Building this dream is Joshua DaddyBear Jordan, my brother, a transman living in Brisbee AZ. This vision Jousha is endevouring to share is about building lives and resurrecting souls all in the desert of Navajo County Arizona.
From Green T Homestead: (This) is a long-running endeavor to create a community of people who wish to live off the land and use as much of mother natures provisions as possible. It is geared towards the Transgendered and Gender Variant Community as well as their families. We give priority to homeless or endangered people and then will be branching out to those that simply wish for a better way of life off the ...grid.
Green T Homestead is welcoming to most anyone looking to work together to survive in this failing economy and declining world. Everyone on the human and not-so-human spectrum and all the social misfits of this world are most welcome as well. Again starting with those mentioned above and branching out as availability is there.
How can we change this?
Well right now what is happening is that my co-founder/companion and I are scouting land in Navajo County, AZ, and on that land, we are planning a self-sustained homestead or, what I call, The Ranch. We will be gardening both hydroponically and indoors to produce fruits, veggies, and herbs for both self-use, and to feed the community, as well as using it as an income source. Also we plan to have ranch animals such as cows, goats, pigs, and chickens to be used, again, for self-sufficiency as well as income generation.
This will be done in phases, starting with the main house and a small hydroponic system to grow fruit and vegetables. All the houses will be built with a grey water hydroponic/ aquaculture system, allowing each tenant to grow the foods they would like.
How will we the residents sustain themselves and where?
We want to build individual domains for the families so that everyone has their own living space. These would be environmentally-sound residences that run off the land and use solar energy and possibly windmills - both to be found in abundance in the area in which we are planning to build. Each of these residences would be operated financially with the income generated by the individuals living in them as well as the combined income that is the "community bank", which would be run by an outside resource so as to prevent misuse of appropriated funds. Each family would be required to work the land in some way and help provide for the community as well as become self-sufficient themselves. There, of course, is more, but most things will be discovered through practical application.
How are we gonna make money?
As previously mentioned we will be generating some income from The Ranch itself via the produce and meat farming. We are also working on several smaller enterprises, such as the Art Auction and other fundraising projects we have coming up. Also we are going to have Green T Homestead merchandise for sale, which will be sold for the land purchase and other expenses - as small as How-To books and as large as building materials and etc.
There will be, in the future, a small camp for kids two to three weeks in the summer which will give them experience with farm life and animal care and maintenance. We will also have weekend artist sales and we hope to encourage residents and others to have their arts and crafts be part of the community funding and individual income sources as. Again, there are many plans and many dreams, all of which will be tried and tested for what will work best.
What are the chances this will succeed?
I, for one, am quite optimistic that this can work well. It will depend, largely at first, on the outside support we can generate from the people at large, whether they desire to be living at Green T Homestead or just be a supporter. As things fall together and life starts to happen, I think the odds will grow increasingly; the more hands at work, the more monies generated; the more money generated, the more people can survive, and that also goes for the farm itself.
Other Goals:
We hope to be able to house some folks that are not looking to stay forever but just get a foot up, so to speak. My dad used to say, "Pull yourself up by the bootstraps," and we wanna give ya some bootstraps.
This housing would not require you to pay out enormous rents and expenses since this is how we all get in spots where we can't get ahead or get our OWN footing, but instead, your rent would consist of helping on the farm and contributing through labor or items to place in the weekend arts and crafts sales. Whatever your niche is, we can find a way to use it; This will be a no-one-rides-for-free project, so that is how we can work it.
What can YOU do?
What you can do is donate money, time, energy, experience, stories, helpful suggestions, materials, such as books and other information and insights, that we might need, post our links everywhere that is appropriate; word of mouth right now is everything. MONEY is not the only way to help us so please don't think that :)
Bottom lining all this, in order to make it, we will take and
appreciate all the help we can get in any form we receive it.
Here's to the future home of Green T Homestead.
JBear-Co-Founder/Vice President
Co-founder and companion Daniel Benham/Treasurer
Joshua-President
Belle Jordan -Secretary
Tristan-Media Manager/Secretarial Assistant
Tory-Volunteer Coordinator
Green t homestead.org
