Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Introduction Continued

What’s the background to this blog, you may ask?   Jimmy and I both had jobs in the Seattle area.  There were many wonderful perks about living in such a bustling and progressive place.  But the area was ‘unsustainable’ for US (even though we had slowly turned our lawn into a garden where we had fresh vegetables, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and Nature provided all the blackberries we could ask for).  We felt our time in that area was expired.  We were tired of such short and unpredictable growing seasons.  (Late last July, the joke was - "if summer could be measured by days over 80 degrees, we’d had 2 1/2 hours of it").

We’d grown very tired of the heavy traffic and intense pace of the area.  So, in spite of many positive connections in our community - for gardening, playing music, doing our arts, and riding bicycles, we really did yearn for radical change.  

This quest led us to search out Intentional Communities like The Farm in Tennessee; Ananda in Nevada City, California; and the Greater Earthship Community in Taos, New Mexico.  We even took a month long road trip last year, down the Pacific Coast and back through the heartland of California, looking for a viable place to grow large, year-round garden, somewhere with adequate water and sunshine, and that was affordable to us. 

Through serendipitous circumstances, we ended up visiting the Gulf area in February - and we fell in love with Tarpon Springs on the last night of our visit here!

Soon after, the perfect house became available - a 104 year old historical home on a double-lot with southern backyard  exposure.  The Universe had spoken!  And here we are, starting to connect!  

We didn’t come here with illusions, as we’d read other Floridian blogs and posts about the challenges of gardening in this area. Through our travels and connections with people in other areas, we discovered there are challenges everywhere, but something about an area that is still small enough for personal connections and community networking made Tarpon Springs stand out. 

Tarpon Springs is drawing the right energy for sustainable living.  The contacts we’ve made over the past week are very encouraging:

The Eco-Bean

Suncoast Co-op

Code Green

Edible Garden

Organic Living for All

Going Green Tampa

Now, to collectively imagine the world we hope to see - right HERE!  It is the Right Time and the Right Place!  And we are being called to make the change we want to see in our world!