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 n…

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 foo…

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 technolog…

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 cre…

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 r…

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 uni…

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. Sh…

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, sta…

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, y…

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" - s…

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 c…

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 m…

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 ------------------> …

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 wit…

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…

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 afte…

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 …

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 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 a…

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 t…

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 in…

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, shrim…

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 depend…

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 O…

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 ret…

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…

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 experi…

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: Segr…

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 …

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 dis…

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 …

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…

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 Defini…

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…

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…

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 au…

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, …

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…

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 tha…

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 p…

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 …

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 …

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 regulator…

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 …

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 en…

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),…

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 la…

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…

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.…

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 -…