Community Sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies

Jul 19, 2026 | animals in subsistence permaculture, Artist as Family online event, autonomous edibles, bees, belonging economies, bicycles, biological control, cars, collapse, community gardens, community op-shop, community schooling, community sufficiency, creative frugality, ecological economy making, ecological knowledges, economics, edible weeds, energy descent, family, farming, ferals, fermenting, fishing, flow of gifts, food co ops, food sovereignty, foraging, gift economy, goats, home economies, hunting, Hypertechnocivility, Insurance, locavorism, love, map, medicinal plants, mushrooms, neopeasant culture making, permaculture, post-industrial thought, preserving, rabbits, radical homemakers, raising boys, reculturing, regenerative culture, relationships, relocalisation, resistance, revillaging, roadkill, salvaging, storytelling, subsistence economy, subsistence permaculture, the commons, walked-for food, wild foods, wood energy | 0 comments

We hosted our third July online session last Thursday night, Community Sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies. Over a hundred people signed up and many asked goodly questions that expanded the consciousness of the subject. We hope you enjoy this next offering.

Here is the audio-only version,

or you can watch it.

We hope you are enjoying these sessions, and that they are adding to your deliberations, plannings and responding to the predicaments of our times.

Our next session is Joyful resistance, an online tour of Tree Elbow, our 18 year old permaculture home. We look forward to explaining all the main hubs, hacks and behaviour changes that have enabled our transition to living well with little money.

Ecological participation (guiding child-led learning in a forest)

Jul 11, 2026 | alternative education, Artist as Family course, bush school, children's learning, community education, ecological knowledges, forest wisdom, Free to learn, home educating, homeschool, Industrial culture, interspecies relating, medicinal plants, Mother Country, play, post-industrial thought, praise, reculturing, regenerative culture, relationships, revillaging, rites of passage, unschooling & not at school, wounding, youngtimers | 4 comments

Greetings from wet wintry Tree Elbow.

Today we are sharing both audio-only and video versions of our recent online session, Ecological participation (guiding child-led learning in a forest). Once again the format is a one hour presentation by Magpie and Blue Wren (with cameos by Woody and Lilly Pilly), followed by 30 minutes of goodly question time.

Here is the audio-only version,

and here is the video.

And speaking of ecological participation, we also share here two recent videos from Woody’s channel, Making venison jerky and Chopping wood with a Viking-made splitter.

As always your comments and responses are most welcome, and if you’d like to book in for either of the next two online sessions, you can do so here: Community sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies and Joyful resistance – online house and garden tour (the nuts and bolts of our systems).

Sending you rainy, wintery love from our hearth,
Artist as Family

A ceremonial approach (guiding community rituals in a time of collapse)

Jul 4, 2026 | Artist as Family online event, ceremony & ritual, community education, health, lifemaking, men's business, mother goddess, reculturing, regenerative culture, relationships, revillaging, sacred country, social warming, storytelling, the commons, women's business | 2 comments

We hosted the first of our four weekly online sessions, on Thursday. Thank you to all those who joined the call, asked goodly questions and brought along your warming presence.

Please find a clearing and enjoy our latest offering, A ceremonial approach.

Here is the audio only version (1hr presentation + 30mins question time),

and here is the video.

We have three more sessions in July, so if you haven’t yet booked a spot here are the links.

Ecological participation – guiding community forest education and wild play groups for children
Thu 9 Jul 7pm – 8:30pm AEST

Community sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies
Thu 16 Jul 7pm – 8:30pm AEST

Joyful resistance – online house and garden tour (the nuts and bolts of our systems)
Thu 23 Jul 3pm – 4:30pm AEST

A big hearty thanks to all who have purchased tickets so far, or sent us donations for our upcoming trip.

Meg, Patrick and Blackwood

Men’s business – rites of passage and the maturation of men (with Yin Paradies and Patrick Jones)

Apr 28, 2026 | ceremonial species approach, ceremony & ritual, colonialism, ecological economy making, eldership, family, fatherhood, First People, gender-lopsidedness, Indigenous knowledges, kinship, men's business, men's health, modernity, post-industrial thought, radical homemakers, raising boys, reculturing, relationships, revillaging, rites of passage, transitional communities, wounding | 6 comments

We hosted our friend Yin Paradies at Tree Elbow over the weekend and before Yin left he and Patrick recorded a conversation focussed on their encounters within the ecology of men’s business.

Whether experienced in this subject or entirely new to it, we hope you enjoy their yarn on rites of passage, sacred economics, personal accountability, ‘fallen patriarchy,’ and reclaiming indigenous and peasant masculinities.

Listen (1hr, 6mins)

In their conversation Yin and Patrick refer to a previous dialogue Patrick had with Yin and his partner Victoria: Bridging, on the way back to indigeneity, and Patrick mentions drafting an annual ceremonial calendar as the next stage of our community’s revillaging.

Thanks for reading and listening! As always Dear Subscriber, we enjoy your feedback, comments and questions.

Q&A (on collapse, gifts, gender, ritual, neoliberalism, fire, revillaging, death and more)

Aug 11, 2025 | Artist as Family online event, belonging economies, bush school, capitalism, ceremonial species approach, children, Collective preparedness, colonisation, community sufficiency, conflict, corporatism, degrowth, Djaara mother country, earth stewardship, ecological crises, ecological economy making, edible weeds, eldership, energy descent, family, farming, fatherhood, fear, fermenting, film, fire, flow of gifts, food, food culture, food sovereignty, foraging, fossil fuels, gift economy, Grief, Happen Films, health, herbs, home economies, human rights, Hypertechnocivility, interspecies relating, lifemaking, locavorism, love, media, medicinal plants, mushrooms, neoliberalism, neopeasant culture making, permaculture, post-industrial thought, reculturing, relationships, relocalisation, revillaging, storytelling, subsistence permaculture, transitional communities, walked-for food, wisdom, wood energy | 12 comments

On the weekend we held two online Q&A sessions, each for an hour and a half. Here we share an edited version of that three hours.

We hope you enjoy this offering as much as we did co-creating it. A big hearty thank you to all who participated, and especially to those who asked such timely, goodly questions.

Listen to the audio version (1:19mins),

or watch the video.

A reminder we will be travelling with The New Peasants to Stanley, Merimbula, Canberra and Sydney in Gadigal Country, where Gadigal born elder and dear friend, Uncle Charles Davison, will be welcoming us all at the Dendy Cinema in Newtown.

Bridging, on the way back to indigeneity (kinship, initiation, druidry, homesteading, wisdom and eldership) with Yin Paradies and Victoria McKay

Jul 23, 2025 | capitalism, ceremony & ritual, colonisation, commons, community, culture, eldership, enclosures, Grief, Hypertechnocivility, Indigenous Australians, interspecies relating, kinship, love, post-industrial thought, radical homemakers, reculturing, regenerative culture, relationships, rites of passage, sacred country, village rebuilding, wisdom, wounding | 10 comments

Make yourself a cuppa and settle in for our next long-form yarn with Yin Paradies and Victoria McKay from Anam Cara Homestead.

Both Yin and Victoria invite us to be on the bridge that spans between modernity and what they call our ‘primal’ selves, and to find and nurture fellow travellers in that place of reclaiming.

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we have.

Listener’s note: At one point the audio goes a tad crackly in the conversation but it doesn’t last long.

(Audio duration 1:11mins)

And, here is the video.

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