Member training from January 13th 2024.  This nights discussion focused on the principles of self-reliance and community building among members of the Tree of Liberty Society. Participants discussed transitioning from a city lifestyle dependent on external systems to a more self-sufficient agricultural culture, emphasizing the importance of like-minded neighbors and cooperative efforts. The discussion included the success of agricultural cooperatives in achieving self-sufficiency, the challenges faced by some members in adapting to this vision, and the educational resources available to help individuals create their own transition plans. The meeting concluded with a prayer, reinforcing the values of independence and community support.

Help support ad free content with a one time donation or becoming a member today.

TRANSCRIPT

Our Heavenly Father, we pause before this training tonight and thank you so much for
the opportunity to be here and the technology that brings us together. We’re grateful
for those who would participate and for the mindset that we have of seeking for
things that are true. We pray for men to be guided. We pray for hearts to be open
to things that we learn that we need to incorporate for those who speak to us and
we’re just so grateful for the good things that we have in our life and pray for
those who are struggling and suffering from the evil and the bad things. We thank
you so much for our Savior and say this in His name, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.
Thank you, Pam. So just want to give everybody a reminder for this Wednesday at 7
p .m. Mountain. That’s January 15th. We have our book club and we’ll be covering
chapters four, five, and six of Inside the UN. Encourage you to, you know, it’s
open to the public, so please encourage your friends to come join us, even if they
haven’t been able to do the reading. Just would love the discussion. I thought we
had a really good discussion last time, so it’ll be good to see everybody that can
make it there on Wednesday at 7 p .m. Mountain. So let’s go ahead and get into the
bulk of the meeting. As we’ve got a few guests with us tonight and wanted to
appreciate them for coming here and just a little bit of background for what we do
every Monday night. Members of the Tree of Liberty Society meet together to discuss
things that are going on, principles, threats to liberty,
and then some things that we can do about it. And one of the things that we’ve
talked about as hopefully everybody else on the call knows, we talk about how a lot
of the solutions that are offered out there are designed to take away power from
us. And they’re designed to look like we’re trying to do the right thing and move
in the right direction, but they’re actually designed to give more and more power to
a central entity. And so as a part of the solutions to be able to restore lost
liberty, I talk a lot about how we have to have a community of people that are
not dependent on the system. Because when you are dependent on somebody else for
your sustenance, you are a slave to them in one way or another. And so to be able
to have true freedom, there are different aspects that we need to be separate from,
you know, at least independent of the world at large. And so I wanted to bring on
a guest to talk to us about what they’re doing along those lines in one way.
And so it is, I just wanted to kind of, I guess, I don’t know,
I don’t want to say disclaimer ’cause I’m not putting down anything. I’m just saying
that this isn’t like, I’m saying that this is the solution for you and your family.
I’m saying this is an option. This is something somebody is doing and it might be
worth looking at. And then looking at there are lots of different individuals doing
different variations of what this organization is doing. And so I wanted to bring on
a representative of the Riverbed Branch. And so we have Philip Gleason. I want to
introduce Philip, founder of Operation Self -Reliance. It’s an initiative, Operation
Self -Reliance. It’s an initiative, and the Utah OSR Land Cooperative,
he’s currently the CEO of OSR Green LLC and the Arizona OSR Land Co -op known as
Coastal or Grove. Hopefully I pronounced that right. A second off -grid agricultural
land co -op, in addition a board member of the Academy of Self -Reliance, Currently
resides on his two -acre off -grid homestead at Riverbed Ranch and you can learn more
about what they’re doing at riverbed dash ranch Com so Philip.
Thank you so much. I’d like to turn some time over to you to talk to us about
what you’re doing and
and We can go from there. Hopefully you can we can take some Q &A and but we we
finish at 10 o ‘clock. So whatever you need, from now until then, Phillip. I’m happy
to be here. Thank you very much for taking time letting us be a part of this.
To give you the the short version of what we’re doing is we’re helping families
transition from a city lifestyle of dependencies to a country culture of self
reliance with like minded neighbors, while remaining debt -free. So that last one is
kind of a challenge. The like -minded neighbor’s description is, we’re looking for
people who want to be self -reliant, people who have integrity, people who like
people, and then people who understand choices have consequences.
For example, if your neighbor’s up, that’s going to affect you indirectly.
And then the last thing is you have the resources to make a transition. So with
that kind of understanding of what like -minded people are, we’re creating communities
based on self -reliance.
What that means is that our research, and I’ll turn some time over to Jesse here
in a minute is that we’ve found that there are communities around the world not
very many but a few communities around the world that are agriculturally based and
that they they own these communities together collectively now it’s not a commune
it’s it’s a different but it’s a cooperative approach and so cooperatives are an
opportunity for a group of people to come together and create a community that would
be very difficult for a single individual to do. And we’ve found that to have these
types of self -reliant communities, there’s like one in Peru that is called Granja
Percón, there are about 3 ,500 people, but they’ve taken, I think it was 2 ,000
hectares and they planted 2 million trees and changed the environment and created an
amazing self -sustaining community that’s become a world retreat for people to go and
see what they’re doing. You have similar things over in Italy and Spain.
In fact, one -third of their country’s national product is created from co -ops.
I’d like to take a few minutes and turn it over to Jesse and have him explain
what happened in Brigham City and what he learned from that.
About seven or eight years ago I was doing some research for a book I wrote and
ran across an account of Brigham City in the 1860s and 1870s. It really,
really caught my attention.
In fact, they achieved what I would consider to be an economic miracle.
In 18, it would have been around 1863, a fellow by the name of Brigham Young
challenged another fellow by the name of Lorenzo Snow to build a self -sustaining
community. The problem at the time was that merchants from New York would bring
wagon loads of goods to the Utah Territory and sell them for four,
five, six hundred percent markup. So it was draining all the capital out of the
territory.
And so Brigham wanted to create this, have Lorenzo create this self -sustaining
community. So it took him a while to figure out how to get started. What he
finally did was set up a cooperative store and he went around town and invited
everyone in town who produced anything to sell those goods through the co -op store.
And then he also invited every family to purchase one share in the cooperative and
so their funds created the capital that was needed to buy goods from the community
and then sell them through the co -op store. Then he went on vacation to Hawaii for
a couple of years and when Lorenzo got back there was $10 ,000 in the savings
account for the co -op store. So we took that money and set up a tannery.
So they took hides from the local ranchers and produced belts and hats and saddles
and whatever else you make out of leather in those days. And so those goods through
the co -op store, and they just kept doing that over and over again, creating new
industries,
hiring local people and then selling those goods to the co -op store, by their 10th
year, that their board of directors estimated that they had achieved 85 % self
-sufficiency. Now, why that’s so important is in their 10th year,
there was a worldwide recession.
In the rest of the Utah had 20 % unemployment, Brigham City had 0 % unemployment.
They also were building homes for the widows and the orphans and they gave work to
the indigents passing through town. So I’m reading about this. When I had beloved
neighbors losing their homes due to unemployment and I thought we should be building
towns like this. And So, that’s when I ran across, actually my doctor referred me
to Philip with Operation Self -Reliance, gave me his phone number, called him up and
invited me to come watch his presentation. I brought my wife and my sister and by
the time it was over, I realized he was going to end up doing what I wanted to
do, so I joined up. We were the 16th shareholders in the as our land co -op.
Back to you Philip. All right. So Operation Self -Reliance Initiative is helping these
families make these transitions and what that is, we have a four -step process.
We first, we find and identify like -minded individuals and essential resources and
then we network them together. Then the second step is that we provide and direct
people to the knowledge base that it takes to become self -reliant. We’ve identified
that there’s essentially six facets that are needed to create a self -reliant
homestead, and that begins with earth or dirt, and then you have to have some
water, then you have to have some food, and then you’ve got to have shelter, and
then you’ve got to have some power, and you got to have some sanitation. So that’s
the building block for creating a self -reliant community. So if you can build a
community, and what research is shown is that if you can build a community of over
200 of these blocks, you’re going to have a community that is sustainable for
generations. It’s scalable, continues to grow because of the breadth and depth of the
of the knowledge base and all the people involved. Because one of the things that
happens to a lot of these smaller communities is that when the kids grow up,
there’s not a place for them. There’s not enough industry. There’s not enough room.
and so historically you find that if you have over 200 members these continue to
grow and expand so so the knowledge base is critical and there is and we’ve learned
a lot the last five years Jesse and I are actually we have our own two acres and
we’ve learned Well, I’ll just give you a quick overview. On my two acres,
if you’re utilizing square foot gardening, you have almost 90 ,000 square feet.
So it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with what you have. The USDA and
universities have shown that you can actually in 120 square feet of grow boxes,
you can actually grow enough nutritional food to sustain an adult to keep healthy
organ functioning. That’s 120 square feet. So if you take and figure out that you’ve
got almost 90 ,000 square feet, there’s a lot that you can do.
In fact, I’m putting in the infrastructure and anticipate that on my two acres, I’ll
be able to feed 40 to 50 people. Now, I don’t have the energy or the time to do
all the work required to do that, but being the oldest of 18 kids and having seven
adult children and 30 grandchildren, with what I’m watching in the world,
I anticipate that I’m gonna have some family and friends show up and I want to be
able to feed as many as I can and have a safe place because of my experience that
I had as a young father it didn’t last very long but I had three little baby
girls that were three and under and went through a short period of time I was
unable to feed him keep him warm or give them a drink. And it was before wet
wipes. And so I wasn’t even able to change their diapers. And I got to tell you
that rewired my brain at that time. So I’m sensitive to those things. So the
education element is critical. And that’s part of our OSR. We have the Academy of
OSR. We have over 80 webinars on it. And if you do the the research or the
assignments on the first 20 of those you’ll actually be able to put together your
transition plan to change from the city to a country culture.
Now the the third step is that we help organize people and provide training for
land agricultural cooperatives. All right now a co -op is different,
especially here in Utah. We have Title III, which really opens up some opportunities
for the small agricultural producers.
And it’s based on, co -ops are based on member centrics. In other words,
the members are the most important and they drive the board. Whereas general
corporation law is it’s board driven. So in your influence on the board is based on
how much uh you’ve invested into the co -op or into the corporation.
So it’s a different matrix and so teaching people how to operate in those and it’s
a different bookkeeping it’s um but essentially it’s a group of people that are
working together to accomplish things that would be difficult for a single individual
to do so and we also are finding that going through this co -op approach that
because everybody owns a part of the whole it’s not a subdivision people act more
like a family they help each other they get more creative in working together and
where we’re seeing some amazing things take place. Now, because it is different,
we’ve got probably 3%, maybe 5 % that don’t get it,
so we’re working through that process right there. But the bottom line is,
is finding like -minded individuals who want to be self -reliant and creating a
community based on knowledge and willingness to work and wanting to be self -reliant.
The last thing that I would say is that
Agriculture is important.
If you have a house and no food, that’s kind of the end of the story.
But if you can produce food and you can actually dig a hole in the ground if you
have to. So you got to get your priorities straight. And so the building out steds
based on those six facets. And I’ll just tell you what our contracts require.
You build a house, it’s got to be passive solar. So you want something that’s not
going to turn into a freezer in the middle of the winter if you run out of fuel.
So we have it set up so your home has to be a minimum of 600 square feet.
We recommend a minimum of 800 square feet. You got to have a garage or barn or
some type of storage. We don’t care what size it is because we don’t know if
you’re raising horses or you’re raising worms, but you got to have some some type
of storage to deal with your animals or feed or those types of things, but it
needs to meet the wind and snow loads, so a really cheap metal shed just doesn’t
cut it. Then you got to have a greenhouse, especially with the weather patterns now.
You don’t know when frost is going to come. You don’t know when hail is going to
come. So you at least need a stable portion. And we have that your greenhouse has
got to be a minimum of 600 square feet. We recommend a minimum of 1200 square
feet. And again, Keep in mind what you can do with 120 square feet if you have
the knowledge to know how to do that. And that knowledge goes all the way back as
to your nutritional needs. Then you’ve got to have a garden and an orchard.
And again, if you’re doing square foot gardening, you’re looking at an average of
four to five pounds per square foot of production, basically whatever you want,
but you also have got to build in your nitrogen cycle so that you,
bottom line is if you feed the ground, it’ll feed you. So you need to look at
your nitrogen cycle and that’s where rabbits and chickens and goats and sheep come
in. And then you got to have water.
You got to have a well and we encourage people to have a well because a well is
much easier to protect your water source from contamination from the atmosphere and
there’s a lot of things going on there and so we encourage you when you’re looking
for a place that you have a good well water source where we’ve got here in Utah
we’ve got an underground river that works really well for us and we hit it about
60 to 80 feet down in Arizona we have to go to about 350 feet so and then we
require everybody to have their own well it may or may not be a little cheaper if
you put four or five families on a well, but here’s the problem you have.
If your well goes down, your power goes down, four or five families are not going
to be able to get help from their neighbor because it just takes too much
electricity. But if everybody has their own well and their own solar system, we
figure that we can suffer a 50 % failure rate and still keep doing what we’re
doing. And then the last thing is you’ve got to have sanitation. Without proper
sanitation you’re going to be fighting disease and other things that are associated
with that. Now that’s the building block that that’s set up for the the two two
-plus acres for a family and like I say my infrastructure that I’m putting in is if
I have enough labor here I will be able to sustain a large number of people but
it takes planning ahead of time and you have to really decide what you want to do.
The last thing that I think is really important for people to consider,
Jesse’s conducted a survey and found that people that are participating in our
project are freedom loving people and essentially they’re looking for a healthy place
and a safe place to raise food and families so the The last comment is that we
have lost a great deal or misplaced is probably a better word,
the knowledge that our great -great -grandfathers had in being able to be sustainable
on their land. And so we’re regathering that information and condensing it down and
then teaching people principle -based management, not only for themselves and their
families, but how to work together. And so we have a member -centric board,
which means that the members direct the boards. Instead, the board just telling
everybody else or the stockholders what they’re doing. We have the members and then
we also have representatives in down in Arizona that we’re putting together.
It’s called a community council. So where you have five to 10 families that have
representatives, a male and a female,
that female input is critical for a community to have it well balanced.
And you find a lot of this in Native American cultures and other stuff that they
have more of a balanced approach. So that gives you an overview of what we’re doing
and I learned something every day out here from my neighbors because of the breadth
and the depth of their knowledge base that’s out here. And so I wanna conclude
with, you know, you’ve heard if you give a guy a fish, you’re feeding for a day,
you’re teaching him how to fish, you’re feeding for a lifetime. Well, we believe
that if you can teach people how to teach how to fish, you can feed a nation.
And so it always comes back to agriculture and food. And so that’s what Operation
Self -Reliance in 20, 30 minutes is, It’s what we’re doing and we’re finding great
success with that Okay, thank you I’d like to open it up to some questions.
Is that okay? Absolutely. Okay, so I’ll start off and hopefully anybody else on the
call if you’ve got Questions that you’d like to to chime in on please do But you
mentioned hopefully I understood you correctly that Of like people that come out
there you have like a two to three percent that maybe don’t catch the vision and
they leave. Did I understand you correctly? Some leave some because it’s it’s hard
work and then you have some people that are starting for example we have 135
members out here and our 1245 acres acres and our large amount of water is all
paid for. And so it’s, it’s a hard transition for them to feel comfortable owning
the land together in a group. So they’re, they’re wanting to turn it into a
subdivision. You’re talking about 3 % of the people. So in our Arizona one,
we are clarifying this upfront very close that it’s, it’s not an option to change
this out. Because our,
there’s a big difference between a subdivision and an agricultural land cooperative
and it comes down to community. And so the people that understand this are having
an amazing experience. I’ve made more best friends out there than I made in the
previous 70 years. The watching things,
we have our own volunteer fire department, we have the rescue rangers. These type of
people are more interested in being self -reliant instead of relying on the government
or a church or some of these other things. And I’m not saying those are bad
things. I’m just saying people who want to be independent are tend to be self
-reliant. They’re problem solvers. Now we’ve got a few,
and I mean, we’re talking less than fingers on one hand that out of 135 that they
haven’t caught the vision yet and so it’s an education process so you know we’re
trying to do general persuasion and long suffering but it is an education but we’ve
closed up some of these these gaps that have allowed people to say oh yeah I think
you got a great idea, but we want to change it. We want to own our own property
and be independent of everybody. And we’re going, you’re, you’re missing the point.
Are you seeing what’s happened with just these first families getting together and
going out there? And if you try to change it into a subdivision and turn it into
a, well, here’s another term, a social Babylon,
that don’t really understand that there’s much more power as a group of like -minded
people than people isolating and trying to segregate and what can I say?
the bulk of the people out here open their arms and reach out and help others.
And then there’s a few that very small percentage that are fearful and want to
gather more and more power and want more land. When the key is not what you’ve
got, it’s what you do with what you have. Does that make sense, Ben? Yeah, yeah.
So that seems pretty wild to me that they would make the investment like just make
the plunge and go out there without having that Like without being in line with
what what your the vision of the community is well, that was You know,
and I have to say in the very beginning you only know what you know And this is
the first time we’ve done all this and so we we’ve got You know the bulk of the
people that are out here doing it they get it and they’re building an amazing
heritage for the upcoming generations and trees are being planted crops are grown
houses are being built barns are going up greenhouses we’ve actually taken this dead
land out here and It’s it’s coming alive. I mean just in one 10 foot by 20 foot
area I created a rabbit colony a little over a year ago, and I took 150 rabbits
out of that last year. Hmm So what just one more follow -up and we’ll go we got
some other questions
What would you say would be like just to be prepared? Oh did it freeze like? Did
you can you hear me? Okay, you can probably hear me still, but the video froze.
Okay, breaking up a little bit, Ben, you want to repeat that? Yeah,
I was just saying that what is the the biggest learning curve?
What? What is it that when people come out there, if they’re prepared for their
like is will will help them transition easier?
Getting a significant transition plan, it’s always cheaper to do things on paper
first and get a transition plan that’s viable, that’ll work, and then sticking to
that instead of saying, okay, yeah, I want a homestead, let’s see,
I’ll get some chickens, I’ll do this, I’ll do that, but you need a transition plan.
That’s one of the things that we help teach people is how to create the transition
plan and what triage, if you want to use the word triage,
the best things to approach up front. And the reason we’re so good at this is
Jesse and I have made so many mistakes. So we got some hands -on experience to help
the newcomers folks get to learn from your from your mistakes that’s good so we’ve
got a question in the comment is you talked about some courses but not sure are
they didn’t see them on the website where do they find the courses to take to
learn those things you’re referring to Jesse you want to address that yeah let me
share my screen if that’s all right yeah let me look at okay – Okay, you can do
it now.
– I think that’s the right screen. – Yep.
– Okay, this is academyosr .com. Are you guys seeing that?
– Yes. – Okay. – Yep.
– So on the, well, let me go to the homepage first. This is our educational non
-profit, and if you click on the path, meaning the path to self -reliance,
it goes to this page that explains the course and how it works.
If you go ahead and click on the subscribe now,
then what we have here is the first 24 lessons. They’re the core of this whole
thing. There’s, I think 80 in total. But the first 24 are the most important.
And if you work through these lessons and actually do the assignments, by the time
you get to the end you’ll have a solid plan for your own off -grid homestead no
matter where that is. And so we encourage people to really take this seriously if
they subscribe. There is a monthly fee for that, but you can do it as fast as you
want. But again, we do encourage people to take it seriously and to actually do the
assignments. And then after you get your solid plan, you can specialize by looking
at some of these other lessons and tweak your plan according to your own personal
interests. But the first 24 are the solid core of the whole thing.
Awesome. Hopefully that answers your question, Rod. Maybe make sure to put the link
in the chat as well. iPhone, you’ve got your hand raised.
Go ahead.
So I was just wondering, When you start like for building homes in that are you
facing this like off of the Amish the way everyone gets together and helps construct
it? Really good question. We have some of that take place on there,
but it’s not required.
What has actually been happening because of the kind of the people here is that,
– Well, we started out getting together on Sunday nights as residents and saying,
telling people, okay, this is what we did this last week. This is what worked. This
is what didn’t work. We recommend you do this or don’t do that. Or by the way, we
found a great supplier for this. And then, oh,
by the way, Thursday afternoon, if the wind is good, we’re gonna be putting the
plastic on my greenhouse we could use some extra help and will invariably have 10,
15, 20 people show up to put that plastic on and other times to say okay I’m
getting ready to do the metal on my roof if anybody’s available Tuesday morning we
could sure use help and you’ll get three four five show up and help and and so
this is the kind of people that we’re coming across that’s wanting to get involved
in these communities. These, I might say we’re not tax protesters.
It’s not a religious statement, though we do follow the Judeo -Christian ethic.
We don’t have a militia, but we do have what we call the OSR emergency action
plan.
And so there’s a lot of volunteerism that takes place.
That answer your your question.
Yes, thank you. You’re welcome. Go ahead, Michael. Where’s that button to raise hand
anyway, whatever.
I’ve like, professionally, I’m a mechanic and also work on all kinds of weird
machines and stuff. You’re like gold. And drugs and air cold equipment.
So I just, I just wondering what kind of you, I guess you kind of answered my
question already is like, set up shop and just get everyone’s stuff fixed so they
can eat food for the winter. That was the thing. Yeah,
we have several people out here that showed up. OJ Wilkes is one of them. He’s an
IT guy during the day and then at night he fixes stuff and he charges for his
mechanic ability. He charges 45 bucks an hour. And for example,
I had an issue that I spent several thousand dollars trying to get fixed. And I
took it to OJ and OJ within 10 minutes, he found that I had a crack spark plug,
and that it didn’t create a problem until it heated up.
So I’ve had, I’ve had three electricians come to my property to help me with
various issues, all three of them refused payment.
So, uh, yeah, we have plumbers, we have, uh, and it’s interesting,
you, you start a project like this with one person and then gradually, if you’ve
got the concept and under people see what you’re trying to accomplish, And you have
a direction, they gather. Jesse and I will spend more time talking people out of
this because they’re not ready. We don’t. So we’ve been accused of being lousy
salesmen. But at the same time, we want people to be successful. And so we say,
go back and work on your plan. You’ve got some disconnect and the size of house
you want and the size of budget you’ve got or your skill set or a couple of those
things. And of course we try to be as gentle as possible. And every once in a
while we get somebody gets really upset but it’s, you know, I had one guy say, I
know I can build a 3 ,000 square foot house for $50 ,000. And I go,
okay, tell me how you’re gonna do that. Well, first of all, having the background,
I could tell that he couldn’t even buy the materials for that. And then we have
others say, “Okay, I can build this house out of tires, and I can do it for 25
,000.” And I go, “Okay, I want you to get 20 tires, and I want you to stuff the
dirt in them, and you tell me how you’re ready to do 2 ,500 of those tires.” And
so it’s helping people connect with reality and to get a transition plan that’s
viable.
But there is a need for everybody. I mean people who have a little bit of
construction that has some farming understand and people that are mechanically inclined
are like gold
I’m just, I’m just not, uh, I’m not much of a gardener. I, uh,
I’m much more. Let me show you the old ladies that show up out here are master
gardeners. So if you’re just willing to go talk to somebody, they will actually show
you how step by step because I was like that. I could build anything.
But I didn’t have, you see these thumbs, they’re not green. But now the third year,
and they came out and I got to say, I also had some grandkids come out and spend
some time with me because their parents wanted to learn how to work. And they said
grandpa is going to teach you how and, you know, but I took these grandkids and I
tied them up, or not tied them up, that sounds terrible. I connected them with a
couple senior citizens out here, and they took my grandkids under their wing and
started teaching them how to plant, how to water, how to harvest rabbits and
chickens, and boy, I learned a ton just following my grandkids around.
– So would you say that people that work there or that live there, are you guys so
far out that you guys, that everybody has to work remote or do they travel into
town every day or are there some occupations where there’s enough people that live
there that they can sustain themselves off of the local community? – Great, great
question. We have all of the above. And in the beginning,
generally we’ll bring in some services from the outside until you start getting
enough core people to be there. But we have those that go into town for three to
four days a week, and then they come out and work on the weekends. I mean, we’ve
got a physical therapist that spends four days out and then three days at the
place. We’ve got a chiropractor. He spends three days in town and then four days
out here. We’ve got another gentleman that goes into town and spends four days and
he works at a troubled youth school in Delta Utah and then you have a guy who
leaves for two or three weeks at a time and works, he’s an electrical tech.
He works on submarines and deep sea and oil rigs and so he goes out and makes a
grundle of money and then he comes back and works on his property. Then we have a
hardware salesman. He goes away for a week or two at a time and then comes back
And then he works a lot online. We used HughesNet in the beginning,
and now a lot of us have gone to Starlink. And that’s worked really well for us.
Micah, I wanted to tell you something. You would be a great gardener because you
know how to use a wheelbarrow. There you go. I don’t think I need to teach you
that. I just rather fix all the wheelbarrows and trade everyone a bushel of carrots
at the end of the season or something. There you go. You can do stuff that other
people can’t do. And anybody would love to have you there to push their wheelbarrow.
So, is that a wheelbarrow pusher? Yep.
Let me share you a real life experience out here that happened this last summer,
early fall. My sweetheart, 51 years, had a stroke,
and so we ended up in the hospital. And while I was in the hospital with her,
I had previously over the last five years picked up five stents and I was sitting
in there and all of a sudden I had chest pain so I had my daughter take me down
to the emergency room the same hospital that my wife was in and it turned out that
I needed a double bypass. Now I had just planted all kinds of garden area in my
greenhouse and I was really frustrated because I wasn’t going to be able to water
everything so I figured it was all going to go away and about two days later while
I’m in the hospital one of my neighbors called me up and said by the way I don’t
want you to worry about this some of your friends and neighbors are showing up here
in the next hour and we’re divvying up all the water responsibility. So when I
showed back up in two, two and a half months later, I had the Garden of Eden and
that’s the kind of neighbors that are drawn to a project like this.
Jesse’s showing you some pictures of the activities that are going on but that’s,
that was a real blessing to me And it turned out to be a blessing for those who
came because some of them who didn’t have the experience came to me and said,
“Thank you so much because I was able to see and show my husband what this two
acres is supposed to look like.” And so we had a real win -win.
So Sal has a question. He says, “Do you have any experience with human Uber?” With
human Uber? Yeah. Not at this point.
We are required by the by the state to install a state approved sanitation system.
We wanted to use some composting toilets, but they said no.
So there’s some issues. Now with that said, I’ve researched this.
We know that urine is great to put directly onto your garden soil. The human ear
needs to be turned into the ground, but if we find that we have more people then
our septic systems can handle. We will actually be using a compost foil with a
straw going on top of the the human ear and and converting it that way.
If we had sawdust we’d use that or wood chips but we’re not doing it but in our
OSR emergency action plan, we will be training people how to utilize human or I
talked to the two guy from the county or the state. I can’t remember which he said
the only reason Utah doesn’t allow like composting toilets or a couple of others is
because nobody’s taking the time to push through to change the law, other states
around like Arizona allow other possibilities.
So what’s your capacity and what percentage of that is filled at each of the
communities?
You mean the capacity where we’re at? We currently have 135 of the 250 openings
Here in Utah, and we’re just getting a start down in Arizona. So we’ve we’ve got
What do you say Jess a half a dozen that are sitting at the door waiting for us
to get our building permits and yeah, they’re still their homes Yeah, they’re trying
to sell their homes and get their
Plants finished Well part of Arizona you guys in Yeah,
we have 1300 acres there and it’s beautiful. It’s got trees. It’s it’s got Open
areas there’s Two plateaus. We already have a lake.
We have a house. We have a big we have four wells already put in What area in
Arizona is that snowflake? Oh, I used to live in snowflake Yeah,
we’re about what, 35, 40 minutes out of snowflake? Towards like as the concho or
where it’s on the way to concho kind of it’s nine miles as the flow as the crow
flies east of snowflake, but you have to go nine miles towards concho and then go
nine miles south to get to it. Once all our roads are done, there’ll be a lot
shorter way to get to it. I’m trying to pull up the map.
Google Earth. So at your Utah location, is it really arid?
Is it really windy? Or what kind of things are– how is it? And then what’s your
plan to change it or is it just to keep it the way it is for like the climate
you talked about how in Peru they planted a bunch of trees and it changed the
climate. Yeah we’re all planting trees for example I’ve planted about 70 trees 60 of
them fruit trees my neighbors planted over 200 trees
so they’re just getting a good start That’s going to change things. I mean when we
first got started out here in the winded blow the dust would just kill you but now
we’ve got enough crops going and Irrigation our roads are in place with gravel on
it. We got a concrete batch plant. That’s that works for us up here We’ve got some
of the big agricultural started. So
we anticipate that getting the trees, getting the grass and the forage crops down,
that’s going to temper the climate a little bit and yeah you see we’re high desert
we’re about 4 ,500 feet and it’s It’s dry.
It’s an old riverbed, but the soil is amazing. I grew out kinds of squash,
corn, and in my greenhouse, I was able to get about 60 kernels of Hopi blue corn,
and it’s normally five or six feet tall, but because I had enough water in it,
They got to be at 10, 11, 12 feet tall, and I have over five pounds of seed now,
just from — well, I had 60 % germination, so I had about 35,
40 stocks of corn came up. So, yeah,
we’re changing it. The soil, we started at 2 % biomass, and when I get done,
I hope to have, you know, 10 to 20 percent biomass. Cool. So,
I was asked about somebody about a,
you mentioned building a house for 50 grand and they were wondering how that was
possible.
Well, if you’re trying to meet the international building code, It gets a little
challenging unless you’ve got a very creative engineer and you want to do rammed
earth.
But the labor is very intensive. And then the reinforcing to meet the seismic and
wind and in snow loads is another issue. So if You didn’t have to deal with those
issues. Yeah, there are ways to do that, but you’re basically looking at utilizing
the uniform building code, a minimum of about $100 a square foot all the way up to
depending on what kind of building materials and the degree of competency you gotta
have have to put all this together. We’ve seen some that go as high as $400 a
square foot.
So the main thing that we look for is that, and we try to work really well with
the counties so that they know we’re not trying to create, well,
what can I say, trailer parks that just turned to trash, but that we actually have
homes that are passive solar and we put in our contracts also that whatever you put
in is going to have a 10 -year life expectancy. So for example, if you’re putting
in a hoop house and you’re using a poly that’s only going to last three or four
years, then we want you to put a couple extra covers in storage So that you got
10 years, there is a strong possibility that we may find ourselves with five to 10
years of interruption of goods that are normally available.
Okay, one last question before we officially close, and maybe we’ll have like a
after time, if anybody has any additional questions. But if somebody wants to come
look at what you guys are doing, how would they go about arranging that? Jesse, you
want to tell them there? Yeah, just put a link in the chat. That’s our event.
Eventbrite listings of what we’ve got going.
If you happen to be, well, Yeah, if you want to take a look at that, you can
tour Phillips off -grid homestead, and if he’s feeling chipper,
he’ll take you to other people’s homesteads as well.
Anyway, yeah, that’s a possibility. So we’re also doing a Super Saturday down in
near Sholo, Arizona on February 1st, and Obviously anyone’s welcome to come to that.
We’ll be talking about all the different elements that are required in building an
off -grid homestead, kind of a 30 ,000 -foot view.
– Great. Well, thank you both, Philip and Jesse. I appreciate the time you’ve come
to tell us about what you guys are doing. We’re gonna have a closing prayer, and
then If anybody has any questions, if you guys can stay for a few more minutes and
see if any more questions are asked. I was wondering, Samuel, would you be willing
to give the closing prayer for us?
What’s Samuel’s last thing I forget? Bigly. Bigly, okay.
It might not.
Yeah, just a minute.
Oh, your iPhone. Oh. Okay, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Our dear kind Heavenly Father, we are grateful for the opportunity of coming together
in this capacity to be able to learn these principles of becoming independent as we
have been taught often by Thy servants and are required to do in order to be able
to survive in this world as things are today. We ask for Thy guidance and direction
as we move forward and strive to apply these principles into our lives. Please bless
each one that stands in need of a blessing. May Thy spirit and blessings continue
with us and abide with us in all that we strive to do.
Watch over in particular as we ask in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, amen.