The Sovereign Homestead Podcast

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...

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 l...

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 t...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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

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...