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kottke.org posts about Aaron Fletcher

Guerilla Grazing and Ingenious Off-Grid Living

In this engaging video we meet Aaron Fletcher, a traveling shepherd who has been “guerrilla grazing” and living off the land for 12 years.

He lets his sheep graze โ€” with permission โ€” public parks and side lots. Homeless by choice, he offers his services to small farms in exchange for food or a place to stay (though half his calories come from his sheeps’ milk).

With a tiny metal cart home pulled by his sheep, he has a bed, a refrigerator/evaporative cooler, a shower (he uses a pesticide sprayer to pump up the water pressure), power (solar panel), sun oven, a mailbox stove for heat, bicycle tire wheels and a corrugated plastic roof.

Fletcher makes cheese and butter from his sheep milk and forages for seeds, fruits, vegetables and herbs.

I heard about this from @hova414, who teases it better than I can:

An “anti-consumer” gives one of the most impressive product demos I’ve ever seen; a nonstop highlights reel of ingenious off-grid inventions. Come for the wearable teepee, stay for the solar banana bread.

My jaw legit dropped open at the solar bread part โ€” that solar oven! It’s absolutely fascinating to listen to him explain how he efficiently uses space, public resources, and a limited amount of tightly curated technology products to live a happy and healthy life, an outcome many of us have been told by capitalism is impossible. I also enjoyed his distinction between being a selfish prepper and a community prepper:

By the way I’m a prepper, but I’m not like a normal prepper as in… I call it selfish prepping. I’m a community prepper. I’m not so interested in trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic situation if everyone around me is suffering. So I’m trying to figure out how to bring up the community so that they can all thrive.

You can learn more about Fletcher’s life and how he lives it on his website and check out his YouTube videos for more clever DIY tips.

Update: Milkshake duck alert โ€” Fletcher’s brand of off-the-grid anti-authoritarianism apparently includes being an anti-vaxxer, as evidenced by some of the videos in his feed. “I’m not so interested in trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic situation if everyone around me is suffering” indeed… :(