Interview: Aaron Fletcher
Aaron Fletcher is a nomadic farmhand and subsistence dairy shepherd who lives currently in the Pacific Northwest. He lives a "home-free" lifestyle that involves connecting with local food sources and working towards local food sustainability. As a voluntarily "home-free" activist, Aaron focuses on local solutions to world problems.
In Aaron's words, being "home-free" is not the same as being homeless or unhoused. Instead, it is the third side of a coin. He believes that there have always been people who have possessions and those who do not, but being "home-free" means being a "have-not-want."
Aaron's experiments in minimizing his ecological footprint, connecting with local food sources, and building communities are inspiring and educational. His lifestyle offers one model for surviving and thriving in a post-collapse society. We can all learn from his experiences and apply them to our own lives, whether we choose to follow in his footsteps or not.
Thank you for listening and reading.
More information from Aaron@ 123homefree.org
Note: AI Generated Transcription may have errors
Leafbox:
Aaron, and thanks for your time and I appreciate mean you live somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle, so I appreciate your time. Aaron, where are you right now in the world?
Aaron:
I'm in southern Oregon.
Leafbox:
Are you in a city on the coast or where exactly?
Aaron:
I'm in a city outside of Ashland, Oregon.
Leafbox:
Oh wonderful. And Aaron, how are you living these days?
Aaron:
I'm, we just had some lambs that dropped two days ago, so we got milk flowing again finally.
Leafbox:
Oh wonderful. So Aaron, how do you usually describe yourself to people who aren't familiar with your lifestyle and your environmentalism?
Aaron:
A mobile farm hand, nomadic farm hand a subsistence dairy shepherd. These are some of the ways that you can really, none of them are adequate enough to really explain everything that goes on with how I live, but that's closest ones I guess.
Leafbox:
So. And Aaron, how did you get into this kind of nomadic subsistence lifestyle?
Aaron:
Because just viewing what's written on the economic shit hitting the fan wall and the need to
Leafbox:
Do you consider yourself more of a prepper or were you worried about
Aaron:
Yeah, I'm an intelligent prepper, I'm not an idiot prepper who's just back stocking stuff and then going about living off trying to live off the system and not taking this transition time to wean themselves from dependence on the system.
Leafbox:
And how long have you been living this lifestyle?
Aaron:
I also have to call that selfish pepper. I call that less intelligent prepping. The stereotypical bunker and hoarding food and then going about society and not doing anything to help yourself or your community become more local food secure or community sufficient. In preparation for shit fan, you're just waiting for shit to hit the fan and then you're just waiting to see how long your reserves will last and then your plan is to just pillage everyone around you, which is the most unintelligent and the most selfish way of prepping is the way that I describe it. And what I'm doing is trying to do that exact opposite.
Leafbox:
And how are you doing Aaron? On that
Aaron:
One second I need to rotate the wagon, the wind started changing directions.
Leafbox:
So Aaron, no, I was going to just ask you how would you grade your current intelligent prepping going?
Aaron:
What are you? Oh, well my intelligent prepping has much more involved than regular people's selfless prepping because I am having to spearhead the whole fucking movement of people being nomadic by wagon with producer pets so that they can calorically stand in for the times that they don't have farms in efforts to connect with those farms. You're going to need your own supply of food, you're going to need your own wagon in order to haul enough water to go out outside of the city for a couple days at a time at least, and in order to do roundabouts and meet and greets and try to get farms to work on. And so what I'm doing is not just worrying about myself, it's like I'm having to simultaneously feel around in the dark for the solutions that work for me while constantly taking into consideration whether that will be a good option for everyone else, if it's a scalable option, if it's able to be reproduced by the majority of other people. I'm constantly having to check everything like that and on how what I'm doing will benefit everyone else's following of the movement. Whereas everyone else can just worry about their own individual example without having to worry about directing it or anything like that. I got people that are already starting to follow this but they're like, they're doing exactly what I didn't want to happen, which is not connect with farms and basically just exploit animals as a petting zoo.
Leafbox:
So Aaron, maybe we can go back in time a little bit. When did you first exit the system? I would say when
Aaron:
You start, first of all, no one is home free. I don't know if you've seen that definition but the definition of home free is getting past the problems of our un sustainability. That's the ultimate definition of home free. The classical definition of home free is to get past a problem. Well the biggest problem that humanity is facing is it's unsustainable problem. Not only do the leftists agree that that's happening because of global warming, but then the right thinks that they need local food security to weather the storm of economy collapsing in the government waiting out and to offer us a digital currency social credit score system new option. So both sides, everyone agrees that the humanity's biggest problem is unsustainable. Just the way that we're defining that and the solutions that we go about that are different and I myself am advocating a third way of going about it, the leftists are claiming that the solution to the humanities of sustainability is to is that tax everyone into being eco, which is really is just going to be a tax on the poor because the rich have always been able to circumvent taxes.
So really all it's going to do is destroy the middle class and create feudalism and fascism and bigger government, whatever, however we want to define that. Communism, fascism, they're all the same thing. They're bigger government, stronger government and less rights to the people. So that's what they're advocating for. And then the right is advocating for us to do a back to the land agriculture thing. And I think that we should do some kind of a hybrid where not the government but hybrid with the right wing stance of I don't believe that the left notion of a solution of communism being exactly the right thing to do. What we need to do is create instead centralized communes or the most centralized version of a commune is communism. What we need to create is I call it decentralized communes. And essentially it's the same thing as tribe tribes.
It's the same thing as the Native Americans had. They knew that when their tribes started to get too large that they started to have lesser quality representation with their tribes decision makers because you can't have someone represent you who you've never met before because your population of your areas too big for your constituents to have ever even met the representatives. So there's something scientifically already established called Dunbar's Number, it's already established by the western governments and it was already established by Native Americans in indigenous cultures for thousands of years before we scientifically discovered it and called it Dunbar's number. Dunbar's number is the maximum amount of humans that you can intimately trust and know. And if you try to have populations that are any larger than Dunbar's number, which is roughly anywhere from 150 to 500, then you start to run the risk of having your representatives conspire against the group to create destroy egalitarianism basically and to create classism.
Leafbox:
Aaron, I have a question. So where did you first get interested in living towards a home free kind of lifestyle
Aaron:
Towards realizing these things? This is where we need to go. These are the problems, these are the problems that we obviously had before us and we're being told to cheerlead for communism or cheerlead for fascism are the two options that they give us far left or far right? It's both of 'em are fucking bullshit controlled oppositions options being given to us from the top. And so when you take everything off the table on what they're suggesting and you just consider what is needed, local food security is what's needed and a homogenizing of the population so that you can facilitate local food production. See we currently, we have a minority of people trying to produce the majority of food and outside in the rural areas and those farmers are having they're livelihoods worked against from multiple angles by the corporations and the elite in order to monopolize their farms or get them to to sell their farms so that they can put them into their monopoly. I don't know if you know that Bill Gates has been the largest farm landowner in America for like six months now.
Leafbox:
Yeah, I've read some of the questionable actions he's taken. I'm just curious where you think, well
Aaron:
Just take that one factoid that Bill Gates is the largest farmland owner in America along with his also the second runner up is BlackRock, which is his corporate buddies. So him and his buddies own the majority of farmland like collectively in the United States. While simultaneously he has been on the books, has been openly one of the biggest supporters of genetically modified foods. And he's also been one of the biggest funders of lab grown meat. And he's talking about wanting to block out the sun in order for our supposed good when really when you tie all four of those things together, it's obvious that he's trying to control our food system. So what do we need to do about that? We need to focus on our local food security. How can we best do that? Oh well we have a growing population of people who are disgruntled with shitty jobs that are purposeless in the city and they're on the verge of realizing that what they need to do is to go out of the Babylon and Can you hear me?
Leafbox:
Yes, I can hear you perfectly.
Aaron:
And what they need to be doing is going out of Babylon to either farm themselves or if they can't afford farming to farmhand. That's the logical fucking solution to any number of the problems that you see before you nowadays with just take Bill Gates own owning trying to monopolize the farmland while trying to monopolize our food system. Just taking single bits of what's going on in the news, you can extrapolate that the most intelligent thing to do is to either farm or farmhand. And then from there, if you dwell upon that or prey upon that for further solutions the next logical thing to address or to try to help in this situation is how to connect the farmers with the farm hands because no farmers going to be able to, I mean right now they're being put out of business because the red tape that they lead are putting on their farmland uses and on their product selling ability and whole host of other red tape bullshit which affordable labor is the biggest, would be the biggest contributor to the alleviation of small farmers'.
Difficult financial difficulties nowadays affordable labor. So the most common sense way to bring them affordable labor is with the exact opposite. Half of the problem is the disgruntled the growing population of disgruntled people inside the cities that are increasingly going to be on the precipice of collectively all at the same time realizing that they're stupid but hoodwinked and they need to be hoodwinked by domestication and they need to be working towards rewilding out on their farms through farming or farm handling. So connecting them is going to be necessary for individuals at that time because most people aren't going to realize that they need to do that until after gasoline isn't available and they're not able to take their leisurely weekend Johns out to drive around and try to knock on doors or there won't be internet available for them to make Craigslist or Facebook ads to connect with those farms. And so the only way that people are going to be able to do that and the the only way they're going to be trying to do that is by physically walking out of Babylon with ruck sacks and wagons, garden carts, whatever the hell they can to hold the supplies they need to get somewhere that they don't feel threatened by the robber raping and pillaging
Leafbox:
And so Aaron Sorry to Interrupt you, but how long have you been living towards this kind of self-sustainable kind of farmhand, nomadic lifestyle? Maybe five, seven years I think on your blog.
Aaron:
I've had goats. I got goats and dairy goats and started doing pack packing with them like pack boxes and backpacks eight years ago, nine ago now.
Leafbox:
And what are your main takeaways that you've learned in terms of why did you not choose to become a permanent base at one location or what's the advantages of moving around and connecting and
Aaron:
Cause if I go the route of getting my own land then I couldn't spearhead the example that's needed for the farm hands to get out to me. I got it. I can't start a farm without a future supply of affordable farms that are willing to work trade for camping and for produce, but that I'm not going to have them if there isn't a hashed out, simplified, foolproof way of putting together the right size. You can't have this a wagon any larger than this because you won't be able to pull it. You can't have any smaller than this because you won't be able to hold enough shit. There's certain parameters that need to be hashed out for people so that they can have some guiding parameters on how to do this so that they can be not starve themselves. And so they can be the saving grace of the small farmers that need their free help.
Leafbox:
No, I think it's great that you're sharing so much kind of your inventions and your trials and tribulations on the internet. Have people started traveling with you ever or do people journey with you or however the farms responded to your offer of labor for trade?
Aaron:
People iffy on who I can take in because of farms. The more people that I have with me, the less inviting people and properties are going to be because they don't especially if it's multiple guys. If it was a group of more females they're going to have more properties opened up to them way more. So I personally think that people should trying to make this so simple that people don't need to apprentice or don't need to do anything like that because people don't need to.
Leafbox:
So how
Aaron:
All they need to do, all they need to do is go find a damn farm to work on and then find two of them. And as soon as you get two of them there within walking distance, then you start working on building a wagon. And once you get a wagon then you have something to tether your own dairy animals too. There's a logical order to this.
Leafbox:
And what are the benefits of the dairy animals for people who might not know
Aaron:
You don't starve
Leafbox:
Because of the milk and the production and the meat,
Aaron:
Obviously because it's a sustainable source of food. All the other sources of food are extremely erratic and seasonal and your ability to harvest them, I mean guarding, you know, can harvest once every couple months to is once a season. And chickens, they don't lay in the wintertime they don't lay period if you don't supplement them extra grain and <laugh> worth having, if you not supplementing them with a artificial economy's supply of grain and meat, obviously why would you kill a dairy sheep when it produces just as much calories and milk within one month than its entire carcass? Probably within one week actually think about it. So it's incredibly it. It's been established for the longest time now that dairy is the most efficient way to derive calories sustainably and continuously for hungry people. Third world country people, the oldest nonprofit in the United States is an organization called Heifer Organization.
And Heifer organization has been around for like 50 plus years. Literally they're one the oldest nonprofit organization in America you never heard of because what they're doing is more legit than any other nonprofit. So all the other nonprofits don't even want to help spread the word about 'em. And the government doesn't want the word spread about 'em cause they're holding a piece of the puzzle of how to actually feed the world while the government claims to be wanting to feed the world while actually wanting it's people to be more dependent on their artificial economy. So yeah he organization basically found a long time ago that scientifically that dairy animals were the most efficient, quickest and most efficient, most sustainable, most continuous way to provide calories for third world starving villagers. And so they're American based, but they buy dairy animals for third world villagers and they give 'em to 'em for free and they give 'em training.
And the only agreement is that once they're a little starter herd gets big enough to where they're able to create a surplus. Yeah, well they're able to as soon as they're able to gift a breeding herd to a neighboring village, then their payment is to basically pay it forward. And so yeah, half organization proved a long time ago that dairy pets are the most efficient way to produce calories for people, food for people, and they based it on the pay it forward model so that it's such a good example. It's such a strong example of how you can actually actually help people that none of the other nonprofits supposed nonprofits even want to address them.
Leafbox:
So Aaron, how do the farm hands or the farms, how do you open the relationship with them? You go to the farm and then you say, Hey, I'm willing to trade a little campground for
Aaron:
Craigslist and farm and Craigslist and Facebook ads are the best way currently. Actually the best way is my Facebook stickers. Have you seen the shirts and the stickers?
Leafbox:
No, I haven't. Tell us about those.
Aaron:
Have you checked out the website?
Leafbox:
I did. I checked out. I loved your little credit card survival kit. I want to ask,
Aaron:
Well the thing right, the right thing right before that was the face look.
Leafbox:
Oh, I must have missed it. I think it was that a t-shirt that had your information on it, I think.
Aaron:
Yeah, but my wagon has a huge sticker on the side of it. It says, also says face look. And then it has the organized information about me and which case communicates my farm handing offer and my services that I offer in exchange for produce and camping.
Leafbox:
So in camping there's the front country and back country. You're kind of on this third space maybe in between the front and the back. What do
Aaron:
What do you you mean by front and back? I haven't heard that.
Leafbox:
The front country is when you live in the city, you're kind of really engaged in your job and the back country is when you really maybe go on a month long camping trip or month long kind of excursion really outside of
Aaron:
Rural rural is where it's at. Yeah, I tell to bring it back full circle to the word that I used earlier that we need to homogenize humanity is that you touched on it, is that there's the really very, very, very unpopulated desolate areas. And then the opposite in this spectrum would be the New Yorker LA or these cities and I call 'em cities, I call 'em shitty. And so what coincidentally, both of those areas, the least populated areas and the most populated areas are both the most dangerous places on the face of the planet because obviously in the least populated areas people are inclined to think that they can more think that they can get away with crime and with murder and stuff. And then the paradoxically, the most densely populated areas actually have a problem of people all assuming who are witnessing a crime go on that someone else will do something about it or someone else will call 9 1 1. And so they just let the rape go on in the alley below you. You've heard about these studies.
Leafbox:
Yeah, I understand your concept that with so many people ignore what's happening in an underpopulated place, you think no one's watching so you can get away with things.
Aaron:
Exactly. Exactly. And then the opposite goes in overly populated. You think that you can get away with things because you can hide in a sea of people after you commit the crime type thing. And there's various reasons also why overly populated places are also the most dangerous. So what logically we should be doing is redistributing ourselves, especially those of us who are living in the cities while claiming to be against global warming and all this bullshit you're protesting car use and stuff like that while living in the city is just the stupidest thing in the world when logically all they have to do is redistribute themselves in a more equal fashion. They like the word equal. Well stop cluster fucking in the cities just come on people. The obvious thing that we need to be doing is redistributing ourselves in a more even healthy fashion. In which case I define that for me personally and within my network of farms in the future. My decentralized communes that I touched on calling this earlier, all this is related to the same picture that I'm trying to paint. It's just describing different angles of it. But yeah, there's the farm. Do you think
Leafbox:
This lifestyle can work for people? I mean you're a young able, physical, strong individual. Do you think this can work for your grandma or people? How do you think they Well,
Aaron:
There's nothing on the face of the planet that is a solution to everything.
Leafbox:
That's a good point. Yes, correct.
Aaron:
This is taking care of, this is solving more problems than any other proposition or any other, like the redistribution of disgruntled workers in the cities and homeless people in the cities who are seeking out purpose in their lives who don't realize yet quite yet the most purposeful thing they can do. And especially if they're activist minded people, the most purposeful thing they be doing is moving out of the city because the very nature of the cities is unsustainable, it's nature is unsustainable. It the definition of a civilization city is a area with such a growing population that they have to continually seek resources from further and further away. It's literally the same definition as the cancer. And so anyone, everyone who has ever uttered in the last years, anything about equality or justice or injustice or anything like that is going to have to realize that they're going to shut their fucking mouth and do something actually different in this world besides just the prescribed top-down demolition O of the current government so that they can bring the whole civilization to their knees so that it will more willingly accept their social credit score system about the social credit score system.
Leafbox:
Right.
Aaron:
I, I'm familiar with it and we can
Leafbox:
Talk about that. Well a lot of people dunno about that yet. So that's important for us to touch on. China has been, for last couple years, they've been rolling out started off in their largest cities. They started this program of called the Social Credit Score System, which is basically just an advancement of our regular credit score system that doesn't just bring into account people's how responsible people are with their payments, their financial payments like credit wise. But it also takes into account supposedly how responsible they are in every other aspect of their life. All the way down to all to the people that you're talking to and friends with on social networking. If they're rated lower than you, then that actually brings your rating down and it, it's insane. It's tied into your social networking. So if you make a post and it gets more down votes than it does up boats, then that subtracts from your overall social credit score and all of these things, even your buying transactions equate into your social credit score system. And then that social credit score system is used to not just our simple credit score system that's used to dictate whether you're allowed these certain borrowing borrowing abilities. But the social credit score system actually dictates all of your social ability, whether you can buy a fricking plane ticket or even a bus ticket or a train ticket, whether you're allowed to put your kids in a private school whether, yeah, it's like it's black mirror to the max or Aaron,
Leafbox:
I understand the fears of it. I've done a lot of research into the Chinese credit score.
Aaron:
Replace your word fear with the word concern because you should be concerned. And they obviously the elite have tried to vilify us into not being concerned by repackaging our concern as fear and oh, you're just afraid of progress.
Leafbox:
No, I understand. You're concerned. I'm just wondering if the reality of someone living in rural China actually matches more your ideal. Cause if you're in rural China and you live in a small community,
Aaron:
No. Cause they focus what they produce, they don't get to keep it's communism. It's totalitarianism. They literally are slaves to their system except don't not like a free market system that has more built-in mechanisms to make sure that people can regulate their own values. The values are completely dictated by the government and controlled by the government. That's not what I'm going for. The rural living that I'm going for is for more like
Leafbox:
Freedom and decentralized small tribes.
Aaron:
Yeah. Like Native American tribes. Yeah.
Leafbox:
I'm curious, at what point do you think young people in the US or in the western countries became disenfranchised? I'm curious when you think this shift happened towards a kind of, I would call it a Doomer viewpoint. I mean in the nineties. I'm curious when?
Aaron:
Way before that. I think it started back when they first started they first started disseminating radio, or I mean a newspaper. It started with newspaper and then radio propaganda that ized, I call it izing. They shamed rural living. They started chipping away at the insecurities of the rural living sustainable living individuals as they live backwards. They're stupid, they don't know what they're doing. They're not as progressive as us in the city. And so it actually started the demoralization process, which the demoralization process or the weakening weakening of citizens' is the central problem for the central mechanism by which we've been able to be manipulated this far. That was the foot in the door, all the other problems, every problem in society is due to insecurities because people don't do any of the crimes if they are secure up upright sitting citizens. People don't rob, if they're more competent that they can acquire those things by more honest means they don't rape per pillage if they think they can get those things by more honest means. It's literally nothing bad happens if people are naturally scared with themselves. And I believe that people people's insecurities only come from that. They're not nat, it's not natural for people to be insecure. I think that it comes from the artificial economy being manipulated via Hollywood and propaganda in general.
Leafbox:
So Aaron, which models who you lives the ideal kind of lifestyle? Is it like a Mongolian nomadic yurt kind of lifestyle would, I mean they have small temporary farming situations plus the animal husbandry. Is that kind of the ideal for you and
Aaron:
No, all those yurts are s are dependent on incredibly flat plateau terrains. They were able to haul their S from one end of the valley to the step valley to the other. But S are one of the heaviest historical nomad dwellings. And there's plenty, it's just so weird. I people assume that just because humans in different cultures had these different shelters, that that's the heights of the possibilities and stuff. We could continue to feel out more and more varied, primitive, so-called options O of housing or hybrids at primitive. Because this, in the future, this wagon will probably be steel framed, but it'll have that drift with salt on top or something.
Leafbox:
Well, I think one of the things interesting, Aaron, is that you're offering a view for diversification. So there's an option for everyone to choose their own adventure, right? Someone,
Aaron:
Yeah. But within certain parameters there's going to be a general comparing it to the Mongolians on those flat steps and they have their big heavy uts, but they have their bigger animals, they can haul that. There's other completely other environment here and situation that starts to reduce the pool of animals and the pool of possibilities of living down to more specific examples within our American terrain. So I tend to divide it up into goat country and desert country and valley country. So you got mountain areas that if you're wanting to do something then you should probably go with goats and it should probably be more packing related like N not wagon because there's more up.
Yep. Yeah. And then in the desert it's going to want to have donkeys and a wagon. And in the valleys you're going to want to have dairy sheep and a wagon because cows, even mini cows take 10 times more water than a dairy sheep dairy go to a donkey and horses take double per pound. They take double the amount of water than those animals too. So the first stipulation on what animal use is what area you're in, and then o of what area you're in. There's only so many animals that are available in America that it reduces you down to the donkey, the goat and the dairy goat and the dairy sheep.
Leafbox:
Aaron, I'm curious, what is your daily kind of life? Do you have a routine or what's your usual day,
Aaron:
I, well, I just try to take my sheep off property currently because they don't have enough to eat on the property that we're at. So we're in town right now at a vacant big old vacant lot that I'm going to prune the trees of. I just got permission to prune the fruit tree, free fruit trees. So a Fri subscriber got me a pruning saw and a saw that also will cut my firewood. So I'm going to come back next week and prune these trees. I was taking a look at 'em.
Leafbox:
Aaron, what's your relationship with, I think you have a Patreon and you have kind of people who support and subscribe. What gave you that idea to do that? Or are you just trying to give information out? What's your relationship with those subscribers?
Aaron:
I share posts on there that are more I don't know, more intimate than Facebook. And then I rarely even more rarely post on YouTube. I just post videos on YouTube usually.
Leafbox:
And I'm just curious, are you getting a lot of direction and tips from them in terms of how to live or where to go or how to
Aaron:
No, they're actually really surprised. I thought that the Patreon was going to take up a lot of my time with people wanting to be friends and stuff. And I don't have time for bullshitting and normal people talk any conversation that someone tries to shoot the shit with me, I'm going to turn it into a talk about local food security. And if I'm not talking about that with someone, then I'm working on it. So it's really difficult for me to be in a situation where I'm taking money from someone who expects for me to have to shoot the shit with them.
I have to, it's so hard for me to do because I feel like my time every second is so much more valuable than money because the only thing I'm using money for is to prototype these things. But the plan is to get this, I'm going to right now my plan is to get this donkey get a donkey to help pull what I'm considering, the very upper limit on size and weight of hitting the fan's survival wagon. So basically this size wagon, if you fully loaded it down, loaded it up, had it fully loaded, it would be on the cusp of it being light enough for you to pull yourself in a survival situation.
But until a survival situation happens I don't want to pull this thing around because that's a pain in the ass, but it's fully loaded, it's too big for a ram to go up any hills or anything like that. And so a donkey will allow for me to haul this fully equipped, which I'm almost done fully equipping it. I need to build this drop down bathroom. Basically on the back end of this, it'll be like a bathroom slash showering area. And that will really round out the whole example. And as I said, this will be the heaviest example. And then after I document that example or have someone else document it, then I'll the donkey go back to just the dairy ram and I'll be getting rid of my electronics and basically I'll, I'm going to create the fanciest, teeny home example wagons example that I can.
And then once I do that, then I'll willingly so that people know that this is actually what I want to do, not because I can't do that sprinter van thing, or it's not because I can't do a horse and buggy normal wagon thing because I don't want to, because the actual benefits of having it in this perfect sweet spot is actually more advantageous. Because for instance, when I get a donkey, a donkey takes five to 10 gallons of water a day, whereas my sheep only take one gallon a day. We literally only in the summertime, we only need to carry five gallons maximum for all of us per day, all of us combined. So I'm going to have to double carry, I'm going to have to double the amount of water that we're carrying just to have a donkey that can pull a heavier wagon that has a full dropdown bathroom and I'm going to have that all made out of aluminum.
So that won't add too much weight on it. But the point is that then the donkey will be re-homed and then I'll downsize it back down to the simplest, lightest weight wagon that any, any normal size goat or any normal size ram will be able to pull. Because I feel like donkeys are so expensive that if I'm having trouble affording one right now, then that's not scalable. And certainly if shit hits a fan and people are wanting to exit the shits in the same method, they're not going to be able to afford a donkey then because no one's going to want to sell their donkeys. Cause donkeys are going to be priceless. But dairy goats and dairy sheep, those will be much more common and much more affordable even after hitting the band. So that's what I'm doing.
Leafbox:
Aaron, what's your relationship with I mean, do you interact with other unhoused kind of people or do you more of, I'm just curious, who do you see on a daily life? Do you just mainly deal with farmers and other farm hands or do you have security concerns or things with your cart and your wagon and your life? And I'm just curious.
Aaron:
Well, I am security. One of my jobs on the property that I'm at is being on the property that's been ripped off multiple times. And I think that's one of the biggest things. One of the biggest things that I have a hard time filling in at this point and reminding people at the right point in my spiel is that one of the other things that a lot of people, it might be more attractive to people is what I say than farm handing, is simple property sitting. There is an exponential need for people who have just bought property, secondary property outside of town and they're in transition. They're trying to sell their in town property and move out onto their rural property so that they can start farming it. But in the meantime, the stuff that they have out on that property is getting ripped off or their rural property is getting squatted by tweakers or whatever. And so there is increasingly openings for people to not only seek purpose by being simple farm hands, but also even simpler I'd say is just being property sitters basically.
Leafbox:
And who are these, I mean there's a lot of drug abuse and drug problems in the US and I mean, are these just pirate people who are just thieves and robbers? Who are these people you're interacting with who are robbing these properties? Just like you said, tweakers or who are just general criminals in general? Or is it getting worse or the same or I'm just curious what you're Oh no,
Aaron:
Yeah, drugs are just going to, drugs and crime are just going to get worse obviously especially as cities and counties start to liberalize their crime policies and start to take it a huge easier on criminals and let them out on cheaper bail and just put 'em on probation and give 'em slaps on the wrists and stuff. And as they start to legalize drugs like they did here in Oregon and it's just exploded the drug problem. They legalized a hard drugs here in Oregon two years ago and it's done nothing but explode the drug problem, obviously. That's what it was going to do. Insane.
Leafbox:
No, no, I, I see Portland and it's sad how it's just disintegrating. It seems like some of these cities. Yeah. What are some of the more fulfilling, are people asking or do it seems inspiring some of the freedom you are offering in terms of being able to travel and live off the land? Are people responding to that or how are people responding? I
Aaron:
Think it's, I think that my example is still so much out of the box that people are still kind of whispering amongst themselves, what's he doing? What's he doing over there? Should we go over there? Should we check that out? Should we embark on something similar type thing? We'll just wait a little bit while longer and see how it goes for him type thing.
Meanwhile though that their learning curve time period is getting crunched down. This is not something you can just go out and I'm trying to simplify it, but no matter how well I simplify it for everyone and pre-package it with a nice bow, they're still going to be learning curve.
Leafbox:
And what are some of the main lessons you want people to take away if they want to? Obviously one, the
Aaron:
Connecting with the farms is number one. I mean there's going to have have farms to be based on not only for your safety but also for legality's sake. I mean with the fricking lockdown, it was surprising at first that they were telling everyone else that to lockdown and staying their house, but then they were letting homeless people just go around freely and camp freely. They totally lifted all camping in the city. Bands everywhere that I know of. And people just started being able to do whatever the fuck they wanted to. And at the same time, that was when they legalized drugs and at the same time, nonprofits started handing out hundreds of needles at a time instead of just doing a simple needle exchange where you bring back the one that you got the day before, you know that you don't end up with a bunch of free ones that you end up just fucking throwing out all over the grass at the playground. <laugh>
Leafbox:
Talking about Covid, what was your experience like during the covid kind of hysteria or years? I'm just,
Aaron::
Oh yeah, I'm surprised. I'm surprised they didn't lock us down. I'm surprised they didn't lock down homeless people. So that gets to the future. In the future, if there's any type of economic collapse, eventually they're going to round up the homeless people into a FEMA camp or whether they call it a FEMA camp or not, they're going to fucking round up homeless people and they're not allowed for them to fucking camp in the bush and start fires anymore. <laugh> logical, not only logical on that level, but when you add into it that they are you familiar with agenda 2012 or 2020 or 2030, any of the UN agendas
Leafbox:
I am
Aaron:
For climate mitigation and all that bullshit they're talking about and their 2030 plans their plans in the long run are to coerce humans into all moving into their smart cities and to rewild the rule zones and to make them uninhabitable for humans, make it to where humans can't even go in these areas that are locked down rewilding zones. So
Leafbox:
Aaron, my only recommendation is I grew up in South America and I've experienced sometimes economic collapse and people can plan everything they want in the UN and the central government can plan all kinds of rules and all kinds of things. But when things start to break down, the reality might be very different than, so even if the UN says, you know, can't leave your 15 minute city, I highly doubt that people necessarily follow those orders. Just like even the lockdowns people were visiting their friends and people are just always looking for
Aaron:
A way. Well, it hinges on the a majority rules and mob mentality phenomenon that we know is linked to strongly linked to their television propaganda and news. So yeah, while we are very fortunate that people didn't swallow hook line and sinker the two weeks to flatten the curve original agreement and when that turned into two years of fucking lockdown in some places yeah, we're really lucky that we had enough pushback to end it. That's not to disregard the fact that they almost had it correct. Yeah. And in the future, if we have another actual economic collapse, that was the biggest economic hiccup that we've had since this country has sounded that I know of, but it's nothing compared to the actual full, full-on shitting the fan scenario where there's no food on the grocery store shelves, et cetera. Like people say, oh shit is already at the fan. I'm like, dude, there's still food on the shelf. Just because food is expensive does not mean that shit is at the fan. When there is no food on the shelves, that's when technically shit is at the fan and people are panicking and willing to kill you for your fucking pop tart <laugh>.
Leafbox:
Talking about food, what's your daily I, I saw some of your videos and you really seem interested in nutrition and foraging and kind of eating a of meats. What's your daily kind of approach to nutrition?
Aaron:
Trying to get more of my and more of my diet on things that can be replicated and are replicated already, ideally already established food substances from my area.
Leafbox:
So does that mean just trying to either buy or trade for everything locally or growing everything or butchering yourself
Aaron:
Or, yeah, that's the eventual. The eventual goal is to not have to worry or even be concerned or even look at what the ingredients are on my food because there is no ingredients on it because it's just produce from my local farmers. Now you have to look for GMO labeling and even that is super questionable already. People are already questioning that company. That's a sanctioning what isn't organic and what isn't GMO anyway the point is that local foods are the most sustainable and of the foods that are the most sustainable dairy is the most sustainable. And do you have
Leafbox:
A lot of resistance? Resistance from kind of environmentalists or people who are into the green movement or do they want you to become vegan or I just wonder how you respond to that
Aaron:
Kind. Oh no. Most green people who are in the environmental stuff, they try their hardest to just ignore me because if they even start to consider what I'm doing then it green washes their whole life.
Leafbox:
What do you mean by greenwashing? I've never heard that term.
Aaron::
Yeah, green I believe it comes from the base word hog washing, like bullshit.
Leafbox:
Oh, got it.
Aaron:
And so it's like, it's basically ecological, hogwash.
Leafbox:
Got it. So people, hogwash people who live in Portland and drink almond milk and think, but they still drive the car and they're still, yeah,
Aaron:
People blocking traffic to protest big oil. But then their whole lives and their diets are dependent on big oil, retarded.
Leafbox:
Great. So what are some of your goals for this year?
Aaron:
Those people are going to start hating me next because they won't be able to ignore me as soon as I get big enough to where they can't ignore me, they're going to start working against me harder than anyone <laugh> because they're going to hate me more than anything because they won't be able, I'll frustrate them more than their sworn enemies big, or that right wing agriculturist or that right wing cow farmer or something like that. They're able to vilify those people in their mind and easily. So it's, it's easy to just let their steam off as it comes. They're seat off onto those people, whether they're talking about them or anything. But with anything that's new and more reflective on your own life and then it makes it pressures tend to build up more and lashings out seem to be bigger. It's the same thing as Gandhi said this at first they laugh at you and then they ignore you and no, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you. I think I've experienced it both ways, so I don't know which way he originally said, but yeah, they'll either laugh at you or ignore you first and then do the other and then they start to fight against you or work against you
Leafbox:
Until they eventually join you
Aaron:
Or yeah, they kill you.
Leafbox:
Well, I hope that doesn't come. Aaron, last question I have is you have a lot of tinkering and inventiveness. Did you have, what attracted you to being such a tinker or kind of inventor type person? You're always like tinkering, MacGyver. Got it. Nice.
Aaron:
Definitely. I love that. That show is my favorite show.
Leafbox:
And then where can people, Aaron find you? What's the best way to get ahold of you for people who are interested in your lifestyle and your philosophy?
Aaron:
1 23 home free.com has the YouTube channel up on it and any other links that they want to connect with me, but it's got the base of the information.
Leafbox:
And then my last question is, Aaron, are there any other people you're really kind of inspired by or how they're living or people who might, someone living on a boat or in rural, some island somewhere, what, what's really inspiring you?
Aaron:
There's a couple of farms that I've found that have inspired me lately that seen through YouTube but I haven't seen anyone doing anything like this that's inspiring. The closest thing to it is three mules.com. He's an old guy that's been traveling with his pack mules for a while, but he doesn't work trade for farms. He doesn't ad advocate for 'em, he doesn't advocate for hunting or foraging or anything, food sustainability at all. But coincidentally, his whole spiel is advocating for a nationwide pedestrian and equestrian trail and bicycle trail basically that runs along the nation's highway highways, which is super along the same freedom line so to speak. But it's just awkward that he has never said, and I've read every single one of his posts and video watched every video that he has ever made. So he never shown or expressed any interest in the local food security while preaching against what he calls the megatropolis.
So it's, I know that none of us, the whole point of 1 23 home free, my YouTube channel and website is that it's a process to become community sufficient and not reliant on the artificial economy. And none of us are there, but when people don't express an exit plan, but they're advocating so strongly for a part of the exit plan, just I don't know. So he's the closest thing. But I haven't found anyone that inspires me with the food production except for some small farms on YouTube. But I'm looking for it. I'm inspired people. I've actually offered a, there's a couple people that are traveling with wagons or with their pack animals or whatever but they're not putting any precedents on local food security, in which case I've offered a couple of 'em to buy them goats da a dairy goat or a dairy sheep or something to add towards and told offer a, Hey, I'll start helping promote your channel if you just start work trading on farms and adding that to your traveling so that you're more holistic example or whatever for people to see, I'll start sharing that promoting. Cause we need more examples of that. And it seems to have done the exact opposite cause know those people even respond to me. It's really awkward actually.
Leafbox:
Well, each through own, I guess. Well Aaron, I really appreciate your time.
Aaron:
Back to insecurities again. All problems in society are due to individuals insecurities. They likely just wanted to come up with their solutions on their own. And so because it doesn't feel as good when we don't come up with things ourselves, and so oftentimes we will cut our nose off to spider face to speak or shoot ourselves in the foot because those insecurities. So yeah, hopefully people can start pushing, putting more emphasis on what I call ego nomadism instead of ego nomadism. Like we all have ego involved in our decisions, but the idea is to reduce it. And this problem that I'm just touching on here lastly is that people need to be traveling around locally to connect with their local farmers and help network network, a bartering system between the farms for when it's a fan so that you, y'all have enough or wide enough spectrum of food to stay happy and healthy instead of using this time to travel around long distances to get in your traveling fix and or your ego boost from being able to say that you're a nomad. It's just so cringey how romanticized ego nomadism still is and how un unknown eco nomadism is that I'm trying to promote. We'll see what happens. Thank you for helping get this ideas out. Hopefully some people will listen.
Leafbox:
Great. I really appreciate your time, Aaron. Stay safe.
Aaron:
Cool. Oh that's super sweet. Thank you. I appreciate your help and thank you for yeah, helping get good words out.
Leafbox:
Great. Have a nice day, Aaron. Thanks so much.
More information @ 123homefree.org
Credits : Photos from Aaron Fletcher
AI Transcription done via Whisper Library
Musical intro in podcast features sound samples from
- Tom Skinner - The Day After Tomorrow
- JJJJJerome Ellis - Fountain #3