001_Introduc,on

[00:00:00] welcome to the adventures in sustainable living podcast. Your host has lived in off-grid sustainable lifestyle for over 20 years. His homestead is run on solar energy. It has an earth shelter, greenhouse and produces much of his own food. And all of this takes place in the middle of the forest in Colorado.

Now let's join Patrick. The man that not only teaches the skills of sustainable living, but lives that life every day.

Hello everyone. My name is Patrick Keith, and I am your host for the adventures in sustainable living podcast. Now, obviously this podcast is about sustainable living, but you may be asking why I decided to call it the adventures in sustainable living podcast. Well, that has [00:01:00] a lot to do with the fact that I have actually lived 100% off the grid for over 20 years.

I power my homestead with solar energy and all of this at almost 10,000 feet elevaPon. And I can tell you from personal experience during those years that I have had many, many adventures creaPng this sort of a lifestyle for myself and my family. And this is part of what I wanted to share with my listeners.

But I also recognize the fact that the way I choose to live is not really for everyone. However, I do believe that sustainable living. Can in fact be for everyone, we all recognize that there is so much talk these days about climate change. Global warming, reducing your carbon footprint, renewable energy buying local, reduce, reuse, recycle, et [00:02:00] cetera.

And maybe at some point we have become so desensiPzed to such topics because it is so commonplace. It's more or less like one of those commercials that you hear over and over again, that it gets to a point to where you start to ignore it. Well, I would encourage you to not ignore such topics because sustainable living pracPces are actually extremely important.

And just as I've had many adventures living off the grid, What I want to do is bring to you to many and diverse topics of sustainable living in more or less a lighthearted manner and share with you that this lifestyle is not only plausible, but it can also be an adventure in living, learning, and perhaps even making a difference for yourself, your family, and even future generaPons.

[00:03:00] What I really truly. Want to bring to the table in this podcast is not just another talk on sustainable living, but I want to show you what a fun, exciPng, producPve, and enlightening adventure that a sustainable lifestyle can actually be. Yes, I will discuss climate change. Global warming, renewable energy, permaculture, recycling, et cetera, because I think these are all extremely important topics, but I also want to share with you how I managed to create my own sustainable living lifestyle.

Although I have gone so far as to live off the grid. That is not what I expect all of my listeners to do, but I will show you by example, that I pracPce the very things that I teach and I do in fact, live [00:04:00] in a sustainable manner every day. Is my lifestyle, the perfect example of sustainable living. No, it is not, but I conPnue to improve my pracPces and I conPnue to learn and I can guarantee you aWer 20 plus years of doing this, I am sPll learning things about living off the grid and living sustainably at this point.

I'd really like to share with you a liXle bit about myself and how I came to be. Where I am. I actually grew up in Northern Georgia and in Southeastern Tennessee, there were two working farms in my family. And from a very early age, I learned gardening, animal, husbandry, home food preservaPon, hunPng, fishing, as well as many of the other aspects of self-sufficiency and sustainable living.

But, you know, at the Pme. [00:05:00] We never really talked about sustainability because it truly was the way that we lived every day. When I turned 18, I moved to Colorado. And after about six or seven in years of doing anything and everything except being

committed to a goal, I finally decided, I finally realized that it was in my best interest to go back to school.

I started, pursuing a biology degree at the university of Colorado and eventually entered veterinary school. And aWer nine years of school, I finally graduated with a doctorate in veterinary medicine. One year out of school, I purchased 46 acres in the mountains. Um, Southwest of Denver. And at the Pme that I purchased this property, it was so ruled that [00:06:00] even basic uPlity services were just not available.

And on top of that, aWer nine years of school, I was so poor. I can not afford to pay the land mortgage and pay rent, um, for, you know, to have a place to live while I built my first cabin. Part of this was really because I found the kind of property that I really truly wanted. And there wasn't a whole lot of forethought and planning about it.

So I kind of went out on a limb financially, but anyway, that's another story. But, believe it or not, I actually ended up living in a 200 square foot tent for about six months while I was harvesPng Pmber, oWen land to build a log cabin. It was fairly difficult living for a number of years, but I built a root cellar for refrigeraPon.

I had gas lanterns for lighPng and I became [00:07:00] extremely creaPve. Um, as far as learning to live without any electricity, some, um, some years later I eventually took an intensive course on solar design and installaPon. I returned to the property and installed a fairly extensive solar array. But, uh, by that Pme I had built a second cabin and both of these cabins were, had already been wired for electricity.

And once the solar Ray was installed, I had full electricity and I was finally able to have a refrigerator freezer and. By the way that refrigerator and freezer are high efficiency appliances and both of those appliances running 24 hours a day actually use less electricity than  a 100 watt light bulb.

[00:08:00] So, pretty amazing high efficiency appliances. Anyway after the solar array, then came to 600 square foot. Greenhouse or  Earth sheltered greenhouse. And, uh, then the chicken barn and a couple of other projects. So years into this project of living on this property, it was kind of interesPng to see the aetude of my friends and family and how, how that changed because they went from thinking I was completely nuts too wishing they had the same kind of place.

So you see, I do actually pracPce what I teach and I think, um, this is such an important topic that I decided to develop this podcast. And that's the reason I developed this podcast because I realized my off- grid lifestyle may not be for everyone, but [00:09:00] sustainable living can impact be for everyone. Um, in fact, um, one thing I want to point out that if some of you think that.

The way that I live is completely implausible and unlikely. And you really, truly want to know the niXy griXy of how I live the way I do then visit my blog, which is called off grid, living news. And it can be found@offgridlivingnews.com and by all means, visit the blog. Sign up for my email list. And absolutely go to my about me page because this is where you will get a much more in-depth story about myself and where I came from, um, at least much more than what I can really go into, um, here at this Pme.

Um, you know, I can remember when I was in my early teenage years, [00:10:00] I first started hearing about, uh, hearing some talk about climate change and global warming. And being the curious person that I was, I started reading about because I just simply thought it was an interesPng topic, but right now I am almost ashamed to admit that at the Pme I thought to myself, well, I will never likely see those kinds of things in my lifePme.

And all I can say, folks is here we are. Here we are now. And it is truly all, very real. Yes. Sustainable living is about saving the planet, but I also want to share, redo that I spent many years working in

third world countries, uh, in various hospitals and universiPes. And it took me a long Pme to realize that [00:11:00] I could do that kind of work.

For the rest of my life, I could spend years working and trying to make posiPve changes. And, you know, I could spend the rest of my life basically trying to save the world if you will. And I was never, ever really going to even scratch the surface. So I am not proposing that you reach out to try and save the world.

But I am proposing that sustainable living can in fact have a direct effect on your daily life and adopPng such pracPces can not only improve your lifestyle, but you can share those pracPces with other people. And eventually if we all did such a thing, we could actually make a difference for ourselves.

And for future generaPons, but when it comes [00:12:00] to sustainable living, there are really, truly so many diverse topics to discuss it's. So in-depth, uh, more so than simply recycling and planPng a garden and so forth. Um, there is something in under this umbrella of sustainable living that actually applies to every single one of us.

Sustainable living can actually be related to almost any sort of personal interest of yours. For example, uh, among other things, I'm an acPve scuba diver and I'm actually a cerPfied instructor. And for those of you who are more interested in the oceans, Then I want to look at topics relaPng to that.

I want to talk to Marine biologists and bring in other scienPsts and discuss how our sustainable living pracPces or lack thereof. Affects the health of our oceans. [00:13:00] For those of you more interested in wildlife, then I want to bring in wildlife experts and examine environmental changes and how that affects habitat and how sustainable living can change that.

And for those of you who live solely in the city, who may be thinking this podcast is not for me, maybe you even live in a high rise apartment. I want to show you that I can bring sustainable living pracPces right into your living room. I want to show you that. Yes, it is even possible to put sustainable living pracPces into your life every day.

Even if you live in the city. And even for those that already have gardens, maybe you're even raising much of your own food. I want to discuss topics to help you improve and enrich [00:14:00] your lifestyle as well. My goal here, folks is to make this a fun learning adventure. My goal is also to make you doubt the way you live.

Now, my goal here is to inform, teach enlighten and encourage you. To put sustainable pracPces into every corner of your life. Now, that being said, I also realized that this may be a liXle inPmidaPng for, so, because most people are going to right away think that this is going to require some significant changes in their life.

But where do you have to realize is I have been doing this for over 20 years. It was a conscious decision to live the way that I do. And there are truly so many things I did to get where I am today, which I will certainly talk about in some future [00:15:00] episodes. But sustainable living is really. It's a lifestyle choice.

It's not, and that's how you have to think about it. It's not a desPnaPon. It's just a way that, that you choose to live. But I got there by simply changing one thing at a Pme. Um, and over a period of Pme, you know, I was living off the grid and, um, certainly living very, very much in a sustainable way.

So what I want to do today is I want to leave you with. One simple challenge or actually let's make that two challenges. So if I can, um, diverge for just one moment and I'll circle around and get back to what your challenges are, but I'm certain that most of you have heard. Numerous things about the problem with plasPc products and recycling.

And however, I really just want to talk to you for a minute about plasPc bags in parPcular. [00:16:00] Let me give you a few staPsPcs that I found Americans use 100 billion plasPc bags every year, which requires about 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture. The average American family takes 1500 plasPc bags every year.

And only 1% of those actually gets recycled. And about 80% of the plasPc that enters the ocean actually comes from the land. Now, these are just a few of the startling staPsPcs that I came across in and, you know, it's one thing to. Make statements like this, but it's another thing altogether. When you actually see the results of all of this firsthand, then it makes a really strong impression on you.

And for example, a couple of [00:17:00] years ago, I went to Honduras to do some advanced scuba diving training. And I was there for six weeks. And one of the things that we were required to do as divers to complete the program was to. Dedicate one day to environmental cleanup. And since the Island of UPla is fairly small, um, what we were required to do was to go to one of the local beaches and clean up trash.

So we were in a group of about, about 20 people and, um, we picked up an enormous amount of trash in 95% of that trash was plasPc. And the startling thing is that we really only picked up a very, very small porPon of what was actually there. So did you know that 800 million metric tons of plasPc enters the ocean every year?

And it is [00:18:00] esPmated that by the year 2050. There will be more plasPc in the ocean than fish. Now that is really truly startling to think about. So all of these things being said, I hope I've goXen your aXenPon a liXle bit. So here's your challenge. So for the next two weeks, do not use a single plasPc bag.

And the easiest place to start is to just stop using plasPc bags. When you go to the supermarket. If you don't have recyclable, um, uh, grocery bags then purchase them and you can also, mini

supermarkets are also now offering the reusable mesh produce bags. So for the next two weeks use no plasPc, no plasPc bags.

And especially when you go to the supermarket that's challenge. Number one, challenge. Number two, talk someone [00:19:00] else into doing. The same thing. So that's it. There's your two challenges. All right, folks, I'm going to start wrapping this up for today. I really truly appreciate you taking the Pme to listen to this introductory episode, and I hope you enjoyed it.

And if you did, I would really appreciate it. If you would sign up for the adventures and sustainable living podcast. And not only that go to my blog off grid, living news and that's off-grid living news.com. And sign up for my email list. There is a ton of other informaPon on the blog. Of course, it's a liXle bit different type of informaPon and not only sign up for the podcast and sign up for my blog, but return for my next exciPng episode.

And what I want to approach in this next episode is. That if you think [00:20:00] implemenPng sustainable living pracPces into your life is, is difficult. I want to talk about several deeper countries who have implemented sustainable pracPces for the enPre country, and it's really quite startling and amazing the things that these countries have accomplished, uh, relaPve to.

What we can do in United States. And of course what we're not doing in the United States. So I hope you would join me in my next episode. And if for now folks, this is Patrick, your host for the adventures and sustainable living podcast signing off. I will see you folks next Pme. [00:21:00]