That Time the Feds Crashed our Homesteading Group Chat

All we wanted to talk about was gardening

Someone invited the “Militia” to our Telegram group chat and our Monday night calls. That’s when it went wrong.

But all we really wanted to talk about was gardening.

Covid was a wild time, an Apocalypse. Not in the disaster definition (although March – May of 2020 seemed like it). Apocalypse as in “unveiling”, “revelation”.

Thriving the Future started in the midst of Covid as my friend Perpend (David) and I were having deep conversations about real things that mattered. We started recording our conversations and it became the podcast. But we also built community.

We had a Rural Kansas group in NE Kansas – what some people now refer to as a Mutual Assistance group.

We would get together and do “No One is an Expert, but we are still going to Get Stuff Done” workshops, where we would share skills. Process chickens (mostly excess roosters), making vinegar, Ham radio lessons, learning how to use Bitcoin. Or we we would help one of our group clear downed trees, or evaluate his land for trees and water retention ponds.

We pressed apples and made cider.

Although we were prepper-adjacent, and fueled by Covid fears, we were all gardeners and “homesteaders”.

We had a Telegram chat and a weekly call where we would discuss a topic or plan an upcoming event.

Building Trust in the Community

Perpend, who I started the podcast with, expressly used these events and the weekly calls to (he hoped) find like-minded people who would be willing to start an intentional community or ask him to join their intentional community.

As a group were still sort of spread out, 10 – 30 miles away from each other. His vision was that we could buy land closer together and (maybe) move to one big plot of land to have an intentional community of homesteaders – like some of those that you hear about in Texas.

Problem was that we were all (right now) landowners, most with debt, who did not want to uproot and move closer together.

We talked about buying land communally and operating a farm, but we couldn’t agree on what our goals were, what we would grow, and who would own what.

This is a common problem with any intentional community, or even a mutual business or project, as Paul Wheaton talks about in his book – Permaculture Thorns. You may have the same ideals and goals, but money is always the sticky issue. And no one wants to talk about it.

Building Trust – Figuring out who to let in your Inner Circle

Perpend evaluated new community members similar to how our ancestors used to do it in the old days, face to face: Share coffee or a meal. Just talk. Figure out the other person. (You can hear Perpend share about this in Episode 17 – Clown World).

We used to do this – (We see it in Westerns):

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Where are you from?”

“Who is your family?”

“Oh I know that person.”

You are finding common ground.

But to ask these type of questions in a live Zoom meeting, Perpend would present a thought experiment or ask questions about gardening and land:

“What are you growing in your garden this year?”

“What does community look like to you?

Then the Feds crashed our homestead group chat

Someone invited the “Militia” to our Telegram group chat and our Monday night calls.

Not sure who invited them. One of the prepper guys.

These Militia guys called themselves the Missouri Militia/Kansas City Militia (I am not sure which). Their mission statement said that they existed to assist the mayor of Kansas City in a crisis or disaster if law enforcement was overwhelmed. (yeah right).

They had a booth at the gun show. But they weren’t the stereotypical bumpkin militia. They all wore BDUs and had high and tight haircuts. They spoke in exaggerated military jargon.

We actually made fun of them at the gun show, because it screamed “these are Feds”. They looked like retired LEO’s or Feds.

(Look, I have a friend who was a sniper in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is one of those guys who talks about guns sometimes, and sits facing a certain way in a restaurant so that he can see all exits; he is constantly surveilling. Even he doesn’t talk or act like these guys.)

The Militia guys immediately started trying to take over our group chat, asking questions about our preps, bragging and repeatedly asking questions about guns. Their stated purpose was to build their prepper compound and they were looking for someone to join them, to “help cover our backs”.

As group leaders and facilitators, Perpend and I asked our usual questions:

“What are you growing in your garden this year?”

“What does community look like to you?

They weren’t growing gardens, or at least they didn’t sound believable that they had even tried.

They laughed at us for talking about community.

We quickly kicked them out of the group chat. It was obvious that they didn’t fit.

Their group leader demanded that I call him on the phone. Relentless military jargon peppered his speech. (People just don’t talk like this…)

He said that we misunderstood them and “you just need to speak to my commander.” (WTF does even that even mean?)

I accused him of being a Fed at that point.

Then he gave us the ultimate diss:

“You guys aren’t Freedom Fighters, You are just Farmers!”

What a compliment!

He might have said “You are just Freedom Farmers”. (It sounds even better telling the story that way.)

The Life and Death of a Mutual Assistance Group

As Covid restrictions faded, people went back to “normal” life and faded away.

We didn’t buy land together because none of us could agree on what we would use it for.

One of us would find some land on sale. Then we debated/argued about who was paying what. The money dried up.

Perpend didn’t find what he was looking for: people to form an intentional community…just yet. He became an Orthodox Christian and moved to Kansas City.

He eventually became an Orthodox monk and was part of a several monasteries over the last three years. That was his intentional community.

Now Perpend/David is back. He is moving close to St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Church in Kansas City and he will be working at their large inner-city George Washington Carver Farm.

P.S.: Apparently I lost some subscribers on Substack from this post.

Maybe I seemed “tone deaf” for publishing this on the infamous Jan-6. Actually, Jan-6 to me means the Feast of Theophany/Epiphany. The end of Christmastide. It is the day before my wedding anniversary. Not an anniversary of when “stupid people did stupid things in stupid places with other stupid people” (to quote Jack Spirko).

I was listening to the original 20 episodes of my Thriving the Future Podcast, that Perpend I recorded in late 2021 to early 2022. Earlier in the day, I listened to In Episode 17 – Clown World, from Feb-2022, where we were talking about Building Trust – and figuring out who to let in your Inner Circle (that is the Bloomscrolling part of this story). We started to tell the story of the Feds/Militia and then it cuts off. I cut it from the episode so that we wouldn’t get cancelled. That was necessary in Covid-time. Let’s see if it gets me cancelled now…

Back to the Bloomscrolling articles.

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