Interview with Liam Davis, Genesis Homesteads, for Parallel Times Notes that this interview was automatically transcribed using AI. Please forgive any transcription errors. To watch the interview in video or listen to a podcast please visit: https://www.paralleltimes.info/podcast-vlog-1 00;00;24;14 - 00;00;36;11
Melanie Rubin
Welcome to this session of Parallel Times. I'm here today with Liam Davis, the co-founder of Genesis Homesteads. Liam, welcome and thank you so much for being here today.
00;00;36;16 - 00;00;39;01
Liam Davis
Thank you for having me. Excited.
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Melanie Rubin
It's really great to see you. And I know we've it's been it's been a minute. We've been trying to coordinate our schedules to get together. So I'm really excited that we've found this time that's that's going to work. So in the next little while, we're going to be learning about Genesis Homesteads and what the business does. It's very innovative business.
00;01;00;28 - 00;01;29;01
Melanie Rubin
And first, I'm going to start by just explaining how Liam and I met. So it was at the Re platform conference in Las Vegas this February, and RE platform is a conference that brings together innovative businesses that are looking to create, if you will, parallel society with a new economy, a sovereign economy. And so, Liam, just because that's where we started and where our communications started.
00;01;29;04 - 00;01;36;29
Melanie Rubin
Can you tell me what made you decide to attend that conference and how that fits in with your business?
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Liam Davis
I think it was seeing how many like minded other businesses and companies were taking part in it. You know, you talk a lot about the parallel economy, parallel culture, and seeing people that were aligned with the work that we're doing and wanting to communicate what we're doing to everybody, and then also see all the other panel speakers. And it was a really amazing event, made so many connections.
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Liam Davis
And honestly, the value of it was connections for us and just networking with people.
00;02;08;01 - 00;02;38;21
Melanie Rubin
Yeah, totally. And Liam was a co-presenter and that was when I learned about Genesis Homesteads, actually. So a little bit on why I'm interested in and this is Homestead as my partner, Chris and I are now creating a homestead at the Operation Self-Reliance Community in Utah. And so I went to speak with Liam about the possibility of him doing some consulting with us at our property.
00;02;38;21 - 00;03;02;13
Melanie Rubin
And actually we will be working with Genesis Homesteads to get some input and we'll talk as we go in terms of what Genesis Homesteads does about what kind of input we will be getting. We're currently gathering our information so that Genesis can give us the best help that you know, that we can give them the most information to give us the best help.
00;03;02;16 - 00;03;20;26
Melanie Rubin
So why don't we start with you giving us an overview of what Genesis Homesteads is in terms of the type of work you do and who your clients typically are. And also if you can tell us about your lovely co-founder and partner.
00;03;20;29 - 00;03;44;17
Liam Davis
Yes. So Genesis Homesteads is a homestead design firm. And what that means is we were looking around at all these different families who are acquiring land, wanting to join in the parallel culture, the parallel economy, and seeing that oftentimes there'd be, you know, 5 to 10 years of trial and error as they would get their land up and running, wanting to build a self-sufficient homestead.
00;03;44;17 - 00;04;23;08
Liam Davis
So we came up with a system that can be used for any climate, any piece of land. And we use this to design homesteads, creating phase maps from inception to producing food to off grid energy all the way to completed homestead. And we work with families with any size of land or living situation that, you know, even if somebody's listening, is in an apartment and they just want to have a consultation about how to produce all their own food all the way up to having a 10,000 acre ranch, we kind of do it all because of our diverse background.
00;04;23;11 - 00;04;35;26
Liam Davis
We integrate permaculture, rotational grazing, like I said, off grid energy and as many sort of cutting edge, but also traditional techniques as we can into the designs.
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Melanie Rubin
That's wonderful. And your partner is your wife?
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Liam Davis
Yes. Yes.
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Melanie Rubin
So, yes.
00;04;40;07 - 00;05;13;10
Liam Davis
Yes. She's a she is a powerhouse because her background is not only in graphic design and art, but also she would rotational and graze beef cattle. So she's she's about, you know, five, five and weighs £120. But she you know, it really speaks to how the systems that we use are as low effort and accessible as possible because she was able to produce £80,000 of grass fed cattle a year, almost on her own with some assistance from the other farm hands.
00;05;13;10 - 00;05;40;13
Liam Davis
So she does the drawings. Actually, you can kind of see you not be heard right now, but you can kind of see one of our designs in the background and also on her website at Genesis Homestead, Starcom. And that's her lovely work. She hand draws all of that and she's really, you know, she takes a lot of the theory and ideas that I have and that we talk about and brings them to life so can do without her.
00;05;40;15 - 00;06;05;14
Melanie Rubin
Great. And your website is Genesis homesteads dot com as you see under Liam's name on the screen and we're just popping up the website here for a second but we hope you'll go Explorer. There's actually a little bit of an initial assessment that people can fill out, right, So that they can submit to you what it is that they're what their gig is, what they need.
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Melanie Rubin
And, you know, if they're interested in talking to you about the possibility of working with you to schedule a brief consult to see if that might be a match, which is what Chris and I did. So that's super helpful.
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Liam Davis
Yeah, Yeah, that can definitely just speed things up a lot and we try to have as many useful questions as we can in there.
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Melanie RubinThat's great. This is a funny question because, you know, both you and I are working with this Homestead concept now and we're kind of living, eating, breathing homestead. But a lot of people have asked me, what do you mean by Homestead? I really have no idea what you're talking about. So we're in our modern culture.
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Melanie Rubin
We've come so far away from that concept. Can you give us a little definition of what a homestead is?
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Liam Davis
Yeah, it's sort of reclaiming an older term. Which homesteads were really the norm for for much of history of people just living on a couple of acres, you know, across the world right now. Actually, a lot of people are still living like this, producing the majority of the food that they that they consume, living, multi-generational. And so you have, you know, maybe grandparents, great grandparents, all the way down to two little kids.
00;07;21;26 - 00;07;45;26
Liam Davis
And I guess another term could be family compound. But there is a huge movement right now with, you know, all the craziness that went on with the lockdowns, with people questioning, am I even going to be able to eat meat in five years? And we've kind of been given this dichotomy of like, you can live in the city or if you're affluent, you can live in the suburbs.
00;07;45;28 - 00;08;10;06
Liam Davis
But nature, that sort of that's sort of off limits or that's crazy. You know, if you're if you're hardcore and you want to go be a Yellowstone rancher, maybe you could do that. But in reality, you know, most people live this way. 150 years ago, just on a couple of acres with their family producing their food and and and making it work in the day to day.
00;08;10;09 - 00;08;30;15
Liam Davis
And I think it's presented in media purposefully as sort of like a slog or you're never going to be able to do anything else. You're never going to be able to make art or have a job or you do something else. But, you know, it takes a village like to do these things together, which is also where my company comes in and, you know, resources like parallel times as well.
00;08;30;15 - 00;08;41;00
Liam Davis
And everybody that's contributing to this movement to be able to make homesteading accessible to people who are not necessarily coming from a farming background or coming from homesteading background.
00;08;41;00 - 00;09;06;02
Melanie Rubin
So great. Thank you. And I love what you said at the beginning that this is scalable, that it doesn't mean you're going to go out and become a rancher full time as a business and folks who who listen to my work have heard me talking a lot about Brian Bernsen, who I am doing a live online course with.
00;09;06;02 - 00;09;30;11
Melanie Rubin
And Brian raises all of the food well, she raises the food that she uses also to trade, to get the rest of their food. But she raises £3,000 of food a year, less than the 10th of an acre. And I had the opportunity to visit there in May. And it's just incredible she does that while she's homeschooling six kids, so she spends about 4 hours a week in the garden.
00;09;30;17 - 00;10;04;19
Melanie Rubin
That's it, something like 2 to 4. And she's got this incredible system while she's supporting her husband serving business. They're both surveyors, raising the six kids, doing the garden and making a lot of their food products as well, their bread, their fermented products. So, you know, yes, Brian's a phenomenon. And it's also people can do these things. It doesn't have to take up the whole life to to raise the food.
00;10;04;22 - 00;10;27;22
Melanie Rubin
That's kind of a bill of goods that we've been sold. If you have a good system and a good design, that makes all the difference. Before we get into what that means, a good design and what Genesis Homesteads is doing to help create a good design, what's your background that led you into going into this work?
00;10;27;25 - 00;10;58;20
Liam Davis
I don't personally come from a farming background or even a landscape design background. Neither does my wife, and we both grew up in Massachusetts and kind of just, you know, in the school system and in public school and all that. But I had a providential experience in 2016, about eight years ago at this point, where I had a loss in the family that led to some of my family members moving out to Washington State.
00;10;58;23 - 00;11;32;15
Liam Davis
And the provenance of it was that this location that they moved to was actually a mile away from one of the oldest permaculture farms in the northern hemisphere. The people who live there actually learned directly from Bill Mollison, who is creator of permaculture. And just quickly, permaculture is a little self-explanatory. It's a design system for how can you create a permanent culture, because right now in our culture where exhausting all the soils you know, birth rates are declining cancer, chronic disease, it's increasing every single day.
00;11;32;15 - 00;11;54;21
Liam Davis
It's how can we instead of designing a system to be as extractive as possible or as manipulative as possible of of energy, to create a system that is self-sustaining, truly sustainable, not just in a buzzword sense, a permanent culture. So I was able to go and live and study at that farm. It's a ten acre homestead that supports three families.
00;11;54;21 - 00;12;14;25
Liam Davis
And like you said, you know, you can produce all this food on a 10th of an acre in such a small space. So it was amazing seeing ten acres of every single little nook and cranny being maximized and when I went onto that property, it was sort of like walking into walking out of a dream or like walking into reality.
00;12;14;25 - 00;12;42;03
Liam Davis
And I was like, I can't believe that there's this system that can produce all the food that we need and nobody's really aware of it. And I'm driving around and seeing all these soy fields, these corn fields, massive suburban housing developments going up, and I'm not really seeing this solution being implemented on a mass scale. There are some examples like Village Homes in Davis, California, some other housing developments and things like that.
00;12;42;03 - 00;13;12;13
Liam Davis
But that's sort of that's really woke me up at the time and got me interested in food production, not production, vegetable production, how to integrate every single aspect of food production and energy production into where you live and into that homestead setting. And then while this was going on, my wife was rotational grazing cattle back in Massachusetts, and then we later met in university when I went back to study regenerative agriculture.
00;13;12;13 - 00;13;39;20
Liam Davis
And she had also gone to to do that program. So, yeah, I said it, but it was just God's providence that it sort of all came together to expose us to this information. And ever since then we've just been obsessed with proliferating this knowledge and helping families to reclaim the knowledge and the birthright that has been lost in the last couple of generations.
00;13;39;22 - 00;14;05;24
Melanie Rubin
That's wonderful. And it's it's always nice to know why people do what they do, because it makes all the difference. Like here, this is really a passion for you, as is your gift to the world to help people reclaim this knowledge and, as you say, walk out of the fantasy and into the reality of what's possible. I'm curious where you were in Massachusetts.
00;14;05;24 - 00;14;07;28
Melanie Rubin
Where where are you from? What school you.
00;14;07;29 - 00;14;35;09
Liam Davis
I'm from from north of Boston. My wife is from the Cape. Cape Cod and yet it's just a hyper populated, hyper liberal area, but still very beautiful. And that actually really influenced my upbringing as well and my love for nature that sort of inclined me to get into farming was all the forests and everything in New England and growing up and experiencing that.
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Liam Davis
So yeah.
00;14;37;23 - 00;15;02;17
Melanie Rubin
I went to graduate school in Massachusetts and lived there for about seven years, I guess so, and spent time on the Cape growing up. It's that's an area that's near and dear to me too. And then what about the title Genesis Homesteads? I'm sure that was chosen with great thought and care here.
00;15;02;21 - 00;15;34;13
Liam Davis
That comes from Genesis 126 in the Bible, which references how God created man in his image and then gave man dominion over the Earth. And I was really looking at, you know, just thinking about that passage and looking at the world and thinking, we're given this false dichotomy of we can either exploit the Earth, we're either going to destroy the Earth by taking part in farming or taking part in building homes or things like that, or we're going to conserve everything.
00;15;34;13 - 00;16;06;20
Liam Davis
We're going to put everything into conservation easements. We're just going to have huge state and national parks. And I'm very thankful that there are these resources, you know, beautiful national parks in America and everything. But more and more of this land is being bought up by multinational corporations, private equity equity firms like BlackRock and realizing from that passage, Genesis 126, that really God wants us to have a participatory relationship to nature that actually makes it more productive than it would be if we left it alone.
00;16;06;20 - 00;16;32;14
Liam Davis
So we can use natural systems, we can use natural design through things like rotational grazing and permaculture and some off grid energy production methods to actually make nature more productive than if we were all in 15 minute smart cities, leaving it all to be conserved by the federal government. That was really an eye opening experience for my wife.
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Liam Davis
And I used to think of it that way. And then we were like, Well, you know, Genesis also building these these homesteads, it oftentimes it's sort of in the image of the Garden of Eden or returning to how can we how can we sort of acknowledge that there's something wrong going on repents and get out of this fallen state and embody the the beauty of creation and the beauty of God's creation, that he is he's bequeathed us with.
00;17;04;08 - 00;17;13;12
Liam Davis
All of those concepts kind of came together and then we were like, Yeah, it just has to be Genesis Homesteads.
00;17;13;15 - 00;17;47;14
Melanie Rubin
Cool. I'm sure you know, we have folks with a lot of spiritual backgrounds watching this program and certainly, you know, parallel times honors everybody's choices and spiritual background. And personally, I'm coming to believe that the most real things, because there's a lot out there that's not real anymore are whatever spirit higher power God however you identify nature and the love that humans have amongst us.
00;17;47;14 - 00;18;09;14
Melanie Rubin
And those for me are the guiding lights. And that if we can connect more and more to nature, we can become more and more real again. Kind of like it's suddenly reminding me of that old I don't know if you knew this book growing up, but The Velveteen Rabbit and the Velveteen Rabbit wants to become real, wants to become a real rabbit.
00;18;09;21 - 00;18;33;09
Melanie Rubin
And I think that, you know, how can we become real creatures, real human beings? And part of that is about having our hands in the soil, whether it's a little pot of herbs that's sitting on your windowsill or whether it's a 10,000 acre ranch or, you know, anywhere in between, that that's part of how we become real again, Like The Velveteen Rabbit.
00;18;33;11 - 00;19;07;03
Liam Davis
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And from our faith background as Christians, it's easier. How can we become more of in the image that that God made us in? But this is accessible to everybody. We work with, everybody from all backgrounds. And it's, it's really having access to these eternal forces, you know, beauty, love, truth, integrity, these things that are really under attack from the the powers that be, I guess I could say.
00;19;07;03 - 00;19;26;05
Liam Davis
So like you said, it's a life's work and it's truly a blessing to be able to help people really empower themselves with this information and to see people have access to this flourishing, that that really is a birthright as as humans.
00;19;26;07 - 00;19;54;22
Melanie Rubin
Great. Thank you. Can you, just to ground this because we're kind of being philosophical and conceptual, which is always fun, but can you ground this for us In a recent example of a project you've done? Of course, whatever you need to do to maintain privacy, but an example of a type of project and why the people might have come to you and what their needs were and how you were able to help them with your design.
00;19;54;25 - 00;20;30;09
Liam Davis
Yeah, many of the the parcels that are available nowadays as land becomes more and more of a sort of just, it becomes more and more valuable every day, more of a of a valuable resource. Many families that we work with are purchasing heavily wooded lots, and then it's sort of up to you, how do you take this forest without damaging it or causing massive erosion or damaging the topsoil, modifying it so that it's able to support a garden, support your home and all of these things.
00;20;30;09 - 00;21;05;03
Liam Davis
So we have had a couple of clients recently across mostly the southern United States who had these heavily wooded lots, and we were able to work with them to discuss how can we even adjust the population of trees over time and focus on sustainably managing it as a food and resource, I guess food production resource for everything from goats to mushrooms to firewood, just sustainable forestry.
00;21;05;03 - 00;21;31;24
Liam Davis
While also how can you clear some of this land to create pasture, to create gardens, to create a home site without causing that erosion that we often associate with with removing trees? So that's been a really great kind of aspect of, of some recent projects because before we were mainly focused in Texas for a couple of months and it was just a lot of pasture and a lot of already cleared land.
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Liam Davis
And so it was just a great design challenge to work with.
00;21;35;03 - 00;21;37;13
Melanie Rubin
And you're based in Texas, correct?
00;21;37;15 - 00;21;42;24
Liam Davis
We're actually in the process of re moving back to New England because.
00;21;42;24 - 00;21;44;12
Melanie Rubin
Wow.
00;21;44;15 - 00;22;05;10
Liam Davis
So that's actually been very exciting too, because it's really in our bones, you know, the beautiful autumns and everything here and the climate and everything. We're excited for that, this next chapter. But we also have have great love for Texas. And we were in East Texas in the piney woods, and it was beautiful there as well.
00;22;05;13 - 00;22;39;13
Melanie Rubin
It's funny that you mention about people having land and needing to manage their trees because just when it was less 16 hours ago, I was talking to a friend who has a small farm up in Canada actually, and they had to take out a number of trees for fire protection and, you know, other protection. You know, there's always this thing about managing the trees that are near the homes so that they don't jeopardize the home.
00;22;39;16 - 00;23;06;25
Melanie Rubin
And then they took out the trees and now they've got an erosion management issue and making sure that the foundation doesn't get damaged. Now with water moving through that didn't before the tree roots when the tree roots were there. It’s interesting that, where I'm going, which is Operation Self Reliance, we have no trees, which is funny because I'm a tree lover.
00;23;06;27 - 00;23;45;07
Melanie Rubin
I hope we will we will soon have trees. I mean, people have planted some fruit trees now, but so I would imagine it runs the gamut from helping people who have homesteads in the high desert to helping people that have homesteads in areas that are highly forested and the whole end of the spectrum that has to do with creating that permaculture environment where the people and the plants and the animals can peacefully coexist in harmony for long or into perpetuity in a safe way.
00;23;45;10 - 00;23;49;00
Melanie Rubin
It sounds like you work with all of that with Genesis Homesteads.
00;23;49;02 - 00;24;22;21
Liam Davis
Yeah, we've worked as far south as as Florida actually, and as far north as Montana, across that wide range of ecosystems by regions. And there is there's an element of, okay, well we're working with too much heat, too much humidity, too much water, too many trees too then going to well, now how do we fit food production into maybe a four month window on a lot that has no trees at all and capturing some of that water and utilizing as much as we can.
00;24;22;21 - 00;24;29;28
Liam Davis
So it's definitely a blast, you know, being American with such a wide variety of of climates across America.
00;24;29;28 - 00;25;02;24
Melanie Rubin
I'll tell a little more of our story in terms of why we wanted to work with Genesis Homesteads, and maybe this will set the stage for the types of factors that Genesis Homesteads considers. For those who haven't heard what we're doing, Operation Self-Reliance is kind of in the middle of nowhere in Utah, or at least the first location is a second location that's being planned for Arizona, and there will be additional locations later.
00;25;02;27 - 00;25;40;00
Melanie Rubin
But it's a 250 homestead property on 1100 acres in an area that used to be an alfalfa farm, a commercial alfalfa farm. And each family or household buys a share because it's an agricultural collaborative. And that is a to roughly two acres to two and a half acre piece of property that we don't own the land, we own the share, and that gives us the right to utilize that share basically in perpetuity.
00;25;40;03 - 00;26;01;04
Melanie Rubin
99 years and then there's extension so we can sell it, bequeath it to whatever we need to do with it. And on that property we will put a home, a barn, a greenhouse, a garden, a well, get our septic permit on Monday, which is a huge deal.
00;26;01;04 - 00;26;01;25
Liam Davis
Nice.
00;26;01;28 - 00;26;55;18
Melanie Rubin
Yeah, big deal. Chris has been out there slugging it out in the 108 degree heat. That environment runs the gamut from very hot and very dry in the summer to very cold and very snowy in the winter. And so the goal of Operation Self-Reliance, as the name implies, is that we become self-sufficient as a community with interaction with other communities, but that we are raising a majority of our food and also that we have some cottage industry that relates to our small mini ranching that we're doing that we can sell within our community and also sell to the broader community, which would be the closest town, Nephi or Salt Lake City even.
00;26;55;20 - 00;27;45;01
Melanie Rubin
And so Chris and I wanted to work with Genesis Homesteads to make sure that we were considering everything that should be considered, like given the fact that we are not going to be full time ranchers because we have other things we do, how can we produce a crop that's going to be salable in that economic environment with the distance we have to go with the time that we have with the microclimate factors that are there, the winds that are there, how can we design our buildings to optimize the the use of our natural elements and minimize the possible damage of our natural elements and do all that in a contextual, early appropriate time, appropriate way
00;27;45;01 - 00;28;22;06
Melanie Rubin
that respects the environment and also maximizes what we want to eat. We wanted to work with Genesis Homesteads to make sure that we weren't forgetting anything, including the zoning, the regulations, oceans. Just looking at my little list, all the microclimate factors size, soil, sun, rain, wind, temperatures. So those are some of the factors we're looking at. Maybe building on that example, can you talk, Liam, of all the different kinds of factors that you consider when you're consulting?
00;28;22;08 - 00;28;59;18
Liam Davis
Definitely. And it really is an amazing project that they all are doing out in Utah. And at the same time, you know, kind of as you go over it, it really shows all of the particulars that are there as you're developing the homestead and as you're looking at, you know, this this huge undertaking that's ahead of you, it's sort of how do you prioritize in how do you do things in steps so that what you do, you know, three, three years down the road doesn't cause you to have to take out what you did in the first month or or, you know, damage that overall vision that you're you're really going for.
00;28;59;19 - 00;29;47;18
Liam Davis
So when we're designing a homestead or doing a consultation, what we do first is look at the most permanent factors in the landscape. That is the environmental factors like rainfall, what is the shape of the land? These are things that are very difficult to modify, but if you put the systems in place to utilize the sun, the wind, the rainfall, the natural shape of the land right away, that can have incredibly positive ramifications pretty much perpetually going into the future five, ten years from now, all the way generations down the road, because alternatively, if we look at let's say we purchased 100 acres and just made it a cornfield, you're taking out all of
00;29;47;18 - 00;30;39;05
Liam Davis
the natural ecosystems, including the tree roots and the topsoil and everything that's holding that water in place. So alternatively, when we're looking at a homestead, our water is obviously so important because water gives life. So we're looking at how do we put in sort of as little change as possible, but with the greatest effect ponds, what's called key line design swales fruit trees, nut trees on contour to build soil and to capture the water as it runs off the land over the contour of the land, allow it to sink more effectively into the land and reach roots more deeply, which definitely in the instance of the high desert, it's it's crucial to do that because,
00;30;39;07 - 00;31;19;15
Liam Davis
you know, a desert will actually get enough rain to sustain life. But the issue is that it's a hard pan usually are just just completely compacted soil where the water is quickly running off or it's passing immediately through the soil. It’s really how do we capture that water in place and then from there we start looking at how do we position the house, how do we position gardens, etc., etc., to take advantage of little microclimates from the sunlight, from the wind, etc., etc., all the way down, going from the scale of permanence, from these environmental factors all the way down to, you know, the home, the driveway, and then the lease permanent actually being
00;31;19;15 - 00;31;32;04
Liam Davis
the soil because of how fragile the bacterial life is in the soil. When we take care of these higher order things, the lower order things are able to fall into place more effectively. I hope that that made sense.
00;31;32;07 - 00;31;59;03
Melanie Rubin
So, yeah, I'm eating it up with a stick and a spoon and I have I'm not as well. I don't want to say I'm not a student of permaculture. I don't have formal training in permaculture, but I actually co-wrote a book called The Home Farming Revolution for Drylands with a person who is an expert in permaculture. And I was like, you know, again, I think from childhood about the stories of the city Mouse and the country mouse.
00;31;59;03 - 00;32;38;23
Melanie Rubin
I was like the city mouse that the country mouse was teaching. And so I learned a bunch of permaculture concepts from her. And in the process of writing that book for somebody who knows nothing like I did. So one of the principles I understand of permaculture is really being on the land and observing what happens on that piece of land before you start imposing your ideas on it and so it's it's ironic, but I keep deferring with Liam and saying Soon, soon we'll start working because I want to actually be out there more before and get data.
00;32;38;25 - 00;33;12;23
Melanie Rubin
Chris is out there now, has been, as I mentioned, putting in our septic system and he's finding things from the neighbors like well, the neighbors that positioned the greenhouse in this way have been successful because the winds that move through from the southeast and the northwest have created natural ventilation through the greenhouse, and they've had less bug problems in the greenhouse, whereas the people who position their greenhouse in this way have had all these bug infestation problems because they're not utilizing the natural flow of the winds.
00;33;12;25 - 00;33;34;13
Melanie Rubin
So we're starting to get that wisdom from our neighbors. But I feel like once we're out there, we will get more of that wisdom before we put permanent design in place. And we have the luxury of doing that because we're going to put a manufactured house temporarily on the property and be able to observe more and start creating the design for our permanent properties.
00;33;34;13 - 00;34;02;02
Melanie Rubin
As you say, three years down the road, I'm sure there's going to be some of that would-a-could-a because you can't avoid it. But hopefully we minimize that and also with your help. So we've talked about this a little bit already, but is there anything more you want to say about why you think this work is so important at this time in the United States?
00;34;02;04 - 00;34;32;22
Liam Davis
Yeah, absolutely. And I spoke a little bit on it earlier about the importance of things like like beauty and love and and also land of being purchased by these these multinational corporations. But it really comes down to preparing the world for future generations, for people to live in sovereignty in connection to their birthright, which is is to be human and to to nurture your your soul and to nurture your family and and all of that.
00;34;32;22 - 00;35;18;07
Liam Davis
And a huge component of that is eating a pesticide, GMO free diet away from, you know, five, six, seven, eight g towers in the city. And it's especially true now that that the UN and other organizations are starting to crack down on meat consumption, you know, etc., etc.. You know, I love cold showers for the health benefits, but, you know, maybe there will come a time where we're compelled to have to take cold showers and it's really getting back to the land, but then also going into it with these these modern understandings and sensibilities, new technologies that exist so that, you know, we don't have to live completely without we can still have have hot
00;35;18;07 - 00;35;44;13
Liam Davis
water and warmth and and, you know, use technology sensibly, but we don't have to sacrifice our humanity in doing so. And so I think, you know, the time is now. There's a saying that the best time to plant a fruit tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. And land is only going to become more scars and freedoms will only be more infringed upon as things kind of come to a head and accelerate.
00;35;44;13 - 00;35;54;11
Liam Davis
We think that this is incredibly important work that everybody is doing. And we just feel once again, blessed to be a part of it.
00;35;54;13 - 00;36;13;18
Melanie Rubin
Thank you. And how do you think that creating excuse me, a mini ranch or a homestead helps people leave the matrix or create a parallel society as you conceive of it or you understand it?
00;36;13;21 - 00;36;42;11
Liam Davis
Yeah, you kind of actually touched on it a little bit earlier. We were talking about the elements of the design, talking about how you were one going on to the land and observing it, and then to communicating with your neighbors and seeing what had they observed, what what were they aware of? And you're creating this system where you're transacting between each other, information and food, other resources like medicine.
00;36;42;13 - 00;37;05;29
Liam Davis
And if we think about literally the movie The Matrix, it's our energies being harvested by something that is not human, that is actually sort of a technological force run amuck. From a Christian perspective, I could call it the Anti-Christ, you know, just a darkness, basically. So, it's taking our energy back from that system of being harvested on a grid.
00;37;06;02 - 00;37;30;24
Liam Davis
And this is why, you know, off grid really goes hand in hand with the homesteading, is because getting off that grid and creating a parallel grid, a divergent grid economy where it's people who have the culture that, you know, we as human beings want to uphold as opposed to being the hold on to this. I sort of unconscious consumption lifestyle.
00;37;30;26 - 00;37;34;19
Liam Davis
So yeah, I think that about covers it.
00;37;34;19 - 00;37;58;29
Melanie Rubin
That’s great. Thank you very much. That ties a lot together on a lot of different levels. So appreciate your your insight. I don't know if we've missed anything that you feel is important. I want to if there's anything else you'd like to share about your work or anything else related to what we've discussed, I'm just looking my little cheat sheet here Of what?
00;37;58;29 - 00;38;10;17
Melanie Rubin
To make sure to ask you. Anything else that's important you think people should know about your work or their opportunities or whatever?
00;38;10;19 - 00;38;41;28
Liam Davis
Let's see. I think we covered most of my notes as well. And and if anyone is interested in a free intro call just to talk back and forth about your situation, feel free to visit our website, Genesis, Homestead, Starcom, and you can fill out that form and we'll be in touch quickly. You can also DM us on Instagram at Genesis Homesteads and some resources that I might recommend if people are interested in permaculture or producing animal foods, regenerative and restorative.
00;38;41;28 - 00;38;57;12
Liam Davis
I recommend Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway and You Can Farm by Joel Salatin. Both just really influential figures, and both of those books have had a huge impact on me and yeah, just thank you for the opportunity. Melanie. It's great to see you.
00;38;57;13 - 00;39;25;25
Melanie Rubin
Thank you much and I'm really looking forward to working with you. It's just great to be coming right up and I will be telling people how that goes, what our experience is so that you can have a little insight into what you could do yourself, whether you work with Genesis Homesteads or you don't. But, in terms of how this can unfold and how much help there is out there for people who want to do something like this, you don't have to know everything.
00;39;25;25 - 00;39;42;00
Melanie Rubin
You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to do things perfectly, just stumble forward imperfectly. And the help you need will show up. So definitely encourage people to start where you are with what you have, do what you can, and just keep going.
00;39;42;02 - 00;40;00;21
Liam Davis
Exactly. All the information is out there and we're going to be making an effort to ramp up our sort of educational content as well, because there there is a lot of information to sift through. But there's many, many nuggets of gold. And we're really excited to work with you as well, Melanie, in the near future.
00;40;00;23 - 00;40;19;29
Melanie Rubin
Good, because I'm going to be paying you real soon in about doing a little intro course. Well, thank you so much, Liam, and appreciate your time and good luck with your transition move and we'll be in touch very soon.
00;40;20;01 - 00;40;20;21
Liam Davis
Absolutely.
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