’t just go away magically. They continue. They persist. So, we use all gray water, plant-friendly soaps in all of our bathrooms and in the kitchen. We really don’t have toxins that we’re flushing down the toilet, like bleach and things like that. The same with our laundry detergent.

Speaking of technology and machines like laundry machines, one thing that you’ll notice is that this kitchen doesn’t have a lot of electronics in it. This is where the dishwasher was. I took that out and put it in the garage. Instead, we have a few wash bins which is a much more efficient use of water. It doesn’t use all the electricity. We hand wash. For me, it’s about simplicity and it’s about getting back to the basics. Sure, some people might think that a washing machine is more efficient, but take into account all that’s needed with that globalized, industrialized system, and what’s going to happen to the washing machine when it no longer functions or it’s broken. The input is far more than the simplicity of connecting and doing dishes by hand. So, we have minimal technology. Not no technology, but minimal.

And right here, this is where the microwave used to be. Now, instead of a microwave, I have a song by one of my favorite humans, Thich Nhat Hanh. And instead of it being a big piece of technology, it’s a reminder that happiness is here and now and to be present in life. And that, to me, is very meaningful.

So, again, we have some technology, but it’s about minimizing it and reclaiming our humanity, taking back power from these big corporations that want to suck our money out of us and keep us working endlessly. Instead, again, it’s about working together in community, simplifying, and living more sustainably. And that’s really what you see in the design of this place.

You’ll also notice that there are no corporate logos or advertising inside the house. That’s a very intentional choice, in order to keep away the subliminal marketing and take a break from the bombardment of materialism.

We have garbage cans. I’m going to show you the garbage can. This hurts a little bit, but let’s take a look. There’s garbage in the recycling. There’s been recycling in the garbage sometimes. And that’s been a challenge of living in a community. However, the goal is definitely not to be zero-waste. The goal is to drastically reduce the amount of trash that we’re making. And, a lot of the trash that we do make actually comes from our food rescue program, stuff that would have already been thrown away. So, the key really is that we don’t have to do a perfect job, but that in the times we’re living in, we know that we have to strive to do better and we have to strive to do a lot more.

Composting at the Homestead

What you’ll notice though is that there is no food waste, no biodegradables, in this garbage can. We keep a bucket inside the house and we simply bring it out here when it’s full and swap it out with a clean bucket. Then all the food waste is composted to build healthy soil. So, none of that is sent to the landfill. You’ll see we have instructions here for how to compost, recycle, and trash. And all of the food waste heads out to the garden where it is turned into soil. I’m going to take you out there, and on the way out, I’m also going to show you the community fridge.

Community Fridge and Bikes

So, we’re one step from outside in the garden. On the way out to the compost, I wanted to stop at our community fridge, which is in the garage. This is open for people to come in and out of. We have a select group of people that come and then they distribute this food to more people in the community who don’t otherwise have access to healthful food. There’s not a lot in here right now. It’s fairly empty at this moment. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s stocked full and sometimes it’s pretty empty. The idea of this is that we are feeding our household through this food rescue program where we rescue the food that would have otherwise been thrown away by the grocery store. At the same time, we have our community fridge where we’ve been able to distribute thousands of pounds of food to people in the community.

I’m actually being swarmed by mosquitoes right now in the garage. It’s really crazy. The Florida summers are difficult. So, that’s the community fridge.

I want to show you another community thing right over here and that’s the community bikes. We had about eight bikes here initially, but as we had fewer people, we downsized. So, we’ve got six bikes right now and the idea is really simple. If you want to get away from the fossil fuels and you want to live more sustainably, then cycling is absolutely one of the best ways to do that. So, we have these communal bikes where anybody living in the house can use them. And if we have guests over we can use them. Having these bikes is absolutely key. And this little system of just hanging them on the wall is a really simple way to store them so that you maximize your space.

So, it is very hot out right now. I’m only wearing this shirt because we’re filming. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be wearing a shirt right now. One of the keys to adapting is that when it’s really hot, just wear minimal clothes, as needed.

This is our composting. We have two active compost bins here. Normally, what you see here would be filled with our carbon source. Now, to tell you just a little bit about composting, composting is just letting the earth do the work that it’s always done. Putting our food in the landfill is saying to the earth, “you can’t do what you’ve always done.” There’s no oxygen there. That’s not how things break down. It’s toxic to the earth to put our food waste into a landfill. Instead, simply by putting it into a compost pile, you’ve got …. Basically, for every bucket of food waste, you have about two buckets of a carbon source like wood chips, for example. It really is as simple as that. I mean, you can go really deeply complex with composting, or you can keep it really simple and just let the earth do the work that it’s done for a very long time.

So, this is where all of our food waste is composted. It’s where the compost from our food rescue program and our community compost program goes. But, we’ve rescued thousands of pounds of food waste, so we can’t compost all of that here and it’s gone to other sites as well. But the big thing is keeping food waste out of the landfill and regenerating our soil, regenerating our earth.

I’m going to show you a couple other things. Here is where we store sawdust. Sawdust is a waste product that we get from a sawmill or a wood mill that produces things from wood, and we use this in our compost toilet, which you’ll see in a minute. Cardboard is another waste product that we use. We use this for sheet mulching for turning yards into gardens. And then here’s all of our buckets for our community compost program. Today is Friday, so I actually have to head out and do a community compost program in a bit.

The Compost Toilet and Toilet Paper Plant

Now, speaking of waste, I’m going to take you over to the compost toilet. I think of this as a bit of a revolutionary thing for our society. If you think about it, most people flush their poop, which we call waste, down the toilet and it becomes someone else’s problem. And it is a problem. The way that we deal with our poop is a big problem that’s causing serious issues for our waterways and depleting our soils. The compost toilet, on the other hand, is a solution. We turn this poop, all these nutrients, into fertile compost that we can actually grow food with. So, we’re taking the problem and turning it into a solution.

And, even better, what I love about this compost toilet is I actually grow my own toilet paper. This is one of my absolute favorite plants. This is Plectranthus barbatus, or the blue spur flower, among other names. And it’s in the mint family. So, first of all, this toilet paper has a really nice fragrance to it. But, more importantly, it’s very soft. In fact, it’s one of the softest plants that I really know of. I mean, it’s a great toilet paper, but now that I’m thinking about it, it’s actually just a nice little wipe to get the sweat off your face because it’s so soft. That’s a new use for it, but it grows abundantly. And, if you just plant a couple of sticks, you’ll have enough toilet paper for a whole family or a small community to be able to use. So, it’s a beautiful plant.

And what’s great about it, I’ll show you. If you want to come inside, we’ve got the compost toilet itself here and the toilet paper sits right here. Now, we also have your standard toilet paper, but we do at least buy a more eco-friendly one than some of the stuff out there. But I primarily just use this. And what’s cool about this plant as well is it can sit here next to the toilet for up to a week after harvesting. It’s great for taking camping and for other things as well.

So, we have a basic system here. We’ve got pee and poop, and then we’ve got sawdust. So, in this one you sit to go pee and then we use this water. It’s pee in a bucket of water that’s diluted and then we use that for watering the plants. Here you go poop, and then after you go poop, you take a handful of sawdust and put that over the poop. And the key to a successful compost toilet is making sure that you use enough of a carbon material like sawdust that you cover it completely and it’s dry. I’m sitting in here and there’s no smell at all. I could definitely talk about poop for a very long time, but all that is to say, our poop doesn’t go to the wastewater treatment plant. It is composted to grow more food. I think it’s about time to get to the garden, finally, which I’m sure some of you will be excited about.

Outdoor Shower and Rainwater Harvesting

Out of the compost toilet into the garden. So, this is the outdoor shower. My top preference for an outdoor shower is actually rain water, but this is just hooked up to a hose just using municipal water. The beautiful thing about this outdoor shower is that, rather than this going to a wastewater treatment plant, this water actually waters the plants as you shower. So, as we’re showering, we’re growing turmeric, ginger, taro, and these are some wonderful little Everglades tomatoes that I just harvested from about three feet from the shower. The shower is actually on an old stump that’s sitting there, so it’s a nice natural stump that you stand on, the shower raining down over you and watering the garden at the same time.

We also harvest rain water off of the house to reduce the total amount of water that we’re using from the city. We collect as much as we can from the roof. We have rain water harvesting on two of the four corners of the house. The more water that you can harvest, the more independent you can become of the systems that are sucking our wells and our rivers dry. And no need for chemicals at all. Just pure water coming from the sky.

There are two systems: we have the 55-gallon drums here. You can generally buy these for about $15 or $25, and then we have the 275-gallon IBC totes. This is my preferred method. About five of these drums equals one of these totes, so 275 gallons goes a pretty long way. What I like about these is they actually have a spigot on the bottom, which opens wide up, and you can fill five-gallon buckets out of there really quickly in order to water the gardens. So, rainwater harvesting is, again, one of these things that some people think is really complicated, but we just had downspouts, and all I did to get the water into here is I got a chunk of a gutter and just strapped it onto there and directed it into this tote. So, it’s simply a matter of directing water into whatever bins or buckets you’re storing water in. Rain water harvesting can be very complex or it can be made very simple.

The Worm Bin

I’m going to show you the worm bin, which is one of the little pieces of magic that there is on the property. It’s just right over here. I’m actually new to keeping worms. I just started this about three months ago. I learned from a good friend of mine, Albert Reisenberg, who’s really pretty much a worm expert these days. What I’m going to show you is how to turn food waste like these banana peels into black gold like this: super nutrient-rich worm castings that just work wonders on the garden. So, you’ve got your food waste and that turns into this amazing stuff. I only open the worm bins once a month and I feed them two buckets, two five-gallon or so buckets, of food waste.

Let’s take a look in here. I just open them up once a month on about the full moon. And then, just look at that. We’ve got some sprouts here, but what you can see on the top here is what I’m talking about when I talk about this black gold. That’s just pure worm castings right on top, just right, ready to harvest. The system that Albert taught me is, once a month, add two buckets of the right ideal food waste, which is really easy to digest, mild food for them. You pull this back, you put it down on the bottom. On the bottom, you have bedding, like nice, fine wood chip stuff. And then you have your buckets of food waste, and then you put this back over the top. So, basically the worms actually put most of their castings at the top. They poop at the top, and then you’re able to harvest these black gold worm castings right off the top. So, we’re talking about another way that on this little homestead we’re turning a wasted resource, something other people don’t want, into a really just beautiful resource for growing food.

Exploring the Gardens and Front Yard Community Engagement

All right, so now it’s time to finally show you the garden, which I know is something that probably a lot of you are the most excited about, and something that I’m the most excited about. One of the greatest parts about homesteading is breaking free from the global, industrial food system and actually growing our own food — growing an abundance of it right on site where we can share it with our family, our friends and our community.

To start with, this is one of the herb gardens. We’ve got four different types of basil: African blue basil, Thai basil, columnar basil and your standard Genovese basil. We’ve got Cuban oregano and your standard oregano. We’ve got mint and we’ve got lemon balm and over here we’ve got wonderful lemongrass. I have this situated right next to the back porch for the easiest access to the kitchen. A great place to put your herb garden is as close to the kitchen as possible, so you can always come out and get fresh herbs. So, that’s one of the herb gardens here.

Moving over here … this is our turmeric and ginger garden, as well as taro and malanga. We have nine different varieties of turmeric and ginger here. They are pretty easy to grow in Florida. The focus of all these gardens is to grow what grows really easily. The plants that don’t have a lot of pests, can handle droughts and really just take care of themselves. And we focus a lot on perennials rather than annuals.

Coming this way, one thing you’ll notice is that our raised beds use logs. Rather than buying materials, we cut down some trees on the property in order to let in some sunlight and we use those to make our beds. So, in here we have a lot more lemongrass. Come on over. We’ve got a lot of papaya that grows really well here. Different perennial spinaches. Over here is the Everglades tomato that I mentioned. Here is a habanero pepper that’s growing — a nice, hot, spicy pepper — and then we’ve got amaranth.

Behind me is moringa. This is one of the most special, most important plants to have on site when you are in a semi-tropical place. The key to growing food is to work within your environment. If you’re watching this video and you’re in Wisconsin or New York or Washington, you can grow an abundance of food there, it’s just not necessarily going to be the same things that are being grown here.

Over here you can see the bananas. What’s key is that plants that need a lot of water are located right next to the rainwater harvesting because the overflow can go right there. Now I’m going to take you over to the side of the house where we have a living wall fence and then out to the front of the house.

Here we’ve created a living fence. You’ll notice that on the other side of this fence there’s a lot growing as well. So, during the six months that I’ve been here, I’ve actually done a work exchange and I’ve permacultured out both of these properties in exchange for the rent here. What we have going here is luffa squashes, which you can eat when they’re young like a zucchini or you can wait until they get older, dried out, and then you actually get sponges which you can use for washing dishes, washing your compost buckets. Again, this garden is developing. It’s on the younger side. But we’ve got grapes and, if you come on down a little further, there is passion fruit growing over here as well. The idea is to create a beautiful living fence that’s actually producing food. So, using vertical space is one of the keys to producing a lot of food in urban or suburban environments often. So, we’ll keep on heading up to the front.

We are in the front yard garden now and it’s summertime in Florida. One of the things that I usually do is grow cover crops. I have amaranth here. I have a couple of types of amaranth. I’ve got my sweet potato, which produces delicious greens as well as big, fat sweet potatoes. And then I’ve got southern peas. All of these cover the ground for the heat of the summer and can tolerate and thrive in the heat of the summer. So, that’s what I generally do in the summer. I have my cover crops.

Over here … this is the beginning of a banana circle and the downspout behind me actually goes under the ground and dumps the water out there. So, that’s a passive form of rainwater harvesting.

The front of the house is really designed for the community: to bring in the community, to interact with the community, and to be of service to the community. This is the community compost drop-off site. For people who want to compost, we give them a clean bucket and they fill it with their food scraps, and then they can swap it out for a clean bucket and bring their food scraps for us to compost. We also have a bicycle-powered compost program, where we swap out buckets with people in the community who are filling their buckets with food scraps.

Here is a community fruit tree. People can come and freely access the fruit, and the idea is to help people see that fruit can be growing freely and abundantly all around us.

If you come right over here, this is the Free Seed Library. We have put 11 of these up in the community. If you want to come take a look at it, we have 12 different seeds available that are ideal for the growing conditions right now. Down here is a seed exchange, where people can add their own seeds. The idea of the Free Seed Library is to provide seeds to people to help them grow their own food, to empower them, and to help them take that next step towards food sovereignty.

And then, what you’ll see all around is this whole front yard is full of wildflowers. The idea is that this is a pollinator-friendly bee and butterfly area to bring in pollinators and to provide habitat for other important species, as well. I mean, flowers in the front yard is a really beautiful place to have them.

Reflections on Sustainability

We’re going to end right at the beautiful magnolia tree, which is kind of …. Actually, before that. Right here, this is part of the Free Seed Project demonstration garden. So, everything that’s growing in here are seeds that come through our free seed packs. This is the basil pack. There’s five different types of basil growing in here.

All right, so this is the magnolia tree that sits right in the front of the yard, and it really is one of the most peaceful spots. The shade that’s cast here makes it the coolest spot in the yard and I can sit out here and really just enjoy the shade.

I’ve got to be honest, that was a long tour. It took about four hours to film this just now, so I’m feeling a little bit exhausted. But, I’m so happy to have been able to share this place with you.

Again, this place was created in six months. This is an example of what can be done in just six months’ time. Now, there was a lot of help. A lot of volunteers helped to create this, a whole team of people who lived here and helped create this place. It takes time and it takes work to create something like this. But, it is possible to step away from this consumeristic model and live in a more sustainable, more communal, more ‘in service to the community’ way.

The truth is that, of course, this is not sustainable. The whole world could not possibly live this way. This still consumes too many resources. But, it is so much less destructive than the mainstream way of living. So, there’s so much that we can do to shift our lifestyles.

One thing I just want to talk a little bit about is that it took a community to bring this together and I give so much thanks to every single person who was a part of this. Also, at the same time, I want to apologize, because this was an incredible amount of work. My biggest task so far this year … this six months … has been learning to work with others. It’s been learning to live in a communal way. And that’s been hard for me.

Working with a team and living together in this place has been really one of the most difficult things I’ve done in quite some time. I’ve definitely been taking feedback. I’ve definitely been working to get better at communication that leaves everybody uplifted rather than, you know, feeling exhausted and the opposite of uplifted sometimes. That being said, communal living is hard. I’ve really yet to find a place where it just flows easily. Even places that have been around for decades … communities that have been around for decades … it’s really difficult.

I just want to share a little bit of advice and knowledge on that. It’s definitely far from all easy. It’s definitely far from getting out of the rat race that just results in bliss. No. Life is hard. Life takes work. No matter which way you’re doing it. Living in a more communal way, living in harmony with the Earth, takes going against the grain of society. And, it really takes deep self-reflection on the way we interact with other people, with other species, and this Earth.

So, it’s a road, you know. It’s a tough road. But, it’s a worthwhile road in order to shift our ways. But again, one step at a time. It’s not a matter of getting to the point of a regenerative lifestyle overnight. It’s work and it’s one step at a time.

I encourage you, whatever you’ve learned today, what you’ve been inspired by, to start taking those things into your life, start adapting, start changing one bit at a time, to live in a more equitable, just and sustainable way.

I love you all so much. I’m glad that we got to spend this time together. There will be many more videos to come, so make sure you subscribe to this channel. And, if you want this information to get out in the world, make sure to comment and ‘Like’ the video as well. And, of course, share it with friends if you’d like to.

I love you all very much and I’ll see you again soon.