Ep. 214 - The Nomad Homesteader vs The Backyard Homestead

Today, Rob discusses the word "nomad," his history with the nomad life and how it can interface with the homestead lifestyle quite nicely, depending on the context of your current environment.  He's also seeking YOUR feedback on a couple ideas! 

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Links:   

• Nomad - Wikipedia
• Homesteaders: Stationary Nomads?
  
  

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to the show. Today is Wednesday, October 27th, 2021. This is episode number 214 of the All-Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. This is a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. I hope that this before we get started, I want to let you know that I am utilizing a different method of recording than I have historically used. So if this sounds different, uh please let me know. In the Telegram chat, t.me slash allaround growth, or if you've got the Telegram Messenger app on your desktop or mobile device, just search for all around growth. I tried to record an episode on this topic yesterday, the topic of being a nomad, and why that's relevant to my life, what the word means, and some thoughts that I had while walking the dog yesterday morning. But as many of you know that are in the telegram group or in the Facebook group, which doesn't really see that much activity, I I began posting there once I got back on Facebook, but I am definitely more active within the telegram group. But those in the telegram group have a better understanding of what the technical difficulties are, the technical difficulties on my phone. And I'll get into that during the drive. But during the driveway from Wikipedia, a nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation, which regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads owning livestock, and tinkers or trader nomads. In the 20th century, population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching to an estimated 30 to 40 million nomads in the world as of 1995. Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to infertile regions, such as steppe tundra, or ice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources. For example, many groups living in the tundra are reindeer herders and are extra nomadic following forage for their animals. Sometimes also described as nomadic are the various itinerant populations who move among densely populated areas to offer specialized services, crafts, or trades to their residents. External consultants, for example, these groups are known as proprietic nomads. Without going any further, I wanted to click on that link as peripatic nomads. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. But let's just hit the road, shall we? And I'll get into why nomadism, or I guess what I thought was nomadicism, is on my mind. Yesterday as I was walking the dog in the morning, I had a thought about the nomad. The nomad homesteader. Okay? And or the nomad homestead, but I'm really it was more like the nomad homesteader. And back in 2013 there was actually another idea that I had called the primal nomestead, and it was that was when I first got into the ideas of rewilding. I was very much into barefooting and had been for a few years. I actually ran um five miles and uh and and and set my personal record for five miles running barefoot. Alright, technically it wasn't barefoot. I was running in uh six millimeter sandals, bedrock sandals. But I digress. The primal gnomestead was an idea that I had about having a homestead, a wild homestead, where everyone lived like gnomes. And that may sound a little strange, and I know it it does, and that's in large part why the idea remains an idea and never was executed upon. But my own history with being a nomad is strong. And reading about the tinker or trade nomad makes me realize that that is precisely the lifestyle that I led for fifteen years. It began in my college days. And unlike my siblings, I really wanted to get away. I really wanted to get out and explore. My brother went backpacking in Europe for a bit, so I shouldn't say that my sister moved around the disregard that comment about my siblings. Um I was just a little quicker to do it, I suppose. Younger. Um by the time I hit college number three, and discovered that I could study horticulture and make a living at it, make my parents happy for going to college, and actually not be one of the people that I heard about, one of the people that I knew that went to college and had a very expensive degree, but were somehow unable to find a job and maintain their career with that degree. So at the age of twenty-one or twenty two, no, I don't even know how old I was. Yeah, about that age, twenty-one, twenty two, I realized that if I structured it properly, I could take the internship that was required for part of my schooling and uh leverage that and use that as an opportunity to live and work and get paid wherever I wanted. So I chose out west. I moved to Colorado, stayed there for a couple of years, moved back to Ohio, worked there for a year or two, moved to North Carolina for four years. This is right where I'm at in my autobiography. I'm writing about these experiences right now in my mid-late 20s as I moved to North Carolina. And I spent some time writing last night, which feels good. But back to the nomad from North Carolina, I moved back to Ohio where I began a seven-year stint in what eventually led up to me chasing corporate America, but during that time and working all those various projects, those projects took me everywhere from the East Coast, Massachusetts to the West Coast, California, down to Texas, all the way up to Minnesota, and many different states in between. So the the idea of being a nomad, not only is something that resonates with me, but it's that's something that I deeply understand because that's how I've lived for a large part of my life. And due to the fact that I don't own the homestead where I live now, I still feel as though those homestead ways and that homestead life is something that I need to hold on to because the reality is, guys, that I don't talk finances with my parents a whole lot because they oftentimes aren't for the well, they're not that open and willing to discuss finances with us, and for the first time we did that as a family last year, last fall, and we realized that in the case of an emergency or a worst-case scenario, if something catastrophic happens to my parents, and they require long-term care, something that is far and above what we are able to provide as children, specifically me being the one that lives there with them, because my brother and sister have children now. The way in which that will be funded will be through the sale of the land and homes. So nothing in life is certainly and I'm not dwelling on that and looking at that as a negative thing, but it's making me realize that the way in which I am going to go about building and developing the life of my dreams through the homestead of my dreams is going to be a little bit different than the way in which someone with no homesteading experience might perceive a typical homestead. Moreover, the land base upon which we live is a little bit different as well. And even though it's twenty acres, and that sounds like a lot, ten of it is woods, one acre is a pond, and because the layout of the land is in I guess what you could say or consider a modified flagpole lot, there's three different three different sections. The largest section is mostly wooded. There's a it's it's really quite strange. So having large equipment, for example, skid steers or horsepower or tractors that are 40 horsepower and above. We have a smaller 23 horsepower tractor, and that for a while I thought was too small, but I'm realizing that's actually a good little fit, and one of the things I want to avoid as we move forward is getting to a point where I'm dependent on a tractor to get tasks done. On the other hand, I am more interested in the idea of a two-wheel walk behind tractor, like a BCS, because that is portable, it's small, it's cheaper, they're less expensive to maintain in the long run, and it's I'll be a little bit more active when um when using it, and all of the implements that are available for it are really suited to a smaller type of homestead operation. So this is really more of an idea that is better suited for me, I think, than an idea that I'd been stewing on for even longer, an idea called the backyard homestead. Thinking that as I grew and developed the backyard or the homestead here, that I could have something to share with anybody who had any kind of land base anywhere, whether it was something in an urban lot, but catering more towards people in the suburbs and small acre homesteads, something that people could do in their backyard, hence the name backyard homestead. But like many ideas, there's only so many hours in the day, there's only so many days in the year, and there's only so many years in our life. And I could execute upon all of them, and I've tried to in the or more ideas, and I've tried to do that in the past, and that hasn't really ended up well for me. I've sacrificed a lot of things in life to work on many and more various projects in the past, and one of the things that always comes up when it comes to sacrifice in order to get things done seems to be my health. And that is something that I have not sacrificed over the past month. I guess I'm in week four of this elimination diet, and I I feel much better, and I'm realizing that in order to build the homestead of my dreams, I'm going to need to build the life of my dreams. And in order to build and construct the life of my dreams, it needs to be health-centric. And that's where I'm at right now, and that's what my focus is on. But with regard to the word nomad and where this conversation went today, in closure, I would like to encourage some dialogue between the ideas of backyard homesteading versus nomad homesteading. And maybe that's what I will title the show Backyard versus Nomad on the Homestead. Or something to that effect. But, anyways, join the chat on Telegram t.me slash all around growth from your internet browser. That will allow you to download the app right onto your computer. And for that matter, you can probably do it on your phone. Just go to your internet browser, t.me slash allaround growth. You'll find the group there. And let's chat about that idea: Backyard Homestead versus Nomad Homestead. Alright. And with that, it's Wednesday. We're about halfway through the week, or we will be at noon for those of you who are out there working a traditional work week. And for those of you who are not, wherever the week is for you, I hope that it's a good week. And if it hasn't been that good of a week so far, well, hey, another opportunity to come join us in the group, lift your spirits, talk with us, and oh boy, I gotta get over and park a little bit closer. And uh I gotta have lights right in my face, I can't see anything. Jesus Christ. Okay, well, not quite the ending that I was looking for, guys. But uh have a great day. I'm gonna go chat with the bobber driver who just pulled in. Take care. See you in the chat.