As we embark on our journey in California’s high desert, we are relearning one another on our 2.5 acres. As you can imagine, there has to be effective and efficient communication, compromise and a shared level of open-mindedness between us. Our family is comprised of five (5) people that have lived with one another at different points over the past seven years and have finally all reunited. Our goal is to create a self-sustaining homestead without any infrastructure (water and power) from the county. However, creating a homestead of this size will take cooperation and teamwork.

The Da Iweda (Native American for harmony) Homestead is the name of our property, and to get her fully operational, our team will need to be able to communicate effectively and efficiently with one another. Effective communication will help ensure that our daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals will be met. Without proper communication, we would ineffectively utilize our time, which will ultimately push our timetables backward. For example, a miscommunication could easily arise and either create confusion or an argument. Furthermore, the miscommunications could ineffectively appropriate resources, costing our group time and money.

Effective communication requires patience and emotional intelligence, but communication is just one of the elements for creating the strongest foundation for our team. We will also need to be able to compromise. We don’t expect anybody to comprise their morals, but we do have to compromise on chores, schedules, and so forth. This week we had to comprise and prioritize our goals. For example, we prioritized growing our gardening business and taking on a construction job in order to sustain the building of our homestead. We have the funds to build for the next six months, but it would be foolish for us to exhaust our resources without first creating residual income streams.

Last, we all need to share a level of open-mindedness. We are all coming from very different walks of life. Our team is diverse in a lot of ways, and with diversity come slight differences that could strain communication and compromise without open-mindedness. Open-mindedness can be viewed as a form of compassion. Putting five (5) people from different walks in a small area requires the unit to be open-minded enough to put our goal before any individual goals. There will always be differences of opinions and even debates on how we should move forward as a unit, but as long as we can consciously communicate, compromise and maintain a shared level open-mindedness, we (and anyone else) can complete almost anything! Ultimately, we want to create thriving businesses (residual income streams), a self-sustaining homestead (infrastructure, shelter, and food production) and be inspirations to the communities of color and show them that there are other viable living alternatives.