The Independent American Gardener—Fostering Self-Sufficient Communities
Interview With Jamon Mysliwiec, In Missouri, USA.
T. I. A. G. —The Independent American Gardener is a budding non-profit community fostering family self-sufficiency through permaculture design and collaboration. An incredible opportunity for families looking to create closed-loop economies and build thriving networks of independent families supporting one another locally and collectively in gardening and living a holistic lifestyle.
We recently had a beautiful conversation with Permaculture educator and consultant Jamon Mysliwiec about his mission, purpose and visions for his excellent new endeavour with TIAG. For the past year, he has been on the road all around North America with his family, teaching hands-on permaculture designs and systems and bringing teachings right into families' homes and yards to jump-start his community efforts. Remarkable right!?! This model of education exemplifies the very core of what permaculture inspires: connecting and co-creating with nature right at home with local community. You will be elated to hear all about what Jamon and TIAG are building, one family at a time.
What does #plantforchange mean to you?
#Plantforchange means thinking generationally. Having an eternal perspective in the seeds, we sow today as if we're creating something not yet perceived but conceived the moment we sowed that seed. Recognizing every step we take has a ripple in the universe.
Where in this beautiful world are you located?
We are based out of Northern Missouri in the small town of Trenton, Grundy County. We started our vision and mission on Lulu St., where we got the name Lulus Garden. Lulus Garden started it all, and it was our family's .87acre urban permaculture property and food forest project. But we quickly evolved to meet our big ambitions, and we sold our home and permaculture project to finance the kickstart of our travelling and permaculture teaching efforts, officially founding the TIAG program.
You can see some added photos and videos of our startup efforts here, where my wife Rizzie shares the story of what started on Lulus Street Here
We are currently back on Lulus Street again, putting our shoulder to the wheel to restore a locally famous building and bring to our community the first-ever Lulus Garden Shop www.LulusGarden.shop and the first location of the TIAG community hub.
Design Mock-up of Lulu’s Garden Shop Coming 2024
What is the mission of your TIAG community & your heart's intentions for starting it?
Our mission and vision for this community is a permaculture food forest in every yard and a mentor in every home. Helping families come together to thrive and be self-sufficient in community-focused living.
We believe in combining the power of permaculture education with personal development to create closed-loop economies capable of fostering self-sufficient communities built on thriving networks of independent families that own their resources, what we call the four pillars of self-sufficiency: water, food, shelter, and surplus. Our community is built by families, for families. It is an initiative and invitation to begin living in a higher form of life, a community of self-driving people, making change.
TIAG was started with lots of heart to bring families together on the common grounds of the ground itself, right in the garden.
Through collaboration efforts with our Lulus Garden Shop, community members of TIAG can both offer and access one another's homestead products, and through a partnership with Haven Permaculture, my design business, families can access inexpensive permaculture designs and education services aiding in the local support they need for natural growing.
"A closed-loop economy is an economic model in which no waste is generated; everything is shared, repaired, reused, or recycled. What would traditionally be considered "waste" is instead turned into a valuable resource for the creation of something new." – quincyrecycle.com
What is your community's daily focus, and what are you currently doing to #plantforchange yourselves and with others?
We provide real-world, tangible community building and support—natural, healthy food, water, shelter, and surplus. We all need holistic health beyond the mainstream medical field's version. We need community support and wealth in all eight forms of capital and vitality in our bodies, plants, animals, buildings, and ecosystems, and we need it independent of the big corporate narrative. We need it autonomously to maintain an independent agency, and we need it at the FAMILY level. So, our focus to #plantforchange is on these real-world applications.
We see this as—
Planting more trees in every front yard down the street of existing neighbourhoods.
Planting the roof of local city buildings with hardy gardens and environmental designs.
Bringing insulated horizontal beehives and food forests to every backyard gardener.
Getting our kids' hands in living, breathing soil, where microbes that make up the fabrics of our world can interact with them, triggering mind and body in chemical and physical ways that God designed our incredibly powerful energy-based bodies to do in the first place.
Physically and tangibly connecting with the earth and the world around us as we were built to mingle with them.
Removing the rubber from our feet and allowing the electricity that pumps our hearts to close the circuit as we ground our bodies in the earth's soils again.
Feeding our guts with ecologically rich and diverse homegrown foods and colors of the rainbow that occur naturally in nature.
Consuming herbs, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, we grow and share
Basing our agriculture on perennial crops long forgotten by the modern degenerative practices across North America today.
TIAG is a community for people ready and willing to do the work it takes to feed themselves. We are groups of families in the cities, neighbourhoods, counties, provinces, rural and urban lots, and the forgotten no-name towns. We are homeschooling families, holistic and conscious people seeking to live 'chemical free' in our food, water, and environment, a people that prioritize the patterns set by God in the very fabric of the universe and the systems he set in stone to guide it. We are all creative people, building blocks atop one another to grow united and become more with every chance we get.
We are free, independent, virtuous, kind, and loving—every day, moms and dads, kids and grandchildren building our community. We are making change every day in our properties, gardens, businesses, and united communities in an authentic way.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." —R Buckminster Fuller
Describe the goals for your TIAG community project.
We focus on family in everything we do. We've had such huge feedback in our travels teaching permaculture so, we decided it was time to move into phase 2 of our efforts, post tour. We developed the TIAG Hub project mentioned above to achieve rural and urban permaculture demonstration sites, as well as exhibiting a closed loop barter and trade economy in the communities that we know and love, all in duplicatable ways that we can implement in many TIAG community across the American continent.
We are currently assembling teams and fundraising to develop the 1st set of TIAG Hubs; an urban commercial permaculture property, and a rural 40acre demonstration. We are beginning with the rural commercial scale lot where a permaculture brick-and-mortar property will round out all three efforts of our organizational tree and make all our services publicly accessible to our immediate communities.
The urban property will offer surplus provided by local TIAG member families that are producing a surplus from their own homes and permaculture businesses, including design services, holistic foods, herbs, medicines, and a smoothie bar with recipes from our herbalist and certified holistic health practitioner. It will have an indoor food forest and an outdoor one, as well as a rooftop garden and smoothie drive through, consultation offices, permaculture demonstration classes and a community event center, with other urban suitable points of interest.
The rural hub is intended for 40acres and will provide a wide variety of resources in all 8 forms of capital for families everywhere —
A 100% off-grid permaculture demonstration property wherein passive solar greenhouses, geothermal technologies with natural construction
Tiny home rentals & yurts
Horizontal hive apiaries with natural holistic beekeeping practices
An in-house event center and indoor forest gardens
Outdoor food forests and demonstration sites for various earthworks and terraforming examples
Yielding fresh smoothies from local fruits and vegetables
Rooftop gardens
Aquaculture ponds
live in-person classes, and more will all be facilitated.
We aim to provide a place where people can see these permaculture growing and design techniques in real-world applications, stay for a time physically using and building with their own two hands, and take that education and resources home to duplicate foundational patterns in their own TIAG communities. Including our economic support systems for local, independent small family businesses, with the goal in mind that communities can ultimately provide for themselves with no outside import through the leverage of local barter and trade between neighboring urban and rural properties.
It’s a bold vision, and its happening.
When teaching on the road, what is the general size of groups, and what is some real-life feedback from them?
Generally, our group size is a minimum of 15 people per live event, and our focus for the past year has been "we come to you" to get into the family living room, where real people connect daily, and authentic experiences, emotions, and values are shared. We leave it to the hosting family(s) to reach out to their community and make a difference by inviting others personally. For larger groups, we meet in community centers. Our largest group to date was 65 people. Our teaching team for the past year has consisted of the founding family alone, with support behind the scenes—namely, Jamon and Rianna Mysliwiec with their five young boys. As of the end of the 2023 tour, the in-house teaching team is now 5 to 6 individuals available for in-person events across the US and parts of Canada, all proficient in different capacities, ranging from Permaculture design and natural beekeeping to Integrative holistic health, Herbalism, and personal development.
With our online communities, we have a much more collaborative approach and bring on professionals for monthly webinars and micro-classes from anywhere in the world to teach on topics such as geothermal greenhouses, Permaculture water strategies, climatology and various supportive content for our community members. On any scale, we teach seminar style indoors and then work outside hands-on. We have travelled and taught over 30,000 miles and 27 states and two countries in 8 months, all with five young boys under 11 and a baby girl on the way. We include families and children of all ages in the outdoor workshops, often with a dozen kids or so working alongside the adults when it comes time to step outside! This is one of our favorite parts of the experience; to see the kiddos with their hands in the dirt makes us feel like what we are doing matters, like the generational effect we are creating is REAL and Tangible. It is so vital and necessary.
We routinely get positive feedback from students; here are a few quick reviews.
"I love how empowered I feel! The world has been heading in a scary direction, but I feel more confident now that I can provide food for my family and even some of my community if times get hard." – Carlianne and Blake B.
"I am very hopeful for the future and my ability to create permaculture in my own space, even with my limited resources. Thank you!" – Charlotte E.
"This was an incredible and enlightening experience! Jamon and Rianna were so knowledgeable and kind. I can't wait to apply the principles of permaculture they have taught me!" – Kimberly W.
What is your current most significant challenge in your mission & project?
Our biggest struggle currently is financial barriers. We are a small family business with an international influence and network, growing fast and with limited financial resources. We've had to taper down our marketing to maintain integrity on timelines for deliverables and increase our team members to speed things up. With the routine influx of work that comes with each weekend event, we are also managing the startup process of various projects requiring heavy funding, such as purchasing and developing a 40-acre permaculture demonstration site, the first of 3 USA-based TIAG hubs. If TIAG resonates with you to be part of, you can support us here.
What successes (small & large) are you celebrating with your community and team?
Thanks for asking; we are celebrating several successes!
1. The official launch of the TIAG program, in which we have successfully purchased a small city block on Mainstreet, located at 1116 Tinsman Ave, Trenton, Missouri. This incredible success speaks volumes to our community efforts! This is the beginning of TIAG Hubs. Each TIAG community is intended to have a commerce building wherein local surplus can be sold, a community building where education and gatherings can take place, and a warehouse/shop where supplies for families seeking to turn their homes into havens can be produced, shipped, designed, and managed. These three efforts are separate but unified in cause and effect.
2. Our Southeastern Utah community event host shared details on the poly-culture garden startup we planted as a community beside another hugelkulture bed and shared excitement for the upcoming swale project she'll be developing on the adjoining hills!
3. Our Northwest Idaho community event host shared concerns about the deer tampering with her fruit trees planted in an eco-swale hillside but noted the swale functioned perfectly, catching rain and booming growth in yarrow mullein and other medicinal dynamic accumulators!
4. Our Northwest Arkansas host shared excitement for the raised bed project we installed as a group with hugelkulture techniques and expressed insights gathered from our property walk, where we reviewed options while reading a landscape!
What are some practices, tools and advice for creating connected communities you are learning along the way and implementing?
Go outside, knock on your neighbor's door, and ask them to follow you home with a shovel in hand. Turn over some soil, plant some trees together, move rocks, ditch the grass, sow seed, and stop waiting for the right time to do something. The time has come and gone so many times already; it's as if there are too many people in analysis paralysis and not enough people with gloves and shovels. Action really does speak louder than words, and when we come together for a common cause, you'd be surprised at just how much even the smallest of groups of 3 or 4 people can accomplish and the surplus of education that becomes available to you. Now, imagine what a whole community could do.
Communities genuinely come together when there is a common ground. For us, that common ground is the ground itself. For others, it may be a book club, a youth event, or a class. Whatever it is, use that as the foundation you gather on. Understand that all the differences in your society have just melted away when each person comes together for that topic. When I (Jamon) stand in front of a group, I realize that despite different religious, political, economic, social, biological, academic, or any other differences, people sit side by side, laughing, learning and teaching. They exchange numbers; they share names, contacts, and resources. If you want to build a flourishing community of any kind, you must have that common ground on which it's made, that one thing everyone respects. It's just unrivalled.
Connect With TIAG & Jamon Mysliwiec
You can connect, support and join Permaculture Consultant Jamon and all his initiates here:
Tiagcommunity.com —Host a permaculture teaching event in your home or local community or join in creating the up-and-coming community hubs across America.
Havenpermaculture.farm/masterplan —Permaculture design services across North America
