The Sovereign Homestead Podcast: Recent Episodes
Casey Pfeifer
The Sovereign Homestead helps liberty-loving people design and create resilient homesteads that yield maximum freedom and provide for a their highest Quality of Life.
If you're seeing this in your podcast feed it means our first child has either arrived or is very nearly earthside!
Sammy and I greatly appreciate your thoughts, prayers, and good vibes in this time.
The podcast will be on an indefinite (though hopefully relatively short) break, while we welcome our first child into the world and find our feet as new parents.
Thank you all for listening and keep shining your light.
-Casey & Sammy (and Tater)
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WHAT I DO: Create Resilient Habitats Where People And Ecology Thrive Together
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Floating wetlands are a "new" old technology that is well worth looking into if you are doing aquaculture at just about any scale - from small backyard tanks a few hundred gallons in size, on up to multi-acre ponds and lakes.
Floating wetlands take the essential functions provided by wetlands and concentrated them into a smaller and more mobile footprint. Wetlands are the kidneys of the landscape, and floating wetlands amplify many of those beneficial functions, such as:
- Integrated wetland (edge) functionality into an open water body = excess nutrient removal and water clarification
- Increased biomass production = more habitat and more food for livestock, wildlife and humans
- More "optimized edge" without reducing storage volumes in ponds
- Shade - decreases water temps, reduces algal growth potential by reducing light in the water column
- Shelter - fish shelter underneath and amongst the hanging roots
- some systems even have protected fish spawning beds hung underneath the island
- Shoreline protection / floating breakwaters - if wave erosion is a thing in your pond, consider a chain of floating islands to reduce wave action and protect vulnerable edges while also creating a highly-valuable living filter element
- Habitat Creation - floating islands contain so much edge in such a small space, they inevitably create habitat for many forms of life - from the micro (biofilms) to the macro (water fowl and fish) and everything in between.
- Waste water treatment - floating rafts with nutrient-accumulating vegetation are utilized to clarify and treat sewage effluent
Floating gardens are great for the homesteader as well. They are self-watering (obvious, but worth mentioning), benefit from increased sunlight availability to crops (light reflected off the water's surface to crop plants on the island), pest protection (no burrowing or terrestrial garden pests are going to make it to your floating garden - unless you've got Navy SEAL gophers!). They make excellent floating hutches for water fowl. Some folks have experimented with adding solar lights, fans and wheedwhackers to create nocturnal fish feeders by attracting insects and knocking them into the water for the fish to eat.
There are many ways to make floating islands - from DIY to pre-made - this would make an amazing summer time home-school project - construction, design, aquatic ecology, observation, nature time...talk about stacking functions!
Show Resources
- YouTube Playlist: Living Systems - Food Production - Floating Gardens
- Pre-made / Custom BioHaven Floating Islands
- Floating Islands International
- Floating Islands West
- Midwest Floating Islands
- Epi-59: Sovereign Food Systems - Pantry Ponds
- Epi-61: Up-Leveling Calorie Production Per Square Foot With Azolla
- Epi-64: Using Duckweed To Grow More Calories Per Square Foot
- Epi-62: 5 Tenets Of Carnivore Homesteading
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WHAT I DO: Resilient Human Habitats Where People And Ecology Thrive Together
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
What do we mean when we say we want to "opt out" of the system?
Firstly, it's the system(s) - the means of production, transport, communication, value transmission etc that we have to interface with to acquire the things we need to live in the modern world. In general, the further the distance a product or service must travel and the more technology involved means you will have less control over how to source it, how much you pay for it, when (and if) it is available etc. If it is produced or provided closer to home you have more agency in how you obtain that product or service and it is more resilient to "disruptions"
Why are so many of us drawn to opting out? We have no agency over the direction of the system(s) - they are by and large completely hijacked by parasites - the political technocratic oligo-corporate controlling class. If we want to have more agency, and thus freedom to live life on our own terms - in alignment with our innate intelligence - the solutions are found in living in closer connection with Nature and other decentralized/distributed systems based on Nature.
Fundamentally, this is about designing your life to create freedom from the system(s) via interdependence with Nature. We all have an ecological umbilical cord - we are completely and utterly dependent upon functioning ecosystems to provide us with ALL of the things we need and want to live well. The sooner we acknowledge this the sooner we can be FREE from pretending we don’t have an ecological umbilical and all resulting pathology that follows.
What We Can Do To Opt Out By Opting In To Nature Connection
- Create freedom from the system(s) by leveraging your interdependence with Nature - choose to ally your life with Nature - Nature is what "they" fear and cannot ever control.
- Harvest and use Nature’s gifts - everywhere nature gives us gifts for free
- Become ecosystem literate where you live - every place has something that wants to grow there - use analogs to find productive species to meet your needs
- Embrace Cyclical vs. Linear
- Cyclical = biology-based - slower, but infinitely more resilient and powerful - where how you grow & harvest can enrich the whole ecosystem.
- Trust in Distributed wisdom vs. Centralized “intelligence”
- centralization of decision-making authority and technical know-how is a hallmark of the technocratic system being pushed upon us
- the opposite of this is Nature - wisdom in every cell
- YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE CELLS - composed of trillions of other cells - each with it’s own innate wisdom
- Find your place and commit to it and it’s people - so much of the control system is commodification of the things that used to be provided via reciprocity by close human relationships.
Show Resources
- The Regenerative Agora - Counter-Economics For Stewards Of The Future
- Epi-73 - Debt, Wealth and Counter-Economics As A means to create a world worth inheriting
- Epi-009 - Green Is The New Gray For Thriving In The Dim Age
- Epi - 005 - Light, Water, Soil and Life - The 4 Pillars Of A Productive And Profitable Homestead Ecosystem
- DIY Soil Fertility series - ways to start engaging with more natural cycles that reduce your need to buy
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Light is an essential human nutrient.
So much of our modern built environment is built without regard to orienting and integrating natural light, and our health - physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and communal - suffers for it.
The good news is that you can design your structures (or retrofit them) to bring natural light back into them and create buildings and places within them that support human thriving because they are well integrated with natural light.
Join me for a dive into the patterns of human habitation design that enhance our relationship with light from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language:
- 105 - South Facing Outdoors
- 107 - Wings of Light
- 112 - Entrance Transition
- 128 - Indoor Sunlight
- 135 - Tapestry of Light and Dark
- 159 - Light On Two Sides Of Every Room
- 161 - Sunny Place
- 162 - North Face
- 163 - Outdoor Room
- 180 - Window Place
- 181 - The Fire (there is NO substitute for fire!)
- 182 - Eating Atmosphere
- 199 - Sunny Counter
- 223 - Deep Reveals
- 238 - Filtered Light
- 252 - Pools of Light
Resources
- A Pattern Language [WHOLE TEXT PDF DOWNLOAD]:
- PatternLanguage.com – website for the book and Alexander’s works
- Zone 0 Pattern Language Fundamentals - Designing Your Permaculture Kitchen ~Epi-076
- Light, Water, Soil and Life - The Four Pillars Of A Productive And Profitable Homestead - Epi-005
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Join me today as we discuss designing functional kitchen spaces that people want to be in.
Lots of people are inheriting kitchens designed more for magazine covers than for function - and where there is a lack of function there is a concommitant increase in friction, which means more stress and less joy.
Kitchens are the Zone 1 of Zone 0 - Zone 0 referring to the space inside the home. Kitchens are the heart of human life - communion over shared food, shared work, a space for being together, conversing, and generally connecting over the daily activities that make up life. Poorly designed kitchens discourage healthy human interaction and bonding, and thus are a huge lost opportunity for not only creating a thriving, functional homestead, but can actively undermine human thriving.
In today's show we discuss some of the fundamental emergent patterns detailed by Christoper Alexander and company A Pattern Language - a seminal work on the patterns of human habitation that support and promote human well being. This book belongs on your shelf if you're serious about creating healthy human habitats. It is guaranteed to spark fresh ideas and perspectives for examining your space, even if you've been there for decades, and give you actual tangible design guidelines if you're starting from scratch or remodeling to build functional, beautiful places for life to happen.
In this episode we will discuss the following patterns as they pertain to permaculture kitchens specifically and Zone 0 home design generally:
- 127 - Intimacy Gradients
- 129 - Common Areas At The Heart
- 159 - Light On Two Sides
- 139 - Farmhouse Kitchen
- 184 - Cooking Layout
- 182 - Eating Atmosphere
Show Resources
- A Pattern Language [WHOLE TEXT PDF DOWNLOAD]:
- PatternLanguage.com - website for the book and Alexander's works
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Today I interview Joshua Longbrook on real world applications of Private Membership Associations for creating systems of support - i.e. the parallel society - outside the jurisdiction of the public (State dominated) sphere.
We'll cover what PMAs are, what protections they do and do not offer, how they are best utilized as extensions of a larger unincorporated Church, and the types of voluntary interactions they enable within and between local communities.
We'll also get into Josh's personal experience with running the Agora Food Club and how the structure has enabled many home-scale producers to supply their wares or seasonal abundance to their fellow food club members in exchange for credits they can apply towards their own grocery bill. I think this is one of the "killer apps" the PMA structure can provide a network of homestead-minded people. Let's face it - even if you're just gardening for yourself, or have a small orchard with even a handful of fruit trees, it's very easy to be overwhelmed with the seasonal abundance from these systems. The PMA creates a way for these small scale producers to exchange their goods that doesn't require all of the licensing and legal hopscotch that becoming an official business does. The PMA literally enables the creation of circular, local economies without the energetic drain of taxes, licensing and all the things the State requires to be deemed "legal".
As Josh shares in the interview, a PMA enables the same dynamics that take place when you invite friends over for dinner - you cook food for them in your home (no food service business license, no health inspections etc), you might offer them a drink of wine (no liquor license required), and you might even offer them a bottle to take home for a few bucks. All of this is OK within the confines of your private home, but for some reason when this activity takes place in a business, and selling is happening, then it needs to be regulated (and taxed). The PMA is basically just a bigger dinner party with more friends all happening within the private sphere.
Resources
- The Agora Hub - the Church that Joshua and company run, of which the Agora Food Club is an auxiliary
- The Agora Food Club
- The Agora Ministries - Christian ministry based in Hixson, TN.
- [VIDEO] Joel Salatin - Food Freedom In The Private Domain (PMAs)
- Rogue Food Conference
- David Edwards PMA Service
- Freedom Works - Mission Society-based Private Membership Association
- Josh's podcast - Our Foundations
- Josh's email if you'd like to contact him directly with questions: ourfoundations@protonmail.com
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
What Plants Crave T-shirts And Stickers!
Another fun way you can support the show AND start some fun and interesting conversations along the way. For those of you that have seen Idiocracy, you know what this is all about. For those of you that haven't...watch this.
Today's show is for those of you lucky enough to have a spring on your property. We will cover the basics of spring morphology and function - including the way I really think they work vs. what the textbooks say - and then we'll go over basic spring assessment criteria, and the main components of spring water collection and distribution systems.
Show Resources
- Past Spring Projects
- Rivera Family Ranch Spring
- Forestville Spring Retrofit
- Wilson Family Ranch Spring Retrofit
- Big Sur Spring
- Black Mountain, NC Spring
- YouTube - Spring Development Playlist
- Technical Manuals
- Springs - Their Origin, Development And Protection, Taylor, G.H., U.S. Dept. Of Interior Geological Survey. [PDF]:
- Basic Ground Water Hydrology - Water Supply Paper 220, Heath, Ralph C., U.S. Dept. of Interior [PDF]: https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/2220/report.pdf
- NRCS National Engineering Handbook - Part 650 - Chapter 12 - Springs And Wells [PDF]: https://directives.sc.egov.usda.gov/OpenNonWebContent.aspx?content=46258.wba
- SKAT - Spring Catchment Vol. 4, Meuli, Christian & Wehrle, Karl, 2001. [PDF}: https://skat.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Handbook_Volume4.pdf
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
What Plants Crave T-shirts And Stickers!
Another fun way you can support the show AND start some fun and interesting conversations along the way. For those of you that have seen Idiocracy, you know what this is all about. For those of you that haven't...watch this.
How do we create a regenerative economy and all that entails when that work is arbitrarily outlawed, suppressed or actively disincentivized by the value systems that dominate our current culture?
HINT: We have to step outside of the current imposed power structure - no permission required.
My presupposition for this episode is this: Mainstream, state sponsored and enforced economic theory and practice has herded humanity as a whole onto a degenerative trajectory with respect to environmental integrity, social cohesion and individual well-being.
We are living in a debt-driven world - stealing from future generations so we can have more now.
If we want to live regeneratively, there has to be another way of meeting our needs today without destroying the ecosystems that provide them. In fact, we need to make them stronger and more productive!
That "other way" is Counter-Economics.
Counter-Economics is the theory and practice of all human action neither accepted by the State nor involving any initiatory violence or threat of violence.
Counter-Economics exists and can be practiced outside the boundaries of State power (the State being that institution that has a legal monopoly on the use of force within a certain arbitrary geographic border). State power exists at the intersection of three things:
- Scope – laws on the books.
- Reach – boots on the ground.
- Will – what lives in the heart of the agent of the State.
To engage in the counter economy is to engage only in moral actions (voluntary, without initiation or or threat of violence). They may or may not be legal as viewed from the perspective of the State Agent.
In order to get to a regenerative economy, we have to add one more layer - an ethical framework provided by the Prime Directive and three ethics of permaculture.
Prime Directive: The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for yourself and your dependents. Make it now.
Permaculture Ethics
- Care Of The Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.
- Care Of People: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their own existence.
- Setting Limits To Population And Consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to reinvest towards the first two ethics.
Once we have combined Counter-Economics with the ecologically sound guideposts from permaculture, we have created the foundation for a truly regenerative economy. One in which the 7th Generation Principle can come to fruition in act and spirit:
The 7th Generation Principle: A 7th generation systems creates socially and economically fulfilling lives for its inhabitants, whose daily activity patterns regenerate natural ecosystems and increase living capital year over year, such that the economic and social value of natural ecosystems is always increasing, and the value-ing of those systems is transmitted intact across generations.
Show Resources
- The Regenerative Agora: Counter-Economics For Stewards Of The Future
- The Prime Directive, Ethics and Principles Of Permaculture
- The 7th Generation Principle: Designing Ecosystems For Continuity Across Generations
- Counter-Economics: From The Back Alleys To The Stars - by Samuel Edward Konkin III
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Today's episode is a short primer on live staking - what it is, how it works, what its good for, what types of species you can use to do it, and how to harvest, prepare and plant your live stakes.
If you have perennially moist soils in need of stabilization, or are able to irrigate certain areas to ensure adequate soil moisture for establishment, you can plant hundreds of trees for pennies per stem and create living structures that provide many layers of function while getting stronger over time!
Livestaking is a great way to establish living fences, plant and grow living structures, stabilize eroded stream or gully banks, establish large trees in pasture, plant living fence posts and much more. It is a greate example of how when we work with nature we can create landscapes that are exponentially more functional and abundant for us, both today and in the future.
Show Resourcesb
- SHD Primer - All About Live Staking
- Expanded list of woody species that can be used for live staking - all but guaranteed that you've got what you need growing nearby
- Curated YouTube playlist showing live staking application across a variety of different settings and bioregions.
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
As within so without.
If we want to see changes in our external world (i.e. regenerating landscapes and ecosystems), we have to first address our internal state.
The older I get and the more I learn, the less I can say I know for sure.
This, though, is one of those things that I've arrived at as being one of those "indivisible kernels of truth" - something solid and constant upon which I can build a foundation for regeneration.
The external state of our landscapes is a direct reflection of our own internal states.
This has always been true in every consultancy I have ever done.
This is why I always have my design clients beging the process by creating a Minimum Holistic Goal. To start designing without first calming and clarifying your own internal landscape is basically the same as giving a bunch of apes spaghetti to throw at the wall and then seeing what sticks and saying "Look, design!".
We can do better than that.
We have to do better than that if our goal is to regenerate the ecosystems upon which we depend for our sustenance and quality of life.
Every landscape ultimately becomes a mirror of one's internal state.
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Building Your Sovereign Homestead
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Adaptive Management: Observation-driven management for constantly increasing resilience and ecosystem function by employing planned, purposeful disruption.
Prescriptive Management: Labeling your observations so that you can look up a prescription that fits that label. This is a much more myopic way of managing a landscape, as you're automatically confining yourself to pre-existing solutions for truly unique problems or challenges.
Adaptation is Nature's way. Nature is always changing - things may rhyme but they are never exactly the same. Therefore our management needs to change with this constantly changing landscape.
3 Rules of Adapative Management
- Compounding: every decision creates a cascade of compounding effects, these effects are never neutral, they are either positive or negative with regards to ecosystem function and whether or not they move you closer to your Quality of Life goals or further from them.
- Diversity: Greater species diversity is always better, and creates positive compounding effects.
- Disruption: Introduce planned, purposeful disruption in order to vary the stimulus that the landscape receives to continue making gains in ecosystem function, homestead efficiency and resilience, and enterprise profitability.
Never assume you've got it in the bag! ALWAYS base your actions on observation - adapt to the feedback that Nature is always providing, instead of prescribing from a narrow field of pre-existing solutions.
Show Resourcesb
- https://understandingag.com/resources/fact-sheets/
- Adapative Grazing Webinar - 3 Part Series w/ Allen Williams: https://pastureproject.org/webinar-archive/adaptive-grazing-101-webinar-series-with-dr-allen-williams/
- About Dr. Allen Williams: https://soilhealthacademy.org/team/dr-allen-williams/
- VIDEO: What Is Adaptive Grazing?
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
When we design holistic ecosystems, we start with mapping out desired and required functions THEN search for, select and/or design elements/systems that provide those functions in a way that aligns with the site-specific context.
This is contrasted with how most people "design" systems - they see an ad or read an article and like the thing or the method/technique they see, and then say "I want thing A" or "I'm going to do technique B" on my land.
And then systems start being built around these sexy, cool things that are out of alignment with the context of time and place.
Today I hope I can convince you that starting your homestead design (or re-design) by first assessing your desired and required functions - and thus creating a map of functions and functional outcomes that you require to support your chosen Quality of Life - that you can then much more quickly and effectively design or select the appropriate elements to populate your design.
This is functions-first design, and I encourage everyone to at least give function mapping a try when designing their homesteads.
Show Resources
- The Prime Directive, Ethics and Principles of Permaculture
- The 4 R's of Regenerative Hydrology
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
If you are serious about food sovereignty, you're serious about building soil.
In this episode I detail 4 methods for creating your own soil fertility inputs from what you are already growing, can source on your property or very close to home, or are already in the course of putting food on your table. They are:
- Vermicomposting ------------------> good biology
- Compost Tea Brewing --------------> amplify biology
- Biochar ----------------------------> retain biology
- Plant-based Liquid Fertilizer --------> feed biology
It is in the SYNERGY between these methods that the real exponential gains are to be found. I chose vermicomposting as a way to create good biology in the first place as it is relatively simple to get started with and will yield returns of worm castins within a growing season or less.
Next, utilize aerobic compost tea brewing to expand the amount of beneficial biology you have created from the worm castings. Once you have a tea you can spray it and cover large areas of plant bodies or soil surface with beneficial biology and nutrients. This is WAY more efficient than spot application of compost.
Next, use your aerobic compost tea inoculated with worm castings to inoculate charcoal and turn it into biochar! Biochar is a millennia+ soil amendment - it will outlive you and the next 20+ generations in the soil - and it will provide a home for beneficial biology and retain nutrients for the entire time it persists. This is as close to an infinite improvement as we can get in our human form.
And finally, to charge up naked charcoal and give all the beneficial biology something to eat, we make anaerobically fermented weed tea (though animal products can be used too) to create a mineral and nutrient rich solution. Use your compost tea brewing set up to hyper-aerate this solution to kill all of the anaerobic organisms, leaving a nutrient soup, and then introduce naked charcoal and beneficial micro-organisms (vermicompost) to create a nutrient-rich, hydrated, beneficial microbe hotel that will provide increasing benefit to your growing systems year after year without you having to do it year after year.
This is about getting off the treadmill of annual inputs. Don't give your money to the big fertilizer companies when you can make a way better, site-specific product on your own for very cheap that doesn't have a long-term downside like typicaly salt-based fertilizers and centralized, commodity soil amendments.
Food sovereignty can be acheived when our food systems build soil by default. That is what this synergy can do for you.
Resources
- DIY Soil Fertility - Part 1: Vermicomposting
- DIY Soil Fertility - Part 3: Compost Tea Brewing
- DIY Soil Fertility - Part 6: Charcoal & Biochar
- DIY Soil Fertility - Part 8: Fermented Liquid Nutrient Fertilizers - write up coming soon!
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Today is an expose about one of America's dirty secrets - we're talking about the nation wide biosolids program.
Supposedly its a great way to beneficially cycle a "renewable resource" to help fertilize crop fields, protect water sheds and keep people healthy.
In reality, its anything but - and we know from first hand knowledge because we lived with it right across the street from us for months.
For any would-be homesteader looking to re-locate to the country, be aware of the potential for biosolids in your watershed and potentially right across the fence (as in our case).
This is a huge problem, one that has resulted from a society and civil infrastructure built around the assumptions of a perpetual and never-ending supply of cheap energy. Now those chickens are coming home to roost, and its on us to fix it. First things first we have to learn just how extensive the problem of dealing with our own shit is so we can wrap our heads around what will be required to retrofit existing systems to make them work for a lower energy future.
Show Resources
- Actual EPA Laws & Regs: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids/biosolids-laws-and-regulations
- Plain English version (its 175 pages long - don't get too excited): https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/documents/plain-english-guide-part503-biosolids-rule.pdf
- EPA Propaganda Page for National Biosolids Initiative: https://www.epa.gov/biosolids
- PFAS Guide Doc: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-07/Joint-Principles-Preventing-Managing-PFAS.pdf
- The EPAs sheet on PFAS: https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained
- EWG PFAS Factsheet: https://static.ewg.org/ewg-tip-sheets/EWG-AvoidingPFCs.pdf https://thesovereignhomestead.com/soil-fertility-for-homesteads-vermicompost/
- Home Bio Gas Toilet - turn your sewage and food waste into methane gas for cooking and valuable and SAFE fertilizer for your garden: https://www.homebiogas.com/
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WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Today's show is all about the things you have to do to get yourself onto your land quickly without shooting yourself in the foot withe improperly located or oriented structures and roads.
Vehicle access is basically an absolute necessity in today's world. By their very nature, roads are a break from the inherent landform, and thus ALL ROADS CAPTURE AND MOVE WATER. This is just part of what a road does.
If you put in a road, or are inheriting a road without understanding that fact, you will pay for it later - all it takes is one good storm.
So today, in this first installment of the Making Landfall series, we're zero-ing in on Water > Access > Structures - the three primary design layers that have to get sorted out quickly when you move onto a new landscape. Where am I going to live? How am I going to get to it? How will this affect and be affected by water moving through the landscape?
This show is about the essential things you need to do to get it right and not create a Type 1 Error that will hamper your efforts to create your sovereign homestead as long as it exists.
Show Resources
- Vehicle Access For Regenerative Landscapes - First Principles ~ the basic principles that guide planning and implementing vehicle access that has a regenerative effect on your site hydrology and ecosystem function.
- Vehicle Access For Regenerative Landscapes - Essential Terminology & Guiding Questions For Watershed Assessment ~ all the things you need to know and consider when assessing your landscape to plan efficient, low-maintenance, high-function vehicle access.
- Water Drainage Elements Index - blog post index of lesser-known cross drains and drainage elements more suited to regenerative water management.
- Don't install 'not my problem tubes' unless you absolutely have to! Yeah, I'm talking about culverts here - I rarely see these done well, especially with regards to what happens with the water after it leaves the culvert. Perhaps try a rolling dip instead!
____________________________________________________________________________
WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
New Year's Evolution. This show is about doing the most important work first - your own internal visioning - an rooting that vision in your heart to create a WHY strong enough to bear any HOW. If you haven't done it yet, give yourself the gift of creating your Minimum Holistic Goal. It is the ONE THING that will make everything else that comes after easier, more fun and more effective.
Creating a legacy worth inheriting starts in you.
Let your life be a love letter to future generations and leave beauty in your wake. That's how we create a world worth inheriting.
____________________________________________________________________________
WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Duckweed is an amazingly productive floating aquatic plant that is highly palatable to a wide variety of small and large livestock (ruminants, pigs, poultry, fish etc). Duckweed is a tremendous ally for those of us looking to create independence from centralized commodity food systems. You may not want to eat duckweed (though you can) but what you eat is very likely to benefit from having duckweed in its diet (and your wallet will thank you for it!).
Show Resources
- Feedipedia Page for Duckweed
- Duckweed Cultivation YouTube Playlist
____________________________________________________________________________
WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
In this episode I am sharing what I have come to call the 7th Generation Principle - a principle guide post of sorts that I've been refining for nearly 10 years now to help guide my design work (for my own life and for others) in the direction of inter-generational regeneration.
Basically, it seems like throughout human history we've actually lived in a truly sustainable fasion - i.e. regeneratively. Some of those examples even persisted for quite some time, but now we are left with very few intact cultures that can successfully transmit the cultural values of regeneration through time from one generation to the next. Even those that still exist are struggling to keep it up.
This principles is my attempt at refining design imperatives such that we prepare fertile soil for the values of regeneration to once again take root in the hearts and minds of the up and coming generations, and for them to have the tools to successfully transmit those values to their descendants.
We'll break down all the context and various pieces of it in the podcast, but here it is in full:
A 7th generation system creates socially and economically fulfilling lives for its inhabitants, whose daily activity patterns regenerate natural ecosystems and increase living capital year over year, such that the economic and social value of natural ecosystems is always increasing, and the value-ing of those systems is transmitted intact across generations.
In this episode I'll walk through the questions that led to me writing this principle this way, and the ways to apply it in your own lifestyle design using the Regenerative Triple Bottom Line - Economic, Social and Ecological to create guiding criteria and questions to assess if you're on target or not.
Show Resources
- BLOG POST: The 7th Generation Principle - Designing Regenerative Systems For Continuity Across Generations
- VIDEO: The Living Root Bridges Of Meghalaya (4 min)
- VIDEO: India - The Living Bridges - ARTE.tv documentary (24 min)
____________________________________________________________________________
WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
In today's show we discuss the idea of the Carnivore Homestead.
For those of us that eat a mostly animal-based diet, we want to produce mostly animal-based calories from our homestead production systems. I got news - just because we like to eat steak doesn't mean we aren't going to grow plants - in fact, we've got to grow them in greater quantity and quality in order to feed the animals that become our food.
Carnivore homesteads have to be regenerative by their very nature if they are to be sustainable. Join me as we discuss the ins and outs of what I'm calling the 5 tenets of carnivore homesteading:
- Maximize Calorie Production / Unit Area - this means growing a better solar collector, which means growing lots of plants. We do this by managing the 4 pillars of any productive ecosystem - water, soil, light and life (biology/living organisms).
- Extend Calorie Production Throughout As Much Of The Year As Possible - extend the growing season, and no its not just about greenhouses, though those are great.
- Livestock Species Selection & Integration - select species that WILL thrive on what your land is innately good at producing, and integrate them with other species that improve the habitat for one another (non-competitive niches).
- Preserve Seasonal Abundance With Long Term Storage - we need to employ a variety of methods to preserve fat and protein during times of abundance for the times of dearth - freezers and canning are great, but there is so much more!
- Build relationships with other producers - don't go it alone! Animal products are high-value, and if you are producing one you probably have an abundance greater than you can use. Trading, exchanging or sell to or with other local producers creates stronger, healthier, more resilient communities and allows us to create our own food systems parallel to the mainstream commoditized, centralized and controlled industrial food system.
Show Resources
- Epi-058 - Sovereign Food Systems: Silvopasture For Sovereign Meat Forests
- BLOG POST: Silvopasture - Sustainable Food Systems For The Era Of Energy Descent
- BLOG POST: High Value Livestock Fodder Trees For Temperate Climates
- Epi-007 - High Value Livestock Fodder Trees For Temperate Climates
- YouTube Channel: Farming With Trees
- Epi-059 - Sovereign Food Systems: Aquaculture Pantry Ponds
- Epi-061 - Up-Leveling Calorie Production With Azolla
- Permies Thread on Carnivore Homesteading
____________________________________________________________________________
WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Today's episode came out of a Permies.com thread on Carnivore Homesteading. The seed questions for the thread was, for those of us enjoying the benefits of a carnivore lifestyle, how can we produce more high-quality animal-based calories for our own consumption from well designed and integrated systems at the homestead scale.
Basically, there are three main focal points that need attention here:
- First and foremost we need to maximize is the number of calories grown per unit area (per acre, per square foot, per roof, whatever space one has) if we are to be eating primarily animal products coming from our own properties. This means optimizing the landscape/whateverscape to the fullest extent possible to maximize our use of those freely available resources that go into growing and producing calories - namely water, light, and soil minerals.
- Second, we need to optimize the distribution of those calories throughout the year (this includes preserving seasonal oversupply/abundance for leaner times) such that high quality nutrition is available to whatever form of livestock we might be keeping or tending.
- Third - select and stack livestock species that are appropriately suited to the given unique context (i.e. ruminants where pasture forages are plentiful, fish/water fowl/invertebrates where water is plentiful etc). Generally, at least in my own limited experience, that when faced with a repetitive task or "problem" that has to be backfilled with my own labor/time/energy, I'm almost always missing an additional living system - i.e. the solution almost always seems to be to "add more life".
With these focal areas in mind, we arrive at azolla - an incredibly productive free-floating aquatic fern that fixes its own atmospheric nitrogen, yields a high-protein vegetative crop that can be harvested DAILY, is incredibly simple to grow and propagate indefinitely for almost no cost after the initial system set up, and can be stored fed to practically all classes of livestock, fresh or dried!
Azolla truly is a super plant, and if you haven't come across it - or even if you have - this one deserves your attention. It, along with other highly productive and nutritious aquatic vegetable crops, deserve a spot on the roster in your homestead production systems - especially if you're trying to raise nutrient dense animal products for your own final consumption!
In this episode we will discuss...
- General plant characteristics - what makes Azolla so darn special
- Azolla's history in agriculture as well as its significant role in creating the current earth climate.
- Livestock pallatibility - cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks, fish, worms, insects - you name it, it'll probably eat azolla!
- Digestibility
- Growing Requirements - light, temperature, humidity, ph, salinity, nutrition, pests - everything you need to know to set up a successful azolla growing environment
- Propagation Methods - different small-scale systems for growing azolla on the homestead
- Harvesting and processing
- Other Applications of azolla beyond animal feed
- and more!
Show Resources
- https://www.feedipedia.org/node/565
- https://www.agrifarming.in/azolla-farming-project-report
- https://theazollafoundation.org/
- https://permies.com/t/40/226880/Carnivore-Homesteading#2060792
- Takota Coen VIDEO - How he uses duckweed to feed pigs, chickens and cows on his family farm - the same process will work for azolla
- ~Epi-13 - DIY Charcoal and Biochar For Home Use
- ~Epi-59 - Sovereign Food Systems: Pantry Ponds For Perennial Food Production
____________________________________________________________________________
WHAT I DO:
Design:
On-Site Consultation
Online Site/Project Consultation
Holistic Ecosystem Design
Implementation:
Water Harvesting Earthworks
High-function, Low-Maintenance Access
Living Systems
Spring Development
Courses:
Minimum Holistic Goal
Media:
The Sovereign Homestead Podcast
YouTube
Just a quick update on recent events here and announcement for taking a break until Novemeber 1st to visit family and dive into some design projects here in Tennessee and North Carolina.
You can also follow Sovereign Homestead Design on YouTube.
We've been having massive technical issues with our webhosting and emails this past month - basically incommunicado as far as our ability to reach out to the world, BUT, our Instagram account @honeybadgernursery is still up, detailing some of what's going on at the homestead. The Honey Badger Nursery website is still down, but we are hoping to resolve that and all the internet drama soon!
We'll be diving into some larger property design work this month for the property we are currently living on, and hopefully into implementation in late October / early November for some mainframe water harvesting earthworks and vehicle access. I'll also be retrofitting a spring for 3 houses in Black Mountain, NC, just outside of Asheville, and will endeavor to film that project and turn it into a helpful tutorial video.
If you have specific systems or designs that you'd like me to explore on the show, drop me a line and let me know - casey@thesovereignhomestead.com
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
What Plants Crave T-shirts And Stickers!
Another fun way you can support the show AND start some fun and interesting conversations along the way. For those of you that have seen Idiocracy, you know what this is all about. For those of you that haven't...watch this.
Today we look at another Sovereign Food System - what I'm calling the Pantry Pond.
Basically a homestead-scale aquaculture system designed to maximize your food sovereignty via independence from the centralized systems of supply and distribution for any of the inputs required to grow what you want to grow - fish, aquatic vegetables, crawfish, shrimp, water fowl etc.
Well-designed homestead-scale aquaculture systems aren't that common here in the modern U.S., and yet they have a tremendously long and productive history in many cultures the world round.
Because aquaculture is so context and place-specific, we're going to talk about things today from a paradim and principles perspective, as well as list the specific design criteria you'll need to pay attention to when shaping your pond(s) and selecting the species to live in them.
We'll look at...
- Context - what you need to analyze to know if this will work for you
- Zones within the pond
- Litoral, limnetic, euphotic, profundal and benthic and the different characteristics of each (HINT: litoral is where most of the action is going to be)
- Different production elements
- Fish and factors affecting their yields
- Invertebrates - crawfish, shrimp, prawns, snails, insects
- Amphibians
- Filter Feeders - molluscs, clams, oysters etc.
- Vegetation - 4 types of aquatic vegetation
- Marginal
- Emergent
- Submerged
- Floating
- Physical Structure Of Your Pond(s)
- Segmentation / Segregation of different ages, sexes, species etc.
- Life-stage design: eggs > fry > fingerlings > adult / market weight > breeding adults
- Predator protection - aquatic and terrestrial
- Temperature and aeration considerations
- Feeding / harvest pens
- Optimizing the pond edge for calorie production
- Shallows, chinampas, paddies, floating islands, trees etc.
If you're serious about creating food sovereignty from your landscape, pantry ponds deserve consideration. Per unit area, there is nothing as productive, especially when it comes to producing protein.
Show Resources
- Azolla Foundation - everything you could want to know about this super plant for homestead aquaculture systems!
- Permaculture Design Principle Deep Dive ~ Epi 10 - Optimize The Edge
- Chinampas playlist
- Adjustable monk/swivel pipes in action
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
In today's show we are talking about creating Sovereign Food Systems.
I think this will be a series, or at least a collection of episodes, each one focused on a different type of sovereign food system that can be applied at a variety of scales across a broad range of contexts.
Basically, a sovereign food system is one that has eliminated any dependence on inputs from centralized production and distribution systems for its continued operation.
I believe these systems are increasingly important in light of the war on independent food that we are seeing and experiencing all around the world right now. We are being squeezed, and the pressure is only going to keep building. Sovereign food systems are a way to in-source the inputs for your food producting systems - to literally grow and cycle them on-site - so that you don't need to depend on globalized supply chains, the price of deisel, and a functioning currency to put quality food on the table for your family.
Sovereign food is all about designing systems that maximize the sunlight, water and soil resources on your property with good design and proper management such that the systems builds soil while feeding people.
That's what sovereign food is all about.
Show Resources
- Silvopasture playlist on The Sovereign Homestead YouTube Channel.
- Livestock fodder trees playlist on The Sovereign Homestead YouTube Channel.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Today we discuss permaculture design principle #12 - Collaborate With Succession.
The more that we can align our designs, systems and management styles with the inherent successional trends already present in our landscapes, the greater our yields will be with fewer resource inputs required. This is all about energy efficiency, and it starts with OBSERVING AND INTERACTING (Principle #1) with your landscape to identify the patterns that are already present. Your land is telling you what it wants to become, you just have to have the eyes to see it!
Show Resources
- YouTube Playlist - Chinampas
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Today we take a deeper look at the 11th permaculture design principle: Make The Least Change For The Greatest Effect.
This principle is about economy of effort. When designing a sovereign homestead, we need to make sure that our systems are providing us with not only the right types of yields, but also in sufficient quantity and at a reasonable return to make our continued tending of the system worthwhile.
Living systems that provide for generation after generation exhibit a high degree of economy of effort.
We'll look at how you can analyze your current homestead and lifestyle to identify the leverage points where optimizing your system can produce outsized returns to your quality of life.
We also talk about biasing your interventions and applications of time/energy/money to more "permanent" improvements - things that will require less of your time/energy/money as they mature while increasing in productivity and/or value that will outlive you by a long margin.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
In today's episode we take a deep dive into Permaculture Design Principle #10 - Optimize The Edge. We will discuss:
- Edge: What is it exactly?
- The real-world effects of edges in your homestead landscape with regards to energy translation, species diversity and overall productivity.
- How to manage edge for physical environments/elements to get more of what you want and less of what you don't (HINT: It's really about surface area!)
- Lots of examples of edge
- Optimizing edge is really about optimizing relationships between elements
- Why greater harmony is the ultimate aim of making adjustments to the edges between different elements and media
- Benefic vs. neutral vs. negative relationships -> and how to get all your living systems to place nice together
Sovereign Homestead Design Services
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
This week we look at Permaculture Design Principle #9: Choose Small-Scale, Intensive Solutions.
This is all about managing intensively in a small footprint at the start - and expanding what works and changing or eliminating what does not. We'll talk about the importance of testing your systems before expanding them by conducting Safe To Fail experiments. We also talk about PROFIT - that most important of words - that little bit of surplus energy above and beyond what the system requires to maintain and sustain itself that you can use to conduct safe-to-fail trials that will lead you towards greater efficiency, productivity and resiliency.
Show Resources
- Jon Jandai Video - What Most People Don't Know About Farming
Sovereign Homestead Design Services
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Today we take a deeper look at Permaculture Design Principle #8 - Integrate, Don't Segregate.
This principle is fundamentally about 'stacking functions' - a common term we hear a lot in perma-speak - but what does that really mean and HOW do you go about doing it?
We'll talk nuts and bolts of creating functionally redundant systems, including:
- Segregation vs. integration, and the energetic costs of going down one path vs. the other in the design of your homestead
- How building functional redundancy into your systems leads to resiliency in the face of disruptive events, and how this can lead YOU to become a more anti-fragile person and thus have a more anti-fragile homestead.
- Why CONNECTION is the secret sauce for 'stacking functions'
- HOW To Do It
- What Functional Design is - starting with functions first, and working towards the elements from there
- The importance of element location and orientation to maximize function.
- List all of the main functional categories a la the Permaculture Design Scale of Permanence.
Maximizing function is ALL about designing relationships between things, not so much the things themselves. Become a designer of connections between elements, and you'll become a better human being in all ways.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
What Plants Crave T-shirts And Stickers!
Another fun way you can support the show AND start some fun and interesting conversations along the way. For those of you that have seen Idiocracy, you know what this is all about. For those of you that haven't...watch this.
Design from pattern to details.
Anyone who has read a permaculture book has heard this - but how to actually DO IT?
Today we talk about Natural Constants and the Yeomans Scale of Permanence as tools you can use to help you design from big, broad, largely immutable patterns down to small, granular, actionable details.
This is how you can ground the small actions you take in any given moment to a 7th generation vision - each action is informed by the many layers of contextual foundation that underlay it.
The most fundamental bit of pattern understanding you can develop to guide the design and evolution of your homestead is knowing your own internal map - your values, and what your life looks and feels like on a day-to-day basis when you live an alignment with them (your Highest Quality of Life). If you haven't done that work yet, start by developing your Minimum Holistic Goal.
Then move on to researching and developing all of the factors the should guide sound design decision - do your own Foundational Site Assessment or bring us in to help. Once you've got your bases covered, then its time to put pen to paper and start designing.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
==============================================================
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
Today we're talking about the 6th permaculture design principle: Make No Waste.
In Nature, "waste" = food. How can we design our homesteads and the various life support systems on them such that the "waste" from one becomes the food for another? How many energetic loops and connection can we create between elements, systems and organisms?
We'll discuss one of the simple tools for enacting the Waste = Food principle - called Input/Output/Intrinsic Analysis. We'll also talk about the switch that flips once you change the way you view what most of our society calls "waste" and junk piles start looking like diamond piles.
The more "waste" we can eliminate by creating systems that cycle energy better, the more resilient and independent we become, and the healthier the ecology becomes.
====================================
Need some help getting the "birds eye view" of your property and its surrounds to help you design your sovereign homestead?
Check out our Hi-Definition Contour Base Map package. This package includes:
- Hi-definition LiDAR contour map layer (contour lines can spaced at whatever scale you desire - as tight as 1 foot or less if you desire).
- Aspect Map Layer - color-code your entire property by which direction it faces - very helpful in identifying ideal growing zones and microclimates for specific plantings.
- Hillshade Layer - for easily visualizing landform across your entire property.
- Slope Layer - color-code your entire property based on the % grade - very helpful for access planning, living systems establishment and site selection for buildings etc.
Deliverables include:
- Hi-definition .jpeg or .pdf of your entire property and/or its contributing watersheds, at whatever size you desire (if you wish to print a poster and have it laminated as an iterative design tool images can be generated at whatever size the poster shop will print).
- .KML file of the contour lines for importing and 3D viewing in Google Earth Pro (free to download) - this is a very helpful and accessible design tool.
We also offer consulting calls if you need some design help or a fresh perspective - see the Virtual Property Design Review for details.
====================================================
What Plants Crave T-shirts And Stickers!
Another fun way you can support the show AND start some fun and interesting conversations along the way. For those of you that have seen Idiocracy, you know what this is all about. For those of you that haven't...watch this.
Today we continue our Deep Dive series on the 12 foundational principles of permaculture.
In this episode we take a deeper look at Principle #5: Use And Value Nature's Gifts / Collaborate With Succession / Work With Nature, Not Against It. There are numerous different ways this principle is written, and we'll explore the nuance of all three of the most common versions, as well as what you can specifically look for in your landscape and within your unique context to better align your design and management of your homestead with natural pattern, and how you can both increase your harvestable yields while expending less energy to do so!
We're starting to get to the point where all of the preceding principles are indivisibly linked to each additional one. Indeed, its almost like they all function together somehow to create hyper-functional systems - i.e. natural ecosystems!
Show Resources
-
Permaculture Principle Deep Dive Series thus far...if any of the prior principles I refer to today are new to you, go back and listen to the other episodes in the series to better understand each one.
-
1: Observe & Interact
-
2: Catch & Store Energy
-
3: Obtain A Yield
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4: Self Regulate & Accept Feedback
-
Ways You Can Support The Show
You can support our work at Sovereign Homestead Design by working with us - we offer remote and on-site/in-person design services, including high-definition LiDAR contour map development for your property that you can visualize in Google Earth, Virtual Property Design Reviews, and on-site/in-person work for conducting Foundational Site Assessments and Mainframe Homestead Design.
You can also support us by grabbing one of the 'What Plants Crave' T-shirts from our store - we've got 'em for Compost Tea, Water and Biochar.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Welcome To
Sovereign Homestead Design
Regenerative Landscapes For Prosperous Living
**What Makes A Homestead Sovereign?**
**There are 5 distinguishing characteristics of a Sovereign Homestead:**
- Productive - A Sovereign Homestead is an intentionally designed system of systems that produces what you and your loved ones need to survive and thrive with minimal external inputs.
- Profitable - A Sovereign Homestead must generate a surplus yield (profit) from its productive systems. This profit is the energetic surplus that allows for maintenance, reproduction/replacement of living systems and infrastructure and incentivizes multi-generational stewardship of the land.
- Beautiful - Building a Sovereign Homestead requires love, devotion and a long time-preference. Beauty is the physical manifestation of love and devotion in your landscape. Make your homestead beautiful and you will want to engage with it more.
- Anti-fragile - Systems are anti-fragile when they grow stronger and more robust because of disturbance and disruption. We are living into a time of rapid ecological, economic and social change (upheaval), and the more independence we can create from centralized systems of production, distribution, communication, and value transfer (control points), the greater our ability to live healthy, wealthy, and free will be.
- Regenerative - A Sovereign Homestead enriches and strengthens the ecology of which it is a part such that the land on which it exists has greater life-expression capacity because of how you live in that place - i.e. a Sovereign Homestead grows soil by default.
**A Sovereign Homestead produces the things you need to live your Highest Quality of Life.**
It is designed and managed at the intersection of 3 things; 1) the Immutable Laws of Nature and Natural Pattern, 2) the site-specific context that is unique to your property, and 3) your vision for your Highest Quality of Life that is unique to you.
**Sovereign Homesteading is more about orientation than destination.**
It’s about what lives in your heart and mind – and how you choose to apply that orientation in the physical world with your hands.
By choosing to orient towards personal sovereignty, you are choosing to accept maximum responsibility for everything in your world. The degree to which your homestead is ‘sovereign’ (free from external control) depends on the degree of personal responsibility you take for everything in your life.
In this way, the physical form of your landscape and home and how you manage them become a direct reflection of your values.
As within (your values), so without (your land and home).
The way to maximize sovereignty from a homesteading perspective is to design your land and home to harmonize with site-specific natural patterns.
"Order and harmony produce energy for other uses via deliberate integration of chosen and natural functions, and the supply of essential needs. Stress, on the other hand, may be defined as either prevention of natural function, or of forced function. Stress creates disorder, and disorder consumes energy to no useful end."
- Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designer's Manual
That means a Sovereign Homestead is designed to work with Nature, not against it.
This limits stress, disorder and wasteful energy use, which puts time back in your day and keeps money in your wallet.
***"If we throw Nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork."***
~ Masanobu Fukuoka
Nature is constantly showering us with gifts for free. A Sovereign Homestead is designed, built, managed and grown to accept and leverage this steady stream of gifts, and return them in kind by mimicking Nature in how it captures, stores and cycles energy and resources throughout the landscape and surrounding ecology.
This is accomplished through active management of the four universal levers for homestead productivity: Light, Water, Soil and Life.
- Water = The Circulation Of Earth’s Lifeblood: Water is the universal medium for life.
- Light = Energy Flow: How much sunlight your landscape captures and turns into usable biomass.
- Soil = The Mineral Cycle: The circulation of life-sustaining nutrients.
- Life = Community Dynamics: The living organisms that leverage light, water, carbon and soil minerals to produce the primary forms of wealth.
These four ecosystem processes undergird all human endeavor. We humans are utterly dependent upon them, and they are the most universal leverage points for creating a healthy, resilient ecology capable of supporting abundant life.
No matter where you are, or what scale you are working at, how you manage these four aspects of your landscape will determine its baseline productivity and function. Each ecosystem process is a different aspect of the whole system that is your homestead landscape – making a change to how you manage one will affect them all. Think of each ecosystem process as a different window looking into the same room – each showing it from a different perspective. When managed together as a whole (i.e., holistically) the potential for creating positive compounding cascade effects is HUGE.
By intentionally designing our lives and landscapes to harmonize with natural pattern and leverage Nature’s gifts, we create resilient systems of production that provide an abundance of what we need to live a High Quality of Life…today and 100+ years in the future.
This means that Sovereign Homesteading goes far beyond ‘sustainable living’ into the realm of regenerative – meaning the ecosystem of which your homestead is an integral part will be richer, and capable of expressing more life, because you are a part of it.
**Degenerative Systems**
- Life expression capacity decreases year over year
- Less soil of lower quality each year
- Takes out more than is put back
- Simplified, single or few species, systems are separated and managed separately
- Requires greater external inputs to make up for progressive loss of living capital as system ages
- Fights the forces of natures
- Reliant upon centralized systems of supply
- Finite lifespan
-
Fertility must be brought in from outside
Regenerative Systems
-
Life expression capacity increases year over year
- Builds healthy soil by default
- Puts back more than is taken out
- Complex, multi-species systems are integrated and managed as a whole
- Requires fewer external inputs as system matures
- Self-replicating
- Aligns with natural pattern
- De-centralized systems of production
- Can continue indefinitely
-
Fertility sourced & generated on-site
We get to choose where we put our life energy on the continuum illustrated above.
Whether we create a world worth inheriting or a diminished future for our children is entirely our choice - and that is a very good thing. We are human beings. We are native to Planet Earth. It is our home and we belong here. We can choose the sovereign path anytime we want. We just have to choose.
Design Services
On-Site & In-Person
**Walk and Talk**
We walk your property together and you set priority on the topics most important to you. Walk & Talks are low barrier to entry, perfect if you’re still in the idea-generation phase or just feel like you don’t know what you don’t know.
Learn More About Walk & Talks Foundational Site Assessment
Essential site-specific work up and base mapping of all the fundamental background information that goes into making sound design, implementation and management decisions for your homestead.
Learn More About Foundational Site Assessment Mainframe Homestead Design
Whole-site optimization for water and access patterning, structure siting and orientation, and recommended selection, placement and management of living systems to create a landscape that is default abundant – mapped out so you know how all elements will fit and function together.
Learn More About Mainframe Homestead Design
Virtual & Remote Assistance
In today's episode we continue with our Permaculture Design Principle Deep Dive Series with Principle #4 - Self Regulate And Accept Feedback.
We talk about why those two terms - 'self regulate' and 'accept feedback' come packaged together, and how each is important to create an environment that promotes rapid iteration and 'safe to fail' testing of systems followed by planned amplification or dampening based on the results.
We'll go through the Cynefin Sense-Making Framework as a tool for understanding the context in which you are in and adjusting your Decision Model to suite it appropriately. This includes:
- The 4 Types of Decision Scenarios
- Simple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic
- The Zone of Disorder where we spend most of our time trying to figure out which type of scenario we are in so that we can respond appropriately.
- How to set up 'safe to fail' experiments vs. 'fail safe' experiments
- A simple 5 option ranking to determine what kind of situation you are in - Simple, Complicated or Complex
- The danger of the "Complacency Cliff" between Simple Systems and Chaos - and how to avoid falling off of it!
This is all about becoming a better designer and manager of your homestead.
Show Resources
- Cynefin: A Sense-Making Framework PDF
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Today is the third episode in our Permaculture Design Principle Deep Dive series - Obtain A Yield.
This is all about intentionally designing living systems on our homesteads that provide for our needs to live a great life.
Join me as we discuss...
- The different types of yields you can design for: product, energy and intangible/impalpable
- The Definition of a system yield - and the 5 ways you can go about obtaining it
- True-Cost Yield Accounting to accurately account for all costs involved in obtaining the yield.
- Strategies for creating yields
- Physical/Environmental
- Biological
- Spatial/Configurational
- Temporal
- Technical
- Conservation
- Cultural
- Legal/Administrative
- Social
- Design
- Where the real limits to the yield potential of any system truly lies
- And more...
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Today we take a deeper look at the second of the core permaculture design principles - Catch And Store Energy.
This is what designing a functional and resilient ecosystem is all about - energy in vs. energy out. Everything that is alive needs to bring in more energy than it expends in order to 1) sustain its own existence and 2) to reproduce. If we design our homesteads and homes to catch and store useful forms of energy, we can create a holistic system that works for us even when we aren't around.
In this episode we will discuss what to look for when you are designing a system to capture and store energy - gradients and cycles. We'll also cover the many different forms of energy you can capture and store with appropriate elements integrated seamlessly into a functioning whole.
This show should give you a very tangible way to employ this second design principle as you go about designing your homestead and your life.
Show Resources
- Mr. Teslonian's YouTube videos on trompes - using falling water to compress air.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
This is the first in a series of episodes that will go into depth on how to apply and leverage each of the 12 foundational design principles used in permaculture.
The first design principle is Observe and Interact. It is the keystone design principle, from which all others are held together and applied toward a functional end.
Join me as we discuss:
- The context for applying the permaculture design principles - i.e. the oft-forgot Prime Directive and the oft-misinterpreted 3 Ethics.
- Why Observe & Interact is NOT about being a neutral observer, or being separate from what is being observed. First and foremost we are part of Nature and we need to understand that our observation of a thing influences the thing.
- The 4 Styles of Observation
- Child-like
- Thematic
- Instrumental
- Experiential
- Why separating observation from analysis, at least immediately, is very important to preserve possibilities.
- Methods of Observation
- Sit Spot Routine - this is from Jon Young of Wilderness Awareness School and the audio recording of Seeing Through Native Eyes. This is the most powerful practice I know of you can start using today to enhance your powers of observation and your connection with the natural rhythms of your landscape.
Show Resources
- Seeing Through Native Eyes on Last.fm
- Seeing Through Native Eyes audio hard copy
- Epi-002 - The Prime Directive, 3 Ethics, and 12 Principles of Permaculture As Sovereign Homestead Design Tools
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Today we are talking about homestead security.
It's a topic that is left out of a lot of "mainstream" permaculture design books - and really its hardly mentioned at all as a design consideration. We live in a weird time, when for just a few short generations, and then only for a select few people, we've been able to delegate our security to "the authorities" (911, the cops etc).
We are quickly heading into disruptive, turbulent and hard economic times - with that comes an increase in crime - we are already seeing it, and have been for quite a while in urban areas. Even if you're out in the sticks, perhaps even more so, you need to be in charge of your own homestead and home security.
Security is something that some people can go their whole life without ever thinking about - amazing but true. But when you NEED security, you NEED IT IMMEDIATELY. Far faster than any emergency responder can get there. So it has to come from us - by our own design, mindset and environment.
Today we discuss the 4 D's of Homestead Security as I'm calling them - Deter - Detect - Delay - Defend. I did not make this up, but I don't know where or if I heard it from someone, but it is the framework I am using as we fix up our current old farmhouse, and it is the framework I recommend to all of my clients when thinking about homestead security from a design perspective.
- Deter
- OBJECTIVE: To decrease the likelihood of being attacked/invaded/intruded or aggressed upon.
- METHODS:
- Relocation - MOVE somewhere where this is less likely!
- Appearance - make your homestead uninviting to criminals
- Awareness - let the criminal know that they are being monitored - signs for cameras, beware of dog, home security monitoring etc.
- Access - fences, gates, walls and what goes on them and plantings around the house the deter someone from even trying to get sneaky.
- Detect
- OBEJCTIVE: To be alerted sooner rather than later when someone enters your property or approaches your home.
- METHODS:
- Dogs
- Motion-activated cameras, doorbell cameras etc. linked to your phone.
- Peep Hole - cheap and effective!
- Acoustic warnings from various access points:
- Bells on gates, doors
- Loud vegetation around perimeter of property or home or barring easy access through windows etc.
- Window Monitoring Alarms - generally call out to a monitoring company if a window is broken.
- Delay
- OBJECTIVE: TO slow down an intruder once they have made the decision to enter your property or home - to buy you more time to respond effectively!
- METHODS:
- Distance - from road, driveway or publicly accessed area - paired with early detection!
- Gates & Fences - locked gates, sharp fences, electric fences
- Doors
- Amored Door Jambs - we used ArmorConcepts.com
- Anti-Kick Plates
- HavenLock
- Night Lock
- Windows
- bars or security film (we used the 8 mil film from BDF)
- Demo, demo, installation.
- bars or security film (we used the 8 mil film from BDF)
- Safe Room: Have a plan and rehearse it that makes you an even harder target within your home.
- Defend
- OBJECTIVE: To neutralize any threat to life or property.
- METHODS:
- Owning a firearm and equally important being well trained in safe and effective operation and maintaining that skill regularly.
- Dogs - if you get a dog that is purpose-bred for protection you have a human-seeking fur missile!
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
In today's episode we re-cap the takeaways from the 2-day grazing school I attended at Greg Judy's Green Pastures Farm in Clark, Missouri. The school was awesome, with great instruction from Greg and his co-instructor Abram Bowerman of Still Waters Farm in Spickard, MO.
Intensively managed ruminant livestock are the tool for building soil rapidly, at scale over broad acre landscapes. The benefits are too numerous to enumerate here, but suffice to say if you have even a couple of acres, you need to get livestock on them and you need to move them.
Anything less and it'll be like trying to homestead with one hand tied behind your back - so much more work or damn near impossible! When it comes to building a fertile, rich and productive soil bank, there is nothing that can compete with well-managed livestock. And building soil is fundamentally what sovereign homestead is all about. If you don't have living soil, you don't have many choices available to you.
Show Resources
- Green Pastures Farm
- Greg Judy's YouTube Channel
- Livestock Fodder Trees
- Dryland & Mediterranean Livestock Fodder Trees
- Temperate Climate Livestock Fodder Trees - individual tree write-ups and TSH Epi-007 - High Value Livestock Fodder Trees For Temperate Climates
- Livestock Fodder Trees at Honey Badger Nursery
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Today's episode is a short one about just doing the next thing.
You don't have to have everything mapped out ahead of time. If you have a set of principles (permaculture) and a long-term, BIG vision (your Minimum Holistic Goal - aka your "10 Year Vision"), it becomes very easy to prioritize and act on the next most impactful thing, without having a master plan.
It's the SAPA framework - Survey, Assess, Prioritize, and Act - a short acronum for a decision-making loop based on permaculture principles.
Survey (Observe And Interact), Assess (Integrate Feedback), then Prioritize and Act on things that you can complete in an appropriate time frame and that will pay you back a multiple of what you've invested.
If you feel overwhelmed with choosing your next thing to do in the evolution of your homestead towards greater self-sufficieny and self-reliance, start by getting your BIG vision outlined (I recommend this process).
From there, assess your survival needs and start with something small that can be completed in one hour (there is almost always some low-hanging fruit that you can literally complete in an hour or less that will increase your self-reliance or self-sufficiency for one or more of your core survival needs - this is permaculture principle #9: Choose Small-Scale, Intensive Solutions.
Then do it again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the next day, and so on.
This is how you will create your sovereign homestead that is a perfect reflection of what you value most and will provide you with the things you need the most to live your highest quality of life.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear understanding of 1) who and what resources you have to work with, 2) your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and 3) what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Olexy from Pixabay.
Today's show is all about getting clear on what makes a homestead sovereign vs. a modern homestead vs. just a homestead.
SPOILER ALERT: It's all about CHOICE. A well-designed homestead gives you more choice - more freedom to say NO to those things that are not in alignment with your highest quality of life, so that you can say yes to the things that are.
We then go into the SAPA Framework for conducting your own sovereignty self-assessment for your life and landscape, applying it to all the basic survival needs: Water, Nutrition & Calories, Shelter, Physical Security, Hygiene & Sanitation, Health & Medical Care, Energy, Finances.
- Survey -
- What your needs for BLANK?
- Where does your BLANK come from?
- Assess
- Who controls the source?
- Rank yourself in terms of Self-Reliance (time) vs. Self-Sufficiency (%) differences between the two
- Which are you trying to increase for each category?
- How well are they being met?
- Are these needs better met by moving the locus of production closer to you or further away?
- Who controls the source?
- Prioritize
- Where would you feel the pinch first? Two ways to gauge this…
- If you had to stay home for 30 days, can’t leave - what is the first thing that would run-out or malfunction?
- That source is gone - how long until you feel it?
- Does it threaten life or property?
- YES: This is a high priority.
- If so, how long until you would be forced to do something ill-advised under the circumstances to meet this need?
- NO: this is a facet of your current lifestyle that isn’t essential to your survival, but its absence makes you less comfortable
- YES: This is a high priority.
- Where would you feel the pinch first? Two ways to gauge this…
- Act
- FOCUSING QUESTION: What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, will make everything else easier or unnecessary?
- Tailored: What’s the one thing I can do for my [BASIC NEED] sovereignty, such that by doing it, will make further steps towards self-reliance or self-sufficiency for [BASIC NEED] easier or unnecessary?
- FOCUSING QUESTION: What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, will make everything else easier or unnecessary?
In short, applying the SAPA framework to all of your basic survival needs areas will help you identify the action steps with the greatest ROI that you can take today to move you and your family in the direction of resilience and greater time freedom.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show is the interview I just did with Jen and Sammy of the Millennial Pioneers Podcast on What Is Permaculture? We talk about the basics of what permaculture is about, and tangible, simple ways to get started integrating permaculture design and mindset into designing our own lives.
We are living in a time when the bills racked up over the past centuries and decades of over-taxing our ecological support base, looting our economy and profligately expending energy are coming due. Permaculture design can solve a lot of the problems, or at the very least help us navigate the consequences of the predicaments that we find ourselves in, that we face as we navigate a future of decreasing net energy, fractured and dysfunctional ecologies and the death of the prosperity=constant growth economy.
You can find Sammy's work and her own podcast at TheResilientLearner.com, and the Millennial Pioneers podcast at Jen's website GirlSeeksJoy.com
Show Resources
- Toby Hemenway’s books - Gaia’s Garden and The Permaculture City
- Permaculture Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison if you want to go DEEP into the nuts and bolts of applied permaculture design.
- The Permies.com forums for just about anything permaculture
- TSH Epi-002 - The Primer Directive, 3 Ethics and 12 Principles Of Permaculture podcast episode
- Getting Started with vermicomposting - Nutrient Cycling For Homesteads: Part 1 - Vermicompost
YouTube Channels
- Geoff Lawton's YouTube channel - excellent, free educational content on his YouTube, and also an amazing do-at-your-own-pace online PDC.
- Andrew Millison's channel for excellent narrated visual presentation of applied permaculture concepts.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Homestead Super Plant Showcase - All About Amazing Vetiver Grass
If you haven't heard of vetiver grass and are homesteading in USDA zone 7b or higher, this is a must listen!
Vetiver Grass - Chrysopogon zizanioides - is a perennail, tufted, clump-forming grass that grows up to 9' tall in the tropics, and typically 6' tall in Mediterranean and humid temperate climates. It is known worldwide for its incredibly dense and fibrous root system that grows 15'+ deep, and is utilized around the world for erosion repair and prevention, slope stabilization, water clarification, sewage effluent treatment, biomass, livestock fodder, hay, and essential oil. Vetiver grass is also incredibly well-behaved - it does not produce viable seed and does not have running rhizomatous roots or stolons - meaning it will stay where you put it. To make more you can very easily divide a mature vetiver clumpe to produce upwards of 30 viable vetiver tillers (young vetiver plants budding off the mature clump).
Vetiver grass can survive winter temperatures as low as 0-5 degrees Fahrenheit, and highs up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It can handle snow and frost as long as the ground doesn't freeze - which generally means it will grow and survive well in USDA Zones 7b and higher. Vetiver grass is incredibly drought hardy once established due to its incredibly deep root system and its C4 physiology. Vetiver grass culms are very stiff and upright, and when planted in contour strips, the grass will grow into a dense living wall that prevents sheetflow erosion and enhances infiltration. It can be buried in sediment and will root into accumulated sediments. It can be burned to the ground and will regrow from subterranean buds. It can be grazed heavily and is an excellent forage or cut fodder for horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits - even certain types of herbivorous fish! It can be cut multiple times a year and it literally a "carbon pump". It is used throughout the world to treat sewage effluent and to clarify manure lagoons, while producing mineral rich hay as a by-product. If you have a greywater reed bed or blackwater treatment system vetiver grass is amazing and reducing total dissolved solids (TDS) and E. coli counts.
Join me in this show as we dive deep into all of the amazing characteristics and many functions that vetiver grass can perform for your homestead. This plant is incredible and is a true ally for any regenerative landscape. It is a total honey badger - incredibly tenacious once established and well-behaved in any landscape - this one can do so much for your homestead, especially if you have erosion issues or are looking to produce feed for your livestock at low to no cost!
Show Resources
- Vetiver.org - international consortium of vetiver systems practitioners - this website has an immense library of scientific literature detailing the many applications of vetiver grass for a wide range of environmental restoration purposes. All freely available.
- Vetiver grass suppliers - look up a place near you to get some vetiver slips.
- Honey Badger Nursery will be carrying vetiver grass in the near future in southeast Tennessee.
- All Things Vetiver Grass - curated YouTube playlist - lots of great videos in here demonstrating vetiver grass in a wide variety of applications - from stabilizing beaches to treating sewage effluent to holding fragile hillslopes to feeding animals.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
How can we design our lives and our homesteads to maximize our freedom in Time, Health, Wealth and Spirit?
This is a primary lifestyle design aim for anyone interested in living as a sovereign human being today.
Join me today as we discuss the 4 freedoms - all of which are aspects of FREEDOM - the ability to choose / say "no" to things.
- Freedom in time is by nature a state of abundance. Abundance is a state of living off the interest, or surplus, of natural systems without consuming the principal. Abundance comes about when savings are continually reinvested to productive ends. Time Freedom is Abundant Living. We have freedom in time when our basic needs are met by systems that largely function without requiring our constant involvement.
- Freedom in health is continuous, harmonic energy flow amongst the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical aspects of our nature. Fundamentally, health is about being functional - can you do the things that you are capable of and need to do (physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally) in order to realize your highest quality of life?
- Freedom in wealth is having access to required forms of capital when needed on the path to realizing one’s purpose. When needed is key - being able to transmute one form of capital to another as appropriate for the time and place.
- Freedom in spirit is having knowledge of Self and the courage to live true to it. To be free in spirit is to use self-knowledge to shed that which is not authentic to the Self, and in so doing live ever more true to one’s purpose. Freedom in Spirit is courageous and self-validating and cannot be bound by the thoughts, projections or opinions of others.
Show Resources
- The 4 Freedoms: Principles For Regenerative Lifestyle Design
- Permaculture: Foundational Ethics & Principles
- Creating Resilient Wealth With The 8 Forms Of Capital
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
The day has finally arrived! We are leaving California and moving to Tennessee!
In today's show I go into all the things that are pushing us out of California and pulling us towards the Volunteer State! We'll cover the economic and regulatory reasons why California just isn't an option for us to build a life here, and why the economic and regulatory landscape of Tennessee is a much better fit for the things we want to do and the kind of life that we want to live.
We'll also talk about taxes, business regulations, general legislative climate, actual physical climate, topography, cultural factors, and (gotta keep it weird seeing as we are from CA and all) even some astrological factors that are indicating that Tennessee, and specifically southeast Tennessee, is the place to be for us.
Show Resources
- Freedom In The 50 States Index - a state-by-state ranking of individual and economic freedom - this is a great starting place to drill down and find the state that is most aligned with what you require to live free and well!
- TaxFoundation.org - index of income tax rates across the U.S. - a good place to look up the tax advantages or disadvantages of relocating.
- Out Of Bounds Astrology - can't recommend a natal chart reading with Phil more strongly - do this if you're looking at relocating! Phil can look up where you're thinking of going, or help to find places that align with your invidual makeup. It is guaranteed to be a very insightful and grounding conversation!
- Tennessee Specific Resources
- Tennessee Greenbelt Law for limiting property taxes for agricultural, forest and open space properties.
- Greenbelt brochure
- Tennessee made ivermectin available over the counter without a prescription during the pandemic - one of the few states that did!
- Tennessee State Fire Marshal's list of building codes by county and township - if you're looking for a place with freedom to build what you want without permits and unnecessary red tape, check this list.
- Tennessee passed SB123 which will create a state-level meat inspection agency to address the current shortage in slaughterhouses - instead of dealing with Federal inspectors, they're bringing it down to the state level - a step in the right direction to get ready for the next engineered "crisis"!
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
In today's show I detail my journey into what will be a multi-year endeavor - completely de-Googling my life. For us to live as sovereign human beings this day in age, we have to consciously design our digital lives to maintain appropriate levels of privacy and security amidst the ever-rising tide of surveillance and tracking. De-Googling my phone was one process I began a year ago in order to start to take back some control over my data and my reliance upon centralized tech cloud services.
Despite the many pitfalls we face daily with smartphones in our lives, they are also tremendously powerful tools, and can be one of the most powerful tools you have when operating your homestead and homestead enterprises as a well-integrated whole. We need to be conscious of how we integrate tech into our lives, and understand that anything they say is "free" means that you are the product.
Join me today as I share my experience in de-Googline my phone and give you the concrete steps to follow to do the same and claw back from digital privacy from the technocrats.
Show Resources (aka your guide to de-Googling a Google Pixel phone)
- Operating Systems
- CalyxOS - this is what I ended up going with - maintains the Android privacy standards, very user friendly, faster than Graphene, looks great, excellent functionality and plenty of options to customize everything - oh and privacy is the default setting, but you have plenty of options to make yourself less private if you so desire.
- Watch TechLore's review of CalyxOS: The Private & Secure Android ROM For Everyone!
- GrapheneOS - more secure and private than Calyx, but requires more technical knowledge to operate, is slower and has a less seamless user experience - for more advanced folks IMO.
- LineageOS - steered clear of this due to reported lack of verified boot mode - backdoors perhaps?
- CalyxOS - this is what I ended up going with - maintains the Android privacy standards, very user friendly, faster than Graphene, looks great, excellent functionality and plenty of options to customize everything - oh and privacy is the default setting, but you have plenty of options to make yourself less private if you so desire.
- Installing & Setting Up CalyxOS
- Calyx OS Installation Guides
- Linux (Ubuntu)
- Windows
- Mac
- Set Up Guides
- TechLore's Complete Android Privacy & Security Guide
- Android Privacy Lab's CalyxOS - Full Post-Install Set Up Guide - Maximize Privacy On Your Android Phone
- Rob Braxman's deep dive into MicroG - what it is, what it does, how it impacts your privacy - excellent resource!
- very helpful Reddit thread - How I Made CalyxOS The Perfect Balance Of Private & Awesome - A Guide
- Calyx OS Installation Guides
- App Stores
- F-Droid Store:
- Sandbox
- Shelter App - a MUST have! Basically allows you to have two phones in one - one for work, one for personal, and limit any unruly behaviors from work-necessary apps to a small sandbox so they don’t have access to all the info on your phone. You can also "freeze" apps that have spyware or trackers so they can't constantly report back to the mothership.
- Read this article from MakeUseOf on how Shelter works.
- Browsers
- Fennec (Firefox)
- Tor
- Video Calls - Jitsi - has desktop and mobile apps for open source video conferencing
- Simple Mobile Tools - found in Fdroid, all the basic data management tools we've come to expect on a phone - only simpler.
- Gallery Pro - all photos and videos, multiple formats
- Contacts
- Notes
- Calendar - use EteSync service to create shared calendars, sync across devices - very affordable and works great
- File Manager
- Camera
- Open Camera App
- Documents / Office Suite
- NextCloud - Calyx has great integration here - can also be self-hosted on Embassy and auto-sync with your phone!
- NextCloud Hub
- NextCloud Files - file sharing
- NextCloud Talk - calls, chat, video conferencing
- NextCloud Groupware - calendar, contacts, email
- NextCloud Office - real time document collaboration - integrates with LibreOffice on Desktop
- NextCloud Hub
- NextCloud - Calyx has great integration here - can also be self-hosted on Embassy and auto-sync with your phone!
- Email
- K-9 Mail
- ProtonMail
- File Sharing
- SyncThing - self-hosted on Embassy, for syncing files locally (at home) or remotely (over Tor)
- Navigation
- Magic Earth - download map files ahead of time - will work even if you have no service or connectivity - this is Great for off-grid stuff! Has voice directions
- Organic Maps - based on OpenSTreetMaps - no spoken directions
- Password Manager
- BitWarden - I self host my own instance on my Embassy personal server, but you can create an account with BitWarden or download and run your own instance if you have the technical chops.
- Messaging
- Telegram
- Signal
- Briar - haven't used this myself, but I've read good things.
- Simple Messenger (native to CalyxOS - slim on features, but can do group texts etc)
- Phone - integrated w/ contacts, call history, simple dial pad etc.
- Drawbacks - no Missed Call alert flags, have to dial in to listen to voicemail, can’t merge calls (at least I haven't successfully done so yet).
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
What if we chose to view nature’s gift of annually-replenishing fixed carbon sources (i.e. brush, forests etc) in high-fire danger areas as an opportunity to harmonize with the annual carbon cycle instead of as a nuisance to be combated?
Could we improve home safety in the urban-wildland edge and take steps towards living within our annual solar energy budget, while saving money and improving habitat and ecology?
We absolutely can. Join me for a journey into what could be if we chose to integrate fire into daily life again. In today's show we cover...
- What a fire-integrated culture could look like
- The amazing technology that we already have to make burning biomass a central part of meeting our needs without sacrificing convenience while boosting the health of our homestead landscapes!
- Rocket-stove technology for heating water, heating people and spaces, cooking, even forging and making maple syrup!
- Making biochar from clean-burning pyrolytic stoves and kilns while meeting our heat-generation needs.
- What needs to happen for such a future to be realized at scale.
- Acceptance of the true nature of this climate and bioregion - Fire is a part of this place and its rhythms and we can’t change that - let's stop fighting this natural energy and design our lives and homes to align with it instead!
- More freedom to innovate
- To build fire-proof homes from natural materials.
- To burn biomass to meet basic energy needs.
- Fire-literacy that comes from LIVING WITH FIRE - respecting fire because we have intimate first-hand knowledge of its power.
- a SLOWER PACE…fire demands attention and calls us to slow down - and this is a good thing especially now in the times we are living in.
Show Resources
- Space & People Heating
- DIY Rocket Mass Heaters 8 movie set - HD instant view, download or DVD set.
- DragonTech Rocket Mass Heater store - a place to order pre-made, done-for-you RMH part and complete systems.
- DIY Plans for building your own RMH + Free Heat RMH movie
- 3D Plans for DIY Rocket Sauna Heater - yes!
- Water Heating
- Rocket Hot Water Systems Playlist
- Wood-Fired Hot Water system from SunDog Builders shows just how simple this can be.
- Cooking
- Cooking With Biomass Playlist
- DIY Rocket Ovens Movie HD Download
- Riserless Rocket-Powered Cooktops for Home Cooking - Walker Stoves.com
- 3D Plans for a DIY Rocket Heater with Lorena Cooktop Option
- Charcoal & Biochar
- Making Charcoal & Biochar Playlist
- Bluesky Biochar - Michael Wittman - wood vinegar for sale and a great educational resource!
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
In today's show we continued with the Living With Fire series in Part 3 - all about fire-proof or at least fire-wise home construction and home refit suggestions to increase fire survivability. Its all simple - some steps are easy and cheap, some are not. We will cover...
- Fire Proof Building Materials - stone, compressed/rammed earth (super adobe), earthbag construction, straw bale construction, earth-bermed structures.
- Dealing with apertures - apertures (openings) into the home are primary ignition pathways - the radiant heat from an approaching fire can ignite materials within the home without any embers or sparks entering the dwelling!
- windows, vents, screens etc. = primary ignition pathways!
- Fire Shelters - why if you live in a fire-prone climate it’s a good idea to have one!
- WEEDS fire sprinkler system - a counter-intuitive way to set up home sprinklers that makes them WAY more effective at protecting your home during a fire than typical roof-mounted impact sprinklers.
Show Resources
- Video of a family narrowly escaping the Paradise Fire in Paradise, CA. Fires hit fast - if you have a fire-safe shelter sometimes it can be safer to stay put and not risk getting caught out in the open!
- Living With Fire - Part 3 - Home Construction And Retrofit Suggestions For Fire Survivability - full blog post
- WEEDS Sprinkler System PDF - Wind-Enabled Ember Dousing
- UC Berkeley Home Fire Risk Assessment (2 minute assessment)
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today we dive into the nitty gritty of regenerative firescaping following Living With Fire - Part 1 in Episode 33.
We will cover:
- Using Zones & Sectors to plan out the landscape around your house with regards to fire resilience.
- Regenerative Fire Resistant Landscaping Principles - the basic do's an don'ts to apply when designing a fire resilient landscape and homestead.
- Fire Safety Buffers - two different buffers around you built structures and other valuable property.
- 0-30' - the intensive zone
- 30-100' - the moderate zone
- Post-Fire Remediation - why you've got to get on it quickly following a fire to steer things in a healthy direction during recovery AND reduce future workload and fire risk.
Show Resources
- Living With Fire (Part 2) - Regenerative Firescaping: Protecting Your Home With Good Design
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today’s show is the first episode in a series of shows that I'll be putting out on designing, building and managing a homestead in a high-fire risk climate.
So much energy in the form of human labor, tax dollars, and lost ecological integrity is expended each and every year for the purpose of reducing fire risk - and yet many of these interventions don't actually reduce the risk of home damage or loss that much, AND they create a treadmill that requires mowing, chipping and spraying toxic chemicals year after year after year - with no end in site...
...sounds like a few other government programs I can think of. The solution is temporary, and actually ensures there will be greater fire risk and ecological harm next year - which means we always have to do MORE and pay MORE for fire mitigation and prevention each year - and the results show it isn't working!
It's time for a fresh take on living with fire, and that is what this series is going to be all about.
In today's show we will lay the groundwork for the rest of the series as we cover:
- The concept of regenerative firescaping
- Why you first must accept that Fire WILL happen, and then that WHAT YOU DO MATTERS.
- The Two kinds of fire risks:
- Those you can control/influence
- Those you can’t
- Basic Fire Science - the mechanics of how wildfires are fed and powered, and how understanding the nature of wildfire is a huge step toward designing, building and maintaining a firewise home that is also regenerative and an ecological positive (not a detriment!)
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show is inspired by the Ayn Rand quote “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
We (the larger collective of society, government etc) have been living in ignorance of reality for quite a while. Right now, a multitude of the consequences of this multi-generational ignorance are coming home to roost.
- Our financial system and the debt-backed fiat currency at its center is crumbling and headed for a crack-up reset.
- The broader, planet-wide ecology upon which we depend for everything that sustains our existence is fractured, diminished and producing a mere fraction of the abundance that it could.
- Our economy is run by oligarchs for oligarchs, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to ludicrous proportions.
- Our social well being is in shambles after 3 years of plandemic insanity, and mental unhealth has never been so widespread.
- The larger spiritual house of the nation is in disarray, and everywhere the evidence of hopelessness and purposelessness are evident.
And yet, despite the state of things, we have more opportunity before us than ever before to create beautiful, abundant, healthy lives. I posit that homesteading is one of the BEST ways to raise and develop whole human beings. An intentionally designed homestead and the lifestyle that goes with it has the three things that ALL people need in order to lead meaningful lives:
- Community - Living rooted in place and connected to the ecology that sustains us.
- We take care of things that take care of us
- Identity - Individual identity as belonging to that place and the people that call it home.
- This is healthy tribalism!
- Purpose - Individual AND shared group purpose of being needed by that place, its people and one’s future descendants.
- A healthy sense of obligation to contribute to making the world better for those that will inherit it yet have no say in the decisions of today.
A sovereign homestead is so much more than a collection of things and organisms that puts food on your table or money in your pocket or a roof over your head. It can literally be the foundation for becoming the best version of you possible and - perhaps the greatest legacy we can hope to leave behind - raising whole, intact, fully-actualized children that know and own their own power.
Show Resources
- The 7th Generation Principle: Designing Systems For Continuity Through Time
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Join me for a discussion of 5 Rules For Happy Homesteading from my own lived experience.
- Be crystal clear on your BIG Why - why are you doing your life the way you are doing it?
- Finish What You Start - obtain a yield and liberate your time BEFORE adding more projects, systems or things to take care of!
- Build in Management for every system you add - when you are designing, growing, building make sure that you account for the ongoing maintenance and management of systems on your homestead. A stitch in time saves nine!
- Show, don't tell - Let your actions and results do the talking to convince others of the value in what you are doing. Never gloat, and never say "I told you so".
- Make Beauty and essential function - design and build your homestead to be beautiful. This will feed your soul and make you fall in LOVE with your own life - which is entirely the point of sovereign homesteading.
Show Resources
- The 4 Freedoms
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show is about homesteading being one of the best tools we have as sovereign individuals for creating freedom for ourselves and our families outside the Scope, Reach and Will of the state.
The State, which I'll refer to as the Matrix here, has 3 aspects to it's control structure:
- Scope: “laws on the books”
- This is practically limitless. There have been approximately ~90,000 laws and regulations passed since 1995 at Congressional level alone.
- However, these claims of control are only impactful if the Reach and Will are there to back it up.
- Reach: “boots on the ground”
- Is enforcement physically possible? In the past, this always meant the government had to be able to put an ideologically possessed individual (the State Agent) literally within arms reach of its subjects to control them (or sword, spear, rifle, artillery range etc).
- We'll talk about a good example of this - Afghanistan - Graveyard of Empires, and how the terrain literally creates a fundamentally unconquerable environment and people.
- Today, we must also contend with Digital Reach - a.k.a. Technological Enforcement which is built around controlling ACCESS to services, goods, money etc. This is a relatively new aspect of State Reach.
- Is enforcement physically possible? In the past, this always meant the government had to be able to put an ideologically possessed individual (the State Agent) literally within arms reach of its subjects to control them (or sword, spear, rifle, artillery range etc).
- Will: “what exists in the heart of the State agent”
- Who are the enforcers? Are they known or unknown to you? Are they neighbors / community members or out-of-towners? The more personal our relationship with the enforcers, the less likely they are to be their worst around us.
- EXAMPLE: Sheriffs refusing to enforce unconstitutional laws.
Where Scope, Reach and Will overlap is "The Matrix" - there is total control. Anything outside of the center is more free. If you can move from a 3/3 situation to a 2/3 situation, whole new horizons of freedom open up. Let's look at the different 2/3 overlaps.
- Scope & Reach, but no Will = unenforced laws, speak easies, “look the other way” culture
- This can be good and/or bad!
- Reach & Will, but no Scope = cutting edge industry, non-coercive legal activity, something that is too new (the State is slow to understand because it is not the innovator!).
- Example: Bitcoin
- Will & Scope, but no Reach = off-shore accounts, jurisdictional & geographic arbitrage
- Move you (your talents, energy, skills etc) and your assets (8 forms of capital) to a place that respects them!
Homesteading is the secret weapon for creating more freedom in our lives. They are all based on who we become while walking the sovereign individual's path. Homesteading is the ultimate human development regimen in my opinion. Let's look at three ways that homesteading helps us create more freedom:
- Become an excellent ecosystem manager: The basic inputs for creating an abundant living system are Light, Water, CO2 and Soil Minerals - and all of them are outside the Scope, Reach and Will of the State to control! With them you can manage your landscape to produce meat, milk, fiber, fuel, medicine, fodder, materials etc. - all the raw feedstocks for Primary forms of Wealth!
- By managing Light, Water, Soil and Life you can maximize these free inputs and yield sovereign production!
- You can also create the “Wall of Green” that the taxman can’t see the value in. How the heck do you tax a food forest? It doesn't fit the State Agent paradigm. He does not have "the eyes to see".
- Invest in learning and improving your SKILLS: Once you have a skill and know how to do a thing, the State cannot take that away.
- Invest your time and energy in building in-real-life, face-to-face, over-the-fence-post RELATIONSHIPS. Trusted neighbors are priceless in the times we are living into.
REMEMBER - What you do matters. The State would have you believe in the inevitability of their control - but they are not inevitable. Practice discernment to take better action, and improve your discernment by dialing in your orientation. This is why all of my design clients must distill their Minimum Holistic Goal before we begin designing anything, and it is what I have to offer you on your sovereign homestead journey.
Show Resourcesb
- The 4 Pillars Of Productive And Profitable Homesteads- Managing Light, Water, Soil And Life To Create More Freedom In Your Life.
- 8 Forms of Capital
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
To build and live a sovereign life in a time when the majority of society is not interested in, and even vehemently opposed to, the ideas of personal responsibility and self-ownership, you will have to get comfortable going first and being weird.
In today's show I am joined by Sammy as we discuss the ways in which we as sovereign humans must "go first and be weird" in order to be healthy, to grow true wealth, to locate ourselves in a place that allows us to thrive, to navigate technology's impact on our lives, and to build and maintain strong relationships in a time when isolation and social division are the norm.
We share many personal anecdotes and lessons of going first and being weird, as well as some questions to assess the degree of external vs. internal validation that may be driving your current lifestyle choices.
Show Resources
- TSH015 - Lessons From 3 Years Of Tent Life
- Chris Martenson's Crash Course @ Peak Prosperity
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show is about the second layer of designing resilient homestead properties. Last week we started with the basic principles of holistic whole-site water system design. This week, we build on that with the basic principles that guide holistic access design and implementation across broadacre landscapes.
- Paradigm
- Access can be an asset or liability - depends on design and maintenance
- Every linear foot of access has a maintenance bill attached to it - design with this in mind!
- Access should ideally improve hydrological function, at the very least be neutra
- Access can be an asset or liability - depends on design and maintenance
- Access Patterning Questions
- Where do you / your animals / wildlife need to go?
- Animals move between water, food and shelter.
- What kinds of activities are/will be performed there and along the way?
- What modes of transport does the route need to accommodate at which times of the year?
- How should the access route be patterned and constructed to create the lowest possible maintenance profile while providing the necessary functionality?
- Where do you / your animals / wildlife need to go?
Access DO’s and DON’Ts
- DO
- Minimize the use of impermeable hardscapes
- Drain road surfaces early and often
- Best Chance, No Chance, First Chance, Last Chance utilize grade changes
- Cross valleys perpendicular to water flows at right angle to flow in riffles if driving through across dam walls (check dam, earthen embankment)
- Follow ridge lines where appropriate (least drainage pressure)
- Crown or slope the road surface appropriate to the context
- Crowned = center of the road higher than both edges - generally 2-4% - drains to ditches on one or both sides
- Insloped = drains water from road surface into the uphill cut bank - road is effectively holding water in the ditch
- Outsloped = road sloped to downhill fill edge, discharges over a broad surface
- DON’T
- Install roads following valley bottoms = this is short-sighted!
- Transfer water from one watershed to another add grade changes w/ appropriate outsloping or cross drains!
- Let roadways become entrenched! These cannot be drained effectively and will continue degrading - this is basically a creek!
- Drive on a road when conditions aren’t appropriate!
Show Resources
- Vehicle Access Drainage Prescriptions
- Incised Drainage Rehabilitation
- Episode 27 - Basics of Whole-Site Water Systems Design
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today we go over the four basic questions that guide all holistic water patterning design. Whether you're an experienced designer or homesteader, or a complete novice that is just getting introduced to optimizing water patterning on your land, this show is for you. That's because, no matter what level you're at, the process is always the same!
Every good whole-site water design follows this same progression:
- How much water do you have? Quantify and qualify the resource you are working with!
- Where is the water currently going / how is it currently behaving? Assess the current function of your homestead watershed.
- Where should the water go / how should it be behaving? For what you want to produce / for your specific homesteading context, where do you need the water to go that it isn't, and how does it need to behave en route and once it is in that location? This step is all about optimizing your hydrological function to have the healthiest soils capable of supporting to greatest amount of living plant life (i.e. your solar panel!) to convert as much sunlight as possible into the greatest about of carbohydrate possible.
- How will you best get the water where it needs to go while behaving as it should? What are the appropriate drainage, infiltration and storage elements to pattern water passively or actively to optimize the overall function of your homestead ecosystem?
Water is blessedly predictable - it always flows straight downhill. Because of this, we can design systems that optimize the productive capacity of every drop of water that our landscapes receive - we just have to take a little bit of time to objectively analyze our landscapes. This is how you do it.
Show Resources
- Water Drainage Elements
- Water Infiltration Elements
- Water Storage Elements
- Pumping Options
- Bunyip Pump (low-head, variable-flow)
- Ram Pump (high-head, low-flow)
- Rife River Pump (low-head, high-flow)
- Nose Pumps (livestock powered pumping
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Join me today for a short episode on the power of paradigm.
We're just two weeks into 2023 but I'm still treating it like the turning of a new year, and this one calls us to take another introspective look at our own personal paradigms regarding our homesteads, businesses, landscapes and lives and really ask ourselves if the foundation of our perception and decision making - our paradigm - is aligned with our highest quality of life?
Our paradigm needs to be if we want to stand a chance of living free, healthy and sovereign lives in 2023 and beyond.
- Does your paradigm see problems as burdens or opportunities?
- Does your paradigm see Nature as an opponent or an ally?
- Is order imposed or emergent?
- The amount of outside energy that must be applied to keep a system functioning a certain way (a landscape, a home, a family unit, a business…etc) is a helpful approximation of imposed vs. emergent order
- Is your paradigm problem or solution oriented?
- In every problem lie the seeds of an elegant solution - IF we can see it!
- Do you invite thinking or shield yourself from it?
- Intentional Design that addresses Root Causes vs. Symptom-focused Quick Fixes
We must be willing to embrace complexity if we hope to design our own lives - off-the-shelf solutions DO NOT WORK for creating a free and sovereign lifestyle.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
If you are a homesteader you know there are LOTS of decisions that you need to make, almost constantly, and without end. How can you be sure that your decisions are maximally aligned with your true values and highest quality of life goals in the Age of Information? Today we are subjected to ever increasing streams of information, accessible at light seed and generally only seconds away, 24/7/365.
How do you stay focused on what is worthy of your attention?
How do you know what is worth your time and what is not?
How can you tell the "shiny" distractions from the authentically helpful?
Today's show is all about discernment - what I believe is the most valuable skill for any liberty-loving homesteader working to create a sovereign life in the Dim Age. We are drowning in information. A shortage of information is NOT the problem in deciding what is the most efficacious path forward for you, your family and your land. Discernment is. We'll talk about what discernment is, how to orient yourself so that you can discern accurately, and the work that needs to be done to create an effective orientation (HINT - it has a lot to do with creating your Minimum Holistic Goal - see below!).
Show Resources
- Cyprian's 'Attention Economy' series on YouTube
Orient yourself towards your Sovereign Homestead
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Join me this week as we look at the basic types of water storage elements used in designing a functional broadacre water system.
Nearly all broadacre water systems include some form of water storage, either as groundwater (aquifer storage), retained soil moisture (accessible by living plant roots), or bulk water (ponds, lakes, tanks, cisterns). Water storage elements function to:
- cover peaks in demand (production from the water source cannot meet peak demand)
- smooth out variations in supply (seasonal changes in availability and ease of obtaining water)
- provide water security in case of supply interruption or disaster (supply buffers)
- save structures from wild fire
- meet legal requirements (firefighting, fire suppression sprinklers etc.)
- improve water quality (clarification, filtration, settling etc.)
- provide thermal storage and freeze protection (thermal mass of water modifies local microclimate)
- enable a smaller pipe to serve for a distant source (cost savings on water infrastructure)
In this show, we're going to talk about the four main types of water storage elements that you might encounter while optimizing your homestead hydrology!
- Soil Storage - we always start here - soil storage is the cheapest form of storage, especially if you're trying to grow something.
- Ponds & Dams
- Tanks & Cisterns
- Aquifer Storage
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Any time water encounters anything but a perfectly level surface, it will move. This movement is called drainage. Water will always move at right angle to contour in response to gravity on a non-level surface – i.e it will move straight down slope. Water will continue to move straight down slope until its course is somehow altered by something in its path. In this way water movement is predictable at the macro scale. This is drainage.
Anytime water is being drained (moving) from one area to another, you have an opportunity to design those patterns of water movement throughout your landscape to reduce or eliminate any potential for damage while maximizing its productive use and ecological benefit. This is the exact opposite of how drainage is treated in most modern design contexts - as a “problem” to be "solved" with what I call 'hydrophobic design' - that solely focuses on getting the water AWAY as fast as possible, without thought to the opportunity lost and the negative downstream impacts that WILL have upstream consequences in the future.
We can do WAY BETTER at designing and patterning water drainage than our current societal norm. By selecting appropriate drainage elements and DESIGNING & MAINTAINING them well you can turn what others might look at as a problem into a massive advantage in your landscape. Think of these drainage elements as tools in your toolkit that you can select from as needed when designing or retrofitting your landscape for improved hydrological function - they all have their right place, time and context for use.
This is the first show in what will be a series on broad acre water systems design. As of now, there will be a show and accompanying blog post for the following sub-topics that make up a holistic broadacre water system:
- Water Drainage Elements (today's show)
- Water Infiltration Elements
- Water Storage Elements
- Erosion Prevention & Repair
- Water Pumping Elements
Each show in the series will be accompanied by a blog post with detailed write-ups on each of the elements we talk about in here. Each element write up will contain a description of the element, followed by a list of functions it performs, a list of context-specific design criteria for determining whether or not it is appropriate in a given situation, general rules of thumb/design criteria to follow when designing and installing it, and additional resources for continued learning.
Show Resources
- Water Drainage Elements - Index Post
- Rolling Dips
- Flatland Drains
- Water Bars
- Roadside Ditches
- Armored Drains
- Grassed Waterways
- Culverts
- Armored Fill Crossings
- Level-Sill Spillways
- Belt Diversions
- Trickle Pipes
- French Drains (coming soon!)
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
I'm kind of tired of the term "carbon negative" being used to greenwash products, companies and habits of consumption.
Carbon, and I'm really talking about CO2 here, is not the boogeyman it has been made out to be.
There is a thing called the carbon cycle on planet Earth. It IS the foundation for all life on this planet. All forms of life on this planet are carbon-based life forms. All forms of aerobic life EMIT carbon as part of being alive.
Let's do away with "carbon-negative" - as a sovereign homesteader, I want a carbon-positive homestead - one that cycles more carbon through living systems and builds more soil with every passing year.
Don't get me wrong, we humans as a species have done A LOT of damage to the ecosystems that sustain our existence, and we have a lot of good work to do in order to put things right again. But lowering the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere from 415 to 350 so we don't "boil the oceans" and isn't where our focus should be.
Show Resources
- TSH 005 - The 4 Pillars Of A Productive Homestead - Light, Water, Soil and Life
- TSH 020 - Rats In A Cage
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
We are rats in a cage...if we allow it.
Today's episode is about learning to recognize and step back from narratives that pit us against an "other". I will go over how to identify them, what the real purpose of such a narrative is (HINT - it ain't in your best interest!), and, most importantly, how to take right action amidst the engineered conflict that would have you spend your life energy on things that don't better your life.
We're going to start by talking about "shock-induced aggression" in rats - and some of the very important findings that shed some light on what we've been living though in recent times, especially in the last three years during the manufactured CoVID scare. We'll cover what Mass Formation is and the conditions required for it to emerge at scale in a population; 1) isolation and poor social bonds, 2) reason and sense-making in short supply, 3) free-floating anxiety (a "fear" climate), and 4) rage (anger directed at an "other").
Then we'll talk about what we should be doing instead of squaring off against the "other", and that is focusing our energy on things we can control and influence (i.e. things that are much closer to home than anything the TV says you should be outraged about) that are generative - meaning they compound in their ability to help us live a high quality of life.
Show Resources
- Rats In A Cage - Peak Prosperity
- Rat Study 1971
- Rat Study 1964
- Rat Study Diagram
- Influence of Supine Posture on Rat Aggression
- Influence of Isolation on Rat Aggression
- Mattias Desmet interview w/ Chris Martenson
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
In this week's episode I walk through the process we've used to guide our family conversations about finding that "family land" for the long haul. Finding land with family can be a dicey endeavor - it requires honesty, real listening and everyone coming with the goal of understanding one another. If you come to a family land search with the idea of convincing everyone to see things your way, it's going to cause lots of drama and potentially damage some of the most valuable relationships in your life.
I'll take you through the three main parts of our family's process:
- Developing individual Quality of Life Statements - a clear one paragraph description of how each individual wants their life to be based on what they value most. This is step 2 from the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Course.
- Setting individual Boundary Conditions for beginning your geographic search - start with the two essential lists of boundary criteria; Must Haves and Deal Breakers. Get clear on what you must have and what you will not accept and, most importantly, WHY. Criteria Categories include Natural Resources, Climate, Legal, Taxes, Community/Cultural Amenities, Sound...and whatever else you need to speak!
- Share it with your people - THis is where the rubber meets the road - actually communicating your desired Quality of Life and Boundary Conditions. We developed a protocol we call "Stick Conversations" to make sure everyone got to say their piece in a way that helped everyone else understand, while minimizing opportunities for hurt feelings, project, judgement etc.
I hope this episode will help you have similar conversations with your family, or any group of people near and dear to you, so that all are better off for having had them. Done right, even when points of conflict are unearthed, sharing this introspective work with your inner circle can bring everyone closer together.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Join me today for a critical-thinking dive into swales - we cover what they are, the functions they perform and how they perform them, and then go into all of the context-specific factors that inform the decision of "To Swale Or Not To Swale".
More than being a referendum on swales, today's show is meant to serve as an example for how to think through selecting, designing and installing elements within your landscape so that they actually perform their intended design function (i.e. rehydrate your landscape so you can grow more food, more animals, more beauty - whatever!).
Swales are awesome rehydration elements and can be a boon to a healthy and productive landscape - provided they are a good fit for your context!
Do your due diligence when considering swales within your landscapes - they are not a one size fits all solution and should NOT be applied in many cases and contexts.
Show Resources
- Curated YouTube Playlist: Swales
- Greg Judy talking about his $10K swale mistake
- Darren Doherty discussing cost per volume of water stored with swales vs. keyline subsoiling.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's episode is all about cycling nutrients on your homestead to build rich, healthy, fertile soils that can't help but be productive. Soil fertility IS the number one asset a sovereign homestead can have. Indeed it's just about impossible to sovereign without it! Join me today for a high level overview of the different methods of cycling nutrients and generating your own fertility inputs to boost the productivity of your landscape and keep money in your pocket! We'll also look at how these different systems can play well together to capture and cycle nearly ALL of the "waste"streams generated by a typical American household into valuable amendments that can help you increase your independence from the grocery store. This episode is all about the permaculture principle of WASTE = FOOD! We will cover:
- Vermicomposting - Perhaps the easiest and highest value nutrient cycling system with tremendous benefits in nearly all contexts.
- Thermophilic composting - good 'ol fashioned turn 'n burn compost piles for processing large amounts of bulk materials into quality soil amendment.
- Johnson-Su Bioreactor composting system - produce incredibly high fungal-content compost that is great for perennial cropping systems.
- Compost tea brewing - brewing aerobic teas to get the most bang for your buck from your beneficial biological inocolums. This is a HUGE leverage point!
- Bokashi - a type of anaerobic "pickling" of food wastes - awesome because this can handle everything that worms don't like!
- Livestock - Chickens, pigs and black soldier fly larvae - all great way to get more value out of "waste" and turn it into food for you or something that grows food for you.
- Charcoal & Biochar - make a soil amendment that will literally last for thousands of years - the ultimate legacy investment to pass on to your kin.
- Korean Natural Farming Indigenous Effective Micro-organisms - a simple, effective and damn near free way to make a site-specific biological inoculum for your growing systems that literally comes from where you live! And the best part is - you only have to do it once!
- Greywater - sink water, laundry water, bathing water - all nutrient rich water that should go into your landscape to grow something!
- Blackwater - yes, I'm talking about toilet water here. Conventional septic systems inject this pathogen-laden water into the ground (often times into the same water supply that wells for potable water are tapping) when it could be utilized by biological systems at the surface to grow tons of food - with no stink of course!
- Compost Toilets - dry composting toilets are an excellent way to capture and utilize solid human wastes and turn them into a valuable soil amendment - for free!
- Biodegradable packaging (cardboard)- don't just recycle it, or throw it out - CYCLE IT and use it to enrich your homestead soil!
Show Resources
- Vermicomposting
- 7th Generation Design - Nutrient Cycling For Homesteads: Part 1 - Vermicomposting
- 7th Gen Curated YouTube Playlist - Vermiculture
- Thermophilic Composting
- 7th Generation Design - Nutrient Cycling For Homesteads: Part 4 - Thermophilic Composting
- Johnson-Su BioReactor Composting System
- 7th Gen Curated YouTube Playlist - Johnson Su BioReactors
- DIY Build Your Own Johnson Su BioReactor
- Compost Tea Brewing
- 7th Generation Design - Nutrient Cycling For Homesteads: Part 3 - Compost Tea
- 7th Gen Curated YouTube Playlist - Compost Tea
- Bokashi Composting
- 7th Generation Design - Nutrient Cycling For Homesteads: Part 2 - Bokashi Compost Systems
- 7th Gen Curated YouTube Playlist - Bokashi
- Livestock
- Geoff Lawton's Chicken Composting System
- Black Soldier Fly Larvae YouTube Playlist
- Charcoal & Biochar
- 7th Generation Design - Nutrient Cycling For Homesteads: Part 6 - Charcoal and Biochar
- 7th Gen Curated YouTube Playlist - Biochar
- Korean Natural Farming
- KNF Hawaii site
- Fermented Farm - clear breakdown of the IMO creation process
- Greywater
- 7th Gen Curated YouTube Playlist - Greywater Systems
-
Water Treatment Systems
- 7th Gen Curated Youtube Playlist - Wastewater Treatment Systems
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
In today's show we discuss the 4 R's of Regenerative Hydrology - Receive, Retain, Recharge, and Release - a simple mental framework for evaluating how your landscape is functioning with regards to the water element, AND how you can make changes in your management and design to optimize it for the benefit of your land, family, business and quality of life.
The 4 R's have parallels in managing a bank account.
- Receive is equivalent to Income - how much water does your landscape receive annually in precipitation? There isn't a lot we can do to change this number, but there are a few. It's important to know what you're working with from the outset.
- Recharge is equivalent to Deposit - how much of that annual paycheck is your landscape able to deposit into its interest-bearing savings account (i.e. your soil).
- Retain is equivalent to the interest-bearing savings account. How long is that water that you've managed to deposit into your soils or is being stored in some form or fashion remaining available to the web of life on your landscape? You can only put it to productive use if you retain it!
- Release is equivalent to Expenditure - we want to make sure that when we "spend" water we do so in a way that further increases our ability to receive, recharge an retain more water in the future! This means having systems of production and managing them so as to create a functional hydrology throughout your landscape!
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today we are discussing lessons learned from living in a canvas wall tent for 3 years on a permaculture farm. I am joined by my partner in love and life, Samantha Davis, for a trip down memory lane as we share the pros, cons and lessons learned from three years of tent-life and living pretty close to the elements. Today's episode is for anyone considering moving into a tent or yurt as a way to get on land quickly and cheaply - lots of things to consider to make sure it works for you and your partner!
Show Resources
- Colorado Yurt Company
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
In today's episode I share with you all my emerging framework for creating a regenerative (i.e. resilient, sovereign, anti-fragile) livelihood.
Show Resources
- ARTICLE: Creating A Regenerative Livelihood - An Emerging Framework - blog post with all of the guiding questions and linked resources in it.
- ARTICLE: Creating Resilient Wealth - The 8 Forms Of Capital
- VIDEO: Greg Judy - Generating Cash Flow On Your Farm
- VIDEO: Sepp Holzer's Krameterhof Farm - a beautiful example of context-specific design and regenerative enterprise
Ready To Create Your Anti-Fragile Livelihood?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show is a great primer for those of you new to the concept and practice of making charcoal and biochar. We will cover:
- What is charcoal vs. what is biochar?
- The MANY things you can do to increase your homestead productivity with charcoal AND biochar
- HOW to make your own charcoal - we’ll cover the theory, and then a bunch of practical methods and the characteristics, pros and cons of each.
- 4 Ways to make biochar from charcoal - there are more, but these are a great way to start
If you are a grower or a producer, charcoal and biochar deserve a place on your roster of regenerative techniques that take what is typically a waste or nuisance (brush, slash, excess carbonaceous material) and turn it into a multi-generational asset in your soils and throughout your landscape and home. Plus, making char is fun!
Show Resources
- Jon Jadai of Pun Pun Organic Farm in Thailand talks through his low-tech method of making charcoal with a 55 gallon drum TLUD.
- DIY Instructional Video from Aqueous Solutions on making your own 55 gallon TLUD.
- Charcoal Trench method
- Our curated YouTube playlist of a bunch of different charcoal making methods.
- Biochar
- ARTICLE: Uses in poultry farming
- ARTICLE: Biochar in cattle farming
- PDF Instructional for conducting clean, safe, effective top-lit burn piles in the forest to make char.
- ARTICLE: 55 Uses For Biochar
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show covers 9 different characteristics of a sovereign homestead.
What are the things that make a homestead more sovereign?
It all comes down to choice. A sovereign homestead is one that gives you more choice about how you live your life. The more sovereign your homestead is the more free you are from external control. These are helpful qualities to keep in mind, no matter if you're just starting out or if you're making changes to an already existing homestead and landscape.
- A Sovereign Homestead Produces Something
- A Sovereign Homestead Is Self-Reliant
- A Sovereign Homestead is Self-Sufficient
- A Sovereign Homestead Is Redundant
- A Sovereign Homestead Is Regenerative
- A Sovereign Homestead Leverages It's Unique/Unfair Advantage
- A Sovereign Homestead Is 'Built To Fit'
- A Sovereign Homestead Is A Networked Node - NOT An Island
- A Homestead Is Only As Sovereign As The Mind And Heart Of Its People
Show Resources
- Episode 2 - The Prime Directive, 3 Ethics And 12 Principles Of Permaculture As Tools For Sovereign Homestead Design
- VIDEO: Karl Hammer - Raising Chickens Without Grain
- Episode 5 - Light, Water, Soil & Life - Universal Leverage Points For Maximizing Production On Your Homestead.
- VIDEO: Greg Judy Demonstrates His Shiitake Logs Grown On Cull Logs From His Silvopasture Grazing
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
This week we take a look at the actual process of designing your homestead. The framework we use to guide our design process is called SADIMEA, and it consists of the following 7 phases:
- Survey - This phase is all about gathering data - developing intimate knowledge of the environment and context within which your life is lived.
- Analysis - Sifting, sorting, list making, relationship mapping and number crunching to organize & MAKE MEANING from the data.
- Design - Many pieces begin to knit together into a cohesive, functional and beautiful whole - where you design a system of systems that is redundantly abundant.
- Implementation - Planning the work yields to working the plan - shovels in the dirt.
- Maintenance / Monitoring / Management / Measurement - Attentive and intensive management of newly established systems, and planned maintenance of well-established or mature systems. Collectively, the M-phase of SADIMEA is all about about making sure your system has everything it needs to perform its design function, and learning where it needs improvement and gathering enough feedback that you can make a viable plan for making that improvement.
- Evaluation - During the Evaluation phase we integrate feedback from the monitoring of systems (new, establishing and climax) and we hold them up against our stated goals & vision & dQoL and ask “How am I doing?” “Is this working?” etc.
- Adjustment - Iteration of your designed systems, conducting safe-to-fail experiments, and improving by doing.
SADIMEA is simple, straightforward, and flexible enough to be applicable in pretty much any design scenario that is dealing with complex systems (such as a homestead).
Show Resources
- Download Google Earth Pro - easy mapping for your homestead
- Download QGIS - free, open-source GIS mapping application if you need/want more mapping horsepower.
- Detailed SADIMEA blog post with all the nitty gritty details and lots of links.
- NRCS Web Soil Survey portal - easy, fast way to high-level information about your soils and their strengths, weaknesses and capabilities.
- VIDEO: Visual Soil Survey - get out and dig a hole!
- BOOK: When Weeds Talk - by Jay L. McCaman - excellent resource for inferring what is going on in your soils based on the weeds you observe growing there.
- SADIMEA Illustrated Poster [PDF]
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today's show is all about the science and application of air pruning to grow hundreds or thousands of trees with incredibly healthy root structures in a small area.
Air pruning is what happens when a tap root or growing root tip gets exposed to air - it essentially dehydrates and goes dormant. This creates a hormonal stimulus that back-propagates up the root towards the stem-root junction of the tree at least 4 inches, and all along that length of root it induces lateral branching. Air pruning is a way to grow non-circling, non-girdling, high-density root systems that increase tree survival and helps them thrive when they are planted out into their final home.
We'll discuss different ways to leverage air pruning depending on your application and the number of plants or trees you are wanting to grow. We'll go into the pros and cons of using air pruning pots vs. constructing your own air pruning beds, as well as how to make your own air pruning bed from basic materials, sized according to your needs.
Second to planting a seed in the ground and having it grow in place for its entire life, air pruning is a great way to grow healthy, strong trees that will do in one year what it will take a typical pot-grown or bare root tree to do in three. You can grow up to 500 trees in a single 10'x3' air pruning bed.
Lots of additional information, including videos and DIY guides, available and linked in the show resources below.
Show Resources
- DIY Article: Air Pruning Beds - Grow Hundreds Of Healthy-Rooted Trees In A Tiny Footprint
- DIY Air Pruning Beds - Illustrated Build Instructions
- Off-Grid Irrigation System - helpful for automating irrigation for air pruning beds.
- Sean Dembrosky from Edible Acres talking about his small, easily-portable air prune beds.
- Akivah Silver - Air Pruning Beds Video
- 7th Gen & Honey Badger Nursery - Air Pruning Beds walkthrough video
- Dr. Carl Whitcomb - Root Pruning Basics
- Extended Presentation
- YouTube Playlist: Air Pruning Science, Pots, DIY Beds
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
Today I make the case why Green is the new Gray when it comes to surviving and thriving in an era of rising totalitarianism - a.k.a the Dim Age.
Living with more connection and interdependence with Nature is the way to live healthy and free when the powers that be and the greater societal mood would you have be dependent, conforming and compliant.
Join me in today's episode as we explore...
- What the Dim Age is
- The concept of being a Gray Man (and how we can expand upon that for the current circumstances)
- Why Green Is The New Gray - why we need to be creating systems of support that function partially or completely outside of centralized systems of supply, production, communication, value transmission and indoctrination.
Show Resources
- Ferfal - The Gray Man Concept
- LFTN - Navigating The Dim Age w/ Vin Armani
- Activist Post - Navigating The Dim Age w/ Vin Armani
- Project Hamilton White Paper
- Episode 5 - Light, Water, Soil & Life
Are you starting or redesigning your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey! 100% Free
Upon completing this course you will have a crystal clear idea of who and what resources you have to work with, your desired Quality of Life that your homestead has to provide for, and what you will need to produce and the conditions required to sustain that production to meet your Quality of Life needs.
Music by Alex Grohl
In today's show we cover some of the amazing gifts and benefits that trees can provide to your homestead and larger landscape, including:
- Trees are the ultimate alchemists - creating stored sunlight
- Trees are energy translators - between the surface world and the subsurface world
- Trees are hydraulic engineers - they bank water for hard times
- Trees as screens for different sector energies - water, wind, sun
- Trees are free air conditioners!
- Trees are rain-bringers
- Tree provide us with shelter and infinitely renewable fuel
- Trees provide us with food AND medicine
- Trees improve pasture health
- Trees are a TAX-OBSCURED investment
- ...and more!
I hope that today's show will get you thinking about the power of trees in new ways, and why, if we want to create a world worth inheriting, we all need to be planting trees. Trees are the ultimately living legacy we can leave to those that will inherit this earth after us, and they are one of the best ways to say "I love you" to your future descendants whom you will never meet but already love.
Show Resources
- Trees Of Power - by Akiva Silver
- Forests Create Rain - Biotic Pump Theory YouTube playlist
- Root Bridges of Meghalaya
- Tree Hay - A Forgotten Fodder (Full Version)
- High-Value Livestock Fodder Trees For Temperate Climates
- Productive Livestock Fodder Trees For Mediterranean and Dryland Climates
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Music by Alex Grohl
Today we are talking about livestock fodder trees and why, if you're raising livestock and want to continue eating high-quality meat and animal products in a time when livestock are being demonized as the cause of all things bad...you'd be wise to start growing and diversifying your feed inputs for your animals.
Fodder trees produce highly palatable and nutritious feed for livestock in the form of leaf vegetation, small twigs and branches, fruit and nuts. Planting livestock fodder trees enable grazing managers to dramatically increase the number of calories produced per acre by stacking yields vertically and temporally without diminishing (and often improving) the growth of grass-based forages underneath the tree canopy. Using trees for fodder – either as direct browse, cut and carry, chop and drop, or in the making of ensilage or tree hay – has a long history in Europe, and is making a resurgence in North America as the adoption of agroforestry practices like silvopasture (the integration of livestock rearing and tree production) increases due to the many advantages provided by such systems.
We'll cover the benefits of silvopasture systems and incorporating livestock fodder trees into your existing pastures, how to select appropriate fodder trees for your region and grazing operation, and a few different ways to manage your trees in concert with your animals.
Resources
- TSH - Livestock Fodder Trees For Temperate Climates
- Feedipedia
- TSH Fodder Trees YouTube Playlist
- TSH Silvopasture YouTube Playlist
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Music by Alex Grohl
This show is a free-form ramble through the history that led to the creation of TSH and the podcast. No outline today, more story instead. From my slow awakening after a zombified college experience, to starting my own fitness training business at the age of 22, paying off the student loan debt and then making the leap into doing permaculture full time and having it literally end in flames and the road to recovery since.
Learn where the inspiration from TSH came from, and where we're going with it.
Resource Links
- Will Hooker - PDC (Video 1)
- Geoff Lawton's Greening The Desert 1.0 - Parts 1 and 2
- Jason Leister's Sovereign Business
Today's Ending Music: I Wish We All Could Leave California (Beach Boys Parody) - Babylon Bee
Today’s show is about optimizing the things that are universal to all homesteads, no matter where you are on this planet. These 4 universal homestead productivity leverage points are Light, Water, Soil and Life.
- Light = Energy Flow - How Much Sunlight Your Landscape Captures And Turns Into Usable Biomass
- Water = Water Cycle - The Circulation of Earth’s Lifeblood
- Soil = Mineral Cycle - The Circulation of Life-Sustaining Nutrients
- Life = Community Dynamics - The Living Organisms That Leverage Your Light, Water And Soil to Produce Value
No matter where you are, or what scale you are working at, you can work with these four things to increase the productive capacity of your landscape. We’ll talk about how to adjust your thinking and seeing to each of these perspectives, the principles that govern good management within them, and some simple action steps and rules of thumb for taking action to improve your homestead’s function.
Show Resources
- Holistic Management
- The Power Of Rain Drops
- High Value Fodder Trees For Temperate Climates
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Music by Alex Grohl
In today's show we cover...
- What a Minimum Holistic Goal is and WHY its important to create one
- The three distinct parts of the MHG, their functions and how to create them,
- HOW to actually USE and LEVERAGE your MHG with the 7 Decision Tests for applying your MHG in real-life and in real-time to make better decisions consistently.
Creating your Minimum Holistic Goal at the outset of your homesteading journey is THE ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary - it will help you guard and focus your energy on the things the move the needle and actually help you create the life you want to live.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Music by Alex Grohl
In this week's show we dive into the ugly world of Type 1 Errors - those fundamental errors in design or implementation of a homestead that will cost you time, money and energy for as long as they exist - the things that if done wrong at the outset, make it nigh impossible to get anything right afterwards!
Learn how to spot Type 1 Errors - on paper and in real life, how to avoid committing them in the first place, why they often persist for SO LONG and how to fix them.
Resources Mentioned
- FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer
- Bill Zeedyk - Zuni Bowls For Stopping Headcuts
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Music by Alex Grohl
Permaculture is a design system based on natural systems and how they function.
The Permaculture Prime Directive - on page 1 in the Designer's Manual, is as follows: "The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. Make it now."
The Prime Directive is often forgotten but is fundamentally important to what permaculture really is. Join us as we explore the Prime Directive, how it protects and preserves the 3 Ethics and informs the 12 Foundational Principles to create a design system that you can use to create maximum freedom on your land in your life!
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!
Sovereign homesteading is an orientation vs. destination. A homestead is sovereign to the degree that it is prepared, productive, regenerative, and closed-loop. These are the four key pillars of a resilient homestead that works for you and gets more productive over time with less dependence on centralized commodities as inputs.
Getting started designing your homestead?
START HERE: Enroll in the Minimum Holistic Goal Creation Mini-Course today for free. This is the ONE THING that will make everything else easier or unnecessary on your homesteading journey!