Thesis Post #14 - Matysiak/Matishak Family Project Goals

Project Goals

Although we did not begin by consciously identifying the goals of our project, in hindsight, this is the place to start. On the other hand, these project goals have been implicit all along. Nyna & I had already been thinking about establishing our own homestead/small farm for four years, traveling extensively throughout the western region of North America in search of an appropriate locality. The three primary goals of our proposed Ecological Homestead are as follows:

(1) to be able to provide for our basic needs through work performed at home;

(2) to satisfy these needs in a manner that is sustainable, in that our practices could be continued indefinitely by our children and their children and so on without degradation of the land or the broader community that supports our family;

(3) to have the potential to be part of the cultural transformation that will be required of us in the years ahead; and to take part in this process by serving as a demonstration site for others who wish to pursue the goal of sustainable living.

In our travels and research of places, we literally fell in love with Alaska. However, we realized that, at best, we could only satisfy the first two of our goals there. The still seemingly unlimited resources of that vast and sparsely populated land, along with a stubborn insistence among residents there to solve problems through high energy industrial methods, made it seem that all our talk on sustainability would fall on deaf ears and establishing a demonstration homestead would be taken as little more than a curiosity among locals.

New Mexico, on the other hand, did not particularly appeal to us at first. This high desert state does not have the spectacular beauty nor the same kind of social stability as Alaska. Yet as we thought about our goals more deeply, we realized that the problems that New Mexico faces, such as limited water resources, alkaline soils, a weak economy, and societal division, are just what makes our work relevant there. It seems that the natural world as well as social structure need to degrade to a certain level before people are willing to consider change. As we did research into how people are thinking and acting in New Mexico, we realized that our project could likely get there the support it needs. In particular, this region has a balanced tradition of both self-sufficient farming and ranching as well as progressive independent thinking. This twin tradition transcends the professional intellectual/physical labor dichotomy we found prevalent in most other places.

So, all that is to say, the following design development is with New Mexico in mind. New Mexico is an arid land of deserts and canyons with plenty of sunshine and water generally limited to mountainous areas that can capture moisture from passing storms. The land is open and expansive, population density generally low, yet often concentrated near and around those limited water resources. Having said that, I believe these plans are adaptable enough, with minor changes, to adjust to many other bioregions. However, our goal is not to have others mimic our ideas but rather to have them engage in this design process themselves.