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Special thanks to @Riverflows for the graphics up there 💚 and of course @Homesteaderscoop for being an awesome community!

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So once again, a great big HELLO from @SenorCoconut,

This week, we're going to ask a few questions to reflect the ethics and ideologies of one vendor at HSCO: The Tinker Tribe! You can also find all about The Tribe on the steem blockchine here @MakinStuff

Building a community is about clear communication and the willingness to support one another. As Homesteaders Co-op (HSCO) grows, we must keep in mind that the complexity and diversity of its moving parts may also expand, so here we are helping this free market stay running smooth together.

We found it essential for the good of everyone to highlight the vendors of the HSCO market place. Wouldn't be nice to know the individuals and families offering their goods and services a little more?

Every week vendors are featured on the web site. As a community, we thought that every week, we should feature these vendors here on the Steem blockchain (@HomesteadersCoop) to give everyone that much more exposure.

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It takes a village to raise a child, because when people help each-other, life is easier for everyone involved.

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Without further ado... let's meet The Tinker Tribe:

SenorCoconut: While researching what kind of questions I was going to ask you, I noticed you have an enormous desire to live sustainably with a big emphasis in the world of DiY. Between the Meadows and Makers Podcast, your Weekly Maker Curation and moving can you tell us a little bit about your life goals?

The Tinker Tribe: First off it is my pleasure to be involved with the Homesteaderscoop and all of the wonderful folks especially @sagescrub who created the site/community. The story of where I am today, and where I plan to go starts around 2009 after I graduated with my degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduating, I had a period of unemployment where I started to ask myself a lot of questions. At that point I started to do some deep dives on a path toward seeking truth. During that time I solidified a vision and drew it down on a piece of heavier duty paper which you can see in the very first post I made on steemit.

Ever since that point I have been steadily working toward that vision. I have reflected a ton to regularly pray/meditate to ask the creator lead me down my truest path. It was through a great tragedy of losing a brother to suicide that pushed me to really take the actions needed to move closer toward manifesting my path toward my higher self. I’ve found that I really enjoy sharing knowledge, and creating new things with my hands trying to use discarded/cheap/free materials. I want to push for a world of self-sufficient communities that are extremely resilient, and adaptable to environmental changes through the leverage of modern technology. It is my conclusion that humans who live in such a way are not easily manipulated or controlled. My life’s goal is to teach and empower others to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle that will leave behind this current fragile system based on a paradigm of death and debt.

SenorCoconut: I am alway curious to hear about the intentions vendors may have put into their products or the desired outcome one is looking for in selling handmade product. I love the recycled bottles turned candles by the way. How are you looking to connect with your customer base?

The Tinker Tribe: As mentioned in my vision for the future I enjoy creating things with my hands and the upcycled beer bottle candles birthed from my way of transmuting a past of heavy alcohol consumption into something useful and positive. I have many future products planned, but they will involve more educational content in the form of DIY guides. I am looking to also create some kits and some specialized items utilizing some open source machines including a Rep Rap Prusa I3 printer, Little Dragon Aircrete foam generator, and a Maslow CNC router. I am looking to make some person to person connections with my customer base by traveling to liberty minded events and conferences.

Pointing people not only to Homesteaderscoop, but also the broader steemit community and my personal website I’m currently re-vamping. This year is my first foray into running my own business, so I am really trying to gain as much knowledge from others in the coop community so I may learn and continuously improve.

SenorCoconut: This next one is on “carbon footprint” and our human impact on our environment. Without getting political, can you tell us how you feel about climate change and pollution?

The Tinker Tribe: I do believe that we have the tools to rapidly clean the planet through some technologies that are extremely realistic to implement. One in particular is a technology developed by Ben Peterson called the “Wastebot” you can read more information on it here: https://wastebot.com/ he just release the guide on how to build the prototype but it is a massive game changer on how to become super resilient while eliminating waste in the form of most plastics. I believe the solution lie in the individual making the conscious choices to move more in the direction of becoming a prosumer (a person that consumes and produces a product) in that we should be implementing creative ways to use items in our local environments and produce abundance in our local communities to reduce the need to distribute over tremendous distances.

All of the issues that plague the planet are driven by the massive industrialized way we produce everything from the plastics, food, medicine, drinking water, and building materials. There is so much waste that can be transformed, from discarded building material on construction sites, food that can be composted and turned into rich soils or things like biogas, plastics that can be chopped up and processed locally creating energy via - wastebot or new products with 3-d printing, farm runoff prevented by using alternative farming techniques such as hydroponics/aquaponics on smaller scale farms with much higher productivity capabilities using much less water.

The solutions are all here now ready to be implemented en mass, and there is incredible opportunity for those who wish to enter any of these businesses looking to the future in my personal opinion. Living your passion while cleaning the planet and moving the goalposts in a better direction.

SenorCoconut: I usually don't like to get political or religious in these interviews, but I would love to hear your reasoning on “taxation is theft”. What does it mean to you?

The tinker Tribe: I’m very glad you asked me this question of taxation is theft, and what that means to me. Taxation in any form that is involuntary is essentially saying that part of your energy is owned by someone else. In essence someone or something like Governments say they own you, and a portion of your productivity/labor/time/energy/creativity. This is usually done under the excuse that taxes are for “the greater good” for without them how would anything get done in society? Like who would build the roads? Who will educate my children? How will you prevent crime? All of these can be taken care of by individuals, and private businesses, churches, non-profit organizations. This can all be done without having to hold a gun to someone's head, and essentially extort them for the funds, which is involuntary taxation. If it is immoral for me to rob you at gunpoint to give a portion of your money to someone a group told me deserves it, then why is it considered moral when entities like governments do it?

SenorCoconut: I really like the sound of Tinker Tribe… makes me think of a communal tribe of makers or something like that. What is the the idea behind Tinker Tribe?

The Tinker Tribe: It does stem from my quest to find my highest purpose in life through meditation/prayer. Deeply I have been seeking and trying to understand my gifts. I really connect to those who are seeking to teach and heal. I began to read a lot of books behind the ideas of shamanism and human interactions. As humans we are only really able to sustain meaningful connections with a smaller amount of people. I am also just a huge fan of decentralized systems because of how anti-fragile they are. I love to experiment and discover the true nature of how things work. I believe it is extremely important to have a growth mindset where the individual believes that they may not understand something immediately, but know they will after a given amount of time/experimentation.

I married these two ideas into the name of The Tinker Tribe conveying the idea of creating groups of folks that will move in a better direction by adopting the experimentation growth mindset mentality. One of my friends drew the picture below for me a while back, when describing my concept showing how the individual creates, and grows through creating.

SenorCoconut: Lastly, let's talk a little more about “Going Off Grid”. It seems you and I may be more like minded than I thought… You have this beautiful raw piece of land, you've even mentioned something about building hobbit holes down the hill. What is your plan for the land?

The Tinker Tribe: I bought a piece of land a few years ago to build my vision through an add on craigslist. I was shopping around on there for a deal on a piece of property. I had been searching around for a little while not finding anything very great. After a little while my Dad got involved in suggesting some finds on craigslist. He pointed out a couple pieces of land, one close to a lake, and one in the middle of a forest that was some hunting land. The lake was the most enticing because it was close to an RV park that has a lot of occupation year round and had easy road access. This all built on the vision I’ve held to be a teacher and start a permaculture farming operation. My vision is to build several hobbit houses on the property to create an Airbnb experience for guests that would like to have a glamping “Eco-vacation”. This would help bootstrap my farm and provide a good income stream for the operation. At the same time I would host workshops on the land to create, and teach systems for self sufficiency such as solar power, aircrete structures, 3-d printing, welding/metal fabrication, wood gasification, permaculture, aquaponics, and atmospheric water generation. Here is the basic layout for the property I currently have to use for rolling out the development.

I believe teaching and healing is one of the most important steps to create the future I want to see and so I have dedicated myself to these efforts. I am an eternal optimist in humanity and know things may get hard but have the mentality of the old greek saying that goes something like “Civilization grows when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never rest in.” I may never see the full fruition of my vision, but believe we all have the power to cause a shift in the current paradigm. This is why I have made my sign off the one you see below.

Yours in liberty toward a brighter future,
Greg Doud @makinstuff

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I was really excited to read your answers, they make me think you and I would make a great team building something like that together... Hélas, we both have properties we've started on with quite some distance between them! But not all is lost, I like the idea of being guest teachers/presenters for both education centers you and I are building. Sister Tribes, what do you say?

You have learned some really important life lessons I only wish more people could tap into, this world could be so much more incredible (than it already is) if we could all get into this growth mindset you speak of. After we learn something comes experience, and after some time with experience comes the embodiment... that's where we can BEGIN a real understanding.

Once again, thank you @MakinStuff for giving us this awesome insight into your life and your vision. It's a beautiful life project! By the way I'd love to here more on the Little Dragon Aircrete foam generator and the other machines one day too.

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For those of you who would like to look at her shop at HSCO here a quick link: The Tinker Tribe!

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Thank you so much for reading and stay tuned for next week's featured vendor... Same time, same place!

@SenorCoconut

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A Free Marketplace for Steem

We provide a FREE marketplace for you to transact in STEEM, SBD and USD. Our co-op vendors are committed to sustainability, ethics and quality in their lives and work.

Unlike other marketplaces our vendors are not charged listing fees, subscription fees or transaction fees. This service is 100% free to them.

Support our alternative economy:

1. Join the conversation in our Discord Group
2. Purchase handmade products with STEEM, SBD or USD at https://homesteaderscoop.com
3. Spread the word that sustainable vendors are accepting STEEM, SBD and USD
4. Up-vote our posts at @homesteaderscoop
5. Follow our Curation Trail on SteemAuto to automatically upvote our contributors and vendors
6. Delegate SP to @homesteaderscoop
7. Donate to our ongoing Fundition project

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Why Delegate to Homesteaders Co-op?

Your delegations will help us grow our community and reward our members for their ethical choices and actions.

In our modern world it is not always easy to choose to live sustainably. To do so often means forgoing income potential and the status quo. Our SteemPower is used to up-vote Homesteader Co-op contributors and vendors in order to reward and support their hard work. Some extra STEEM may one day go a long way for some individuals of our community.

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Who is Homesteaders Co-op?

Get to know our mission in our introduction post

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Want to sell sustainable, handmade products for STEEM, SBD and USD?

Learn more and apply here

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https://homesteaderscoop.com

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