Didn't get the job at JCC! Time for another plan...

I didn't get the teaching position at the local community college. It is time to step back, take a breath and come up with a new plan for generating the income I need to do the projects around here at Woodhenge. As a result of this decision I will be doing several things differently.

This blogsite will be updated several times a week from here on...I will learn how to make the links work and eventually develop it into a website that is a useful tool! I promise!

I warned you previously that I don't update my blog very often and asked that if you had questions and comments that you send them to me at jsjuczak@gisco.net. Soooo, I opened the comments file today and was amazed at the amount of positive feedback. I will address the general theme of the comments and still request that if you need to get in touch with me that you use jsjuczak@gisco.net as an initial point of contact. You can also reach me at:

14910 Fuller Rd.
Adams Center, NY 13606
(315) 771-7333

Please feel free to contact me if you wish to have a visit and tour of where I live. Note the "please contact me" comment; we're not always around and when we are we're a family and community that has to get some things done. We're not trying to be impolite, but things need to be done. A good tour takes 2 hours and you'll probably be invited to eat with us (especially if you've lent a hand on jobs we're doing around here) if we know about your visit ahead of time.

Learning and teaching self-reliance is a passion of mine. The people we live with share this passion. There are times that I think that we aren't so special and then I have a revelation...I was canning almost three cases of assorted citrus juices yesterday while my wife made graham crackers and it hit me "this isn't what the typical couple is doing on a Sunday morning"! We just get so used to doing things for ourselves that we don't consider it out of the ordinary to do things like this.

I will be scheduling several 'at Woodhenge' seminars in the near future. I hope to offer, to small groups and families, a series of Homesteading 101 lessons. Practical things that I think will teach you how to overcome the prejudices our society builds into people that are anti-self-reliant oriented. I watch how people react to our home made food...frankly, the are a bit afraid to eat home canned products, stuff made from bulk-bought dried foods (beans, rice, etc.), even water from our well is suspect to some! Some look at our power system and think "I can't do that".
You can!

My goal is to make things like building (without a mortgage), growing and preserving food and
providing your own electricity transparent and simple. Layers of complexity are added to things to discourage you from doing it yourself. Compare a nuclear power plant to a set of photovoltaic panels...don't get me wrong...I think that nuclear power is cute in a kind of faddish way, but not practical in the long run (who is going to pay the grounds keepers on nuclear power sites for the next 5000 years! That cost alone shows how short-ranged the thinking is about these complex items...'someone' will figure it out is not the philosophy we should be taking with the next 10,000 generations). PV panels are as simple to understand as lead-acid batteries and as easily recyclable

Please send you comments to me at the jsjuczak@gisco.net address. Send me topics and dates for suggested seminars. My friend Steve W. and I will be filming a pilot for a television series we've entitled "Crude Food". We want to make it a cross of the Red Green show and Emeril.
A fun look at where food comes from and how it it processed. Harvesting wheat berries, grinding them and then making something like bread out of the flour; hatching a chick raising it, harvesting the eggs and using them and then killing the bird and processing it for meat...that kind of thing. Add your ideas to the fray! Steve and I are both fairly goofy, transplanted Long Islanders (near NY city). We both needed more space and freedom. Farming is a natural outlet
to that need for space. Food processing is a natural progression from farming.

Enough babble. More tomorrow???