Building a Better World in your Backyard instead of being angry at bad guys

Final Update (I think). The book is now done and available in print, ebook, and as an audiobook. If you are interested in purchasing a copy you can do so here.

Update. The campaign just ended with phenomenal success! A total of 2768 people supported it with $153,983.05! Thanks to all of you who joined me in helping make it all happen. If you missed out I’ll be sure to make one more update to this post when the book has gone through the final editing processes, been printed, and is available for anyone to purchase. Odds are good I’ll do another blog post too reviewing the book after I’ve got my copy and read the whole thing.

So I’ve known the Kickstarter campaign to get this book printed was coming up for months now. I’m excited to see it finally happen! Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-Koop have been working on this for over a year. I’ve read a few sections they’ve shared in various threads on the Permies.com forums and it looks like it should be an excellent book that is essentially right along the lines of what I’m aiming to do with this blog.

(Please note some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. What this means is that should you click through them and make a qualifying purchase I will receive a commission which I’d certainly appreciate since it helps support this blog project. However, this shouldn’t increase your cost any, and certainly don’t ever feel like I’m pressuring you to buy things through the links I offer or anywhere else. I’m all about being frugal first!)

I’ve mentioned the 3 E’s before, and have yet to sit down and compose a full post on the topic, but the short version is that the Economy, Energy, and the Environment are not three separate topics. Rather they are three interrelated issues in which altering one pretty much mandates changes in the other two. The more economic activity we have the more energy resources are needed, and the greater the environmental impact. I’m part of various communities on-line that all focus on the 3 E’s (though they don’t all refer to them as such) but tend to focus more on different aspects. Peak Prosperity.com where I got the basic framework for this concept tends to focus on the 3 E’s from more of a macro society wide view, with an emphasis on the Economy.

From what I can tell this new book by Paul and Shawn are approaching this from an individual/household perspective and focusing more on the environmental angle. Still they are clear to point out that what they propose in the book is not aimed at personal deprivation to achieve ecological goals. Rather they focus on solutions that also save you money and lead to a more luxuriant life! This is exactly what I’m trying to demonstrate with my blog, as such I’m thrilled to see they are ready to go to print with this book. I feel like there needs to be more people demonstrating that we can lead better lives, help restore ecological systems, and be able to retire early as a result!

I was going to encourage you to support the kickstarter in order to see the book get printed, though I expected they would reach their modest goal with ease. I was right about that. The kickstarter has only been live for a few hours and has already met the goal needed to go to print! So it’s no longer a question of whether or not the book will get printed. Rather it’s now about supporting and encouraging them for all the labor they’ve put into creating this. It would be nice if they could see a bit of profit from their year+ of effort to encourage them and others to produce more such work.

Plus supporting the kickstarter at a $10 or higher level is basically a way to preorder a copy of the book. $10 gets you two copies as an ebook, while $15 would get you a single physical copy. Their goal is actually to make these affordable enough that people could buy multiple copies and give them away to spread the ideas within farther and wider. Personally I supported the campaign at the $100 level which will get me either a dozen physical books or 36 ebooks, or a combination of both, in addition to the other incentives given. (Updated to note that I’ve changed my level to $200. More about this a little farther down in this post.)

Beyond just the book itself their rewards for supporting the kickstarter campaign are crazy generous and likely of interest to anyone who be intrigued in the topics covered in the book. These thank you rewards are reason enough to support. However, Paul really wanted to see what would happen in terms of publicity if he could get major support in the first couple days. To this end he started putting together a bonus reward group of stuff. Other members of the permaculture community began offering even more items for this. In the end there is a collection of 31 extra items being given as rewards to anyone who supports the campaign before Friday, April 12 at 2pm mountain time. (Updated to note that this deadline has passed, but now they are on to stretch goals instead!) And by anyone they mean even if you only give $1!

Just what to I mean by “crazy generous”? Here’s a list of what they are offering for as little as $1.

For $1 you get:  
- Permaculture Playing Cards eBook (4 gift codes)  
- Care and Feeding of a Rocket Mass Heater (4 gift codes)  
- Rocket Ovens Cooking Microdoc (4 gift codes)  
- Hugelkultur Microdoc (4 gift codes)  
- 21 Podcast Review of Sepp Holzer?s Permaculture  
- Cool Public Thanks
  
And for that same $1 spent before Friday at 2, you also get:  
- "Common Weeds and Wild Edibles of the World" full length movie by Sergei Boutenko 
- Chapters 1-10 of "Green Prosperity: Quit Your Job, Live Your Dreams" by Thomas Elpel  
- "Grow a Salad in Your City Apartment" eBook by Rosemary Hansen  
- "Learning to Spin on a Drop Spindle" eBook by Raven Ranson  
- 2 Chapters from "To Catch the Rain" + rainwater calculation chart by Lonny Grafman  
- "Native Bee Guide" by Dave Hunter  
- An hour long presentation by Tim Barker about ram pumps  
- Chapters 1-4 from "Dairy Farming: The Beautiful Way" by Adam Klaus  
- a two hour long presentation by Jacqueline Freeman about Farm and Animal relationships  
- Paul's 4 hour presentation on animals in the landscape  
- a two hour presentation on money and finance for permies by Jocelyn Campbell  
- Movie about the 12 rocket mass heaters at Wheaton Labs.  
- Hugelkultur chapter from "Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist" from Michael Judd  
- Uncle Mud's EZ Cob Rocket Stove from Chris McClellan (aka Uncle Mud)  
- The Spring 2019 issue of Communities Magazine from ic.org  
- Thermophilic Composting for the Garden or Homestead pdf from Alan Booker  
- Everyday Artisans' Common Sense Approach to Bread Making  
- Water Retention Landscapes slides from Zach Weiss  
- Permaculture Applications for the Commercial Farm slides from Neil Bertrando  
- "Six Quick Stove Tricks" from Ernie and Erica Wisner  
- Wading Pool Aquaponics plans from AutoMicroFarm  
- Collection of 14 Permaculture/Homesteading Cheat-Sheets, Worksheets, and Guides from Wild Homesteading  
- Unofficial Companion Guide to the Rocket Oven DVD from Wild Homesteading  
- Paul's Hugelkultur Q&A from the Eat Your Dirt Summit from Amanda Smith  
- Module 1: "Dare to Dream" from the Garden Mastery Academy by Amanda Smith  
- "The Chemerical Cookbook: Helping you detoxify your world" by Andrew Nisker of Take Action Films  
- Intro & Chapter 1 of "Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption" by Ma'ikwe Ludwig  
- Tree fractal art from Dave Burton  
- Diego Footer's presentation on "15 Lessons Learned from Driving Headlong into a Permaculture Based Homestead" from the Eat Your Dirt Summit from Amanda Smith  
- An Afternoon at Skeleton Falls video from Artful Productions  
- Seed Saving video from the Basics of Plant Propagation Course from PermaEthos  

Project update! At this point there are just 9 days left in the kickstarter campaign. As I noted initially they easily met the funding goal to get the book printed. Since then they have added a ton of what are called stretch goals. This means that if they reach these different goals then they will be doing more things. Personally I feel like the most important stretch goal that most everyone involved is hoping to hit is the $100,000 goal at which point they will be able to produce an audio book version. Why is this at such a high level you might wonder? Paul explained that it’s because they decided to offer so much to begin with that margins are very tight! Hence a lot needs to come in to be able to make these thin margins add up to what needed to produce the audio book.

However, again many people in the community have stepped up to support this project by allowing their books and projects to become stretch goals. So there are many stretch goals on the way to the audio book level, and I should note, many more beyond it. As I type this the project just reached the $70,000 level fulfilling the 5th stretch goal!

The first stretch goal was to add 100 extra doodles throughout the book. That one will benefit everyone who pledges at a level which includes a copy of the book. Most of the remaining goals are aimed at the $100 and up levels, again because they are giving so much for the money already at the lower levels and margins are tight.

Next at the $100 level with the current extra goals met you would get:
– “Clean with Cleaners you can Eat” an ebook by Raven Ransen
– One copy of the “Building a Better World in your Backyard” book signed by Paul and Shawn, assuming you choose to get at least one physical copy.
– A gift code for the HD streaming version of the 3 DVD set of “World Domination Gardening” Paul produced in a previous kickstarter campaign. I understand you could upgrade this to physical DVDs later if you wished for whatever the added cost is.
– “Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist” by Michael Judd in an ebook format.

Hopefully more stretch goals will continue to be reached adding even more onto this pile of rewards! If you want to see the whole potential list you can find it at the kickstarter campaign.

So as I noted above I chose to increase my pledge amount from the $100 level to the $200 level. If you know me you know I’m not really a freely spending guy. I’m more of a saver. However, I started thinking about the extra rewards I’d get at this new level, in addition to my desire to see this campaign succeed wildly to hopefully spread the ideas in the book further. I realized I’m quite likely to find value far beyond the extra $100 for what they are offering, so I upped my level to essentially “buy” the full Rocket Mass Heater 8 DVD set as streaming video, which I’d get at the $150 level. I have 4 of the DVDs which I wrote a bit about in this previous post on my RMH, however, now I’d kinda like to see what the earlier 4 DVD were. I’ll also get an HD streaming gift code for the Rocket Ovens DVD which I already have. So I can give this one away at some point.

What I was really after though was that at the $200 level I’d get codes for streaming 100 hours of video of a permaculture design course and 77 hours of video from an appropriate technology course! These are both things I’m highly interested in learning more about. I don’t expect that these videos are of a slick, polished professional variety. I think they are more like someone with a video camera taking part in the courses, but its the information I really interested in. Personally I’m hoping they’ll work more as something to listen to like a podcast as I hammer away at my metalwork.

I feel I should note for anyone who has already pledged to the campaign and also wished to increase their pledge amount that you need to be careful how you do it. Kickstarter allows you just increase your dollar amount without changing your reward. So if you want the rewards with the increased pledge amount you need to make sure you changed that too! How I did this was to log into the kickstarter campaign and click on the “manage your pledge” button. This then gives me a button to “change your pledge” which I clicked on. This then shows me my current reward as well as a list of all the other reward levels. It took me a bit to figure out how to change my reward level as I’m looking for something to click on. What I realized was that I simply have to click on the entire block listing what’s in the reward level I want. The whole block acts as a button, where as I was looking for a “select this” button or something. Once I clicked on the whole block I got a button to “continue” and confirm my change.

Ok, end of my update. I now return you to the original post.

Here’s a little question and answer thing they put together for their media promotion kit which might be of interest.

Q: What is your book about?
A:  Recipes and philosophies for dramatically making a strong, personal, positive impact on the environment.  So strong that if just ten percent of the population adopted half of the things in this book, that it would solve nearly all of our environmental problems.  And all while making for a more luxuriant life and saving money.   Without getting involved in politics or protesting.   We thought about some really artsy titles, but, in the end, we decided that “Building a Better World in Your Backyard Instead of Being Angry at Bad Guys” is extremely direct.

Q: What does a better world look like to you? What problems does your book focus on solving?
A: We would love to have focused on all of the problems. But we didn’t have that much space in the book. So we decided to focus directly on three footprints: carbon footprint, petroleum footprint, and toxic footprint. It just so happens that by implementing the solutions we present for these three problems, we would also go a long way toward solving most of the world’s other problems too.

Q: Who is your book for?
A: We have discussed this a few times. It seems like each time, although it feels weird to say it, the answer is “everyone.” But maybe it’s especially for people who are passionate about solving world problems and feel like the usual “solutions” just don’t cut it. Or maybe they just like saving money. And a lot of our solutions are focused on people living in a cold climate, so maybe someone from a tropical climate would get less out of the book, but there are still parts that would apply for them.

Q: Why the focus on personal change rather than political change?
A: So often it feels like the solutions being presented for global problems are along the lines of “we need politicians to do so and so and if they don’t we’re going to be angry about it.” At the end of the day there is often very little progress, if any. In this book we place a strong focus on things that you can do, at home, that are guaranteed to make a significant positive difference – without writing letters, attending protests, or being angry at bad guys.

Q: What do you think will motivate people to implement the solutions you present in your book?
A: A lot of the time we hear about solutions that sound a lot like sacrifice: drive less, turn your heat down, take cold showers, etc. But in this book we place a strong emphasis on solutions that make a huge impact while also saving money and providing a more luxuriant life. The idea is that a lot of people might want to implement these solutions even if they aren’t particularly passionate about solving world problems. Maybe they just want a little extra money in their pocket.

Q: So many books say “if everyone did this, it would solve the problem.” What if only some people make these changes?
A: We strongly believe that if only a fraction of the population implements the ideas in this book, we will have effectively solved the problem. The few DO have the ability to solve the problems of the many.

Q: Can anyone do the stuff mentioned in your book?
A: A lot of books about solving world problems focus on the need for further innovation in order for their solutions to make an impact. While we both really appreciate and encourage further innovation, we also recognize that the average person might not fit under the label of “innovator.” So in our book we focus on solutions that the average person can implement NOW that make a huge difference while we are waiting for the innovators to come up with further optimizations.

Q: Your book is called “Building a Better World in Your Backyard.” What if people don’t have a backyard?
A: The book is broken down into six different parts: the introduction, the problems, general strategies, things you can do within the walls of your home, things you can do in a backyard, things you can do on a homestead, and the conclusion. The idea is that there is something in here for everyone. And maybe, in time, you will find a way to get access to more space to play with these ideas.

Q: Why now, vs 10 years ago or 10 years from now? Do you feel like change is attainable today? Is the population ready?
A: We wish this book would have been available 10 years ago. But it’s not. It’s available now. So we make the best of it. We are intentional about trying to provide incentive for people to implement the solutions in our book, not guilt them into it. I think that this makes a huge difference in whether or not people will be interested in making change.

Q: Are there examples of people implementing the solutions presented in this book, or is it all just theoretical?
A: This is a book about practical solutions. Some of these ideas are fairly new, but many of the ideas presented in this book have been implemented by thousands, maybe even millions, of people.

Q: What inspired you to write about building a better world?
A: We both have had far too many conversations about solving world problems where the other person was providing solutions that were very weak. And when we tried to bring up our solutions, they would tell us that those solutions couldn’t possibly solve the problems because otherwise they would already have heard about it everywhere. It would have “gone viral.” The hope is that, by sharing this book with the world, these ideas will infect the brains of millions of people and we can have a lot more progress.

Q: What chapter of the book took the longest to write? Why?
A: We have a chapter on growing double the food with one tenth of the effort. It wasn’t that we had trouble figuring out what to say, it’s that we had trouble figuring out what not to say. We spent many weeks trying to cram a massive amount of information into this one chapter. There’s so much more that we would like to say, but we think it turned out pretty great.

Q: You started a Kickstarter campaign to pay for the costs of publishing your book and you have some unique strategies for getting your ideas out there. Can you tell us a bit more about your campaign?
A: We are trying a few new things with this Kickstarter campaign. The first is that we are making it super cheap to buy a dozen copies of the book in an effort to effect mass change through substantial education. We are also setting things up so that by supporting the campaign, even at the $1 level, you get a huge gob of goodies. We really want to reward people who support us when we need support the most! For that reason we also have some more goodies for people who support the Kickstarter in the first 48 hours, even for $1. We started off with about 5 things on the earlybird bonus list and now we’re looking at over 30 videos, book excerpts, ebooks, etc. that various authors and influencers have thrown in the pot! So now by supporting in the first 48 hours, people get over $100 worth of stuff for as little as $1!

Finally, I’ll add some images they’ve shared of the table of contents for the book. I think these alone can give you a decent idea of what the book will be like.

I’m sure I’ll write more about this book once I actually get a copy and have read it, but I wanted to share this with you all now so you’d have a chance to get your own copy and/or support the campaign. With that, I think it’s now time for a studio snippet and then I need to get back to some studio work!

Studio Snippet

Today I’ve been working on finishing up a small batch of vessels, mostly because I need one of them done to meet a show deadline at the end of the week. This morning and early afternoon I was doing patinas. On most of the pieces I used my two most popular blue patinas, because, well, they are the most popular and I need more!

However, the piece I’m most excited about here is the yellow one with the black spots. That is a new variation on the black spot/line finish I’ve done in the past. It was developed in my most recent patina workshop. As I showed how to get the base yellow the question was asked what would happen if the cobalt nitrate that gives the black lines was put over the top. I didn’t know, but thought the temperatures needed would be in conflict causing the base yellow to burn before the black part got set. Still since we were working on “test tiles” the decision was made to go ahead and test it. It worked beautifully! I expect to be doing much more of this, and perhaps expanding it out to other base colors.

I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.