The Sovereign Seed: A Homesteader's Guide to Regenerative Living
The Sovereign Seed: A Homesteader’s Guide to Regenerative Living is a practical, soulful field manual for anyone ready to turn a piece of land into a living, self-sustaining ecosystem that feeds people while healing the soil.
What this book offers
A complete, step-by-step roadmap for transforming backyards, suburban lots, or multi-acre homesteads into resilient, food-producing landscapes using permaculture design.
Clear how-to instruction on foundational systems: soil testing and building, Hugelkultur “living battery” beds, integrated pest management, water literacy, and reading the unique story of your land.
Ready-to-use guild blueprints for annual and perennial gardens, pollinator sanctuaries, chicken and duck systems, regenerative grazing, and a living swimming pond that doubles as wildlife habitat.
Designed for real-life stewards
Built as a “choose your path” guide with three routes: the Backyard Steward, the Resilient Acre, and the full Regenerative Homestead, so you can start exactly where you are.
Organized like a working homestead with sections on foundations, living pantry, whole-land guilds, and four-season rhythms, plus a full Steward’s Calendar to turn overwhelm into an annual flow.
Includes appendices with plant and fungi profiles, financial frameworks, and printable forms, making this a working manual you will dog-ear, write in, and return to season after season.
For whom this book is written
New and experienced homesteaders, urban and rural, who are tired of fighting weeds, pests, and poor soil and want systems that largely care for themselves over time.
Stewards seeking food security, ecological repair, and a deeper relationship with place, whether tending a half-acre in town or expanding toward a multi-acre regenerative farm.
Farmers, designers, and educators who want a grounded, pattern-based reference that bridges science, storytelling, and lived practice in regenerative living.
How this book is different
Rooted in lived experience from WWOOFing, work trades, and years of on-the-ground experimentation, it blends story with rigor so you understand not just what to do, but why it works.
Moves beyond one-off tips into whole-system design, teaching you to think in guilds, stack functions, and close loops so fertility, water, and energy are generated on-site.
Honors the inner journey of stewardship, reframing “self-sufficiency” as sovereignty built through relationship, with soil, water, plants, animals, and community.
What you’ll be able to do
Read your land like a living text, map sun, water, and wind, and design from patterns to details with confidence.
Build long-lasting Hugelkultur beds, high-performance annual and perennial guilds, pollinator corridors, and integrated animal systems that regenerate the land as they produce food.
Carry your homestead through all four seasons with an indoor nursery, extended-season structures, and a month-by-month Steward’s Calendar that turns chaos into a grounded, regenerative rhythm.
Add The Sovereign Seed: A Homesteader’s Guide to Regenerative Living to your library as the anchor text for your land-based life—and let your homestead become proof that abundance and healing can grow in the same soil.