Network/Community of Wildsteaders

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#1

I am hoping we can within the feralculture rewilding movement, create a network of wildsteaders. A wildsteader would be a rewilder with their own place, skills to share, or items to trade (not so much a part of any intentional community, though those are welcomed in the network). Whether one person, a family-group, or a group of friends sharing land, this would be for trade, visiting, and community building without being in an intentional community.

If you are for it, share your local (state/nation/region), skills, and/or items for trade.
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#2

I and my husband live on the Blackened Forest Wildstead (currently on family land, but saving for our own land) in Kentucky.

My skills are: I am a novice herbalist being trained in foraging and herbal medicine by Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. I have a certificate as a Natural Health Consultant, and I am 4 years into rewilding (not counting my half feral childhood).

My husbands skills: Novice wood carver, novice bushcrafter.

Both of us have lived off-grid and semi-off grid.

Can Trade: Black Walnut Husks (in season),

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#3

Currently in Northern NM

Skills: hide tanning, butchering, shoemaking (old styles), gardening, and seed saving.

For $$$: rawhide, bark tan hides, buckskin. Available in buckskin: elk, mule deer. Available in bark tan or rawhide: elk, sheep, goat, deer. (Trade not available as this is my job right now).

For trade: elk leg sinew. I could make buckskin for trade potentially.

Seeds for trade: Hopi Black Dye Sunflower

Wanted: bow staves (hickory, Osage, yew, mulberry), black walnut husks, old planer blades, old metal files, old wood working tools, adzes, crooked knife, moose billets, knappable rock, wool for felting, green coffee beans (ethiopian preferred).

Please grow out for me: Katy’s Sugar Meat squash (c. Maxima), Japanese indigo, coreopsis, Hopi black dye sunflower, madder, fiber flax, peppers (shishito, paprika, peppers for hot sauce, etc)… This means grow, process, and send to me. I can teach you how. Warning: Know if you grow out a squash to save seed, for example, you can’t grow other c. Maximas. The rewilding hipster police might come to your house too.

Note: if you have a lot of “skin in the game” as far as helping feralculture and similar goals the price for some of this stuff is zero. No trade/$$$ required. I’m also happy to get people started in stuff I am learning/“know”.

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#4

i live on land my partner and i have named Ardea, in the southern Appalachian foothills of NC.

skills: plant ID and simple botany, wild foods foraging and processing/preservation (including acorns and other nuts), keeping various animals on minimal grain (primarily ducks and pigs), wild fermentation (primarily foods), herbal medicine and medicine making, cultivating mushrooms on logs (primarily shiitake), ecology/land-based/forest succession strategies, native tree and plant propagation (primarily from seed), seed saving (mostly of indigenous perennials), propagation of indigenous food plants, building, handyman crap (minus most electrical and car-type stuff), small-scale no-till gardening, cleaning up the kill/roadkill (mostly deer and small livestock)…

for trade: i do not typically keep a surplus of anything around for very long, but: herbal medicines (mostly in tincture form - 100+ herbs). and plants, primarily indigenous (to me) plants/seeds - i got lots, but typically best when seeds are in season since i also grow plants for money.

looking for: nothing much i can think of right now, however, i am always wanting seeds of various species of food plants indigenous to NC/eastern US. i am especially interested in wild plums at the moment. here i will also edit and add more as needed.

will edit as needed.

:slight_smile:

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#5

I love the idea of what you are going for, but I would encourage you to break up this very large subject into smaller categories.
There exists a category for gifting and trade. https://circle.feralculture.com/c/circle/gift-economy
There is also an existing community category
https://circle.feralculture.com/t/about-the-community-building-core-category/2783

I suggest using the smallest topics, as it is more manageable, and easier for newer people to find the conversations, they are interested in. For instance someone might only be interested in trading or gifting, but not necessarily people’s land projects. Would people find a specific skill share category helpful?

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#6

hey there @jenniferocious - this occurred to me too. i was thinking that perhaps we would let this flow as it is, let it get some momentum, and then we could see how it might be better organized after it was being utilized? that was my initial reaction.

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#7

Good thought… Though I still wander… as I was thinking they all went hand in hand in the network. This person has this skill and these items, and live here… oh they are close enough to go use my skills in trade with, or oh they are too far away. Or, oh, I want to visit that area, maybe on my trip I could trade skills/items with them. Just my thoughts. But if it is best to break up, then we can do so. More a reference, then open trade. But the skill share and location area kept together would be good, as travel can hinder those things.

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#8

@dennis come next fall I can get you all the walnut husks you want.

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#9

I’m in southern Minnesota, the hills-and-rivers area. Shodo, looking for more people. What can I offer? well, I make my living as a psychotherapist, I teach Zen for free, do Reiki and a kind of bodywork called Ortho-Bionomy, and have a lot of skills in the teaching/healing/facilitating group.

What can I offer? Lots of wild herbs here waiting to be wanted; strawberries, elderberries, raspberries (starts), lots of wild edibles that I haven’t touched yet.

For identification: I’m a woman, almost 70, lesbian, with grandchildren and attachments to them. My core work is changing consciousness to be able to work with plants, animals, mountains and streams, everybody else - to protect the living earth and reverse climate change. I write about that here: www.MountainsandWatersAlliance.org.

I love for people to visit and put in a little work, or a little money, or some spiritual practice time. Those able to love the woods and waters and fields - I’d love to be your student here.

Mostly I like the gift economy. But I do work about half time because too many of us don’t have cash, and cash pays taxes, builds things, etc.

#10

:heart: this idea, have wanted something similar, but have always dreamed of this info in an interactive map (i’m super visual). no idea how compatible that is with this forum software or if there’s an open source/free map code we could use.

in map form, we could view desired layers: trade goods, skills, families/communities, look around by state/country, and see what popped up based on our interests.

don’t want to distract from the main intent of the thread. will edit this to add my own listing shortly.

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#11

Awesome post. Been trying to connect on this with others for awhile. Will post my info next

#12

I love the idea of a map but think that some forum participation and vetting should happen before people have access to it. This all may seem benign at this point but there’s definitely a possibility that, at some point in the future, we may not want our locations/resources/network to be public…

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#13

i agree completely, @ernesto. my hypothetical map :wink: should only be accessible to folks within the forum, and possibly only those within a slightly more trusted level of the forum.

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#14

Discourse (the forum software) has an automatic “Trust Levels” function. New users start at 0, then it increases over time based on a number of variables (posts made, posts read, likes, time, etc.). Groups/categories can easily be created which automatically allows access once a user reaches a certain level. The group membership can be part manual and part automatic as well. It’s also possible to do things like automatically elevate the trust level for people who becomes a patron, and all sorts of various buttons and levers.

Making the map is another question, but limiting access to various forum locations is easy.

It’s also trivial to add custom google maps. All you have to do is put the link on a separate line in a post and it will automagically render it. I don’t know how giving that much info to Google rubs everyone, but it’s simple from an implementation perspective.

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#15

Even having different levels of trust necessary to access different levels of the map would be cool. People could choose the trust level required to see their location. This way we could have a cool map that anyone can see, with public nodes and known “friendly” spots visible to everyone, and have a more detailed resource for those that have shown more dedication/input to the project.

@andrew As far as google having information goes. When I saw a USB port on the colonoscopy scanner that they used on my ex wife, ten years ago, my first thought was, “Great, now google even has pics of my wife’s guts.” These days, I don’t think it really matters anymore. I can say that finding the exact location of any nodes that I’m able to purchase/setup in the future will require person to person interaction with someone in the network, maybe even a probationary period at a “training” camp first. I’m fine with putting a general dot on a map, but anyone wanting to come camp at an established refuge node will have to meet me somewhere and pass my psychopath/mooch/gold digger detection system. Because my plan involves setting up each node with water collection/solar/wifi, and I don’t see having full time caretakers at them, I’ll only want people that have contributed in some way to the network to have the exact locations and keys to the amenities. I am working on a little 3g connected security device for node protection though.

#16

Super valid point Ernesto. Considered that multiple times. But also have come to the point where if I can have a place open to travelers and wanderers and give them a reprieve from the road, I want to do it. Or I’m somewhere friendly and a good place to meet others

#17

I want to connect with people too but have to learn to deal with the stark reality that I’m black-pilled as can be and being around most humans really drains me. Most truly independent, sustainable, nomad types that I’ve met can only handle people in small doses too. I’m hoping to help create refuges for these types. It would definitely be awesome to have some sites more geared toward public access and socialization too though.

Here’s an idea about potential gatherings that I typed out and posted everywhere a while back, but got no response to:
https://muut.com/prototribal#!/workshopsfestivals:hike-in-musicsustainabili