Hello again from @SenorCoconut,

I want to apologize for not giving you a Vendor Feature last week, summer got me really busy on the homestead but we are back on!!!

This week let's hear all about the ethics and ideologies of: Alex Leeor whome you may better know as @eco-alex!

Building a community is about clear communication and the willingness to support one another. As Homesteaders Co-op (HSCO) grows, we must keep in mind that the complexity and diversity of its moving parts may also expand, so here we are helping this free market stay running smooth together.

We found it essential for the good of everyone to highlight the vendors of the HSCO market place. Wouldn't be nice to know the individuals and families offering their goods and services a little more?

Every week vendors are featured on the web site. As a community, we thought that every week, we should feature these vendors here on the Steem blockchain (@HomesteadersCoop) to give everyone that much more exposure.

It takes a village to raise a child, because when people help eachother life is easier for everyone involved.

Without further ado, here are a few question I've conjured up... let's meet Alex Leeor:

SenorCoconut: I wanted to read your book Earthship Chronicles before coming up with some questions for you, but I felt inspired to do it today. You live in an Earthship, could you briefly explain what that is and what it is like to live in?

Alex Leeor: Briefly!? Oh boy. I think very simply put... It is fuck*!ing awesome living in an Earthship! This is freedom, this is real security. This is what a home should be like! This is because an Earthship home delivers everything you need to be in comfort and even luxury year round, with no bills. That includes water, power, heating and cooling, food production and more. The earthship provides these utilities to without you having to do anything, it just works… period! Earthships achieve this through their encounter with the forces of nature, mainly the sun and rain. Earthships are “designed down”, with layered thinking, so that the entire home works like a finely tuned machine, built to perform and serve you for a lifetime, with little to no negative impact on the environment. In fact, the most recent Earthship Build in the UK, Earthship Sheppey, even has a negative carbon footprint!

So what this is really, is a path to freedom for yourself and for your family. It is a way out of the burden of stress that living in the capitalist system imposes upon those who choose to live in it. And that is the point, it is a choice that we can all make. It costs peanuts to self build a small earthship in a rural location compared to buying a ridiculously expensive box of a home in a city that will require that you work full time for the rest of your life to pay off and live in. When this is done in a community, it means that we can come back to our roots, which is family, friendship, and living in the moment, being free to live your life in the way in which you want, and without harming others or the earth.

SenorCoconut: If my research serves me right, you are working on a second book. Can you divulge a little please?

Alex Leeor: Ahhh, well I have alluded to this in the first answer! My new book that I am just finishing is called 99 Reasons WHy Earthship s Are Fuck!ng Awesome!* It also has a sub title of “The Only Way Is Out, Are You Ready To Jump Yet?” The reason I am writing it is to do my very best to explain as simply as possible what this whole movement is really about, and why I am such a strong supporter of Earthship Biotecture. It is not easy to explain it to people who ask me why they are so amazing, because it is not about one thing, it is about a HUGE long catalogue of things.. each one of which is SO important. This includes.. Environmental impact, Lifestyle, Health, Security, Cost, Performance, low tech, no maintenance, no utility bills etc.. I could of course go on!

So this book is an educational resource, that is so easy and simple to read and understand because each point is so concise and easy to state. Anyone who wants to understand Biotecture and the many facets of what makes an Earthship what it is can learn a lot from this book!

But it's about more than just education! This book is also a fundraiser for my gift-economy community Vision! If it does well, it will speed up the process of buying land so I can then look at getting a group of people together who want to be a part of this new paradigm.

SenorCoconut: This next one is on “carbon footprint” and our human impact on our environment. Without getting political, can you tell us how you feel about climate change and pollution?

Alex Leeor: It’s great that you have tied pollution to climate change in this question! I think pollution is one of the very serious issues that face our world and most of it is due to fossil fuel burning and other bad practices. I have been involved with carbon footprinting since 2000, and actually ran one of the very first Carbon Footprinting Companies called ‘C LEVEL’ back when the concept did not yet exist. Back then we were very diligent about how we approached the problem and what solutions we came up with. To us it was not enough for a company to just compensate for their carbon footprint, such as by planting trees. We had REDUCTIONS built in as a core part of our carbon footprinting process, so that we could ensure that we help move business in the right direction, offering them other alternatives such as solar hot water heating, use of recycled paper etc, to help reduce it and then save money on compensation in the following years.

So, how I feel about the climate change is really that we need to change our behaviours, our consumption, and the way we deal with waste. Basically what I’m talking about is decentralising things, so that we can start to acquire things locally, and deal with our own waste in a productive and beneficial manner. That means everything from power, food, and sewage treatment.. All of which can be done very easily.

What disturbs me most about the way we are handling things is that we have simply commercialised the solutions, by offering options like Carbon Credits, but do almost nothing to tackle the actual problems. We can not buy ourselves out of this problem! No amount of money will solve our climate crisis. Whether the problem is man-made or not, it is here and we have to deal with it in a meaningful way. This means that we have to change our habits, or culture, our whole way of living, and that is no small ask!

SenorCoconut: I know you care tremendously about mindfulness in many senses of the word. As the Eco-Train Conductor, can you tell us about how the idea to create the incentive came about and how has it affected you?

Alex Leeor: Actually I’m the ecoTrain Driver 😉 @artemislives is our conductor and wow what a job she does!

ecoTrain is an open, active, global community focused on sustainability and moving towards the healing of Mother Earth, and of course ourselves! We manually curate and up-vote posts using the #ecotrain tag, based on merit. We support posts that fit the general theme of "Things that help make this world a better place". This can mean so many things, and includes topics such as Homesteading, Vegan Cooking, Spirituality, Esoteric Knowledge, Gardening, Eco Building, Self Sufficiency, Sustainability, Healthy Living, Parenting, Biodiversity, Waste, Decentralisation, Biodiversity & Nature, Climate Change, Ethics, etc..

"ecoTrain is about moving forwards together into sustainability and a new level of eco-green global freedom." Whilst this does include supporting Steem and the blockchain, there is another primary goal of the ecoTrain and is one of the reasons it is here!

As you know that I am a keen supporter of eco building, off-grid living, Earthship Biotecture, and most things natural and holistic. Ultimately I support us reclaiming our birth rights, and for us to be free to live in a way that supports our deepest human nature and desires. I believe that to do this we need to shift to a new paradigm that is being birthed slowly but surely. I believe we must come back to our roots, and fulfil our most primal needs. Most important of these is to live in a supportive community that fosters healthy relationships and dynamics.

For this to happen we must remove the need for money wherever possible. This starts with the most important part, which is having a home without going into debt to buy it, and being able to live in that home without the pressures of bills and taxes. It is those financial burdens that cause most communities to fail, and usually results in many compromises that ultimately creates a disconnect within the people of the community.

The gift that keeps on giving! The Gift Economy.

Relieving people of the burden of being forced to work to pay bills in a job they may not even like, living in a home they cannot afford, in a location they may not even want to be in... is the ultimate gift! Giving people their lives back is an amazing form of service and is a gift that keeps on giving. My vision to create a community based on the gift economy starts with the purchase of land.
This initial purchase is what the ecoTrain seeks to secure! Once land has been acquired, it is only a matter of organising the builds for each person using the gift economy approach. When a community comes together and helps to build a home for each other without any money being exchanged, we enter into the realm of great potential and creativity. Nothing brings greater results then when we feel gifted, and we want to return that gift with our time and positive energy. Therefore, there would be no cost for the land, and extremely low costs for materials and labour. It would be possible to offer an eco home in this community for just 10-20,000 dollars (or less for a tiny-home), and that home would provide a lifetime of power, water, comfort and security at almost no cost!

SenorCoconut: Lastly, let's talk about India, it's one of those places in the world which will always have a place in my heart. I’m sure you've had quite the journey(s), what brought you to live there?

Alex Leeor: Yes, you are right I have had quite the journeys in India, starting back in 1997 when I first visited. You know, India is something different to everyone who comes here, it is a personal thing. When you go to a country like England, USA, Spain etc, your journey is usually an external voyage. We see things, we eat things, we enjoy ourselves pretty superficially, and we are not so interested in the culture that we visit.

With India it is different... instead we embark on a deep inner voyage that is often spiritual in nature, and certainly was for me. India has something very special to offer those who visit, and as crazy as it may sound, it is the ONLY country that I have ever been to that makes any sense to me!

I never imagined I would actually settle here, and build my earthship home, but that is how it ended up. I travelled to many countries for many years looking for a place to build, and everywhere was so hard, so challenging, and so expensive! So finally in 2006 I was living in Portland Oregon in the USA, and had lived in every country I wanted to try, but nothing fit. It was at that time that I decided to sell everything and come to India permanently. It was just a few months in that I discovered Karuna Dham, in the south of India, and once i found it I knew I had finally discovered the place that I wanted to build and live. More details on that in my book! 😉

I want to thank you for taking precious time out of your day to answer these questions. You really speak to my heart when it comes to building community and returning to living a more natural way of life! I am completely sold on the idea of moving forward into this new paradigm you mention (It's not like we have much of a choice anyhow!).

Perhaps the greatest revolution starts where we personally take on the change we want to see. Weather living in a negative-carbon home or simply refusing to participate in the single use plastic trends, once we act as we see fit, we take the road to empowerment and sovereignty... but it can only work if we start living like we are our environmeny and our environment is who we are... Let's not forget it is our habitat. You said it best: No amount of money will solve our climate crisis. Whether the problem is man-made or not, it is here and we have to deal with it in a meaningful way!

Once again, thank you so much @eco-alex for letting us have a peak into your life, it was a pleasure to read 😁 and good luck with all your projects! I hope to build with you one day...

For those of you who would like to look at her shop at HSCO here a quick link: Alex Leeor!

Thank you so much for reading and stay tuned for next week's featured vendor... Same time, same place!

@SenorCoconut

PS: Special thanks to @Riverflows for the graphics on that first image at the top of the post 💚 and of course @Homesteaderscoop for being an awesome community!