My First Free Thinking Project Blog post to share with you!
I'm in the process of starting a website... This is my very first post. The website is getting its shape although not finished yet but would love feedback if anyone has the time!
Helllo!
My first Free Thinking Project blog post – YAY!! So I guess this is where I outline what the Free Thinking Project is, and my interests so you can know what to expect in my blog. Be warned – this is long as I have quite a few interests :). (and just a warning – I’m not all that good at blogging but I plan to get better … so I’ll add more pictures soon!)
My name is Mere and I’m one of the founding members of the Free Thinking Project.
The vision for the Free Thinking Project is multifold:
An avenue to make a living by doing what we love.
A property subdivided into an affordable remote-ish (4 hours from Cairns) permaculture ecovillage – a community of likeminded people living, learning, sharing, growing and evolving together in a time of change.
A space for guest accommodation, permaculture internships, market weekends, running workshops on topics we are passionate about, growing (as much as possible) our own food and medicines, and supplying all our own power, and ultimately a venue for the Free Thinking Festival of Ideas and the best private Library/Learning Centre in Far North Queensland (Australia? Southern Hemisphere? The world? Can we dream too big??). Our imagination is the only limit for the use of space – health centre, meditation retreat?
A way to share new ideas unhindered by conventional thinking onsite and online.
A very grand vision that grows with new ideas – one that inspires and motivates us!
I have 6 children between the ages of 25 years old and 4 months old! The middle 4 are boys aged 13, 11, 7 and 5, and the eldest and youngest are daughters. My eldest daughter was a standard hospital birth, my eldest son was an emergency caesarean, and the last 4 children were spiritually awakening unassisted home births – amazing experiences in the power of being a woman and my primal mind’s inner knowing.
From the experiences of unassisted birthing I gained a belief in the power of every individual to have the innate ability to develop without external influences imposed by rigid societal norms. My consciousness flowed automatically towards home schooling – in particular unschooling as the method of learning. This involves allowing the children to set their own learning schedule but providing lots of educational experiences and conversations to give them the ability to explore learning and concepts in their own way. My eldest daughter was conventionally schooled. This was at a time when we were living a conventional lifestyle working 9 to 5 – me as an educator and social worker with a growing awareness of the flaws of conventional society becoming more and more intolerable to my consciousness. After my first unassisted home birth I decided, apart from a few work contracts, to stop working and be at home with my children and watch them grow and help them learn to become the best they can be at their own pace. They choose when they are ready to learn specific things – my eldest son decided at 10 that he would learn to read because he wanted to play a computer game with lots of text dialogue and was reading fluently within 2 weeks of making the decision to learn. They all understand concepts beyond their years and learn the basics along the way as they are motivated to learn. Right now we have educational television shows and movies on a network attached storage system connected to our TV. The 11 and 7 year olds have decided reading would be a good thing so they can put on whatever they want to watch! I’m ok with this as a learning motivation 🙂
Everyone in my family (except my oldest who is forging her own path in the world) are permaculture trained – Scott and I through PDCs and the children through absorbing the information through us, our lifestyle and others they are in contact with. Our life follows the guidelines of the overarching principles of permaculture, and the property is being developed following permaculture design principles.
Politically I would have to say I’m an anarchist. Not the common understanding of anarchy being chaos with images of black clad protesters throwing molatov cocktails, but the true meaning of anarchy – decentralised localised governance systems.
So my family is decentralising our life – taking responsibility for our own needs as much as possible in all the ways we can. We school ourselves and as much as we can take care of our own food systems (while writing this I see a young wild bull wandering over the lawn mowing it for us at the moment but eventually ending up in the freezer!) and health (we use the conventional medical system for emergency care and diagnosis if needed). We don’t vaccinate preferring the concept of natural immunity through healthy lifestyles, rather than injecting our children with toxic substances like mercury, aluminum and other pollutants.
Hippocrates stated “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” and this is the principle we live by. Exploration of this statement lead us to permaculture. Scott, who is a very slim, fit and active 43 year old, surprisingly for us has hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia and further exploration lead us to take a nutritional turn to a low carb and high fat (LCHF) diet – a ketogenic diet – combined with intermittent fasting (16;8 for the parents, 14:10 for the kids). Going sugar and carbohydrate free isn’t easy! Now we eat lots of sprouts (some of them are very sweet which gives the impressions that we have sugar J), freshly harvested spirulina (you can buy some culture here (link coming soon) ), and lots of vegetables (homegrown if possible), homemade organic multivitamin and mineral supplement (when I can buy the ingredients in bulk you will find this in the shop as well – so keep checking the “products” section of this website for new stuff!) and high fat foods. I will write a post about FAT BOMBS in the future – my kids love them! We believe that most of the health issues in our modern society can be attributed to sugar and carbohydrate consumption, and although we still have limited amounts, we have cut it out of our diet for the most part. So inevitably, after most our lives spent eating a standard modern diet, we have had health issues.
I had cancer in my lymph system (possibly from growing up near a sugar cane farm that was regularly treated with pesticides?) and treated myself with black salve. It is illegal to buy here in Australia so I took control and made my own. I watched my father die from chemo and radiation treatment and that would never be a treatment option I would take – no matter what. Scott had cancer on his back (it was on his spine – I will try to find some photos to post at a later date) and he treated that with black salve as well. There is no cancer now.
Scott had Ross River Fever, a mosquito born malaria type illness, last year. We treated that with MMS (chlorine dioxide) and DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide). Both are amazing products that we use all the time and are selling in our store (have a look and buy some to support our ability to be free of the system and your ability to take control of your own health). We make our own toothpaste, deodorant, sunscreen, insect repellant and skin care products that are all non-toxic and organic. We care about what we put in, and ON, our bodies (again take a look in the store and try some – they are awesome and you won’t want to go back to using conventional shop bought toxic products!). I am constantly creating more products for my family to use, and to sell to you. I am developing an organic arnica cream to use on all those childhood ouches. To give it a bit of a boost I put some DMSO in it – particularly for insect bites. The kids love it and reach for the cream when the hurt themselves.
Scott is experimenting with a product I’ve made that regrows hair – a combination of beneficial oils and essential oils and DMSO. I’ll let you know how that goes! I use (and sell) a similar product as a facial serum for aging skin – I don’t want wrinkles just yet!
Onto a different topic! After 6 years of living in the bush with only a generator to provide us with power for a few hours a day, we have installed an off grid power system. Scott will be writing a post about the installation soon. A combination of solar panels, dual fuel (gas and petrol) generator that turns on and off automatically when the solar isn’t giving enough charge to the batteries, and NIFE (nickel ferrous) batteries. What amazing technology!! We have decided, as a result of the exceptional attributes of this system, to sell the same 4kw system that we have, with all the addons to make it the robust system that we have. We are also selling a small 12v system for travelling and camping. Check out the information here (link coming soon!).
We predominately use gas for cooking and we are investigating some technology that is amazing. Google WASTEBOT – that is a project that we will get onto in the near future! It turns rubbish or wood into useable gas – simple as that! Want to stay with us and help?
There’s a lot more I could write about, but a 4 month old is quite time consuming and she’s just woken up (it’s harder to type one handed while breastfeeding!). And this is a long long post so it should probably end!
I’ll write individual posts on all of the things I’ve written about above in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on this blog if you want to know more. and visit our store if you are interested in trying any of our products. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to know anything more about anything I’m writing about, or leave a comment (please don’t be inflammatory as this is a blog about a NEW way of thinking, living and being and a shift away from the old paradigm of thinking.
After the Far North Queensland wet season has dwindled away into the dry season, you’ll also be able to find us, and our products, at local markets and festivals.
Now – what image do I put ith this……
Till next time x