There are only two ways to design your homestead:

By Imposing Your Will on The Landscape…or by Aligning With The Landform and Natural Processes.

The Process And Principles In Building Your Sovereign Homestead Are About Getting The Big Picture Decisions Around Water, Access and Structures Right So That Nature Works With You And Not Against You.

I wrote Building Your Sovereign Homestead to give you the best “wish I had known that before I did X” advice based on my experience assessing, designing, and more often than not, repairing Type 1 Errors in client landscapes.

Type 1 Errors are foundational things done wrong that make it almost impossible for anything to be done right afterwards. They cost you time, energy, money and peace of mind as long as they exist. 

Today, most homesteaders inherit landscapes and infrastructure that are in some way degraded and dysfunctional from a history of extractive land use and imposed design. These systems are unfit to meet the demands and manage the disruptions of the turbulent future we are living into, much less create a thriving and healthy ecosystem to support you and your family.

Instead we have to design regenerative lifeways that emerge organically from the situation and place.

We are living at the end of the time in which we could get away with pretending we don’t have an ecological umbilical cord.

We need healthy, productive and intact ecosystems if we are to live well.

The vast majority of humanity that has ever lived has known a direct connection with place, because that place literally fed, housed and provided everything for them. Those of us living in high-energy consumption countries have forgotten this for the past century or so…and that era is now coming to a rather dysfunctional end.

Whether we would choose it or not, the end of the cheap energy era is creating a de-facto localization and re-prioritization of how we live. 

The degree to which we align our lives and landscapes with this macro-economic and environmental trend will have a direct impact on the quality of life we get to enjoy, and the quality of opportunity we pass on to our descendants.

The way to do that is to design and build your homestead in such a way that the ecosystem of which your property is a part is better off for you being there than not.

It’s about choosing to be regenerative.

It’s about choosing to listen to your land and growing an ecosystem that harmonizes with natural forces and is abundant by default.

It’s about creating a homestead that works for you by working with Nature.

This is how you build a legacy worth inheriting and become a better ancestor.

Onward,

-Casey