Desert Homestead 2026: Garden Growth & Family Holiday Recap
In this New Year’s update from Occupy the Land, we
In this heartfelt New Year’s episode of Occupy the Land, Ernie and Donna sit down to recap 2025 on their Arizona desert homestead and share their vision for 2026. The year focused heavily on infrastructure—powering the bus, workshops, and guest dome prototype with solar upgrades, inverters, and battery banks—while Donna built thriving raised garden beds with rabbit compost and heirloom plants. We reflect on the holidays with family and grandkids enjoying ATVs, shooting, and desert freedom, the motivation behind occupying the land (decentralization, self-reliance, and preparing Generation Next), and lessons from past activism (Ron Paul Revolution, Love Bus tour, silver education). Looking ahead, 2026 brings more dome integration, food production scaling, water retention refinement, and continued emphasis on private property, privacy-focused tech, and living above the grid. A motivational update on why this peaceful, practical path to liberty matters now more than ever. Peace.
Transcript: Welcome to occupy the land. Occupy the landlord. We’re going to sit down with you today and give you a recap of of how 2025 went for us out here on the land, and then gave you some, pointers on what we’re going to be doing in this next year, what we learned, what we’re going to do different, what we’re going to do the same.
So we can share all of these things with you. In 2025 was a lot of infrastructure power. Power to the bus. Power to the build, power to the workshops. Power to the second workshop. In the third workshop. And so we’re fine tuning that. We upgraded the bus power. We’re using, a lot of the storage equipment that we had for the main bill after we, you know, got into it, we could see it was going to be a year before we, you know, get to, deep into the main house, build.
What we’re doing over here is really a prototype. It’s a guest home that we’re doing a lot of experimenting with. And we’ll we’re taking you on that trip, too. But at the end of 25, you know, we were ready to have, family out here. Friends come by and visit extended family. And for Christmas, it was a thing.
We were very busy getting things ready to have a comfortable time for everybody out here. And it’s warm. I mean, I’m, I’m I’m hot and it’s Arizona. So we got to prep for probably by the end of May. It’s going to start explaining to us the sun. It gets windy and about a month February, March a little bit of April it gets really windy.
So this gazebo that Donna got, it’s metal and it’s concrete pillars that we did concrete bolts into to hold it and hopefully it’ll hold up. I didn’t want to do any temporary stuff because I know how the wind is. That’s why we’re using masonry and steel. And it is been, a really nice visit. The holidays are over.
We’re like, what is it? January 6th, January 6th, January 6th. And the motivation for occupying the land was what we knew was coming. Well, it’s here and we are. Instead of getting in details, our investment advice buy silver and it’s still it’s going stupid now. So I still think it’s got a long ways to go. So, what’s going to happen over this next year is going to tell what the future is for this country in the world, and it’s what’s after occupying the land, having no debt, having actual land, spending your time learning trades.
You want to know how to be a plumber or a carpenter or, you know, an electrician. Build a house that will learn to fire. So that’s what we’re doing, and we’re trying to share it with our children and our grandchildren. Well, they had such a good time out here with the quad and the ATVs and the the Polaris Ranger and the electric bikes and all that stuff.
So they’re seeing that there’s options. There’s an alternative to the rat race. There’s an alternative to the lies. Well, there’s a lot of lying that’s going to be going on. It’s going to come down to stuff. It’s going to come down to not being too hot, not being too cold, not being too hungry, too thirsty, too unsheltered. That’s what we’re really emphasizing.
It’s not we don’t get into the details of every little building technique. And so why don’t we give you an overview. And the reason is because we don’t know, you know, why don’t you have a workshop? Why don’t you have your friends and family come out and do what we’re not sure. We’re experimenting. Once we get the technique down on this first down, we’re going to go ahead and, we’ll know what we can do, kind of supervise, train somebody.
Right? You do this and do that and build this way and keep doing it and rock and roll and whatnot. But we were planning on doing food production starting another month or two, but it just got uncomfortable with us thinking, you know, how things were going. We needed to start growing food. Well, Donna spent a lot of time away from the build doing her garden, and we’re at the stage now with the integration of the dome onto the stem walls of the hyper Adobe bags that I needed my workshop.
I need my plasma camera, I need my welder. I need the stamp press for the struts I need, I need, I need. So that’s why she’s been working on the food production, and I’ve been working on the electrifying the workshop. Got her two shipping containers. We can see immediately we needed another one. We have a 30 by 60 by 22ft, building that will go between the two shipping containers.
That will give us a a lot of options, but we’re going to be a little ways before that because we need to get further along on the build of the dome. This is been really just a demonstration of our confidence and our commitment to what’s coming. We have 18 acres out in the far, far, far. They’re not common desert, but that doesn’t mean they’re never going to make it out here.
But it’s going to be a while before somebody with a clipboard. But, we have a plan for that, too, because the whole advocacy is, you know, can you can you not use your own property to sustain your life, to provide for your future, to be leave something to generations next. This is why we’re doing this. And we’ve been advocating for that and doing videos and talking about it.
That’s our motivation. And to be comfortable in the process. Now the Love Bus is very comfortable. I mean, it’s small, you know, it has every we we’re comfortable near. We got, you know, powered water kitchen, you know nice bathroom a nice bed entertainment starlight communication. So we’re and the vehicles that we need and the equipment we need to do what we’re doing, it’s just time and pressure and that is what we’re about now.
The the food production was really just a test. Tell them what you did and what your plans are. First of all, I had to get a shelter to go around whatever food I wanted because right now we don’t have any fencing out here and I don’t really see a lot of animals, but you see their track, so their fences are going to stop.
Rabbits. Yeah, but so far I haven’t, I haven’t have any had any critters come in. So anyway that was the first thing. And then decide what I wanted to plan, how big I wanted to do it, what if I was going to do it in ground above ground kind of thing? So I decided to do the grow beds.
So I got to grow beds. They were a little bigger than I, probably should have gotten for the way I wanted to set it up, but it works in there. They’re two, four by eight, eight foot grow beds, and the materials that I use were everything pretty much that we sourced around here. There’s some cardboard board on the very bottom, some larger wood, some smaller wood, some straw that we had out here.
And then our neighbor had some rabbit chipping rabbit manure. Yeah. The rabbit or the chips and then, the rabbit manure that they have, they have tons of it over there. So we did all of that in layers and free and then. Yeah. So and then we planted everything and everything’s doing really well. There was one portion of it that was covered the, the, the frame of it is actually a chicken coop.
So it came with a partial cover. So when I took that off the other side, started to, grow a little faster. So, you know, it’s the whole sun thing. It’s still very mild out here. We haven’t had any, like, super cold temperatures. In the event that we do, I would just cover it with some type of tarping or plastic and whatever I need to do when it starts getting summer.
Yeah, but we got we have time for that. But now is the ideal, time. A lot of people start, they’re, they’re growing so they can transplant in just like a couple of weeks. But I have different things in stages. I just recently, over the weekend, did, in smaller containers. I did some carrots and, radishes.
So I’m trying to do some more root things. I haven’t really done much of that, but. And I also need to do the two, potatoes and that kind of stuff. So anyway, I do want to scale that up at some point right now, it’s just kind of for us to have, fresh food from the garden with dinner every night or something like that.
But I do want to scale it up so that I can actually, store some of these foods, either dehydrating it or canning it in some degree. So that’s kind of my kind of my goal for I don’t know about this year. I probably just want to plant a few more things just for us. And then maybe the following year I’ll scale it up a little more.
Well, we’ve done we’ve learned canning. We’ve got all the canning equipment, a lot of preserving, making our own personal hygiene products. Donna, soap is the best ever, you know, and people are just rave about how well it cleans. And you’re not smearing the man all over. Yeah, that’s one thing. Personal hygiene products, you know, what’s the vector that they wouldn’t get you?
You know, it’s it’s in the water. It’s in the air. It’s in the food for sure. And if you can stop, you know, smearing the man, you know, whatever intentioned crap, you know, they put on your biggest organ or your body, your skin. I’ve used your soap for 15 years or something about that. It’s been a long time.
I just think it’s it’s just cumulative. You know, you use the dish soap, use the hand soap. You use the cream, the lotion, the the, the sunscreen, the, I don’t know, whatever the lip balm, those kinds of things. And, and then just recently, I started doing my own laundry soap out of just some, some simple products that aren’t really going to poison you.
So for the land. Right. So I just think it’s cumulative. And so if you try to kind of back off some of that, even with just doing one product at a time or just something, I think that you’ll find you’ll be a lot healthier. And that’s what we’re working on, you know, and, Donna, we’ve been working really hard, getting ready for the holidays and everything.
And Donna, you know, starting to suffer, not getting enough sleep and and stuff. So she’s got a little bit of a cold, but we don’t get sick or we haven’t been sick, even through the whole Covid thing, we didn’t really get. It’s been a long time since I’ve been sick. I know caught something when I went up north, for the holidays or just being tired, I don’t know, but in any case, I’m doing it now.
Yeah. Your brother brought it from New York. I haven’t, I haven’t, taken any medication at all. I was looking for some NyQuil last night because I was just really. But the stuff we had was kind of old, and I can’t smell anything right now there. And he said it kind of smelled bad, so. Yeah. So I tasted a little bag one.
Yeah, yeah. You throw that away. Maybe not. So just trying to do it with some things around here. Make my own little, you know, tumeric tea type of thing. I mean, just eating garlic and, you know, and we something. Yeah. We supplement. So I mean, just dealing with those types of things. You should know. You should know how to do that.
It’s been, I don’t think people believed us or family, you know, they come out when we first got the land, they’re like, wow, this is going to be a lot of work. 18 acres of, oh my God, mom and Dad, how crazy are they? But when they came out, they stayed a lot longer than they planned. The kids had an awesome time.
Everybody wants to come back. They want to help. And so it’s our vision is coming to pass. But there’s a lot of work. Like today I got to change out some solar panels, get more powerful ones because my inverter on the workshop, the, cheaper panels that we got for free, my son sourced from a company I was going to just here’s a bunch, which is good.
We can use them for a lot of other things, but I have to put too many and series and take up too. Much room. And so I got some better panels that I’m putting up. So it gets up to a high enough voltage that the amped controller that maximizes the energy from it can’t even read it, you know.
And that was so that’s one thing that I’m going to be doing today. And I don’t like redoing stuff and have love. That’s why we’re going with masonry, because we could leave it there for months and come right back where we left off. And nothing degraded because here it’s all about ultraviolet UV. Now, these red bags, these hyper Adobe bags that we use, they’re good for out in the middle of the sun without covering them for years.
You know, three, seven years here in Arizona down to three. But the, so we don’t have to really worry about it when we use them for the check dams. We had them up there for a few months, and then we got the stucco in there, the covering it to tenting it and experimenting different fibers, basalt fibers, fiberglass fiber.
Yeah. And it worked great. So we’re really looking forward to every stage that we’re adding on to our build. And we’re learning a lot. So that’s what we are really about. We wanted to make sure that you guys are inspired, that it can be done. And 18 acres doing the roads and the driveways and you don’t get stuck.
And all of the infrastructure, you know, not too hot, not too cold, too hungry, too thirsty, you know, to unsheltered. And this is, what we’re demonstrating. And it took a year for us to get to this point. It was four months just for me, putting Holland 150, 200 and loads of gravel and sand sourced from a mile away here to just be able to have the drives so we are enjoying herself.
Fortunately, the Love Bus was constructed. We did in late 2019 and the first couple of months of 2020 that we knew when we did our Vaccine Education Summit in September of 19. What was coming. And it was I was worried and I’m going, we got to get small, we got to liquidate everything, give all our stuff that’s going to be theirs anyway to our kids and, start over and get lean.
Well, with the big shipping, moving trailer that we got, an 18 Wheeler is like a Mayflower. Thinks it has a lot of storage and so on. So we put everything that we can’t live without, you know, which about half of it probably. We can live with that. But we, put that in there for storage, and we got that on the land early.
So it is really we’re self-sufficient. We don’t. We didn’t even go in there. You know, until a couple months ago. So now we’re going, oh yeah, that’s where that is. And I needed that, that and that and that. So it’s been, working out. Well. We have a lot of things you know, I look forward to being able to, you know, bring out and have a room for my lab and my 3D printer and, you know, a bunch of other building rebuilds in the studio.
And so I’m there’s so much stuff that I got a checklist going to last me the rest of my life, which is very cool. Now, Donna, I remember when we first she she goes, well, I was going to take years and I go, if we’re lucky, you know, like, yeah, we got we get up every morning, we do the work.
You know, our work is on our new site, on this site, on, you know, a lot of things, our activism that we still do, we’re trying to spread the message and we’re going to be talking about that in the future too, is that gets launched. Beware the Ides of March, you know, here we go. But between now the time that you do a lot of the outside work, we do get a lot more stuff done and 115 degree weather because the days are so much longer there.
We do a lot of the stuff early in the morning, then we go inside, you know, where we have enough power to run evaporative coolers and the air conditioner window shaker in the bedroom when we want to, you know, sleep comfortably in 70 something degree, atmosphere. So we’re doing okay. You know, this is not I mean, we had to upgrade, you know, some of the solar system, you know, make it more, reliable and powerful.
And we had that equipment, but it was for the house. But it’s going to be a awesome screw that. We’re going to go ahead and make use of it. Now. So this is and Donna had to have this pool. How big is that pool 14ft by 3.5ft. So 14ft. Like I really I mean, you want to spend the time on that maintenance.
Okay. I am so glad that she did it because it’s January 6th and I’m sweating. So in Arizona, I get used to it. There is a, a lot we want to share with you, but the main thing on this, the beginning of 2026, you’re going to experience and at least see coming, and soon you’ll experience why we did this.
And it’s never too late to occupy the land. And what I mean by that is be self-sufficient. Don’t let your circumstances around the world and the United States.
Overwhelm you, you know, and I really I say this get out of paper. Paper. I mean, it’s nice to have some cash and so on, but, if you’re looking at, a balance sheet that it says on your computer screen or some statement you get on your 401 K or, or even your Social Security, if you’re older and you’re getting that, which we could qualify as, just got for all the paperwork and, you know, so, you know, it’s not going to buy anything, you know, the dollars that you have in retirement just going to evaporate.
It’s going to go away. You need hard assets. And the best thing is to be able to live, to be able to feed yourself. And if you have young children, educate them. Don’t turn them over to the government to raise your family. That’s just a big, giant mistake. And we lived a very moderate, poor, poor, poor, poor life in the 90s because we chose to pull our kids out of school.
Everything was around that. We tried homeschooling, we did different charters, Montessori, you know, and eventually they went to a Christian private school. And that was the best decision that we made. That was the best investment. They all married well there, you know, all healthy. They’re doing well financially. They got their own resources. They listen to us enough. But anything that you have represented in the US dollar or paper or pinky swear you’re for A1K is this while they’re invested in dollar denominated stuff, I just got I just got to warn you, I just my opinion, which is not financial advice, what do I know.
But we’re confident enough that that’s how we structured our life to be able to be. We’re closer to nature. We’re closer to the land we have, you know, one neighbor within five miles, the next one’s like another five miles. Now we have modern transportation, and we did the roads. Well, because there were cow trails. And that’s why we got the tractor.
The only reason we’re able to do this for us, visiting other builds and other occupiers of the land around the country. We were familiar with the desert. I like the desert because a lot less bugs. We were in the desert because the weather is so much nicer, and it’s only between about 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. that it’s the sun beating the crap out of you so you have to wear.
I wear more long sleeves in the summer than I do in the winter, and it is pleasurable. I wake up content. There’s plenty to do. We advance in adding to our life priorities, you know, rear up and what we got to do that day. But we’re doing and I encourage you to pay attention. Watch what we’re doing. You know, we’ll we’ll share with you.
You know, what we learn. And, you know, don’t do that and we’ll get more into that. Yeah, because we’re all about positive ways. I don’t want to show you, you know, every freaking screwed up thing I did. Until we find the solution, it’s not good to say, well, I didn’t work and that didn’t work. Hey, this works, but don’t do this.
We’ll get to that. And there wasn’t a lot of that. We already had done prototypes, experimenting on our home in North Phoenix. We had two acres there where we did a lot of experimentation on aquaponics. We did a lot of raised, bed gardening. We had, bunch of chickens. God, what was there, Max? We had a chickens at one time.
50, you know, over 50. You know, chickens. We had turkeys. We even had goats at one time. And, I really like goats out here. Goats may be a good idea, but if you got foliage, they. They’ll just kill a tree and eat the bark. And they might eat too many of the things. Yeah. And and you can’t scold them.
They just look at you go. Would you think I was good? I’m a goat, you know? So, we got rid of the goats because they were just too smart and, you know, being a pain in the butt. And then we harvested turkeys one Thanksgiving. Just to show that we could. And, you know, there’s that, you know, that kind of turned some of our friends into vegetarians.
But the, one thing that we wanted to demonstrate was growing. Now we have aquaponic systems. We still have that we can deploy. The problem was, is that aquaponic systems are great for using a lot less water, and you would think that it would be good out here. The problem is, is that it’s a chemistry experiment all the time.
And if you have, you know, one, day or two, you got the chemistry, right. I mean, things can go really fast downhill and it’s hard to get it back now. We had fish from that. We did. And it may be a thing in the future, but only when we have you know, more time, you know, it’ll be an additional system to what we have.
I’m not going to put everything into the aquaponics. Yeah. And my sisters are getting near retirement age and they are they’re really looking forward to coming out here. Hence welcome out. Absolutely I got land out. You know I got plenty of land. You know we have a runway that we put that kind of bisects from one corner to the other.
So we got a triangle, probably about a little bit over nine acres that we’re really developing. And the rest of it, we’re just leaving for family now. That is something I look forward to taking care of our family generations next. Now they’re going to want to do what they want to do, but we want to make sure that they have the option now, our extended family, that it’s a family thing, you know, so there’s a lot of people that have offered, oh, we can come out and I’m now, you know, I really want to keep it a family thing.
And the one thing is, is we’re really emphasizing private property ownership. This is mine, not yours, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine and go by our rules. And this is like a good neighbor, Ernie. And Donna is always there. And that’s how we, interfaced with our neighbors. Even extend your ten miles away. Six miles away. You know, we get, you know, further towards town.
They know we’re out here because we offer our tractor that a lot of people coming out here, they need to dig their septic, they need to grade the road. They need to repair flood damage. So just give me a call. I may not be able to come out right then, but, you know, within a week or so we’ll go out, take care of business, and we get a lot of good deals and a lot of goodwill, like a good neighbor.
That’s what we need to be. This is about community as much as it is what we’re doing here, because you’re always going to be part of a community. But I wanted to be able to select who’s in my community, and a lot of people that come out and do this kind of homesteading thing, I can’t we haven’t met anyone that’s not, you know, in line with our mindset.
I don’t I mean, you know, rule one, don’t be a dick. And I haven’t found any dicks. You know, they’re all pretty, but of course they want what they want on their part. And I respect that. What do you want me to do? How you want me to do it? I’ll do it. And then we get, you know, free duck eggs.
You know, we get, you know, good deals on fence posts. We get, we get, we get. But you got to give. So that’s what we’re doing.
In this New Year’s update from Occupy the Land, we
In this episode of Occupy the Land, we finally overhaul
Description: In this reflective episode of Occupy the Land, Ernie