👁 ❤️ 📰 no. 4

Hello. It’s been a good while since our last update. There have been quite a number of developments here on the EHO homestead and micro-farm. We’re not ready to open the storefront just yet. We are hosting more events and finally podcasting. Let me catch you up a bit…

First up we have a special event slated to take place here this Sunday. We’re hosting a gene trader’s event on the property from noon to five. It will cost twenty dollars at the door and one hundred for VIP. At this event you will be able to acquire seeds and clones of verified genetics as well as guaranteed female plants. There will be a number of vendors also carrying lighting and other necessary growing accoutrements.

We also have a selection of our first season of starters ready for you. All growing in our own recipe of organic no-till soil. Some of what we have includes kale, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage and more. Just wait until you see how happy these creatures are in our soil!

This week we finally got the chickens we’d been talking about since before winter hit. Cute little buggers! Not only are they going to provide our family with nutritious delicious eggs, they’ve been tasked with the job of keeping our pest count down. We’ve only got four to start so that us and the Eye Heart Kids can get used to caring for them. It’s a first for all of us.

In other news, we noticed the MA Cannabis Grower’s Association post on Facebook earlier this week about censorship on mainstream social media. Apparently, pages associated with anything cannabis are being told to change the names of their groups to appease this net-neutrality thing that’s been hotly debated for some time. The mods of the group posted that they refuse to change their name and be censored so they will be moving to other platforms with less restrictions, in particular Steemit. Good news, folks! We saw this coming.

Please understand, this is not an “I told ya so”, we are simply relieved that we’re not the only ones sounding like paranoid conspiracy wackos and we’re excited that we will now be joined on decentralized uncensored platforms by others who will help spread our positive messages and lifestyle practices. As of now, our VP of Business Development has his own Steemit blog on which he hosts our Eye Heart News podcasts every Monday at 4PM EST on MSP-Waves Radio.

This coming Monday our guest on the podcast will be our good friend Robes of Caldwell’s Social Club.

#EHN Eye Heart News no. 3

As we wait out the last bit of lingering winter weather, the first day of spring 🌼 has come and gone. We’ve gotten what I pray to the gods is a last snow 🌨. As it happens, last frost is slated for 4/20. A fine date for a first day to get some outdoor planting done. After bicycle day and the day before my born day! There’s been talk of an event here that weekend. Gotta reach out to Caldwell’s Social Club to get an update.

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As you may have seen in our previous posts, the indoor beds are built and now filled with that fresh organic soil, locally sourced of course, just down the street.

Many of our collective food scraps are destined to be food for worms and microbes from here on in. Mostly fruits 🍉 and veggies 🥗.

Dennis brought us some of his close to three year build to seed and enrich our foundation.

A little sifting to make it fluffy and airy.

We’ve got worms!

They’re SO CUTE, apparently 😝.

Compost tea is brewing.

Microbes are fed and aerated.

Sprouting 🌱!

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The kids found chicken claws in the soil. I see necklaces in the near future.

👁 ❤️ Kids are inquisitive. Self directed.

👁 ❤️ Dogs are lazy and stubborn. LOL. 🐶

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📋
* Cannabis clones 🌲.
* Bugs 🐞.
* Mycology 🍄.
* Aquaponics 🐟.
* Bees 🐝.
* Chickens 🐔.
* Zero Waste Conference 🚯.
* #EHO podcast on MSP-Waves 📻.

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I hope you enjoyed the new format I’m playing with for these posts. I will continue to tweak it from week to week. If you have suggestions or questions feel free to comment.

You can also see this and follow our VP of Business Development, JP Steinberg on Steemit.

#ENH Eye Hear News no. 2

We’re very excited here at the #EHO homestead! As we near the start of Spring 2018, we have begun to finally get out on the property and in the greenhouse. It’s been a rough winter and there is a nasty wind and snow storm headed our way tonight. We’re ready. The last storm knocked our power out for a couple of days, which is really no big deal except that I can’t keep up with steemit and podcasts without power. We do have solar panels on our barn, although they are currently grid-tied so, while it saves us money on our bill, it does not store power for us to use when there’s an outage. With the amount of old large trees around this area it’s something that can happen often during the stormy months. As the last storm approached, we also had a bit of trouble with our well water. At first we though there was something wrong with the relay switch that controls the flow from the pump, then we thought maybe the pump itself was on its way out. Luckily, neither of those were the problem. Seems the water level in the well itself was a bit too low to build enough pressure to get enough water to flow through the entire house. As of now the well is working and we’ve cleared out any clogs in the pipes. The pump is in good shape. We may need to frack the well at some point in the near future to get more volume of water. For now we’re good.

While we’re in our infancy as a homestead, micro-farm and lifestyle brand, we’re trucking along quite nicely. Once things returned to somewhat normal, we called in the troops. Our seeds had been delivered and the organic soil we’re using in our beds was just a phone call away. Boy was that a load of fun! NOT. We bought about a half ton of organic soil amended with manure and fish guts from a place just down the road. When the dump truck backed up towards the greenhouse its rear wheels sunk immediately into the very wet soft ground. We had to move the soil the old fashioned way, with shovels. Then the truck had to be dug out. The hard part is over.

Our friend and colleague, Brandon Estrella, came by to help us pop seeds. Brandon is not only an expert cultivator, he is also an intellectual and academic with whom I look forward to developing some of our educational curricula as well as engaging him in some deep and civil discourse on our upcoming podcast series. More on that below.

We haven’t stated every project that will be taking place here on the farm. As of now we’ve only started crops anyone would normally start indoors this time of year. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and a number of others. However, we’ve also been careful to procure seeds that are specialty and heirloom. We have no intention to grow the same produce already abundantly available throughout the local farmer’s markets.

We got our boxed nutrients ready to feed the plants too.

Look at that beautiful rich soil! Just wait til we start feeding it our compost. This will make for some serious no-till live shit. There will be no shortage of healthy scraps for the worms and microbes to metabolize.

Of course, Eye Heart Kids were present and accounted for.

The whole crew is really pulling their weight around here. When we say co-op, we mean it. Peer-to-peer starts in the home. Lifestyle is not a term we take lightly. We may not be fully #sustainable, #off-grid and #zerowaste today, we’re a work in progress and we want you to be part of this progress. We will be sharing our projects and experiments with you every step of the way and we welcome and look forward to your feedback. There is still much to do here. Building more beds, sowing more seeds, inoculating mycelium, and we’ve even got cannabis clones of verified genetics taking root now. Keep up with us  here or follow our VP of Business Development’s blog on steemit for weekly updates, announcements and our upcoming podcast on MSP-Waves. It’s gonna be a big chunk to bite off and chew, we got this. That should be happening in the next coupe of weeks. And if you missed it last Friday, I was a guest on Pennsif’s Alternative Lifestyle Show. Soon as he has the archive posted I’ll be sure to share it with you. Until next time, be kind to one and other and take care of our planet please. It’s likely the only one most of us will ever have.

#EHN Eye Heart News no. 1

Good afternoon from the #EHO homestead. If you’ve been following us you know we’ve been a little behind in our weekly postings. Well, that’s about to change. As VP and administrative manager of #EHO I’ve got a lot on my plate. Especially since we’re in the very early stages and much of what we’ve got planned is still in development. Seems there’s always way more work to do before the actual “work” begins. I don’t see what we’ll be doing in the near future as work; instead, I see it as simply what needs to be done to achieve maximum thrive on a day to day basis. Meaning that we ought not focus simply on working as a means to earn currency which we exchange for the basic necessities that help us survive such as food, rather we engage in the kind of work that provides us with necessities such as: farming, building, socializing, growing and creating. Take a look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in order to gain a better understanding of what I mean.

The work we’re currently engaged in is many faceted. First of all, we’ve taken over this just under one acre micro-farm which was once a retail florist. The property was abandoned for several years and in slight disrepair. The barn which houses our storefront, clubhouse/office/boardroom and has a 300 sq ft greenhouse attached, is a solid wood structure built mostly at the turn of the 20th century so it’s actually in great shape considering. The windows and doors are drafty, which has made heating it a bit pricey. Since I’m the only one using it a great deal of the time I tend to keep myself just comfortable enough to plug away at our ongoing projects. We’re just weeks away form the last frost, which oddly enough is on 420 this year. We’ve already begun work on the big greenhouse and done some tidying up around the property on the few good days we’ve had. Fortunately for us we have 4 kids always looking for something to do!

In order to keep this blog going steadily, I am going to piggy back topics each Monday with my Steemit blog and podcast. Obviously, some of the topics are too controversial for #EHO, which just means this blog will be more honed and streamlined. The three main topics I will attempt to cover here from week to week are sustainability, zero waste and mental health and wellness; pertaining mostly to farming and homesteading with a little technology thrown in perhaps. This week’s guest on Hangin’ with WHO is Rob in the Page family aka White Walking Feather. If you are not familiar with his work take the time to watch the Talismanic Idols documentary Ungrip. Rob lives on a 72 acre homestead on Albert, Canada where he and his wife have built a fully sustainable off-grid earthship, grow their own food, raise livestock and govern themselves. Get ready to take notes.

Next week’s topics – Food waste & DIY recycled paper.

Blogs and podcasts and crypto, OH MY!

Hello again from the #EHO homestead. Sorry for taking so long between posts, we have so much going on here it’s been a bit difficult keeping up. a few weeks ago we had several days of board meetings in order to begin ironing out the details of what exactly we are going to grow in our greenhouses and around the farm. We spoke about merchandise and sourcing certain products. We discussed the many ideas we have for classes, seminars and workshops. We didn’t cover as much ground as we would’ve liked due to that terrible flu that was going around; here’s some of the plans we’ve set into motion.

We met for a second time with one of our board president’s former student whom has become somewhat of an aquaponics expert and is looking to invest in and initiate a serious indoor operation for farming carp and growing organic leafy greens. Once the current, soon to be former, owner of the property moves his pontoon boat from the garage that is to be our farm stand, we will begin to install the tanks on the heavy duty utility shelves already there. We will be documenting this project and ensuring it remain as close to #zerowaste as possible.

After having done a fair amount of research and network with the local farming community, we decided it would be best to grow produce that isn’t abundantly available around here already. One thing we found to be lacking is mushrooms. And boy do we love mushrooms! Our VP and his wife have been studying mycology and learning to forage for several years now and it has become a passion for them. Since having occupied the property and explored the immediate area just before winter hit, we found puffballs growing just across the street. And boy were they delicious stir fried with a little garlic in olive oil! As soon as the weather breaks we’ll be inoculating wood piles around the property with edible and medicinal mushrooms.

There’s tons more happening here and we’ll be keeping you in the loop as things unravel. In the meantime, be sure to head over to Patreon and support our VP, JP Steinberg, in his podcasting and blogging endeavors. We’re happy to be a sponsor on his weekly talk show and we certainly enjoy the music he spins. Your subscription and support of his social media helps support his work with #EHO and will surely go a long way. In the coming weeks we will work withhim to create merchandise and marketing campaigns for both his DJ career and our mission to develop a lifestyle brand that will usher in an era of p2p commerce for a generation of healthy, happy, eco-positive communities all over the world.

 

Repurposed wood dab bar for sale.

This dab bar was handcrafted right here on the #EHO agora by our property manager, Mark Bifuclo and our #no-till live soil guru, Dennis Sumner. The wood is a #repurposed shelf from the old Fall Brook Shop. We are willing to barter goods and services; the asking price is $500, or best offer.

Board to death…

A little behind this week so I’ll cut to the chase; our board president, Rob Ryan should be on a plane heading towards #Boston now and we shall be there to pick him up. Due to a full-time teaching schedule at a state university and obligations to do the family thing for the holidays, he was unable to attend our New Years Eve speakeasy. For the next several days we will be here on our one acre micro-farm whittling away at our many responsibilities and starter projects to get the greenhouse budding and our aquaponics bubbling! Gotta go…

Eye <3 2018!

We probably should’ve had a blog post for the new year by now, but we tend to move at our own pace here at #EHO. It’s not exactly a standard practice in business, but we’re not exactly a standard sort of business. We believe in the idea of organic, not only in the foods we grow and consume, not just our health and beauty and household cleaning products, but in our daily interactions and endeavors. If that means there are days when not much else gets done other than some brainstorming and exchange of ideas through social media and board meetings, so be it. You can’t rush progress! Now that my excuse is out of the way let’s get to this blog here…

Firstly, we must extend tremendous gratitude to everyone involved in our operations from top to bottom thus far; both old friends and cohorts as well as our newest board members and soon to be staff for all of their hard work and dedication to #EHO.

Our New Years Eve speakeasy was a tremendous success!

Thanks to La Rhonda’s Alchemy in a Jar for providing amazing local and organic CBD jellies with cheese as appetizers. What a great way to ease into a night of hobnobbing. Chef Bo Jangles worked up several courses of a surf, turf and vegan dish each accompanied by an optional medicated sauce fit for any fancy get-together.

And we couldn’t have had such a classy looking set up if it weren’t for the hard work and expert craftsmanship of our property manager, Mark, and our no-till aficionado, Dennis. The two of them are not only passionate organic growers, they will be keeping the building and grounds in tip top shape as our business grows (pun fully intended). Also keep an eye on our social media pages for pics of projects they have for sale such as the dab bar and cheese board they created for our NYE dinner.

Venture Glass was in attendance as well. This was their second time attending one of our events as a vendor and we have agreed to give them a permanent spot on our display shelves. After a nice little chat with the owner, we realized our business philosophies and practices are very much in line. We look forward to having them as part of our #p2p network.

That brings us to two last announcements for today.

Our board president, Rob Ryan, has introduced us to one of his former students whom has spent much time and energy studying and learning aquaponics. Together they have developed a plan and come up with a start up budget to build tanks and raise fish on the property. These tanks will be designed in such a way as to also grow our herbs and dark greens organically and abundantly.

And…

As promised, this Wednesday we begin our morning yoga and mindfulness meditation sessions. These sessions will take place at 10AM inside our board room during cold weather and outside next to the brook come Spring. Participation is mandatory for board members and staff. Just kidding! However, we would like to welcome anyone in the area whom wishes to join us and maybe even lead the groups once in a while.

Also beginning this week we are hosting several weekly open and peer-run support groups. Wednesday evenings at 6PM we have Addictions, Habits, Compulsions and Cravings and will also be teaching EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) at the start of each session. Afterwards, at 7PM we will have a Double Trouble in Recovery meeting.

Thursday evenings at 7PM we will have an open and peer-run support group for PTSD, Anxiety and Depression. All groups will adhere to the same principle of anonymity as Twelve Steps and since we are in a legal medical and recreational state we will be accepting of anyone engaging in a cannabis-inclusive and non-abstinence treatment modality.

Here is a link to our Google calendar.

Thank you for taking the time to keep up to date on our goings on and we look forward to seeing you on the farm soon!

 

Countdown & News.

Tomorrow is Xmas eve already! That means we’re only a week away from our speakeasy New Years Eve party. Tickets are still available, click the link provided for details and to make your reservation while you still can – LINK. There is so  much going on here at EHO in preparation for the new year and our grand opening in Spring. We will have several pre-opening sales in our storefront as we begin to stock and arrange vendor displays so that you may visit and get to know our board and staff, perhaps even talk to us about how you can get involved. We have teamed up with La Rhonda’s Alchemy in a Jar so that in addition to carrying her amazingly delicious LOCAL,  ORGANIC and ZERO WASTE jams, we will be developing many of our seminars and classes on sustainability together. We have been busy reaching out to the local farming community in order to establish the peer to peer relationships and networking opportunities we wish to engage in as a business and members of the community. Keep checking back with us here for regular updates on goings on such as our forthcoming Kickstarter campaign and monthly fundraisers. And don’t forget to follow us on the various social media outlets, links below…

Coming shortly – short how to video on a quick, easy, inexpensive way to make liquid hand soap and reuse your old bottles. This will be an example of how our zero waste bootcamp will help you save money while keeping a great deal of plastic from entering our waste stream.

A Speakeasy New Years Eve

Please join us for a specially prepared, locally sourced and organic dinner by Chef Bo Janggles featuring cannabis medicated sauces, appetizers and deserts. BYOB, champagne toast provided. Live entertainment and DJ in our rustic solid wood barn on the beautiful south coast of MA. Seating is limited, click the link for tickets  before this event is sold out – Speakeasy NYE dinner.