The Sovereign Homestead Podcast

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 regulat...

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...

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 li...

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...

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...

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....

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 de...

This show is a broad overview of common water infiltration elements used in holistic ecosystem design to create a water retentive landscape - i.e. a watershed that slows, spreads, sinks and retains water that then grows a ton of biomass!  We'll discuss what makes each element what it is, it's primary and secondary design functions, when and when  not to employ them, and some basic implementation c...

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...

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 ae...

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 t...

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...

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 w...

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 bo...

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 ban...

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...

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...

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....

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 s...

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 n...

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 t...

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 t...

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,...

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...

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...