Tag Archives: moving

Learning the natural flow

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When moving to a new home and land, I always felt it was wise to pause and observe it for the first year. Live with it, learn it, collect information; get intimate with its natural flow so you can make adjustments that better suit you and your family. Hey, a new home may feel good, but nothing is perfectly matched, everything needs some tweaks or adjustments. However, it is important to pace yourself and pay attention.

I think this process is especially important when looking at the land. Basically, you need to know what’s there and how the land evolves over the seasons. After being on our new land during most of the summer, it may be shrewd to go through two years without making any major changes. Frankly, I have had very little time to really be with the land and experience its nuances, as I have been so busy with painting, packing and moving throughout the magical time of spring and summer.  Most of my time outdoors has been spent relieving the plants from the strangle hold of vines: Wild Cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) and Bindweed/Wild Morning Glory (Convolvulus arvensis). And folks, those vines are very impressive, they do not need much time to swallow up plants let alone trees and shrubs. Although Wild Cucumber can cover entire trees, thank goodness, it is very easy to pull off its hosts but Bindweed really grabs hold and refuses to let go unless you unravel it and get to their roots. They really know how to anchor in deep. Along with removing vines, I’ve widened paths and tried to balance the plants on the land, as some seem to have more advantage over others.

Wild Cucumber

Bindweed

As a forager, my desires and the land’s needs will need time to adjust to each other. I can see now that it will need a lot more attention than I’m wired for. Typically, I help the land awaken in the spring and forage my way around it through the seasons. But I fear that it will no longer be sufficient anymore. Therefore, we will need to come up with some compromises as the relationship of steward and land evolves. I have no idea what that means at this moment but know it will take time to evolve as I live with it, learn it, collect information; get intimate with its natural flow.

Your trash may be someone else’s treasure

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Do you have something that is perfectly good but you no longer want or need, perhaps clothes your son grew out or a bookcase? Would you like to remove it from your home, make space but you have no desire to coordinate a garage sale or cart it off to a second hand store and it makes no sense to throw it away. You would rather recycle it.  On the other hand, do you need something, a wheelbarrow, maybe fireplace equipment; it doesn’t have to be new, just functional. Perhaps Freecycle TM is for you.  FreecycleTM is a worldwide online network where you can post notices about items you’d like to give away and find things that you need. The only requirement is that the transfer of an item from one person to another has to be FREE.

Through FreecycleTM, you can help the environment by diverting useful items from landfills while also helping members of your local community. Everybody has something they want to get rid of, so instead of dragging it out to the curb and filling up the landfills, wouldn’t it be better to connect with someone who probably wants what you have?

The Freecycle Network is made up of over 5,000 groups with over 9,000,000 members, in 85 countries around the world. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. As a result, the network is currently keeping over 500 tons a day out of landfills! This amounts to five times the height of Mt. Everest in the past year alone when stacked in garbage trucks!

It is a wonderful tool for redistribution and I have been utilizing the network for almost ten years in towns from coast to coast. I have found it particularly helpful before and after a move. When we were preparing to move from California back to New York, I would list an item and sometimes within an hour, I would have at least 5 people requesting the item. It was so easy to purge, even on the day of the move when a large item simply would not fit into the moving Pod. On the other hand, when we moved into a new location and needed something, someone in our new community had the item we needed.

I know you must be wondering about safety. Common sense is always important. Most of the time when picking up an item, it is left by a mailbox or garage. I rarely ever meet the people that I make an exchange with, but thank you notes are often left. Some people do prefer to meet in a central location. After, almost ten years of exchange, I am happy to say no problems have ever occurred during an exchange. The worst issue is a no show, which is often frustrating.

Local volunteers moderate each local group. However, there are a couple of basic rules that govern all the FreecycleTM programs:

Keep it free, legal & appropriate for all ages

No offering YOURSELF or YOUR CHILDREN

Subject line of your posts should include:

  • Offer, note location
  • Taken
  • Wanted, note location
  • Received

By giving freely with no strings attached, members of The Freecycle Network help instill a sense of generosity of spirit as they strengthen local community ties and promote environmental sustainability and reuse. It’s a beautiful thing.

To sign up, simply go http://www.freecycle.org  and find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on ‘Browse Groups’ above the search box.

And of course, membership is FREE!

What ways do you redistribute your unwanted items? Please share and I will continue to share.