In the three and a half years that I lived full time on my off-grid, off-road desert wasteland property, I had a fair share of minor and severe injuries. Some of course were due to negligence, hurriedness, distraction, bravado, and other typical human errors. Others were truly unavoidable despite respectable best efforts to defend against dangerous natural forces and life forms, as well as hazardous artificial objects and architecture.

There were a few times when sudden completely unpredictable gusts of winds flung lethal objects that I barely blocked, dodged, or that were trapped by other objects only inches before taking out an eye or impaling me. I soon learned to wear eye protection at all hours when outside of the walls of my tiny home. And even inside the walls, I’d have to wear eye protection when packs of bees entered or during intense sand storms.

Without listing every mishap, I’ll say my saving grace was always using vinegar, turmeric powder, gauze and medical tape to irrigate, disinfect and bandage small cuts, scrapes, burns, splinters, rashes, etc.

The paradox with wearing adequate foot protection such as hiking or combat boots, was that in the extreme heat, that type of footwear was a recipe for gnarly chafing and heat rash. I could only last a few hours before serious problems would occur that might keep me completely off one or two feet for days. So I had to adapt to the summer heat by just limiting my range generally, and wearing makeshift sandals that would protect the soles of my feet and give adequate ventilation.

It was a trade-off to lose the enjoyment of the feel of the bare sand, but I would eventually scour and remove all the shards of glass, nails, and other hazards from certain areas so I could feel free to dance bare foot anytime.

There was a gradient of “safe for bare feet” areas, to moderate danger, to severe danger. In the moderate zones, if I was feeling brave or felt like I could get away with it for just a quick mission to grab something and come right back, I did naturally evolve a methodology to more safely traverse the distance. Basically, I realized that if I slowly drag my feet through the top inch or so of sand, I can kind of comb it gently with my toes before putting direct weight on each step. So it goes: comb ahead and feel for sharp immovable objects, shift weight onto the lead foot if it’s safe, otherwise remove hazards, recalibrate and repeat until safety is assured.

You never know when you might be in a survival situation where you’re forced out of bed with no time to get shoes (tip: keep a sturdy pair under the bed), or in a situation where your shoes were on, but one or both get ripped off during some escape maneuver. So this safety measure became an unexpected yet useful form of training. Now if ever I’m in a situation where my shoes are missing, I’ll know to slow drag using my feet as antennae and combs.

For several years I’ve been phasing out all plastic materials from my nursery operations and often it seems like there just aren’t any options to replace the black buckets, cups, trays etc that litter the landscaping industry. However sometimes I get “ah ha” moments and remember some obscure cheap ubiquitous product with typically a single use that if adapted properly can work well.

I had been experimenting with waxed paper cups and while they tend to only last about one cycle of starting from seed, growing a seedling, and potting up or planting out, they feel much better to use than plastic cups or pots. The main problem is that while paper cups are cheap and can be found everywhere, they’re too small for bigger plants and/or once a seedling starts to out grow them, they have to be planted otherwise they’ll suffer and possibly die.

So what I needed to find was a much bigger non-plastic container that still had some water proofing. It dawned on me that paper popcorn buckets often have a lining (though probably not as eco-friendly as I’d hope for) that would keep the paper from disintegrating as quickly in nursery conditions.

So that was the solution, I luckily found some unbleached cardboard-like popcorn buckets with a minimal coating. So I was able to put in drainage holes and they worked like a charm to grow seedlings safely for a longer period of growth. They also worked well for bundles of seedlings that could be transplanted easily, like a kit of herbs.

Here I’m growing daikon radish microgreens on the top of a sweet potatoes that are slowly sprouting below.

After years of working on remote private land where I felt safe enough to operate at night with bluetooth headphones and a high powered LED headlamp, an important innovation was needed at a project site in south central Los Angeles.

I immediately knew that it would be a potentially lethal error to block out ambient sound and break the cardinal rule of situational awareness in a more threatening environment. And yet, like in the movie Iron Eagle, if there’s no tactical reason to be silent, I work harder, faster, better, smarter with electronic dance music keeping me in a flow state and able to make critical movements with footwork, tools, etc. to the cadence of the beat. In the absence of cadence calls and marching bands, there’s no need to go without the power of operating to and with music.

Now we have not only bluetooth headphones but high quality small, portable, rechargeable speakers that can be attached to anything. So I grabbed my tactical training helmet and started engineering a simple contraption that would serve my established need to have a high powered USB rechargeable LED head lamp in the front, and now a hanging blue tooth speaker on the back. It just so happened that the way I was able to hang the speaker off the back of the helmet allowed for it to line up perfectly against the base of my skull and rest snug against my upper neck so that the bass frequencies would kinetically absorb such that I could feel it as much as hear it.

It was such an OH YEAH moment to get this right. I started just wrapping the baseball sized speaker with electrical tape to secure two small carabiners that attached to the velcro-ed fabric cover of the helmet. I later upgraded to a hose clamp which would be relatively indestructible whereas the tape would routinely wear out.

It was important to use a rechargeable headlamp that would stay on and not shut itself off while charging, some of them don’t and are thus not ideal for this application. I was able to slide in a usb battery bank on the top of the helmet which could multiply the use time while in the field without having to stop and recharge. This formula provides almost infinite capability as you can carry multiple pre-charged battery banks and once the light starts to slightly fade, swap them out.

The obvious and most tactically critical element is the fact that while you can play music at a volume that helps get the job done, you also have plenty of situational awareness of ambient sounds. You can hear yelling, car horns, alarms, etc. and if you need to have a normal conversation you can either adjust the volume manually on the speaker, or I would just be used to reaching in my cargo pocket and adjusting volume with my mobile phone buttons always oriented the same way for convenience.

I don’t know if manufacturers are making similar helmets, I’d think motorcycle enthusiasts might have something similar. But for the price savings and the fun of a custom build, this system is all I need.

I’ve since upgraded to a slightly bigger speaker for better sound quality, and have at times opted for a smaller form factor headlamp that could go directly on my forehead underneath the helmet allowing for the standardized video camera mount system to be available for filming in security contexts.

An important consideration is to keep the LED as high lumen as possible for it to serve as a visual stun gun to create a gap to evade hostile threats. Temporary blinding by the bright light can be a safer and better deterrent than pepper spray as it’s not going to affect you, and it’s already deployed and doesn’t have to be scrounged for under stress. It’s also in a better zone legally in that there’s no need to explain bicycling or working with a headlamp on, whereas using pepper spray will always require an arguable narrative of self defense.

Another great thing about this type of headlamp is the strobe function for emergency signally and the fact that it has a flood light mode and a spot light mode which is unbelievably dead on and powerful at a surprising distance. I’ve used it many times to discover threats and obstacles of all kinds far before I get too close to them or them too close to me.

I had the exciting opportunity to convert a defunct pontoon boat into a critter proof desert garden oasis that eventually had fish, water plants and water gardens in addition to many different types of container gardens. It also served as a secure plant nursery.

The design concept was to wrap the gaps where windows were starting with wood beams that then supported ¼ mesh hardware cloth. It was straight forward to measure the height and spacing of a number of wood beams, screw them into the fiber glass walls, then secure the mesh with washers and screws.

The makeshift door was tricky because of the different angles, however I made it work with two separate hinged pieces with bungee cords to make sure they always slammed shut and snug. There were a few other holes that had to be patched.

I later brought in a 200 gallon water tank and set it up behind so that it would slowly drip and maintain the water level of the ponds which evaporate quickly in the hot season.

Aside from a few breaches, it has held up well and has produced a lot.

I’ve engineered low tech, low cost vermiculture worm compost tea systems many times. They’re always different as the name of the game is to use as many “on site resources” as possible. This strategy saves money, reduces demand for new product fabrication, and gives an extra spirit and charm to the process. It’s always more rewarding to salvage reusable materials for the feng shui effects as well. When you find materials that have been buried, hidden, overgrown, or otherwise neglected, and you put them to use in a new design system, it’s like you’re liberating the soul of the object from the feeling of being treated like junk. It takes it out of limbo and gives it a dignified afterlife. There’s no way to measure the feelings of spiritual uplifting when you hack together stuff like this.

Here I’m using an old galvanized trash can as the primary collection unit for kitchen scraps to be fed to red wiggler compost worms. I start by drilling drainage holes in the bottom with a titanium metal drill bit. I concentrate them towards the center so that I can place a bucket below and have all of the drainage drip into the bucket.

After much experimentation I’ve found that the most critical part of the process is creating adequate filtration so that the compost muck doesn’t end up just sealing the drainage holes. When that happens, and you try to run water through the system to get the “worm juice” compost tea, it just backs up and you get a pond that drowns the worms and makes for an anerobic mess that has to be dumped or shoveled out.

So I go to extremes to ensure there are multiple filtration stages in effect. Here there is fine mesh screen material, typically referred to as fly screen for screen doors. Then there are cut out pieces of nursery trays. Then there is a layer of gravel.

Ideally, only the liquid product will make it all the way to the drainage holes and the spongy decomposing debris will get held back. Eventually the worms and other composting organisms will break everything down so it can be washed away in the slurry.

It’s always best to cover each batch of fresh kitchen scraps with a layer of leaves, mulch or compost to keep the fly population in check.

So when you’re watering the garden or potted plants, you can use filtered or aged tap water, or fresh or stored rain water (so as to not harm the delicate worms and microbes) and pour it into the top of the trash can, wait for it to drain through to the bucket below then apply it before normal watering so it gets further diluted and dispersed. It’s a like a plant food smoothie and works magic for the overall health of the the soil biology.

It’s important to not however that the compost tea should be produced and applied immediately. Even waiting overnight can result in the souring of the tea such that it becomes harmful to plants and soil. I will typically fill the 5 gallon collection bucket with water, pour it into the can, place it back underneath and let it fill up for a couple of hours. By the time there are only a few slow drips, depending on the volume of compost, I’ll get 2/3 to ¾ of the liquid back in the bucket. What remains will be sponged up by the compost material, though it will keep dripping. So if you come back in a few days, there might be an bit of tea in the bucket. That’s what I be careful not to apply to sensitive plants. It can be tossed in a pile of mulch or leaves or applied where anaerobic composting is already happening, like at the base of a pipe of composting leaves, or the like. It will have a sour and foul smell so best to manage it accordingly. Another option would be that after you harvest the tea, you just leave the bucket to the side so that the remaining slow drip just naturally goes into the soil below the system and dissipates without becoming stagnant. It’s also important to be aware that if it does accumulate in any container, it can attract mosquito larvae which is no fun.

The fresh compost tea is also useful for direct application to leaves to fight fungal infections as it creates a protective biofilm. For plants that you don’t intend to eat the leaves of, it can helpful to protect them.

Thanks to having several pounds of bulk daikon radish seeds for microgreens cultivation, I had the idea to make seed packets and staple them to the back of business card sized event flyers. Hand bills or hand flyers as an event marketing strategy have almost gone extinct with the prevalence of social media and smart phones, however there is a rustic charm to the real-life personal and tactile experience of handing someone a flyer. Most people light up with curiosity and interest and few people are too cool for it.

I couldn’t justify to myself the environmental impact of simply printing flyers to hand out. So it was a perfect match that I had a lot low cost seeds, a stapler, and a hand flyer concept. The business card form factor made sense for it to be easily put in pockets and for the stapled seed packet to stay well attached to the flyer paper using the card stock.

The response was off the charts as the target audience was open minded, optimistic, utopian electronic dance music folks. They are all to varying degrees enthusiasts of sustainability. For me to make the rounds at numerous events giving away seeds stapled to an event flyer with a QR code, it clicked for everyone. I was giving mini horticulture workshops on the dance floors and motivating people from all different walks to life to find space in their life to start a garden, or restart a garden, or to pass the seeds along as a gift to someone in their life with a green thumb.

It was definitely a smash hit that I will repeat as needed to get an ecologically intelligent and conscious wow-factor of guerrilla marketing.

I’m moving towards a completely post-plastic nursery policy, but for now, as I phase out the plastics I put them to use however I can. Here I’m using the so-called “flats” that are often used to sell ground cover crops to be installed like tiles. I’m using electric fence wire to secure two of the flats, one on top of the other, as a means to protect a batch of daikon radish microgreens from rodents and birds.

Over time you learn from experience that there are few straight lines in nature. The forces of erosion of land forms from the elements of wind and water, along with gravitational forces, seismic forces, and so on, they all tend to result in a consistent patterns. When digging a ditch the steeper the banks or walls, the more likely they are to collapse, fall in and back-fill whatever you’re excavating. Some very hard packed and predominantly clay soils can hold shear walls well, however most walls require some rounding at the time of digging, otherwise they will eventually get rounded off by natural forces and prevent or inhibit the intended function of the earth works.

Here I’m just dragging my foot across the slope and intuitively rounding it out, afterwards I shovel out what got broken off so it will be hold up in the current form until plantings help to further stabilize the soil.

_{Salvaged sweet potato vines from backyard garden clean up}

_{Using gaps in produce crate to support a system of vine cuttings}

I was blessed to do a barter with a friend to help clean up his backyard garden in trade for the harvest of all of these sweet potato vines. I had so many to process that I realized I needed to compress the system into a single propagation unit rather than a lot of separate pots. It only takes a few to take hold and within a few months they will grow extensively. I used a produce crate with many gaps in the walls to support several layers of tightly back vines.

Gambusia mosquito fish are a vital component of the water gardens that I design. They’ve proven to thrive in unfiltered, uncirculated “eco-system ponds” that include enough natural plant filter and oxygenation functions to support small fish year round despite extreme high and low temperatures that push the pond chemistry to the limits.

As per their name, they feed on mosquito larvae and thus perform the task of making aquaculture more safe and hygienic, they also provide nutrient to the water and thus provide a natural fertigation (fertilization/irrigation).he

The ceramic tiles seen below them are used to create a dynamic height platform to place plant pots based on the size and depth of the soil in the pot, thus creating island gardens of mixed pots sizes.

Bamboo is my favorite building material in the garden. It’s useful for ornament, structural, and ecological applications of all kinds. Not to mention all of the potential advanced applications such as paper, silverware, fabric for clothing, furniture, bedding and much more.

It’s so versatile and comparatively sustainable vs tree products that take much longer to grow and are much more devastating to harvest. Bamboo is a fast growing grass that thrives in almost every climate. It’s a crime and a sin that it hasn’t already replaced the majority of paper and wood products, however it’s gathering momentum and I hope that it will soon do to the forestry industry what solar, wind, and hydro power have done to fossil fuels.

Here I’m using them as a facade to add an ornate frame and cover the lumber or metal back bone of a garden feature. Ironically it is telling the exact story I just narrated: the old paradigm of lumber being covered by the new and ancient paradigm of bamboo.

In the blackberry country that is the pacific northwest region of the U.S., you can never catch up to all of the ripe berries that seem to be in infinite supply in late summer and early fall. I had the privilege of managing a large property with a vast array of blackberries forming a partial security and privacy barrier on the sides of the parcel. I spent many hours harvesting on behalf of the clients and squirreling away plenty for myself for my wine making. It was my first attempt at making the wine and while quite bitter, it was amazing and I’ll be looking forward to many more batches in the future.

The by-product of the wine was the filtered bulk of the seeds, skin, and remaining pulp of the berries. I found that adding a bit of natural sweeter, such as stevia drops or powder, brought back the sweetness profile that the yeast had consumed during fermentation. So I ended up with a black berry jam product that while mildly alcoholic, was actually a great breakfast meal on to itself.

I can’t say enough about much of a game changer daikon radish microgreens have been since I’ve been emphasizing them in my often mobile or rapidly shifting garden operations. This represents about a 3 week turn around from planting to harvest. If you cut them at this point, it’s great yield however if you wait for the true leaves to form within another week or two, and thereafter only cut from above at least the first node, then you’ve got rapid regeneration all the way up to full size leaves and a full size radish root. They’ve got that sharp bite so best to disperse them within a salad, stir fry, soup, etc. I had to abruptly leave my land and was forced to harvest this whole batch and preserve it with fermentation in a salt brine.

This potato score from the central Los Angeles skid row / produce district waste stream turned out to be the most magical life transforming gift from the cosmos of a life time.

I rescued this crate of tiny potatoes with much excitement because I saw each one of them as a viable full size plant with high reliability and versatility compared to the much slower and less certain process of waiting for full size potatoes to sprout eyes.

The fact that these were already sprouting instantly indicated to me that they were going to quickly be presentable for gifts or for sale once established in nursery pots and trays.

From a tactical and strategic perspective, they were like living ecological humanitarian land mines, ready to propagate edible life in a rapid force multiplying manner. Imagine if all the land mines ever dropped in war were matched by an equal number of air dropped tiny potatoes.

The small form factor and spherical shape eliminate the issues that normally limit the rate of propagation of larger sizes. If larger ones get a gash, rodent bite, or start to rot for any reason, all the space gets wasted when they rot out completely. I see these small ones similar to cherry tomatoes in that they just resist and repel the forces, living and non-living, that tend to ruin the big ones. They are by definition tactically hardened as smaller units that are harder to kill.

I started using plastic cups and it was taking too long so decided to spread them out into a large tray and let them grow together. It took extra effort to disentangle the roots later for potting up into more cups however they held up just fine. That’s one of the best features of root crops like this, they can lose all of their hair-like roots and leaves and still survive and regrow against all odds.

I was able to bring a lot of joy to a lot of people by giving them away at music festivals and to anyone I could find who would take them. Most had never seen a potato plant before, they were charmed and intrigued. It got many people to start gardening again after years since their last one. Many gave them to their parents to grow. It was really a magical gift to me that I made into an exponentially magical gift to others.

The most magical effect of it all was that of all the new friends I made from giving them away, one of them became a best friend and worked magic to open some of the most important doors to my destiny.

It’s something out of a fairy tale, discover a boxes of barely salvageable root crops, clean them up and plant them out, then have countless epic adventures as a result of regenerative generosity.

This was a couple of months after I did an experiment of planting seed potatoes in 5 gallon plastic nursery pots with mostly avocado leaf litter as the growing medium. They did in fact multiply and give me a nice little harvest proving that with just a bit of nutrient and moisture retention they can regenerate in austere conditions.

This incident belongs in a series on the world’s dumbest preppers. Every other time I’ve had to use traction mats for vehicle recovery, only the elements were to blame, I did everything right and used them properly, effectively, and efficiently to recover my smaller truck. Sometimes you get lucky and it only takes the first try, sometimes you’re out there for hours to get out of one sand pit, if not a series of them. I never felt any loss of pride until this time. And worst of all, this self inflicted incident happened in my big truck.

Sparing most of the details, I was hauling a trailer which made making a u-turn almost impossible on the road to my desert land. An oversight in planning and a slight unforeseen change in terrain beyond my control threw off my visual navigation ques and I missed the critical turning point. Not knowing when or if I’d be able to make a u-turn with a trailer up the road, I made a decision under pressure of traffic behind me creeping up, to make a maverick move into the sand, albeit in four wheel drive mode, thinking I’d be lucky enough to get back on course.

It was a big mistake that became clear within seconds. The ground was uneven due to storm activity and I got stuck only digging my back passenger side wheel into the soft sand at least 1-2 feet below the front. I’ve already learned to immediately stop once you start spinning out otherwise you’ll make it exponentially worse.

I had the traction mats, I got them in place, but was weary they’d work well on this bigger truck with a fully loaded bed, and at this extreme angle. Of course, it spun out repeatedly after many cycles of re-positioning. I finally decided I’d have to rest and start again at sunrise.

After many more tries, I had to do what I was dreading and that was unload everything in the bed off to the side to lessen the weight. Then dig out much more around the sunken wheel, and ultimately experiment with doubling up the mats on one side to catch the tire as it moved laterally.

It was almost 24 hours before I got it out. At no point along the way was I confident it would work, but I had no choice other than to keep resetting and trying, hoping not to damage anything permanently. It was a miracle that nothing seemed to be damaged at all. However you just get a sinking feeling when you see the organs of the truck getting stuck in the sand. Digging out a wide area around critical components is most difficult part of the process. But you can’t cut corners on freeing them up, again and again after every failed attempt which sinks them down into another position.

The feeling when you finally get traction and feel the difference in grip and get those first few inches that then turn in to feet, and you’re back to the surface, it’s profound. After a while you feel like it’s your arm or leg or hand that’s stuck, the clock is ticking and once it gets released and you make it out, all of the damn petty worries and doubts and neuroses you thought mattered so much just melt away and you thank your lucky stars that you didn’t completely undermine your plans, your finances, your vehicle, your safety, and your life.

When you get out of things like this without a scratch, but it took going into a trance of epic beast mode, it puts everything else into perspective.

What motivated me to act so vigorously was the movie playing in my mind’s eye of the far off neighbors, the sheriff, helicopters, any number of others taking turns shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, and some of them counting the dollars I’d have to spend to beg for help. I’m not so cynical to think they wouldn’t be polite and professional to my face, but to see the lone wolf fall on his face, and know the outsider from L.A., the city slicker made such a rookie mistake, that’d be a real bruise not just to be ego but to my reclusive reputation.

I’ve kept completely to myself and survived doing it only because I take extreme precautions not to be anyone else’s problem. But when you’re stuck with a big truck and trailer less than 100 feet from the main road, you’re an attention magnet.

I only had one encounter, he was friendly enough, but could easily have been scouting to see if I was an easy target for gang robbery. Seconds count in exposure to the public in this area. How you are perceived and whether you can be perceived is everything. I got very lucky this time.

There better not be a next time and the key factor will be more diligent preparation with navigation. It’s happened before, you just misjudge the turn and over shoot it in the pitch black of night, being complacent and trying to train not being so reliant on GPS. However GPS is the right tool for the job, and sometimes it can’t just be the final destination, it’s got to be the critical maneuver points on the way there.

I’m not an entomologist however my studies have informed me that there is an extremely high likelihood that my desert land is home to a vast number of desert recluse spiders, who like the related brown recluse native to other regions, contain a toxin that can cause necrosis of the skin after a bite. Basically, like acid your skin dissolves, tissue repair mechanisms are nullified and you might end up requiring surgery, if not amputation depending on the severity. Astonishingly and luckily so far I’ve managed to avoid bites.

I’ve found balance with them having seen them colonize almost every thing with hidden areas that I’ve built or left out. After awhile you just know to keep a defensive posture, put on gloves if necessary, move things with shovels or sticks, move things slowly, always be ready to brush off or jump back. The scariest moments are when you know there’s one or more on, let’s say, a cloth or tarp, and you know you have to keep track of them so they don’t end up climbing up your boots or getting into something else.

The manner in which I store gloves and boots has changed accordingly. I’ll fold them onto themselves and/or seal them in bags, or use some other means to inhibit habitation.

I do believe on a spiritual dimension, if you respect them, you can hope they’ll respect you. That’s why I never kill them, I only take whatever time and care is needed to safely relocate them. As far as I know I’ve never harmed or killed any and I’d be very upset to ever lose that grace.

During a chapter of my life when I was doing a lot of plant give away booths at music festivals and other events, I kept finding new ways to be resourceful in getting plant stock that could be easily propagated. One of my favorite strategies is to post or search online to find local free sources of resilient plants like mint, that people want removed from their property. If I can get a decent amount of it for only the cost of removal, it’s a great synergy. I’d be repeating the cycle all day everyday if I could.

There are a lot of perfectly useful plants being thrown into dumpsters, not even into composting or mulching operations, that could be rescued. It’s a great feeling to save money, participate in the barter economy, and have a lot of plant stock to give away or sell. If only there were more hours in a day.

In the process depicted, I’m removing the mint leaves by hand for use in herbal concoctions, dipping the strand of exposed root material in water to give it some emergency transplant hydration, then potting them up into unbleached paper cups where they’ll be getting a good start on their way to new homes.

It had been almost a year since I had been on my land living in a state of 100% off grid independence from the municipal water supply. My strategy that I called “Flood Sport” was to dig 25 foot diameter pits in the desert sand, temporarily line them with tarps whenever it rained, and catch every drop of rain I possibly could during every storm. Not knowing whether it would be a few drops or a flood meant having to run this drill many times.

You get a sage-like smell in the air and see the certain clouds forming, you start to get an intuitive sense of when to get in action. I’d get geared up and run out to take the folded tarps out of canvas wrapped shade storage, gently drag them into position within the pond pits, then reveal the carabiners that are above ground under big protective rocks, beneath which they were anchored to buried lumber by a length of paracord.

Then while fighting the wind, get at least 8 of the eyelets on the tarp secured so it doesn’t blow away or fold over on to itself before there’s enough water to hold it in place. I got it down to a science and was able to snap into action at any hour under any conditions. For the first two years of research and development it was a supplemental experiment, but during the final year of total isolation, it was life or death. So I trained to never get lazy when you sense the rain.

I’ve been mixing my own bulk ingredients and making my own trail mix for about 15 years. It’s evolved over time and the most recent iteration includes almonds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, cinnamon and ginger. The process depicted shows the need for a large container that can mix 25lb boxes of the main ingredients. The tricky part is breaking up the block of raisins.

I evolved the tactic of using the approximately 1 cup of cinnamon powder and 1 cup of ginger powder to pre-coat the block before using a large spoon to break it apart. Once the fine powder starts coating the surface area of the raisins, they break apart more easily and eventually get fully coated and stop sticking to walls or clumping. It’s become an art form and a meditation. Ultimately once thoroughly mixed, it goes into mylar bags and 5-gallon buckets for long term storage, and gets metered out in daily breakfast units of about 1 cup to be eaten with fresh fruit when available.