Good Life Revival: Permaculture, Rewilding, Homesteading

If you’re someone with big dreams but limited means, this conversation is for you.

For episode 47 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with John Holzwart of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, better known to most simply as Little John.

If you know Little John, it’s probably as a result of his years of touring the country on the fair circuit, leading demonstrations and workshops on the art of broom-making.

John is a skilled artisan with a sharp eye for honing raw materials into something that’s equally functional, elegant, and aesthetically pleasing. Now he’s looking to transfer those talents into the arena of urban permaculture through his recently organized non-profit Arboreus, whose mission is to reclaim vacant lots around Sheboygan and convert them into community gardens and food forests.

He already has his first lot well under way, and he’s not afraid to dream big about what comes next. I believe he’s on the right track, and I hope his story inspires you to make some serious moves on that passion project of yours that maybe you’ve been holding yourself back from pursuing.

Whether success or failure, I can guarantee that you’ll learn and grow more than you could ever imagine along the way!

To find out more about all the cool stuff that Little John does, visit . To peruse his collection of brooms currently available for sale, visit . And if you’re just here for the Cornelian cherries, head to .

To add your name to the waiting list for my winter 2018/2019 wild food mentorship program, click here. Space is limited and these spots will fill up quickly when the program goes live!

If you want to try out the wonderful hemp CBD products from Blue Ridge Hemp Co., follow this link and be sure to use the code GOODLIFE at checkout for 10% off.

As always, if you get some value out of the work that I put into this podcast, and you’re able to translate that value into some financial capital - as little as $1/month - I hope you will consider becoming a supporter over on Patreon! Your contributions allow me to devote quite a lot of my time and energy to this work. I would love to do even more, with your help.

Finally:

I’m taking the Good Life Revival Podcast on the road in November 2018!

My dog Jojo and I will be cruising our rusty old pickup truck from Indiana to Oregon via Colorado, then down the California coast, across the Southwest and back home over the course of about three weeks. Here’s our rough itinerary, accounting for a couple people I will definitely meet up with along the way:

If you are somewhere along this route, and you’d be interested in opening up your home/farm/woodland shelter to me and the dog, and possibly sharing your story and good conversation for the podcast, let me know! Send me an email through this link and we’ll go from there. I hope to meet as many of you as possible while we’re ramblin’!

We changed our names, quit our jobs, and moved to a farm owned by friends, in a new town, in a new state.

Then our dog died in a tragic accident. Then my (life) partner left me while we were in the middle of starting a farm business together.

We had spend the past four years of our lives working toward this one goal of living self-sufficiently, closer to the land, and we had finally arrived.

So why did she leave?

That’s a question I will be asking myself for a long time to come.

In this unusual episode of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I take some time to explain what has transpired in my tumultuous personal life in 2018.

I share this, warts and all, because I want to make it clear that I’m no guru or master teacher with all the answers — I’m just a guy, someone just like you, trying his best to figure this stuff out as I go.

I’m still searching for “the good life,” too, and I suspect I always will be.

Stick around to the end of the episode where I share a song I wrote last week, called “The How’m I Gonna Keep My Head Above Water Blues.” If you dig it, you can download it (and all of my other original music) by becoming a supporter over on Patreon.

Do you believe that we are currently observing the early signs of the collapse of civilization, and that our society could actually quite easily fall apart within our lifetimes, due to any of myriad looming existential threats?

If you knew that civilization was going to collapse one year from now, how would that affect your daily life?

What if that collapse was set to arrive one month from now? Or a week from now?

How would that change your agenda, and what would you prioritize?

If the proverbial shit really did hit the fan, ...what then? What skills, knowledge, and experiences could you call upon in a long-term or potentially permanent survival scenario?

Are you “prepared”? And what does preparedness truly consist of anyway? Does it look like a bunker full of rations, or a more like a healthy mind and body full of earth skills?

For this installment of the Good Life Revival Podcast (no. 32), I spoke with the one and only Aaron Fletcher of Oregon, a self-proclaimed herder-gatherer who leads a lifestyle of intentional homelessness with a modest flock of sheep.

Over a decade ago, Aaron observed all of the ways that our modern civilization subjugates and exploits us while poisoning the planet, and recognized that this house of cards was built to collapse, and so he resolved to check out – to the fullest extent possible.

You might call him a doomsday prepper or a survivalist, but Aaron is someone who understands that true preparedness consists of requiring very little, and being able to acquire it for yourself directly through your interactions with nature.

Aaron Fletcher is truly one-of-a-kind in our era, and I think there’s a wealth of wisdom to be gleaned from his experiences. You may not be convinced to trade all of your worldly possessions for a flock of sheep by the end, but I hope this conversation will spark your imagination about unique possibilities for your own life.

Do you communicate with the plants on your local landscape? Because they are always trying their hardest to reach you, whether or not you’re able to hear them.

My guest for this installment of the Good Life Revival Podcast — no. 43 — is Daphne Valentine, a professional forager, farmer and pickle-maker from Murphreesboro, Tennessee. When it comes to communicating with plants, Daphne speaks with authority, drawing from a deep reservoir of lifelong experiences.

“Plants have a frequency. If you’re in tune with it, if you’re listening, you’ll hear it. [...] Medicine plants give off a pretty strong frequency, and we hear that as foragers.”

Aside from her pursuits as a forager, she and her husband grow medicinal hemp on their farm through Tennessee’s Hemp Research Pilot Program, which she says is a very profound experience.

“Having grown hemp from seed to big bushy plants that are speaking, very loudly, I understand the connection. I understand the language that it is speaking.”

Each of Daphne’s primary interests are united, I think, by a core passion for the physical and emotional healing power of medicine plants, and of food as medicine itself. I hope this conversation encourages you to venture out on to the land to cultivate intimate relationships with all of the plant allies that you find there.

We humans are innately spiritual creatures: we are all driven to seek purpose beyond pure survival, and connection beyond the individual body.

We want to be a part of something greater than our individual selves—to feel that we are working with others, whether human or more-than-human, towards a common goal that supersedes individual needs.

I believe that the civilized cultural paradigm that currently dictates our collective worldview does not serve us, and thus it is in our best interest to plot a new course going forward with a set of cultural tools that are actually useful and relevant to our daily lives.

Over the course of many countless millennia, our species externalized many of its instincts in the form of stories—mythology—because this allowed for more fluidity in our behaviors and thus the ability to more quickly adapt to changing conditions.

Instincts change over the course of evolutionary time, millions of years; stories, on the other hand, can change just a little bit, often imperceptibly so, every single time they’re told – and the ways in which they’re told are invariably a reflection of the time, the place, and the people involved. Thus, culture is an extension of ecology.

Recognizing that the dominant culture of No-Environment is detrimental to our continued survival, how can we create new cultural tools without engaging in cultural appropriation?

How might we reclaim a land-based mythology for ourselves and our kin that allows us to thrive individually, and flourish collectively?

How do we participate in the spiritual landscape of our ecosystems, and cultivate an intimate, co-creative relationship with the Earth?

Explore these questions and more in the latest episode of The Good Life Revival Podcast, no. 29: ‘How to Develop Your Own Myths, Rituals, and Culture.’