Scrapsteading

This is a book review for the new book Scrapsteading "prosperous homesteading on any budget" by Billy Bond and Mat Hundley (links to their stuff at the very bottom).



The goal of the book is to remove our most common excuse for inaction, "I would... but I don't have X".  With these ideas, even someone with zero land and zero money could get started today.  They cover everything from finding land, feeding livestock for free, obtaining fruit trees for your food forest (without paying $80/ea from the box store), and more!

The authors organize their frugal ideas around the structure of the official permaculture ethics and principles.  Fundamentally "value the margins", which in our modern day, they see as including the many waste streams generated by our society.

At just 106 pages, it isn't a long book (which could be a pro or a con, depending on how avid a reader you are), yet some of the ideas in the book are pure gold.  It's a real cut-to-the-chase deal.  They say, here's what you can do, here's how to go about it, moving on. Really it's a trailhead - a series of different starting points you can pursue to go from 0 to Holmgren on a shoestring.

For example, they mentioned that bark chips from local power company's tree pruning crew can be a good source of free carbon for your mulch layer.  Keeping my eyes open for that, I soon spotted a truck and approached the workers just as the book recommended.  Now instead of having bare ground, I ache from head to toe from hauling the free material! (a good problem to have).



Authors:
Matt Hundley
HollowtopFarms.com
Billy Bond
https://www.youtube.com/@PermaPasturesFarm21
permapasturesfarm.com
https://freesteading.com/groups/perma-pastures-farm/
(podcast...)
https://fountain.fm/show/s8oANOz3l07jfI5AKxn1
https://www.youtube.com/@permaculturepimpcast