Pedal2Petal's post-ERE life

[Pedal2Petal]

On the Waitlist for 7 Months

Pages back, I mentioned we are trying to get into a co-op. Co-op rents are priced at about half the average $ per square foot. They keep getting cheaper the more space you have too, so they are the best option for families in the city. A recent article showed that rents for Vancouver are between $1.80 and $2.80 per square foot, per month. And at the new co-op we were just accepted to, we are paying $1.00 per square foot.



The lady who lived there before needed more space because her millennial children had both moved back home. I took a picture of where they keep the millenials.



The mother is a single mother. She actually seemed really happy that her kids were living with her again. Willing to move for them so they didn't have to share a bunk bed. As everyone gets poorer, I think more and more people out there are making multi-generational housing great again.

BIG ASS BARAGA

It's a 5km bike ride down the hill from the co-op to the biggest community garden plots in western Canada. Our new apartment is 960 square feet, but these allotment gardens are 1000 square feet each- and there's over 400 of them. 100$/year for all the land you really need. It's called BARAGA, and you can see it from the airplane coming in to our airport.



I've been surprised by how well co-ops keep everything up to date. Everywhere we've seen so far, major updates have happened in the last year. A full new kitchen, a new roof, new building facade, new fences, new flooring, new new new. These buildings are some of the most well cared for places I've ever seen in this moldy city.

Our rent will actually be going down compared to living with my in-laws, although utilities are extra.

And we even get a fucking parking stall.

[Pedal2Petal]

The Gardens Update

It’s only been two weeks since we moved in, but I’ve already been put in charge of designing community gardens at our co-op. I have a 7k Canadian peso budget and a copy of sketchup at my disposal.

After a few iterations, I have this.



If I get my way,it will also have 3 oversized compost bins, a perennial food forest and a bench.



I came up with a method to design for the sun. In food gardening, sun hours is critical. Without sun, you can't grow anything with calories in it.

Every hour on the hour, I took pictures of the area. Here it is at 11 AM.



And here it is at 2 PM.



By counting hours of sunlight in various places, I know what can grow where. I only put beds in the areas with a minimum of four hours.

Unfortunately, that’s still very little sunlight to work with. With the four and a half hours of sun we get on this part of the property. We can grow Broccoli, Peas, Beets and anything that’s a leaf – kale, salad and other rabbit food..
Most people want a garden to grow tomatoes. And for tomatoes, six hours is bare minimum, and really you need eight for adequate results.

And Speaking of Tomatoes…

I picked fourteen pounds of them so far off my single plant. A friend tells me that is exceedingly high but correct the record if you know better.

This is a picture of the first ones to ripen, also the biggest. Bike for scale.



I’ve had to rip out the plant, because it’s now been 100% shaded out by the potatoes. It’s an tiny plant with a giant root ball. I’ll grow this variety again for sure.



Irrigation Automation

I’ve also built these.



There’s 2 things I like about sub irrigated planters. One, you never have to water them. And two, you never have to water them. If you irrigate by hand, you can never scale up. And I intend to scale up.

The “Established” Garden

Although I’ve moved to a different part of the city, my old garden in the northern mountains will remain mine. Because once you win land, you must never relinquish control.

The garden has moved from permaculture zone 2 to permaculture zone 6. This will dictate what I grow, since I can only get out there to water, plant and harvest once a week at best, and once a month at worst.

Yesterday I snapped a picture of the garden exploding in potatoes.

[Josué]

That's some cool planning you did there for the garden

Without sun, you can't grow anything with calories in it.

Interesting, I had never seen it this way. How many hours of sun do you need for leafy stuff like spinach?

Not that I expect anyone to be impressed but I'm quite proud of my first batch of balcony cherry tomatoes:

[Pedal2Petal]

Interesting, I had never seen it this way. How many hours of sun do you need for leafy stuff like spinach?

Spinach has no calories, so it needs very little light. I have a chart of low light plants on this page that shows spinach as needing three to four hours of light.

[Pedal2Petal]

A Craigslist Venture

I've been taking the first steps into a home-based Craigslist selling business.

It's bothered me for the past few years, that all my income is too removed from the reality of my life. My money flows in through a pipe between the US and Canadian economy, but what if something happens to the pipe? Or the companies on the other side of that pipe? Or the governments over here and over there?

I'll consider myself more secure in my position if I can build a money generator over here, to supplement the one over there.

More money coming in will also help secure my goal of owning land, sooner.

Since it's my mission in life to produce the maximum possible with the barest minimum of input, I’ll be creating my Craigslist products using almost exclusively free inputs. Here’s a few of my products so far that I am trying.

Battery Banks

I’ve found a use for the 120+ lithium batteries I salvaged earlier in the year. My cost for each recovered cell in $0.90. Thrown into a $1.15 battery housing, and I have attractive, usable power banks at about 2 bucks a pop. I can sell at $20 and be the cheapest guy on Craigslist.





The ads are all up for these but I haven’t sold any yet. It’s possible I’m still charging too much, or the market is saturated. I’ll also experiment with my messaging. I’d rather not stoop to overpromising milliamp hours which is what my “competition” on craigslist is doing.

Jerusalem Artichokes

An extremely productive crop that has a much higher selling price than potatoes. Typical prices at seed companies are 20$ for 6 or 7 tubers. If I can corner the market on these tubers in my city, it should represent a nice little cashflow with very little effort.



Red Wriggler Compost Worms

I paid 25$ for a half pound of these worms. These creatures have a doubling time of mere days. Therefor as long as I can supply them with enough biomass to support their exploding population, I can create money out of food waste just as fast.



My plan is to create “compost worm kits” with a 5 gallon bucket and sell those. I could probably ask 30$-40$ each. Total cost should be zero as long as I can keep getting my buckets for free.

With any of the above ideas, I’m prepared to create a website to sell the products through targeted to my area. Craigslist is more of a way to market test. I’ll also be able to mail everything out economically if needed.

Bonus Idea – 5 Gallon Buckets

The number of purchase requests I get for 5 gallon buckets is ludicrous. If my price was low enough I could probably sell tens of thousands a year. But I don’t have a local readership on my site, so I’d have to ship nationwide. This is above my weight class at the moment but I might ask a few developer friends I have if they would be willing to take it on.

[jacob]

I comment way too little on this journal but that's just because I'm very impressed and never disagree with anything. Until now

The wiggler doubling time under ideal conditions (enough food, good temperature/moisture and no overpopulation) is about 3 months... or some 800% CAGR. People around here (Chicago) are selling starter batches (about a pound) for $20. Also, people do mail these things. Not sure how.

I've found craigslist to be very different from region to region. It's really just a platform and best/optimal strategies depend on the local community [of craigslisters].

[vexed87]

P2P, can you recommend any resources for learning about building these battery packs, and batteries in general? I think they are awesome and would buy one from you if I was local, don't worry I won't be going into competition with you, just curious really!

Also great work with the garden, I love your plans for your community plot, how will the materials be funded?

[7Wannabe5]

Yes, I am also curious about the battery packs. I love your compost-mobile. Very cool and clever!The highest yielding variety of tomatoes I've ever grown was a massive ugly-but-tasty fruiting Russian variety known as "Pink Elephant." It would likely do well in your climate. One gardener I met in Detroit was able to train his tomatoes to grow up towards the top of his 14 ft. passive greenhouse through an extended season. I have a friend within biking distance who is raising hogs for bar-b-que, and there are several halal butchers in my neighborhood, so I may have to steal your lard acquisition and processing meme. What fun!

[Gilberto de Piento]

If my price was low enough I could probably sell tens of thousands a year.

You could test it by selling them through Amazon, though I was surprised by how expensive five gallon buckets are in general.

Your site comes up with the "This site may be hacked" warning on the Google results page.

[Pedal2Petal]

The wiggler doubling time under ideal conditions (enough food, good temperature/moisture and no overpopulation) is about 3 months... or some 800% CAGR. People around here (Chicago) are selling starter batches (about a pound) for $20. Also, people do mail these things. Not sure how.

I wondered if anyone would call me out on this. I realize I'm really, really stretching the definition of "days." I've read contradictory information online reporting anywhere from ~10 to 90 days to double a population. That's why I intentionally left the time frame vague. On the lower end, I think we're counting a doubling of individuals not adults, from an initial population of adults.

P2P, can you recommend any resources for learning about building these battery packs, and batteries in general?

I learned most of what I know from the youtube channel "Rinoa Super Genius." Alternatively, the Candlepower forumis a leading internet community for batteries and related technology. Any specific battery questions can be asked on reddit.com/r/batteries

Also great work with the garden, I love your plans for your community plot, how will the materials be funded?

We have a budget. $3500 from the co-op funds matched with $3500 from a government grant we've won for this sort of thing. And the president says if the plan is good enough or enough people are into it, we can stretch push that $7k budget up higher, to 9k or 10k. And as you'd expect, I have a lot of ideas for how to stretch a budget till it screams.

The highest yielding variety of tomatoes I've ever grown was a massive ugly-but-tasty fruiting Russian variety known as "Pink Elephant." It would likely do well in your climate.

Russian varieties tend to do very well here. I'll have to look into this "Pink Elephant."

Your site comes up with the "This site may be hacked" warning on the Google results page.

Good to know. I'll have to try and fix this today. I really hate Wordpress sometimes...

[Pedal2Petal]

Cleaning up a URL Redirect Hacked Wordpress Site

I've fixed the hacked content. Truth be told, it's something I've needed to fix since February but it's been an extraordinarily lazy year for me.

The first time I tried to fix this, I eliminated a shitload of suspicious entries from my sql database. I had assumed it was an sql injection and that would fix the problem.

So I submitted my site for review from google. They got back to me and told me the spammy redirects were still there.

That was about a month ago, and it looks like that's when they hit me with the "site may be hacked" text.

Today I went back into the filesystem, and found a bunch of weird stuff in the htaccess file. That's the file that often handles 301 redirects so it was on the top of my suspect list. The "last edited" timestamp matched up to near the date of the hack in February as well. Note the wildcard key terms.



This is probably the tenth time I've had to fix a hacked server since I started server wrangling in 2004. Every time it's been something completely different. Each hack expands my knowledge of my server and how all the different elements interact. It's been a non-voluntary but useful learning process so far.

[Gilberto de Piento]

I've had the htaccess file hacked too. I added the wordfence plugin and do a lot of backups.

[jennypenny]

I didn't see your comments about sunlight and growing tomatoes when I answered your question in the garden thread.

You might need to add in some red mulch or something to warm the soil. I've also seen people plant tomatoes next to walls and paint them white with a reflective additive in the paint. Not sure what would work for you. I'd definitely try Rutgers and German Johnson instead of larger tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes would also work. I grow sun gold cherry tomatoes. They might work for you, too.

They biggest problem you'll have is that you should rotate the tomato beds to avoid soil-borne diseases. I'm not sure how you could do that if only a couple of beds get enough sun for growing tomatoes. One option would be to change out the soil every year if you're using raised beds, but that's a ton of work and not always effective.

Your design looks really cool.

[Pedal2Petal]

The Permaculture Post

Your design looks really cool.

Thanks JP. I've been thinking a lot about design lately. The permaculture system had an enormous impact on how I approach design. For years I've been applying permaculture not just to crops, but to building my websites, preparing my food, my shopping habits and my daily routine.

And my permaculture is telling me that where I've placed that garden is just not going to work. I've put it there because of co-op politics and decisions that were made before we even applied to live here, and I intend to play a bit of politics to get it placed elsewhere.

Right in front of my own porch sits a large slice of land that gets 8 hours of sun each day. That's a hell of a lot more solar calories. I'm building a case for placing the gardens in this zone to present to the board president, our landscaper, the other gardeners, and anyone else who will listen to my ranting and raving about sunlight hours.



Bringing it back to Permaculture, I've noticed something appear on my potato plants.



You know what that is, don't you? That's a valuable high-nitrogen fertilizer, delivered free and delivered often. I accidentally made a good habitat for these birds by building a trellis out of twigs from the forest. The trellis was meant for peas but nature had another idea.

By the way, I looked around at all my neighbors and couldn't find any other bird droppings beside their man-made store bought trellises. I think there are several reasons for this which I won't get into.

Now that I've observed this benevolent process of birds shitting, I can incorporate bird habitat into all my future garden designs while keeping in mind ways to prevent them from eating my plants.

I'm also impressed with the progress of my sunchokes, which are now taller than I am.



The stems have expanded in width a lot. They should be sturdy enough by now to support climbing bean plants, so I'm going to try climbing beans up them. It's similar to the "three sisters" idea, but I don't have room for squash or corn so I'm going to try a new related idea - the "2 brothers." Remind me to check the rooting patterns of each plant to make sure they complement each other.

[Pedal2Petal]

How Early Can ERE be Done?

I went ERE the month I got married, September 2013. I was 26 at the time.

It’s almost uncomfortable for me to say this, because I never reveal my power level in real life.

That is extremely early, so the ERE method really, really works.

Do you know of anyone who got out earlier?

[theanimal]

It depends on your definition of ERE. Yes, the person who's amassed a large financial asset base and quit their job can qualify for ERE. But so can the person who works a couple months out of the year or whenever they feel like it/need to.

If we are accepting the latter definition, I am about to quit my full time job at the end of this month. I'll be following the strategy of the second plan. I'm 23.

[jacob]

Depending on how you count/qualify (FIRE?), I haven't heard of anyone earlier.

That picture looks strangely familiar. You're in Vancouver, right. Is that the top of the Grind?

[jennypenny]

That picture looks strangely familiar. You're in Vancouver, right. Is that the top of the Grind?

I was wondering the same thing. I've done the Grind.

I gotta say, I don't just envy your age at reaching ERE, I envy your location. Vancouver is a great city.

[Pedal2Petal]

That picture looks strangely familiar. You're in Vancouver, right. Is that the top of the Grind?

I envy your location. Vancouver is a great city.

Vancouver is an 11/10. So good that it’s attracting half of the Chinese elite and their money is destroying the middle class. But this isn’t the place for politics, it’s the place for my pictures.



The photo on the previous post was taken from the peak of Mt Strachan. That’s the mountain just east of Cypress, which is a ski resort on the North Shore just like Grouse. Locals mostly avoid Grouse because it’s become an extremely popular tourist spot.

I’ve annotated the hike for your convenience.



Starting at the Cypress parking lot, we climbed in a clockwise direction. Last time, we summited St. Marks but this time we continued on to summit both peaks of Mt Strachan.

The first peak offered 360 views of an enormous slice of southern BC.



The second peak, the entire sunshine coast and Bowen Island.



A few hundred yards down from the second peak, lie 10,000 shredded pieces of a military plane. It felt more somber than I expected.







Then, a hauntingly silent meadow of blueberries and huckleberries. There is no wind or birdsong, and the foliage and the way the valley lie dampens every footstep. It’s so silent that it will make your ears ring. Otherworldly.



We took a shortcut back, down an abomination of a trail. A gravel scar cut across the mountain which in winter will serve as a ski run.

[jacob]

Bloody hell!

Around 2005 I was "strong encouraged" (by someone working there) to apply for a position at TRIUMPH. I rejected it because I didn't want to be a "staff scientist". In 2006 I turned down an offer at McGill because I applied for a US green card a few months earlier (having just gotten married).

(My supremely narrow field of physics research have somewhat strong connections to both sites.)

So I pretty much said no to Canada, twice. Maybe that was a mistake, but I bet that was one/two of those moments out of a handful in one's life where a big difference could have obtained. Well ... on the flip side, it would have effectively required DW to can her PhD in progress, so there was that.

Still ...