Using a Homestead Business to Design the Life You Want

Sometimes the most obvious way of solving a problem is not the best way.

On this episode of Homesteady, we explore our most valuable non-renewable resource: time. Beginning with the story of the Village on the Hill, we see that looking outside the box for a different solution may be the best way for us to achieve our goals. In part two of our ten part Homestead Business Series (miss part one? Listen here ) we head to North Idaho to meet Dan Ohmann on his grassfed homestead.

How did this police-officer-turned-stay-at-home-dad-and-farmer do it?

On the surface, we see a couple and a child living on a homestead raising lamb and pastured poultry. Dan's spouse still works a traditional job in the software industry, and they gross approximately $2,250 from their meaty side hustle. Like so many of us, the arrival of his first child inspired Dan and his wife to escape their HOA-ruled suburb for something different.

Dan decided he needed to take a lot more responsibility for his resources-namely, food, and increasing food security and self-sufficiency. 

(An aside-food security is an incredibly weighty and important topic. Learn more here.)

Dan's explorations led him to the concept of permaculture. Designing sustainable systems using the natural resources that are available led him to Geoff Lawton's work.

"The primary goal of permaculture is to provide a permanence of culture on the earth for people and all living things."

-Geoff Lawton

So, what is permaculture, anyway? It is an amalgamation of social and agricultural systems that, like most things, is best defined by Wikipedia.

Dan experienced a paradigm shift in watching Geoff Lawton's permaculture videos and taking his online permaculture course. Dan realized that like so many of us, he had designed his life according to the socially accepted success formula- good grades+ good college= good job, good money, good life. The permaculture model not only shifted Dan's thinking about sustainable agriculture, but showed him that he could apply these same principles to design a lifestyle that deviated from the acceptable success formula. Why?

There has been a growing awareness though that firstly, there is the need to pay more attention to the peoplecare ethic, as it is often the dynamics of people that can interfere with projects, and secondly that the principles of permaculture can be used as effectively to create vibrant, healthy and productive people and communities as they have been in landscapes.

(Wikipedia 2018)

When Dan's son ran into health problems that were directly related to his diet, that was the final push he needed to start figuring out how to provide what he needed for his family himself. They were able to make a big change, and leave their home in suburban Atlanta when his wife got a big promotion at work where she received a large pay raise and could work remotely.

Leaving the police force was a difficult transition for Dan. It was his entire career: he had worked his way through the ranks for many years. This was a meaningful job for Dan, with real value in serving his community, and he knew that he had continued career growt