Podcasts about homesteads

U of I researchers preserving heritage apples in wilderness area

In this episode of the Modern Homesteading Podcast, Harold and Rachel have a good old-fashioned homestead chat. They covered everything from sore backs to swales, compost piles to creating memories—things every homesteader can relate to.Find the full show notes and links mentioned at https://redemptionpermaculture.com/chewing-the-fat-about-our-homesteads-a-season-of-change-and-growth/

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Luis and Nate talk about homesteading.Become a Member at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://spanishwithnate.com

U of I researchers preserving heritage apples in wilderness area

Gender identity and anti-trans legislation are a repeat focus this session. Lawmakers begin work on property tax changes. The governor is quiet about Medicaid expansion. Sen. Sheehy wants to know how many pushups the Secretary of Defense nominee can do.

Gender identity and anti-trans legislation are a repeat focus this session. Lawmakers begin work on property tax changes. The governor is quiet about Medicaid expansion. Sen. Sheehy wants to know how many pushups the Secretary of Defense nominee can do.

Did you know the average homestead LOSES $1,980 per year? But it doesn't have to be that way! In this video, we reveal how three successful homesteaders turned their farms into profitable businesses using the E.G.G. method: In this video we will discuss how 3 different homesteads made $75,000 last year, selling the right kind of products!

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This week we discussed Update 41.2’s release notes, special codes, and our week in gaming. Game News Update 41.2 Release Notes Expect a small update next week Coupon code for mounts: GALIDRIELSGIFT Coupon code for pet drakeling: SMAUGSSPOILS Store Sales This is your final weekend to get the Homesteads and Harvests Coffer! Read more on […]

What if you could get your stolen money back from the Federal Government and use it to improve food production systems on your farm or even your homestead. With a little creativity and specialized knowledge you can. Our guest today, … Continue reading →

Support future Podcasts & creation via the Audio link or enjoy for free! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/jebrounity/support⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jebrounity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ every week! Support the Podcast & Jebro's content creation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/jebro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted on https://www.twitch.tv/jebrounity every week! Check out the guests below: Taja: https://www.twitch.tv/taja Malchemist: https://www.twitch.tv/malchemist Readergeek: https://www.twitch.tv/readergeek13 Sponsored by Arenanet Purchase Secrets of the Obscure: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://guildwars2.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=26&aff_id=20⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link supports Jebro. Sponsored by Arenanet JOIN The Lightbringers guild: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://t.co/aYsckcNOZe

815: Kareen Erbe on Resilient Homesteads.Helping people design food forests and gardens with a holistic approach.In This Podcast: Broken Ground is Kareen's passion and a platform where people can learn how to work with and create from the principles of permaculture and sustainable living. Kareen is a passionate environmentalist with a deep-rooted connection to the land, and through Broken Ground she offers workshops, consultations, and design services to empower individuals and communities to grow their own food and regenerate the earth.Through her signature resilient homestead program, participants are guided through the principles of permaculture design, soil building, food forest creation, and water harvesting, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to transform their landscapes into thriving, biodiverse ecosystems. By fostering beneficial relationships between plants, animals, and people, Broken Ground is redefining the way we interact with our environment and inspiring a new generation of land stewards.At the core of her mission is the belief that everyone has the ability to cultivate abundance and resilience in their own front and backyard. By providing practical tools and resources, along with ongoing support and mentorship, Broken Ground empowers individuals to take control of their food supply and reduce their impact on the planet. Through education, community engagement, and hands-on learning experiences, Broken Ground is sowing the seeds of change and cultivating a future where regenerative agriculture is the norm, not the exception.Our Guest: Kareen is the owner of Broken Ground, a garden design consultant and educator. For over a decade, she has helped people in cold climates grow their own food so they can eat healthier, live more sustainably, and become more self-reliant. From getting clients started on their first ever garden, to working with couples on designing a full-blown homestead, to designing large-scale farms, she's helped thousands of people grow nutritious food for their family through consultations, design services, her signature Resilient Homestead Program, and her YouTube channel. Kareen and her husband live on a suburban homestead in Bozeman, Montana, USA with their dog Beni, a greenhouse, pond, vegetable gardens, a food forest of fruit trees and berry bushes, and a flock of chickens.Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/BrokenGround for the show notes and links on this episode! Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.Click HERE to learn more!Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate...

The Peddler & the Fairy: Part 4 The trio make a stop at a friend's farm.  In 10 parts, by Scholarly Mori. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Another morning dawned bright and clear, dissipating the last wisps of fog lingering over the ground. All was silent except the crackle of the fire. Thinking it odd the fire hadn't died down, Devin squinted open an eye. Reina sat serenely, her legs tucked under her nursing a steaming mug. [[MORE]] He was about to wish her a good morning when he felt a familiar pair of arms and thighs. Lifting the blanket, he was not particularly surprised his morning wood was sandwiched between his stomach and a limp, drooling fairy. He tucked some of her hair behind her ear. She looked so peaceful compared to when she was awake. It was hard to imagine so much energy in such a tiny package. Her optimism was contagious, always so bubbly and cheerful. Every time she'd laugh or giggle, her nose scrunched up adorably, and dimples appeared. As he stroked her freckled cheek, he became aware of the squishing of her breasts against him with every breath she took. That gave him a naughty idea. He gently grasped her between his fingers and slowly stroked himself with her warm little body. Her nipples were much softer than when she was aroused, but they still pleasantly stimulated him as they dragged over his skin. It wasn't going to be enough to make him cum, though, so he rubbed against her a few more times and then let her be. He didn't want to wake her up. Out of Devin's periphery, he noticed Reina watching him. He mused, "It seems to be her favorite sleeping spot." "Looks to be. I admit I'm a little jealous of her size." "I'm glad you're not as small. Would have made what we did last night a bit more difficult." She swished her tail and took a sip of her drink, attempting to hide her blush. "I'm still a bit sore back there, but I would be up for it again sometime." Clearing her throat, "I hope you slept well, herd-mate. I have stoked the fire and prepared you something warm to drink." "Thank you, Reina. Getting out of a warm bed when it's cold is not one of my favorite things." "That explains why you snuggled into me so much last night. Kept on laying your head between my breasts." "Did I? Couldn't have asked for a better pillow!" "You did. Maybe that's why you are in need of some attention this morning. Can I relieve it for you?" Devin looked down at his erection. "I would love that, but don't feel obligated." "But I want to. You've made me orgasm so many times since we met. I want to do the same for you." "If you insist, then." After taking the drink Reina prepared for him, he got to his feet as Reina knelt in front of him. He gently disengaged Azalea from his morning wood and placed her back under the blanket. She tried to suppress her eager smile as she settled into a comfortable position. With her long, slender fingers, she gripped his twitching member. "I can feel the pulse of your heart, herd-mate," Reina exclaimed with reverent awe. "I hope so! I'd be concerned if you couldn't," he chuckled. Having no prior masturbation experience, either mutual or personal, she attempted to clumsily jack him off with no cadence or particular pattern. In the past, she had stealthily watched girls from other herds pleasuring their mates, but watching didn't necessarily equate to knowing what to do. Reina grew a little apprehensive, seeing he was not eliciting the response she desired. She dared a peek into his face, thinking he might not be enjoying her efforts, but his eyes were gentle and didn't convey any sense of urgency or boredom. "I'm sorry for my inexperience, herd-mate." With a gentle smile, he laid his hand over hers. "I appreciate your earnestness. Grip it like this; that's right; a little tighter, it's not that delicate; and pump up and down. Try to think at what speed you'd want someone to rub your cunt and try to mimic that, and don't be afraid to try slight variations once you're comfortable." As she became accustomed to her task, he let her take over. She experimented with overhand, underhand, and sometimes both hands, listening for indications that he liked it. After several minutes of practice, she wondered what to do next when a droplet of clear liquid appeared. This must be that pre-cum Azalea & Mavis mentioned yesterday. She scooped some onto her fingers and stretched the sticky substance between them. I thought only females got wet, and the males just stuck it in when things were slippery enough. I guess this means he's feeling good? As her hands became slicker, she wondered if she should use her mouth. Leaning forward, she sniffed. Hmm, not as strong a smell as a male Whitehorn. I suppose humans bathe more often. Such an odd shape too -- thicker, but not as long. No wonder my herd-mate was worried he wouldn't be able to satisfy me. He shouldn't worry about trifling things like that. Her eyes slightly crossed as she inhaled again, more deeply, letting his scent etch itself into her memory. Then she planted a polite kiss on the tip and daintily fed it between her lips, nibbling on the spongey gland. With a few swirls of her tongue, she lapped up his pre-cum while continuing to jerk him off. "Ar youf feeing guud, her-mae? Wan me go faser, or harer?" "Deeper," Devin panted. Smiling around his penis, she watched his eyes go momentarily vacant as she started bobbing, feeding more into her mouth with each descent. She felt butterflies when Devin groaned from the warm wetness enveloping him and her silky tongue bathing his nerves in ecstasy. Her physical size was smaller than the males of her species but large by human standards, and her mouth reflected this -- quite able to accommodate his length. Devin was entirely in her mouth and could just barely feel the back of her throat. He was about to lose himself in the sensation when he remembered the drink he was holding. He looked at the yellowish liquid skeptically. "Whash ong her-mae?" "What is this?" Replacing her mouth with her hand, she continued to pump him to not lose the tempo. "It's just a tea made from the leaves of fireweed herbs I gathered this morning." "Oh." He put the mug to his lips and lightly burned his tongue as he took a sip." "What did you think it was?" He took another sip, avoiding eye contact. "Nothing specific." She studied him for a moment. "No, it doesn't contain any of my urine; if that's what you were worried about. Although, among some herds, I've heard there are males who enjoy drinking their females' first pee of the morning when it tastes strongest. I can do that for you if you wish." "No need to trouble yourself. With the brief experience I had using Azalea's magic, I can understand, somewhat, why they would like it, especially if they're in season, but I'm quite content with this," he said hurriedly, fearing she might insist. "This," he stated as he swirled the tea around, "is relaxing. It's a bit tart but has a hint of sweetness, a bit like you, now that I think about it. Your personality, I mean." "My personality, hmm? I'm sure that wasn't the only thing you remembered just now that tasted sweetly tart." She smirked. "Still, I'm happy you found it to your taste, my love. I enjoy it every morning, as well. It clears my mind and helps me focus." She gulped his member down once more. Her sucking grew louder and more lewd as more precum was added to her saliva. She placed his hands on her antlers to let him guide her as he pleased. With how well she was doing, she didn't need any guidance. Instead, he scratched behind her ears, wondering if this was a bit demeaning, like petting an animal, but she nuzzled her head into it, seemingly wanting more. Reina increased the suction, so her cheeks constricted around his tongue-cradled shaft. Noticing his balls start to contract close to his body, she kept milking his glans with her throat, not realizing what this signified. Being too close to climax to warn her, she squeaked in surprise when his first spurt went down her throat. She backed off a bit and massaged his balls as he filled her cheeks. It was at this moment that Azalea stirred. She sat up, rubbing her eyes while stretching one arm in the air, causing her boobs to jiggle. As she scratched her bed hair, she looked around and suddenly locked half-lidded eyes on the scene playing out nearby. She took in Reina's eyes darting between her and Devin's penis, noting her embarrassment to be caught in such an awkward position. Azalea fluttered over and plopped down on Devin's thigh. Scrutinizing Reina's gradually filling cheeks, she nodded to herself, affirming Reina was doing a good job. She gave her a loving peck on the cheek, yawned, and started idly rubbing her nipples as she waited until the two finished. With Devin's final spurt, Reina slowly pulled off, careful not to spill. She sat back and was about to swallow when Azalea grabbed her chin. Reina was unsure if she had done something wrong, and the two stared at each other until an audible stomach growl broke the silence. As if on queue, Azalea pressed her small lips to hers, causing Reina's eyes flew open at the sudden intimacy. The kiss wasn't passionate, but it was hungry and seemed to convey a 'let's enjoy this together' feeling of playfulness. With her eyes, Reina begged Devin for help as Azalea flicked her tongue across her lips, seeking admittance. However, Devin enjoyed the surprise show too much to curtail what he reasoned was a good bonding experience between them. He urged Reina to go along with it. Giving him the poutiest face she could manage, she loosened her lips, allowing Azalea's to dart in, and their tongues entwined in a gooey embrace. I didn't realize this kind of kissing felt so good. Her tongue is so small. She smells so sweet, so floral. As they continued their oral wrestling, Azalea occasionally scooped some of the creamy treat into her mouth, humming with its deliciousness. She continued until just half of Devin's load was left in her flustered friend's mouth. Breaking the kiss slowly, she lingered on the feeling of Reina's soft lips, savoring the thickness of her life-mate's early morning cum. She licked her lips in satisfaction after an audible swallow. Looking a little more alert, Azalea flew to her bag, pulled out a comb, and re-perched on Reina's shoulder. "Thank you, life-mate, for the morning treat, and thank you, Reina, for sharing!" she said, excitedly hugging and nuzzling Reina's neck before organizing her unruly hair. Reina swallowed twice. "Yo, your welcome, Azalea. The, that was my first kiss with a girl." "It was?! I'm happy I could be your first, and we definitely shouldn't make it the last!" Taking a sip of her cold tea, Reina tried to calm her fluttering heart. "Did I do an adequate job, herd-mate?" "Once you got the hang of it, it felt amazing!" He wasn't sure she could take any more kissing, but he did anyway to further emphasize his appreciation. "I'm glad it was to your liking. I'll service you whenever you need it." After an unexpectedly fun morning, the trio got dressed, had a quick breakfast, and set off to Gylan's farm. --- Azalea sat on Reina's antlers, kicking her legs. "Are we almost there, life-mate?" "It should be coming into view now," was Devin's reply. As they topped the final hill, a large valley spread out before them, dotted with a patchwork quilt of colored fields, and a wide, slow-flowing river meandered down the middle. Homesteads with sturdy, timbered buildings clustered here and there around the valley. "Which is your friend's farm, life-mate?" Devin pointed to the southeast corner. "The one with the water wheel." "I can't wait to meet him! What's he like?" Devin stretched his shoulders. "He's a practical man but very jovial. He, his wife, and his daughter work hard to provide a home for all the demi-humans on the farm." "Is his daughter hot?" asked Azalea conspiratorially. "She is attractive, yes." "Have you mated with her?" inquired Reina. "I didn't think about sex so much before I met you two, so no." "Are you implying my presence has made you more licentious? I am a prim and proper lady," Reina contended with a haughty air. "Yes, properly allowing public access to your ass, you mean," Azalea giggled. "It was ONE time, under uncharacteristic circumstances," Reina huffed. Azalea flitted over to Reina's back and patted her rump. "We could make it two." Reina just snorted and flicked her tail. Descending the hill, the trio approached the main lodge. A large, burly man opened the front door as they approached, wiping his hands on a towel. Peering into the distance, he scratched his dark red beard, and his eyes lit up in recognition. "Hoi, young Devin! Good to see you're still kickin', and I see you found folk to kick it with!" he shouted. Devin circled the wagon, brought it to a halt, and jumped down. "I did. Some interesting events happened recently. I see you haven't overworked yourself to an early retirement yet." "Sometimes I feel like it. Hard to keep up with all the young'uns around here." "Did you finally hire more workers?" "Aye, a few temp workers, and only till the first snow. We weren't expecting you for a few more days." "The weather was favorable, and my horse had some additional assistance," Devin offered while gesturing to Reina. "Let me introduce you to my companions. This is Reina Virtsa and Azalea Ó Gallchobhair." Reina extended her front hoof and bowed while Azalea curtsied. "No need to be so formal. It's a pleasure meet'n both of ya's. Glad young Devin found traveling companions. It's said strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. Wouldn't settle for anything less than two, eh?" he laughed, smacking Devin on the back. "As you probably already guessed, I'm Gylan Kiveläson, one of ten farming families in this valley. I manage this one with my wife 'n daughter. Unfortunately, my better half isn't here to greet you. She's over at the neighbor's, help'n set up a roost for some harpies. I'm not sure where that daughter of mine has wandered off to. "We haven't finished harvesting your order yet. We'll have you stay with us tonight, and we can load up the merchandise tomorrow afternoon." "Sorry to intrude like this," confessed Devin. Ruffling Devin's hair, Gavin countered, "Don't be silly, ma'boy! You're like the son I never had!" "Well, then, we'll be in your care." Gylan shielded his eyes from the sun. "Still sometime before sundown. Would your companions like a tour? We've made some changes since your last visit." "I'm intrigued. It sounds very educational," affirmed Reina. "Yes, yes! Show us everything!" exclaimed Azalea, landing on Gylan's shoulder. "Such energy and excitement makes me wish I was young again, little Azalea!" Gavin complained. "Nonsense! You look like you're in the prime of life!" "Plenty of work and being around youngsters like you keep this fifty-year-old going!" Unhitching Reina, Devin clasped her hand and followed Gylan. Gylan led his guests around, commenting here and there about the buildings and fields, what grew in each, and how they rotated crops. "You certainly employ many people, Mr. Kiveläson," Reina commented as she watched the various farm hands go about their duties. "We employ twenty-five demi-humans. Sixteen live here full time. The other eleven are temporary workers from other farms and help out if we are shorthanded at the end of the year." "You only employ satyrs and sheepmen?" she asked. "You could say we employ them, but we consider them more like family. Initially, we just planned to grow produce and grains, but shearing sheep-folk so often made us wonder if there was a market for their wool on this side of the kingdom. We asked young Devin to find out if there was a market for it. "It was challenging to find a buyer at first, but now, the demand for Gylan's 'all-natural sheep-girl' wool is in some demand. Townsfolk say it breathes better and is warmer than other textiles. We shear them around spring. Relieves them of their old coat, helps keep them cool during summer, and also gives them a chance to regrow it in time for winter. Additionally, we sell milk from the satyresses almost year-round. We make enough from the land's resources, so anything the girls produce is their own spending money to buy things they want during trips to town." "I bet they have a lot of fun when they do," commented Devin. "The hustle and bustle of Iceford is exciting to them. For me, it's just nostalgic. Would it surprise you to know I wasn't originally a farmer? We used to live in Iceford. I was a carpenter by trade, and my wife was a seamstress. I'm sure you all remember the drought fourteen years ago." "I do," recalled Devin. "Took a massive toll on everyone across the kingdom. Many parents starved to keep their children alive." His voice trailed off. "That they did, young Devin." "It affected many outlying demi-human tribes, as well," added Reina. "I remember being very hungry. My family's herd had to migrate much further than we normally did, and we had to ration a lot of food and water." Azalea included, "We fairies don't normally need to eat much, so food wasn't as much of an issue as finding water was." "That was the catalyst that motivated me to be a farmer; too many orphans. Broke ma'heart to see them homeless. Because the effects were so far felt, the local guilds offered a large incentive of money, seed, and building assistance to anyone who wanted to become farmers. I talked it over with the wife, and we decided to try our hand at it. "It took half a year till we were established enough to think we might be able to offer some orphans a home. We inquired at a few orphanages and were further encouraged when we learned that we'd receive a year-long monetary stipend for each orphan we adopted, so we did. They are all grown up now, and we consider them as our children; as my own blood-kin." "That was very noble of you, Mr. Kiveläson, to give them such an impressive establishment to call home," commended Reina. "Thank you. Can't say I can take much credit, though. I just acquired the land and built the buildings. They are the ones who turned it into a home." Gylan ended their tour at a building with a large, mossy waterwheel turning lazily in the river. He motioned toward the new-looking barn. "And now, for the biggest change we made. The wheel isn't new, but we did have to rebuild the main structure for our latest addition." Nearing the large double doors, they heard the clacking of something mechanical, punctuated with an occasional low moan, issued from within. Devin glanced at Azalea sitting on his shoulder, wringing her hands in unsuppressed excitement. Gylan opened one side of the double doors and ushered them inside. Gylan exclaimed proudly, "This, here, is the newest addition! Our automated milker!" The interior was spacious and well-ventilated. The wall to their left had neatly organized shelves with buckets, pails, drying racks, stools, crates, and several empty labeled jars. On the right side, extending along the length of the building and spotlighted by the afternoon sun shining down from windows in the ceiling, were seven waist-high, partitioned stalls. All but one contained an oddly-designed table. The far stall was slightly different, with a wall sectioning off the back half. The moaning they heard earlier came from a sheep-girl facing the visitors. Her walnut-colored dress was pulled over her back. She was bent over a table, lying on her arms, eyes closed, panting, and her face was the picture of pure bliss. Her backside was stuck through the wall and jostled quite energetically, making the ornamental jewelry gilded to her curled horns twinkle in the light. Next to the sheep-girl were three lively satyresses chatting, seemingly undisturbed by their noisy neighbor. They were positioned in a similar manner, except behind them loomed the large axle of the waterwheel. A series of gears and axles connected to it split and powered a piston system that was steadily and tirelessly plunging dildos into their backsides. Another set of gears went to a contraption housed in a wooden box under the tables. All the girls were chest-down on the tables, their milk-laden breasts snuggly cradled in glass containers, allowing a perfect view of their nipples expressing generous amounts of creamy milk into the jars below. "Good afternoon, girls. Look who's come to visit!" "Heya, Devin!" announced a grinning, tomboyish satyress with short orange-red hair and a lithe physique. Like all the satyrs on the farm, she had rectangular pupils and a pair of short, straight horns, angled in a slight 'V,' adorning her head. She was naked except for the coarse fur covering her legs and hips, an open-front vest, and a bell that clanged softly around her neck whenever she moved. "Hi, Cyna! You and your sisters are looking well." "We are! I finally became a milkmaid!" Cyna proclaimed. "I can see that. Congratulations!" "I turned eighteen this year, and Papa finally let me induce my milk! See? I've almost filled up two bottles already, and they threw a party for me, and Ryna ate so much she gained weight!" she rattled off excitedly, poking her plumper sister in the side. "That's not true!" Ryna denied it as she adjusted her glasses and fidgeted with her braided white hair. "Well, maybe a little. Momma and Ellyn make really good food, ok?" "Welcome back, Devin," drawled the oldest of the three, tucking strands of her long, black, wavy hair behind her ear, revealing a beauty mark under her eye. "Hello, Iryna! Are you doing alright? You looked a bit flushed." "I am. I got tested for affinity, and well; I got the lactation crest." She placed her hand on the mark pulsing on her lower belly. "Apparently, one of the potential side effects, besides a larger chest, is milking addiction. My nipples are so sensitive, and every squirt of milk feels like it's pumping a mini-orgasm out of me." Gylan patted Iryna's head. "That's why we added the pistons. At first, it was only one, but the other girls wanted to try it as well, so we installed the others." "But they are too slow," lamented Cyna. Azalea fluttered behind the three satyresses. "Wow, you can take two centaur dildos!?" "Took a lot of stretching, but yes, I love having both holes stuffed!" Cyna replied, wagging her stubby tail happily. "I know the feeling! When you cum, and there's so much in you for your body to spasm around; feels wonderful!" Azalea agreed. "But I see what you mean by too slow." Ryna lifted her ass, pushing back, so her human and satyr dildos reached just a bit deeper. "When there is a rainstorm, they move a little quicker. Cyna likes it fast and rough. She doesn't appreciate the subtle stimulation of edging." "Slamming my hips against a cock and having it bottom out gives me plenty of stimulation!" declared Cyna. "And a bruised cervix," Ryna smirked. Cyna reached back to push her clit down, so it rubbed against the centaur dildo sluggishly stretching her cunt. "Well, it's worth a little discomfort. Iryna knows what I mean." Iryna stretched her arms forward, reminding Devin of a cat stretching. "I like both, little Cyna, but right now, the speed is just right." she purred. Gylan scratched her ears. "Could you lift your belly up, Iryna, dear? I want to show Devin the table. The platform was designed with comfort in mind. The whole thing is padded. The front is wider, so it's more comfortable to lay flat while they get milked." "The back is narrow enough to straddle, and it's equipped with stirrups to adjust themselves as needed." Gylan put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. "Funny story how this came about. A troupe of dwarves came through here need'n some supplies. Thing is, they didn't have enough coin. After thinking for a bit on what to barter, a gruff member of their party asked, 'you produce milk here, yes?' I said we did. 'I could rig up yer water wheel to pump the milk for ya, but y'all have to get the actual pumping device elsewhere.' 'I know a goblin lass named Eitri who could craft one for ya,' suggested another. "Long story short, they built this contraption. One of them still needs a table and a pumping device, come to think of it." "I see two other holes. What are they for?" inquired Reina. "The smaller hole in the back is in case any of the males want a turn, and the large middle one is for―" A lusty moan interrupted Gylan. All eyes turned to the sheep-girl next to Iryna. A tall, stocky young woman in a gray dress and white apron, previously unnoticed due to being obstructed by the sheep-girl, stood up. "Sorry, everyone, I musta tweaked her nipple a bit too hard!" She held up a pail of milk and nodded to the last sheep-girl. "Since Da didn't introduce Priscilla, I'll do it. She is an exchange farmhand from the other side of the valley." Gylan's heavy-breasted daughter exited the stall, her flaming red hair fanning over her shoulders as she set the pail down. She closed the short distance and embraced Devin in a spine-cracking hug. The pillowy softness of her chest helped distract from the pain in his back. "Hi, Ellyn," Devin gasped. Ellyn loosened her grip and looked him up and down. "Are you eating enough? You're so scrawny despite being older than me." "I eat light when I'm on the road. I do try to keep myself in decent shape -- try being the key word." He hunched over, rubbing his back. She gave him a knowing glance. "Good thing you're staying the night. Gives me a chance to get some home cookin' in ya's before you go traipsing across the kingdom again." She pulled him into another hug, this time more gently. "It's good to see you again." "Likewise. Priscilla looks like she's havin' a time of it." "She is. the boys are quite feisty today, so she's getting a lot of attention." She motioned behind the wall. "Are you here for the usual merchandise?" "I am. The usual shipment of milk and wool. Oh, and Jeni wanted another special order." "I'll let Ailean know he's needed, and Erinnah decided she wanted to be sheared late this year, so we can ask her if she's ready. Don't tell her I said so, but I secretly think she was just waiting for you. Also, to answer your question, Reina, the medium hole is for the sheep-girls." Reina looked again and noticed Priscilla's sizable stomach. "She looks four or five months pregnant." "Looks like, yes, but there ain't no little'uns in 'er," Ellyn elaborated. "The breednial crest is what's makin'er belly so big. She also has the lactation crest to help increase her milk production. Sheep-girls produce far less milk than satyresses or holstaurs. However, their milk contains more fat and minerals, making it ideal for cheese-making. Not only her; all the sheep-girls have both." "As you've noticed, they have the side-effect of gettin' the girls all hot 'n bothered, especially the breednial crest. They wanted, or maybe I should say needed, something more; stimulating than a slow piston, so we built the back room. Gives the girls the satisfaction they crave, and the boys get to help out without risk of knockin'em up." "They won't let me have a turn, though, cause I don't have any affinity," huffed Cyna. "Interesting, but why does it make her belly large?" asked Devin. Before Ellyn could answer, a sudden thump, followed by a soft rustling sound, was heard from behind Reina. Everyone turned to see a young woman walking out of one of the hay piles, straw sticking out from all over her dark-green silver-trim cloak. "Speaking of our resident mage; Jyora, come over an' meet some old friends!" Gylan urged. "It's hard to work with so much noise in here, Mr. Kiveläson. That's why I requested my room up there." She annoyedly pointed to the loft. "Jyora, you do enough work for two people. You can relax a bit. Also, you can just call me Gylan." "Time is a precious thing, Mr. Kiveläson. I dislike laziness and prefer to make the most of my internship while I'm here, thank you." He shrugged. "Suit yourself." "Jyora is a soon-to-be graduate of Thawden Magic Academy," Ellyn explained. "She needed some hands-on experience in order to complete her schooling, so we hired her to check the workers for magic affinity. Our current arrangement is a bit tricky. Only Priscillia, Erinnah, Iryn, and Ailean have affinity, so she has to personally milk the other sheep-girls, on top of her other work, until she has fully trained them how to power and maintain the girls' crests." Jyora looked at them through a pair of pince-nez glasses with dispassionate brown eyes while holding her cloak closed with two dainty paws. Large fuzzy ears twitched as she shook free some of the straw still clinging to her head. She was a willowy girl with short fur covering certain parts of her body and tufts of fluffy fur around her ankles and right above her elbows. "What is she?" Devin whispered to Azalea. "I'm a descendant of the ratatoskr; with very good hearing, she answered. "I believe the less-imaginative call my kind squirrels." "Oh, sorry, it's nice to meet you, Miss Jyora. I'm Devin Ebonplume." Devin made the motion for a handshake, but Jyora just looked at it, bowing instead. "To answer your earlier question, Mr. Ebonplume, sheep-folk have an irrational fear of being sheared. Various methods to break them of this phobia have been attempted with mixed results -- from blindfolding to sleep-shearing. Some have even gone to more extreme attempts like using the fearousal crest, which causes the user to associate feelings of fear, hopelessness, and despair as a powerful aphrodisiac. Although, questions of safety and viability were called into question about that one." "Crests and glyphs have pros and cons. The more extreme the change in the user, the more severe the side effect. The side effect of the breednial crest was negligible compared to others, and for some even preferable as is the case with Priscillia exhibiting very little to-no responsive stimuli except from that which causes pleasure." "You're very knowledgeable, Miss Jyora. I wish we would have had someone at the fairy village like you to teach us. I'm sure most of my knowledge is outdated." "You've some knowledge on the subject?" Azalea pulled the top of her dress down a little revealing her lovecrest. Jyora adjusted her glasses and squinted. "You have quite the antique crest. I rarely see this one used anymore. Most users prefer them for a very specific purpose, mostly out of some necessity. Case in point, I invented the breednial crest." "You created it?! I've never met an actual crestsmith before!" "I don't think of myself as one as it's the only one I've crafted. Creating something brand new that hadn't existed is always daunting. For that reason, crestology and glyphology study is the pursuit of improving and bettering old methods. Most just modify what already exists, but a few pursue pushing the boundaries of what might be possible out of curiosity or necessity." "For my graduation project, I wanted to try tackling the problem of finding a way to cure the sheep-folk's idiosyncrasy. I postulated that, since humans and most demi-human species enter a relaxed state after orgasm, there must be a way to concentrate this state of mind to override their phobia. The problem, though, was how to concentrate it and what catalyst to use to attach it to." "The first clue came when I was attending a lecture on more sustainable methods for assisting harpies with egg production. After much trial and error, I eventually structured the breednial crest based on an oviparous, or egg-laying, demi-human's biological process. This crest only works on the female of their species, though. It's designed for whenever a sheep-girl mates with a male, and all the semen ejaculated into her womb will be enveloped into an egg-like structure made from the sheep-folk's bodies' higher calcium content. During the resolution phase, the post-orgasmic relaxation chemicals are released and siphoned into the egg, where it mixes with the semen. The side effect of this process is a near-constant orgasmic euphoria during the egg's formation since there is no decline process after orgasm.' "So, how does it help with alleviating their fear?" queried Devin. "Before we get to that," Ellyn interjected, suddenly appearing behind the little mage, "Jyora, dear, you only told a half-truth about yourself. Would you like to 'show' Devin and his friends more precisely what kind of squirrel you are?" Leaning in close to her ear, Ellyn threw in, "This is the perfect time to indulge in your little hobby to a brand new, unsuspecting audience who have no knowledge of the naughty little thing you like to do." Jyora frowned. Is she talking about what I think she's talking about? She flushed at the possibility. How did she find out? I thought I was discreet, or at least prudent, enough to make it look accidental. All eyes were fixed on Jyora, waiting to see what she'd do, which caused her paws to tremble. Ellyn, noticing her demeanor change, instantly hugged her to her chest. "Of course, you don't have to. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I know you're a very private person." Jyora knew Ellyn's intention wasn't to embarrass her or be malicious. Her "hobby," as she called it, was something that developed since she'd come to work on this farm. Its root cause stemmed from her work-driven personality. Her single-mindedness at completing a task tended to make her shirk aspects of her life: socializing, interpersonal relationships, and maintaining her health -- especially her sexual health. Those things took time away from study and research. She took pride in this aspect of herself. Yet lately, she felt she was missing out, seeing how the demi-humans, especially Ellyn, interacted with each other. That's why she began to admire the older farm girl. Ellyn was personable and liked by everyone. She genuinely cared about those around her. She managed her work with such an easy-going attitude and made sure everyone around her was as happy and healthy as they could be. Sometimes it was little things -- cooking meals, nursing someone when they fell sick, or just lending a sympathetic ear. Other times it was more intimate: fingering a satyress who needed some relief during milking because she was afraid to use the piston machine or giving a blowjob to a satyr who had trouble sleeping. Once, during the height of the demi-folk's mating season, when they were most distracted from work, she had even observed Ellyn servicing four of the farmhands at once. Jyora couldn't imagine herself, on hands and knees, back arched, simultaneously masturbating two satyrs in each hand while a sheep-man pounded her ass, all while also giving a sheep-girl cunnilingus. When confronted about it later, she said she only did that during that particular time of year, and it was more efficient than relieving them one at a time. Now, though, Jyora was here, in front of a small audience, and Ellyn was giving her a prime opportunity. She could take a step at loosening up and indulging in something that she had only just started dabbling in. With a placid expression and a quickening heart rate, she licked her lips and wiggled out of Ellyn's voluminous bosom. With excited trepidation, she slowly unclasped her hands and spread them wide for all to see. Several eyebrows shot up to realize, aside from her cloak and soft leather shoes, that she was completely naked. "Isn't her patagium a perfect backdrop for such a precious, cuddly body!?" Ellyn gushed. Everyone's eyes followed Ellyn's hands as they stroked and petted what she called the patagium -- the soft, thin, fur-covered skin connecting her wrists and ankles to both sides of her body like wings. "Little Jyora is a flying squirrel and, as I suspected, an exhibitionist. Unlike a regular ratatoskr, she's much more subdued. She's also much lighter and more suited to gliding than climbing. I am a little sad that her long, flat tail isn't curled and bushy." Ellyn seemed to be more animated than Devin was used to seeing. Like her father, she was usually very pragmatic and easy-going, but he'd have to add 'an avid fan of cute things' to his mental image of her. "So you didn't know she was an exhibitionist?" asked Reina. Ellyn smooshed her cheek against Jyora's, stroking her head. "I never caught her in the act; I'd only heard rumors. Given her no-nonsense attitude, I brushed it off as just that, but then I started hearing about more detailed incidents such as incidentally leaving her robe unbuttoned, allowing a sneak peek at her perky breasts." Jyora moaned as Ellyn flicked her hardening nipples. "Or when she 'accidentally' dropped something and coincidentally "forgot" to wear underclothes that day, giving Cyna a nice view of her cute, heart-shaped ass." "It's a very squeezable-looking ass," remarked Cyna with a suggestive smile. In response, Ellyn did precisely that, causing Jyora to squeak in surprise as Ellyn pinched her backside. "So you tricked her into thinking you knew she was an exhibitionist?" Reina submitted for clarification. "Maybe a little. I took this opportunity to find out for certain. I wasn't trying to be mean. I was just curious." "M'not an exhibitionist.," Jyora murmured. Her pride stung a little at being tricked into revealing herself. Despite already fully exposing herself, her pride wasn't quite ready to give in. "Maybe you were only toying with the idea earlier, but your gaze crests seem to imply you wanted to take it further at some point." Azalea pointed to Jyora's lower belly. Everyone, except Iryna, Priscilla, and Devin, had a blank look on their face. Below her navel was a simple (compared to Azalea's) heart-shaped womb crest with two jagged lines on either side and an upsidedown star at the base of the heart. "Only other crest or glyph users can see each other's crests." She explained. "What does the gaze crest do?" Devin asked. "It creates a vibrating sensation inside her when someone looks at her lustfully." Jyora suddenly sucked in her breath. Falling against Ellyn, she squeezed her thighs together as her crest pulsed to life. Rhythmic vibrations reverberated through the length and breadth of her vagina. "Oh, my! Another naughty secret you've been keeping from us." Ellyn cooed. Her finger wound across Jyora's flat belly to where she thought her crest might be. "Oh! I can feel the buzzing!" Her fingers circled the spot. "I bet it feels amazing." Ellyn wrapped her arms around Jyora's shoulders. "I wonder who it was who activated your crest. Are you wondering too? Is it exciting imagining someone having lewd thoughts about you, but who could it be? Should we try and guess!" "Hmm, dad only has eyes for mom, so it can't be him. Perhaps it's Reina! A queenly-looking lady such as herself might feel the need to spank some proper manners into such a lewd girl for revealing herself in public. Or perhaps it's Devin. Have you ever done it with a human before? The shape and thickness might be just the right fit to hit all the right places. Combined with your crest, you might just gush on the spot." "Perhaps it's me!" she said teasingly. "I know my way around a girl." She formed her fingers into 'V' and sultrily licked between them. "As you know, I have a lot of experience helping out everyone on the farm when they need it. Or it could be little Azalea. I bet those tiny hands and tongue would want to tease the pleasure out of even the tiniest nooks and crannies." Devin cast a suspicious glance at Azalea, who looked away, feigning innocence. Ellyn's syrupy words dripped like fuel onto Jyora's fire. Her growing arousal made her want Ellyn to take her and do whatever she wanted in front of everyone. Yet some tiny shred of pride remained, preventing her from coming out and asking for it. Perhaps she actually wanted Ellyn to fan her spark just a little more. "Should we maybe try to tease out what other secrets you might be keeping?" Ellyn hummed. She tried mustering herself, but only a meek, "You can try," came out. "I'm quite competent at deducing things about a person. Shall we start with your reason for wanting a room in the milking barn? You said you disliked interruptions earlier, but that's an odd statement considering how much noise there is in here. Between the gears and the girls moaning during milking, it's anything but quiet. I think maybe you have an alternative reason for wanting to stay here. Maybe, a little alone time on the table." Jyora's expression remained unreadable, but her body was about to betray her. A small bead of moisture glistened between her legs, alerting everyone to her current level of arousal. "I couldn't guess which hole you enjoy it in, maybe both, but I could venture a guess at what type and size toy you use. You're pretty petite, so the centaurs are out. Perhaps one from your own species? No, something tells me you like something more exotic. I'm going to guess a satyr. Maybe medium size?" Everyone's eyes returned to her cunt as if it were some lewd truth-telling machine. Sure enough, her body affirmed Ellyn's guess as more liquid rallied to her lower lips. Between Ellyn's sultry voice, the intense vibrations between her legs, the area above her hand-full-sized breasts flushed red, matching the color of her cheeks. Her clit and labia were fully swollen. In order to cum properly, though, she needed physical sensation to push her over the edge. "I wonder what your audience thinks of your little fetish." Jyora glanced around. Gylan had his arms crossed, seemingly amused by the whole affair. Reina's face didn't betray her emotions, but she did look like she was trying not to be too obvious rubbing up against one of the barn's support posts. Azalea had her hand under her dress, attempting to covertly masturbate. "You look like you are about ready. Who do you want to take you to bliss; or do you want to do it yourself?" Ellyn crooned. Jyora looked down. She felt vulnerable to be so horny and fully exposed in front of so many people. She imagined their eyes running over her body, lingering on her stiff nipples and the juices dripping down her thighs. At the same time, it felt liberating. Her body was doing the work of helping her open up in a way that she didn't anticipate, showing everyone how she felt without words. Tossing aside the last of her pride, she craned her neck to look into Ellyn's emerald eyes. Her unassuming attitude and gentle touch made her feel safe in this girl's arms; safe enough that she impulsively kissed her. "M'want you to," she mumbled. "Want me to what?" "I want you to give me an orgasm," Jyora pleaded. Ellyn smiled. "I'm more than happy to! Let's give them a good show. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of face you make when you cum." Supporting Jyora in one arm, she started trailing kisses down her neck while her other hand snaked down to her soaking slit. Ellyn slowly burrowed her fingers through her swollen folds, causing her to arch her back and push her hips into the much-needed sensation. After circling the entrance to her vagina several times, her fingers slid effortlessly into her juicy depths. The vibrations felt much stronger on the inside. "I'm a bit jealous that affinity users are able to enjoy such fun magic." With her fingers well-buried inside, Ellyn started to thrust them in and out while circling Jyora's stiff clit with her thumb, flicking it with every other cycle, sending little jolts coursing through her spasming body. Jyora had given all vestiges of control to Ellyn; she was her little plaything. She squirmed around the invasive digits, whimpering her need as the squelching from her cunt became louder. Ellyn paused, holding up her hand to show the audience how soaked Jyora was. She gave the juices running down her hand a quick taste before plunging her fingers back inside. Jyora's breathing came in ragged gasps as she leaned her head back into the crook of Ellyn's shoulder, locking eyes and hoping they conveyed how good she was feeling, how hungry she was, how much she needed this, and how happy she was Ellyn was giving her what she needed. Crooking her fingers, Ellyn searched out the special spot at the top of the vagina she hoped would push Jyora over the edge. She must have found it because Jyora suddenly bucked twice. Her eyes rolled back as her body spasmed, clenching hard around Ellyn's fingers. Ellyn felt a sudden gush of liquid over her hand and small ripples around her fingers, followed by two more jerks of her body before she finally collapsed. Ellyn caught her and hoisted the exhausted girl into a more manageable position. Then she rewarded herself by sucking the savory juices off her hand before giving the limp girl a kiss on the forehead. "You have such a cute, sleepy face after you orgasm! I wish I could snuggle with you right now, but I need to go process Priscilla's milk and help Da shear Erinnah for Devin. I'll lay you down in the hay pile you fell into earlier so you can rest a little." "Well, that was quite the show, wasn't it, Devin, my lad? Never a dull moment around here!" Gylan laughed. "Uh, ya, it was something." "I'm gonna go fetch Erinnah. I'll be back shortly." To be continued in part 5, by Scholarly Mori for Literotica.

We talk about the Superbowl mostly, and then Homesteads

Adaptive Management: Observation-driven management for constantly increasing resilience and ecosystem function by employing planned, purposeful disruption. Prescriptive Management: Labeling your observations so that you can look up a prescription that fits that label. This is a much more myopic way of managing a landscape, as you're automatically confining yourself to pre-existing solutions for truly unique problems or challenges. Adaptation is Nature's way. Nature is always changing - things may rhyme but they are never exactly the same. Therefore our management needs to change with this constantly changing landscape. 3 Rules of Adapative Management  Compounding: every decision creates a cascade of compounding effects, these effects are never neutral, they are either positive or negative with regards to ecosystem function and whether or not they move you closer to your Quality of Life goals or further from them. Diversity: Greater species diversity is always better, and creates positive compounding effects. Disruption: Introduce planned, purposeful disruption in order to vary the stimulus that the landscape receives to continue making gains in ecosystem function, homestead efficiency and resilience, and enterprise profitability. Never assume you've got it in the bag! ALWAYS base your actions on observation - adapt to the feedback that Nature is always providing, instead of prescribing from a narrow field of pre-existing solutions. Show Resourcesb https://understandingag.com/resources/fact-sheets/ Adapative Grazing Webinar - 3 Part Series w/ Allen Williams: https://pastureproject.org/webinar-archive/adaptive-grazing-101-webinar-series-with-dr-allen-williams/ About Dr. Allen Williams: https://soilhealthacademy.org/team/dr-allen-williams/ VIDEO: What Is Adaptive Grazing?   ____________________________________________________________________________ WHAT I DO: Design: On-Site Consultation Online Site/Project Consultation Holistic Ecosystem Design   Implementation: Water Harvesting Earthworks High-function, Low-Maintenance Access Living Systems Spring Development   Courses: Minimum Holistic Goal   Media: The Sovereign Homestead Podcast YouTube Instagram      

Practical applications for Charity in the Church is discussed based off of the Live Show from the Tactics Con in Lafayette, LA. Catch that original show here: https://pubtv.flfnetwork.com/tabs/the-pub/videos/26839 Missions Conference 2024 at Christ Church https://www.christkirk.com/missions-2024/ Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America)https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

Practical applications for Charity in the Church is discussed based off of the Live Show from the Tactics Con in Lafayette, LA. Catch that original show here: https://pubtv.flfnetwork.com/tabs/the-pub/videos/26839 Missions Conference 2024 at Christ Church https://www.christkirk.com/missions-2024/ Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America)https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

Practical applications for Charity in the Church is discussed based off of the Live Show from the Tactics Con in Lafayette, LA. Catch that original show here: https://pubtv.flfnetwork.com/tabs/the-pub/videos/26839 Missions Conference 2024 at Christ Church https://www.christkirk.com/missions-2024/ Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America)https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

Homesteads follow an agrarian schedule to meet the needs of the seasons and the market. Learn how I plan my homestead by month and tips for a successful year every year. Don't forget to check out the Ultimate Homestead Bundle before Jan. 21, 2024! Episode Links Ultimate Homestead Bundle: https://thehillsidemarket.com/pages/ultimate-homesteading-package?sca_ref=5214991.61SYL0S1cP Homestead Planner Book: https://amzn.to/3NY1qtA Seed Starting Site: www.garden.org Free Homestead Guides: https://www.thehomesteadeducation.com/homemade-freebies/ Animal Health Guide: https://www.thehomesteadeducation.com/product/winter-animal-health/ Find Kody Website: www.thehomesteadeducation.com Curriculum: www.homesteadsciencecurriculum.com    

With Brendan from Posterity CiderworksBrendan from Posterity Ciderworks tells stories of how he finds neglected heirloom apple trees on long forgotten homesteads in California and uses them in his cider.His adventures are like watching an apple treasure hunt reality show.Quince - the Homesteaders Secret -Did you know that heritage homesteads had 1 or 2 Quince trees - to be used to create pectin for jams and jellies - before store bought pectin.Episode website: https://ThrivingtheFuture.com/posterity-ciderIf you like this unique topic, shoot us a tip on Venmo @ThrivingtheFuture or CashApp $ThrivingtheFuture. Or join the Thriving Patreon at Patreon.com/ThrivingtheFuture.Sponsors:Cider from Posterity Ciderworks.Grow Nut Trees - Chestnuts, elderberry, elderberry cuttings, comfrey crowns, adapted to the Midwest. https://GrowNutTrees.com.Thriver News - Thriving Community News, without the Noise. https://Thriver.News.New 2024 Homesteading and Permaculture Bundle from Permies. 35+ e-books, courses, and videos. Forest Garden, Agroforesty, Community, Fermentation, and more! Plus 2 books by Nicole Sauce.

Homesteads are a year-round job, but you have to reset at some point in your agrarian schedule. Learn how I reground for the year on my homestead, for my business, and our homeschool. There are a ton of links, so browse them for some handy tips! Links: Website: www.thehomesteadeducation.com PNW Pigs: www.hannerhomestead.com Survival Course: www.thehomesteadeducation.com/survival Prepper Planner: https://amzn.to/3GVxbzw Frixion Pens: https://amzn.to/3GVmEVh Homestead Business Coaching: https://www.thehomesteadeducation.com/homestead-business/ TrueLeaf (Free shipping on $75 orders): https://www.pjatr.com/t/3-139809-277182-153185 The Four Agreements: https://amzn.to/41Ajjo4 Podcast about the fringes of society: https://www.podbean.com/ep/pb-f2t6c-1221701  

If you enjoy the Millionaire Choice Podcast, please take time to subscribe and review the podcast!Intro: In this episode of The Millionaire Choice Podcast, Tony Bradshaw welcomes a special guest, TJ Visiodei, the CEO of ACTS Decentralized Real Estate. Join Tony and TJ as they delve into a discussion about wealth, money, and the innovative approach of developing homesteads for families. Together, they explore the current state of the economy and the world, providing valuable insights into creating a millionaire mindset. Segments: Wealth and Money Matters: Tony and TJ kick off the conversation by exploring the fundamental principles of wealth creation and financial success. They discuss the importance of making deliberate choices to achieve financial freedom and the role of mindset in building wealth. Decentralized Real Estate: TJ shares his expertise on decentralized real estate and how it can revolutionize the way families approach home ownership. They delve into the concept of homesteads, discussing how this approach can provide stability and financial security for families. Navigating Economic Challenges: The duo addresses the current state of the economy and its impact on personal finance. They share practical tips and strategies for individuals to navigate economic challenges, emphasizing the significance of adaptability and financial education. Global Perspectives: Tony and TJ broaden the conversation by discussing the global landscape of finance, the economy and what has gotten us where we are today. The discuss what people can expect in 2024 and beyond and the importance of preparing for what's to come. Wrap Up: As the episode comes to a close, Tony and TJ recap key takeaways from their conversation. They emphasize the importance of taking proactive steps towards financial independence and adopting a strategic mindset to navigate the complexities of the modern economy. Learn more about ACTS Decentralized Real Estate at https://actsdereal.com/ Don't miss this insightful episode filled with practical advice and thought-provoking discussions on wealth, money, decentralized real estate, and the state of the economy. Tune in to The Millionaire Choice Podcast to empower yourself on the journey to financial success.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Original Air Date: August 12, 1946Host: Andrew RhynesShow: The Lone RangerPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Stars:• Brace Beemer (Lone Ranger)• John Todd (Tonto) Writer:• Fran Striker Producer:• George W. Trendle Music:• Ben Bonnell Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK

Original Air Date: August 12, 1946Host: Andrew RhynesShow: The Lone RangerPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Stars:• Brace Beemer (Lone Ranger)• John Todd (Tonto) Writer:• Fran Striker Producer:• George W. Trendle Music:• Ben Bonnell Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK

Episode 124: In this enlightening podcast episode, we dive deep into the world of music and its power to transform lives, specifically young girls. Our guest is Amanda Ashley from Girls Rock Rochester, a non-profit that uses music to instill confidence in girls and guide them through the often male-dominated music industry. Amanda shares the inspiring stories of Mike and Rebecca, two apprentices from Homesteads for Hope, who went from exploring their passion for music to forming their own band, all under the supportive environment of Girls Rock Rochester. We discuss the crucial role of respect, acceptance, and empowerment in fostering inclusivity and how music can serve as a bridge in a world teeming with differences. Join us on this empowering musical journey where we're not just hitting the right notes, but also transforming lives along the way.https://girlsrockrochester.org/

We have reached the 100th episode!! Funny enough this episode actually snuck up on us, and we didn't realize until the end of the show it was the 100th! We answer more listener questions about homesteading, cattle, battling horseflies, and more. Logan shares a great story about an air horn on his Kenworth that was the talk of the town.  We're proud to announce that Agzaga is now the official sponsor of Talk Dirt to Me! It is the ultimate online farm store. American owned and operated. Go check out their site and get what you need. Be sure to use the code TALKDIRT to get 10% off your order! Visit them at: https://agzaga.com  If you enjoy this episode then please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends! Submit your questions of all calibers at our contact page on our website: https://www.talkdirtpodcast.com/contact Follow us on social media: Talk Dirt to Me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/talkdirtpodcast/  Bobby Lee: Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=hurricane%20creek%20farms Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/hurricanecreekfarm/ YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/c/HurricaneCreekFarms Logan: Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/LHFarmsTN Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/lo.hanks/ YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYpTjKQtOMABFOc2Aw3_Ow/featured 

This Week We Are Joined By... Jenny Brongo from Homesteads for Hope and we chatted about Homesteads for Hope a nonprofit inclusive community farm for individuals with and without disabilities to learn, work, live, and grow in nature's classroom. Our beautiful 55-acre farm is located 10 minutes outside of downtown Rochester directly on the historic Erie Canal, providing a peaceful, sensory-friendly environment. Support the show: https://www.instagram.com/98pxyrochester/

In this episode you'll learn about some of the history of our canalside property, as well as a sneak peak into what the future holds for Homesteads for Hope.This episode includes some unique perspectives from our Founder and CEO, Jennyrae Brongo (whose Great Uncle previously owned the property), our local Assembly Member Josh Jensen (who grew up in our area and majored in history), and our Canal Way Grant Representative, Andy Marzo.Our conversation will touch on some of the reasons why our history-rich campus stands out and is memorable, as well as the need for some updates and upgrades to improve accessibility for people with varying physical and safety needs.Many people have heard of accessible playgrounds...Homesteads for Hope strives to be one the first truly accessible farms with a campus that offers a continuum of opportunities for people of all abilities. Thank you to Roc Vox Studios for helping us share this valuable content. www.rocvox.com

In this episode, you'll get to know Laura Bentley and Darrell Morgan who specialize in meeting your Kubota equipment needs at Bentley Brothers in Albion and Brockport.Last year, right around this time, we were looking for a tractor and stumbled across Kubota's 50th anniversary contest. We fill out grant applications every day and they can be painful – but – this was a quick and easy form asking why we were making our HOMETOWN PROUD.It took 5 minutes and we made it to the finals. People across the country began voting for Homesteads for Hope and we ended up winning the grand prize of $200K!!Learn what we have done with this monumental gift and how we have developed a meaningful relationship with Bentley Brothers. Kubota and specifically, our friends at Bentley Brother are champions of the farm and are a great example of how local businesses can make a real difference in communities like ours!

We aren't able to record a new episode this week, so here is a great interview we did with Michael H. of the Atheopagan Society Council. See you next week! S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism, Mark: Hmm. Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do. Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as Mark: That's right. Yeah. Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one Mark: Yeah. Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah. Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right? Michael: yeah, Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.

We all know that spring gardens are everyone's favorite to have BUT if you haven't yet, you really should start planning your fall garden! So why exactly should you have a fall garden, let's discuss a few reasons. Less work, less hands on, less pest pressure, less weed pressure, it's cooler outside, and you need less water. Most big box stores do not have plants for fall gardening which is crazy to us because you can still gardening well into the fall and even the winter depending on where you are located, many of those people in warmer climates (like Florida) can almost garden year-round. So let's talk planning a fall garden. What Vegetables Can Be Planted In The Fall? We've got plenty of vegetable suggestions for you that are suited for the fall garden, with planting dates that run from late summer through fall itself. Here are just a few of Hoss favorites for fall growing! Arugula, beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, collards, garlic, kale, mustard greens, kohlrabi, lettuce, onions, peas, radishes, spinach, celery, cilantro, and swiss chard. You can also add in some cool season flowers such as, Calendula Prince Mix! When Should I Plant Fall Vegetables? | Planning A Fall Garden Obviously the best time for planting depends on the area where you live and what you plan to grow. The secret to fall vegetable gardening success is planning your harvest backwards. You will want to start with your frost date for the fall in your area. Then find out the number of days that you will need before you can harvest your fall vegetables. You can usually find that number on the back of the seed packet. Days to maturity. This will be different for direct seeds versus transplants. How Should You Prepare For Your Fall Garden? Prepare your garden for the fall by making room for all the new plants that you are about to harvest. Start by ripping out all of the plants that you have already harvested, as well as plants that are no longer performing well (like tomatoes that have succumbed to disease or peas that have been burned by the sun). At this time, you will always want to pull up any weeds from the beds so that they don't try to steal nutrients and moisture from your fall vegetables. Tarps Cover Crops Get your spots ready for onions, garlic, and strawberries that you will overwinter. Ya'll be sure to check out The Great Fall Garden Festival, it's a Meet & Greet gathering of Homesteads, farms, and artisans who connect with others through their YouTube Channel. It's FREE ADMISSION on September 9, 2023 from 9am-5pm in Jemison, Alabama. Check out the link here! This family friendly event will feature an educational speaker series, homemade and home grown fare at our participants booths, meet and greet, food truck vendors, and a harvest contest. Product of the Week Seed Starting Supplies Premium Garden Seeds Watch the Complete Show on YouTube Below: https://youtu.be/J9KUpUD04qM

#SustainablePortugalTuesday #GrowYourOwn #CommunitiesInPortugal***Don't forget to try your luck as we continue with the NEW 'Learn about Portugal' QUIZ. Have a go and share what you think you know at - www.learnaboutportugal.com***Get those wellies on again for 'Sustainable Portugal Tuesday', as we head back to Quinta Essencial as guests of Jason Hall and check in with our mate Matty with an update on his quinta plans.Head Gardener Lee McGrady will also be around to share his knowledge and answer any gardening questions you might have.With the rising cost of food and questions around global supply chains, isn't it time to plant a few seeds and grow some of your own grub? Find Jason here - www.facebook.com/QuintaEssencial Professional 'Head Gardener' Lee McGrady works around the Lisbon area and can be contacted on (00 351) 928 115 005 ---Thank you for being here! All that we do is made possible by our GMP! VIPs and Portugal Club members, our associates including Expats Portugal and channel sponsors Herdade Do Meio.Find out more about us and how we can help you at www.goodmorningportugal.com Learn loads more about Portugal and become a GMP! VIP or join 'The Portugal Club'' at https://ko-fi.com/gmp/tiersJoin Expats Portugal for access to top migration professionals, discounts and perks - https://expatsportugal.com/?wpam_id=27Check out Portugal's most exciting new sustainable development project - http://www.herdadedomeio.ptNeed to exchange Dollars for Euros? Try https://www.goodmorningportugal.com/support-services/currency-exchangeContact Carl Munson - carl@goodmorningportugal.comWant to create live shows like mine? Try https://streamyard.com/pal/d/4668289695875072

On Today's Podcast Episode Harold and Rachel Have A Chat Over Coffee About Their Gardens, What's New On The Homestead, What They've Been Up To, and What's Coming Up. The Modern Homesteading Podcast, Episode 212 – July 17, 2023 Find the Shownotes for this episode at https://redemptionpermaculture.com/coffee-chat-about-our-homesteads-and-what-weve-been-up-to/ Learn More About Our Membership at https://modernhomesteadingmembership.com

Today's episode touches on a very timely topic for me. I'm currently developing a program to assist European farmers in their transition to regenerative management of their farms, and the big challenge is to make a program that is relevant for the vast array and contexts and differences that farmers across this continent are working from. No set of information is appropriate. No one teaching style is going to connect with everyone.  Even the regulatory frameworks and incentive structures can vary a lot. I've long since observed this as an obstacle for design frameworks like permaculture which have a solid foundation in the principles and patterns of nature, but often get lost in the details and techniques like swales, chicken tractors, or herb spirals. I'm of the opinion that we're all overwhelmed with information and possibilities in our bizarre anthropogenic world and more options and information often only serve to make choosing and taking action tougher.  I believe that simple and reliable processes and organizational support have a much bigger role to play in helping us to set priorities, put parameters on our options, and make the overwhelm more manageable, especially when it comes to the complexities and timescales of working with living systems.  Lucky for me, one of my friends and respected colleagues in the permaculture space has just developed a course and accompanying tools to assist precisely in this area. William Horvath, founder of “Permaculture Apprentice.” William studied permaculture in Australia before quitting his job as a geologist for the mining industry there and moved with his wife back to Croatia where he is originally from.  For years now he's been developing his own permaculture paradise and writing and educating about his experiences on his blog and through his design and consulting services through permacultureapprentice.com. He has also begun teaching permaculture courses for people looking to start their own farms and transition to a regenerative lifestyle. In today's session we pick apart the common hurdles that lead to inaction and paralysis despite having all the knowledge and information we may need. We talk about the common problem of having lofty goals, many projects going on at once, and limited time and resources to do them. From there we go deep into defining the What, Where, and How of your goals in order to build them into a process. William talks about how to break them down into manageable chunks from there through phases and steps of development as well as sharing tools and advice for keeping everything organized and scheduled in calendars and to-do lists so you never miss essential windows again. I really want to express just how important I believe that this piece of the puzzle is for all of us in reaching our goals. I know from my own experience how much getting organized, building routines, planning ahead in detail, and creating loops of experimentation, monitoring, and revision have all been in my life and in my success with clients and in business.  Though I've come a long way personally, I still have a lot of learning in this area and doubling down on preparation and planning has always paid dividends for myself and those I know who excel in their chosen fields. Before we get started, I'll also recommend that you go over to the links in the show notes where William has given exclusive access to some of the tools and templates that feature in his course in order to get you started.  And if any of you want to stay up on the development of the transition program I'm building for Climate Farmers, the beta program will be available for members of the Climate Farmer's community this fall and you can sign up now on our website at climatefarmers.org.

In this episode, you will learn why Andy Gallina is HOMESTEADS HERO! Andy is known as a developer with heart, revitalizing parts of our community that needed some TLC and the vision that Andy possesses. Our CEO & Founder grew up with the Gallina's who have watched her family struggle to navigate antiquated systems that no longer serve the special needs community. Their support has been invaluable. Andy's endorsement means the world to us. He is more than a philanthropist, he is a business man with a good eye for investments. He sees our farm as worthy of attention and support and we hope you enjoy learning more as you enjoy this episode. Thank you to RocVox for helping us share this valuable content. www.rocvox.com

In this episode, you will meet two of our apprentices - Emily and Adam. Our apprentices are why the farm exists and their hard work is why it is so amazing! As you listen to them share about their lives and what they love about Homesteads for Hope, think of how many people with I/DD long for the sense of community they describe. It is estimated that 2/3 of the people who qualify for services/programming do NOT have fulltime options available to them. The pandemic disrupted many routines. While most of us are resuming our normal routines, many people in the special needs community remain "stuck at home." We will continue to advocate for this population and appreciate RocVox for helping us share this valuable content. www.rocvox.com

We just wanted to get more personal today and talk about where we are at and what we're doing on our homesteads. Life is always busy and we want you to be able to sit back, take a break, and feel like you're hanging out along with us. ***We have some fun news, our new podcast Porch Talks has launched!! ***We are so excited to share this new podcast with you guys! Just the two of us bullshitting and laughing with you, as if we were all gathered around our front porch. :) Lauging, swearing and chatting about non-sensical ideas and topics….just a feel good podcast for all the “keepin it real” people out there!! You know you want to join us! ;) Go for it and hit the link below….https://patreon.com/porchtalks?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creatorExcited to build another community full of our kind of people! We appreciate you all and appreciate the support of Porch Talks! *****************************************This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacyPodcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy

Many of you will remember my guest today from the three other interviews I've done with him over the years. Zack Loeks is a good friend and a maverick of many regenerative skills and knowledge. From growing up on a permaculture homestead in northern New Mexico as a kid, to farming commercially in Canada, teaching edible ecosystem design through Ecosystem U, designing and installing edible ecosystems and many more side projects, I'm always thrilled to catch up with him.  In the past I've interviewed him about his previous books “ The Permaculture Market Garden” and "The Edible Ecosystem Solution” which are broad concepts and patterns brought into practical design and applications. Today however, we're going to focus on his newest book, “The Two Wheel Tractor Handbook,” which, in contrast to the other two, is a more specific manual about the wide range of uses and applications of a versatile tool, which incorporates broad concepts and uses within it.  We start out first by just catching up as Zach explains some of the many fascinating projects and jobs that keep him constantly busy and innovating. From there we dive into the world of two wheeled tractors and why he believes they're one of the most useful and adaptable pieces of machinery for a wide range of contexts and enterprises. We discuss their history and innovation and the huge number of single use power tools that they can replace on a farm or homestead. We also do a side by side comparison with larger four wheeled tractors and on the other side, compare them to working solely with hand tools. Zach also breaks down the options for different attachments, personal considerations as to whether a two wheeled tractor is right for your own operation, and we even discuss the maintenance and repair considerations to make sure it doesn't break down on you.  Yes it's nerdy, yes it's super fun, and yes it's always inspiring to hear what Zach is working on and tinkering with.  Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community Links: https://newsociety.com/books/t/the-two-wheel-tractor-handbook?sitedomain=row&variant=43851666292986 https://www.ecosystemu.com/home https://www.ecosystemsolutioninstitute.com/ https://www.zachloeks.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@EcosystemU https://www.instagram.com/zachloeks/

In this episode, our team answers some questions from you - Our audience! We spend going over some details that not everyone knows about Homesteads for Hope and offer up the answers you're looking for. What we share comes from the heart and even if you are not located near us, you will be energized by what we are cultivating at our farm. We hope it inspires you to create something new and innovative in your own backyard. We are proud to serve over 600 families now and plan to at least double that over the next year! We increase our impact by raising awareness and sharing our model. Thank you for joining us for this conversation and thank you to RocVox for giving us the space and guidance to make this podcast a reality. www.rocvox.com

This week, Kevin and Josh sit down and discuss the previous weekends hunt in Ohio. The calling was good, the weather was not, but the coyotes were active. They discuss the tactics used that brought coyotes into view, and the results of their brutal night out of state. The guys also discuss- Being self reliant Chickens Homesteading Gear changes through the years Shooting Equipment failures MISSES! and a lot more! Thank you all so much for listening this week, and be sure to check out all the great companies we are fortunate to work with that bring this podcast to you! www.predatorhunteroutdoors.com code: tripod for 10% off tripods and mounts code: light for 20% off lighting products Predator Hunter Outdoors www.huntwise.com code: OVERDRIVE for 20% off an annual membership HuntWise www.sionyx.com ORC Archery ATN Prym1 HuxWrx

In this episode, we will tell you all about the 200 year old estate home on our property. A once beautiful landmark for people driving by or boating on the Erie Canal needs a lot of TLC. When we purchased the property, we knew renovations were needed, but as we served more people and got a better idea of what our community needs, the FOREVER HOMESTEAD Project has evolved. You will learn about the ups and downs leading to us breaking ground and our excitement about what is to come. Our guest, Jon Gatti of Gatti Plumbing shares from the perspective of a community member, a business owner, and someone with a loved one who has Autism. You will see why he believes in our mission and urges other businesses to step up and help Homesteads. Thank you to Gatti Plumbing (https://gattiplumbing.com/) and RocVox (www.rocvox.com) for sponsoring this episode.

In this episode, you'll meet Jenny, one of our hosts and the Founder & CEO of Homesteads for Hope. Jenny will tell you about how she grew up a "Sister to Autism" and about some of the valuable lessons she learned at her family's gravel pit. Lean in, as Jenny opens up about parts of her story she rarely shares to get an inside look at why the farm's mission is so important to her. Jenny's raw, unfiltered perspective is refreshing. While she does not claim she has all the answers, you will love some of the solutions she already developed and are sure to be inspired by her future plans to serve people with and without disabilities. Learn more watching her TED Talk: https://tinyurl.com/3ew3yftk. Thank you to our sponsor, RocVox Studio for helping us share Jenny's story. www.rocvox.com

In this episode, you'll meet Heather, one of our hosts and the Development Director at Homesteads for Hope. Heather will tell you about how she became an advocate long before many knew what the word "Autism" meant. She will share how her professional background and life experiences have made her a powerful advocate for her own children (all four with varying levels of special need), as well as 1000s across the US. Heather will hit on some hard truths that the special needs community currently faces and while she admits her life is exhausting, you will be impressed with her positive energy and dedication to helping others. For the first time, Heather will share unpublicized details regarding her federal court battle, how she set a legal precedent for the country, and the ways she continues to fight for change through her work at the farm and as a writer, public speaker, and educator. Thank you RocVox for helping us share Heather's story. www.rocvox.com

In this episode, Jenny and Heather will fill you on some highlights of Homesteads for Hope and how this 55-acre property is creating real impact in the special needs community. While many people think of Homesteads for Hope as "just a farm," you will learn about how it has grows much more than produce. You will learn how they use "nature's classroom" to reach people who are often overlooked and underserved. Get the inside scoop on how they have made this unique setting truly inclusive, what programs they currently offer, and exciting new developments that are unfolding this season. By the end of this episide, it will be hard not to fall in love with Homesteads mission and we hope that you feel moved to join us and/or start an intentional community is your hometown. www.homesteadsforhope.org. Thank you RocVox for helping us share this important information. www.rocvox.com

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It takes a village to raise a child, especially one with a disability. The world can feel lonely for special needs families. Join our conversation, fall in love with our mission at Homesteads for Hope, and feel supported during these difficult times. Our podcast offers a raw, unfiltered perspective on difficult topics that need to be discussed. By raising awareness, we fuel the advocacy needed to create a future where people of all ages and abilities can live a life of purpose. With each episode, learn from and be inspired by people who think outside of the box and feel empowered to “move the mountains” getting in your way.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but   I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism,  Mark: Hmm.  Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.  Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do.  Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often  Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a  Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as  Mark: That's right. Yeah.  Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one  Mark: Yeah.  Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then  Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah.  Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right?  Michael: yeah,  Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.  

And this episode of Wednesdays with wheels I sit down with the founder of homesteads for hope we talk everything about the farm the new additions they're planning on making and how they're making a difference within the Rochester community