Kin’s Domains (Ringing Cedars)
Discover the central idea of the Ringing Cedars books. What Kin’s Domains are, why they matter, and how they are changing the world.
Quick Note: This report is broken into 3 sections:
- What Kin’s Domains are
- The Differences Between Kin’s Domain Settlements and Eco-Villages
- How to Create a Kin’s Domain (Anastasia’s Instructions)
- The 17 United Nations “Sustainable Development Goals”, and how they are all addressed by the Kin’s Domain model.
A Kin’s Domain is a 2.5 acre piece of the Earth where a family creates a living Paradise garden for themselves and their (future) children, to pass on in perpetuity. The land is your connection to the Universe, and the space of your kin.
One Hectare (2.5 acres) of land for every family.
Humanity needs a way of living that will regenerate our planet, our lives, and our families.
“If the human community consists of rational beings, why does it pollute the water it drinks and the air it breathes?
“Why have people chosen a way of life that leads them to consume mostly low-quality food?
“Why, as we keep speaking of spirituality, culture and human values, are there constant wars in the world?”
These questions are taken from the Ringing Cedars of Russia series by Vladimir Megre, in which the idea of Kin’s Domains is proposed as the solution to these problems, and all world crisis. In these books he provides a great deal of evidence, that Kin’s Domains would be the most sustainable and most widely accepted model of living currently available to the world.
A Kin’s Domain is a piece of the Earth that a family takes to create a living Paradise for themselves and their future children, to hand down to them in perpetuity. It is the Domain of their Kin.
It is at least 2.5 acres of land (100m x 100m), where a family plants a living fence of trees and bushes around the perimeter. On the inside, they dig a pond, plant a forest, an orchard, flower and vegetable gardens, build a house and keep bees and animals, all with the intention of passing this land down to generations of their children. They use strictly organic methods of gardening, and create no pollution of any kind. The families who create Kin’s Domains are doing so to ensure the best possible future for their children.
When each willing family does this, bit by bit, the world will be transformed into a blooming heavenly oasis. Each family, willingly and enthusiastically, takes to the land and regenerates the Earth. There are already more than 400 Kin’s Domain settlements in Russia and eastern Europe, with the largest of them having over 200-300+ families.
This is not a movement that is being forced or recommended by anyone externally, but instead it is an idea being carried out by people of their own free will, largely without governmental support. An idea like this which so many people are doing on their own, should be supported by all governments, because they lose nothing, and have everything to gain.
If people are willing to accept land, plant gardens on it, become self-sustainable, and regenerate the environment in the process, should we not help them?
Kin’s Domains address all 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, while requiring minimal financial resources. Read our report on Kin’s Domains and the 17 SDGs below.
“Creating a Kin’s Domain means improving the environment, and that’s the main purpose of a Man’s being. If God had created the environment, and His children were talented so much as to improve it – that would be the utmost spirituality of mankind.”
– Vladimir Megre
The Difference Between Kin’s Domain Settlements and Eco-Villages
Discover the important and major differences between the two models, and what makes Kin’s Domains unique.
Kin’s Domain Settlements and “Eco-Villages” are not the same thing.
A Kin’s Domain is 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of land, which a single family transforms into a flourishing garden Paradise and home for themselves and their children.
A Kin’s Domain Settlement is a community comprised of many individual Kin’s Domains.
The “Eco-Villages” of the West have a much more “communal” focus, where everything is shared between individuals. This idea of an individual space for each family, where a family is self-sufficient, greatly differentiates Kin’s Domain Settlements from Eco-Villages. There are many other differences.
Here Vladimir Megre (author of the Ringing Cedars books) explains his experience at the NEXUS Summit located at the United Nations in 2015, when he was sharing the idea of Kin’s Domains:
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V.M: “Now, it used to be that we’d sometimes call our settlements “eco-villages.” It turns out that that was a mistake. And a big one. As soon as you say the word “eco-village”, including there, people immediately imagine the eco-villages that already existing, and what people do there.
As a general rule, everything in these settlements is communal. There aren’t family homesteads [kin’s domains, family homestead is a different translation of the Russian word родовое поместье] there; everything is communal.
What I mean, is that everyone works a communal field, or somewhere else… well, like the way it is in the Tamera Settlement: they have communal breakfast, lunch and dinner there. You can have a bite to eat… well, it’s like some cafeteria. You can have a bite. There’s a kind of trend there, where people say, “Let’s call ourselves an eco-village, too,” and so on. But if everyone were to decide to call themselves eco-villages, then it would also be the case that, “See, everything here is communal, like during Communism.”
There’s an article on the Internet. The article’s author is Tatiana Ginzburg, and she travelled around, looking into the many settlements in which she’s been: in Italy, Finland, and America. At one of the assemblies in the Tamera Settlement we had a representative there, from the Kovcheg (“Ark”) Kin’s Domain Settlement. And here’s how she writes about his speech:
This was Dima from Kovcheg. “He presented Kovcheg as a super cool eco-village and he got a big hand from the audience. Westerners don’t understand what a ‘family homestead’ is. That is, they don’t understand that there can be a settlement on the land and that it’s not communal. That is, the point of the settlement is to live on the land, not to create something communal.
And for that reason, if they’re presented with a Russian settlement with a hundred homes, then they’re overjoyed, delighted, and they think of it in their own way: ‘this is a commune,’ ‘this is an eco-village’ in their sense of the word, where people work together, eat together and share communal property. Now, Dima didn’t draw special attention to this point, in case, God forbid, people might not like him.”
It would seem that it’s just one word, and what goes along with it: “family homestead” or “eco-village.” But as soon as we call ourselves an eco-village, then people lose interest. “Why should I go to faraway Russia when I can have this right here, close by? Here you have America, here… it’s the very same thing.” That is, clearly we need to be more attentive to what Anastasia said. Be more attentive to the words “family homestead” and “family homestead settlement,” understand what’s behind them, and get this out to others.
How to Create a Kin’s Domain, According to Anastasia
Anastasia’s recommended steps to creating your Kin’s Domain.
1. Choose the Place
“First choose for yourself a place of your own you like best of all the pleasing spaces on the Earth. A place where you would like to live, and would like your children to live out their lives. And then you will indeed leave to your great-grandchildren a fitting memorial to you. The climate, too, in that place must be favourable for you. Take one hectare of land in that place for yourself in perpetuity.”
“What could you do if you were standing on your own land?”
2. Build a Living Fence
“Would it not be better, Vladimir, in place of a whole lot of posts, which can later rot, to plant trees?”
“It is possible to plant bushes in between them that people cannot get through. Take a careful look, and think what a splendid living fence you would have! And it would be just a little bit different with each person. And everyone would come to admire the view And your descendants in the ages to come will remember the creator of this splendid hedge. And the hedge will not only save them time on repairs but will bring them benefits as well. It will serve, in fact, as far more than just a barrier. One person will make a hedge out of birches growing in a row. Another will use oak. And someone with a creative impulse will make a coloured hedge, the kind one reads about in fairy tales.”
“What d’you mean, coloured?” [says Vladimir]
“Planting different-coloured trees. Birches, maples, oaks and cedars. Someone may intertwine a rowan-tree with clusters of bright red berries and still plant guelder-roses in between. And make room for bird-cherry trees and lilac bushes. After all, you can plan it all out in advance. Each planter should watch to see how high each one grows, how it blooms in the spring, what kind of a fragrance it has and what feathered friends it attracts. Thus your hedge will be both sonorous and pleasantly fragrant, and you will never get tired of looking at it, as the picture will be changing its tints with each passing day It will flourish with colours anew every spring and every autumn burst forth in an explosion of fiery hues.”
“It will hasten the implementation of the plan if you use a plough to dig a trench around the perimeter of the ground-lot and plant the saplings in it, along with the seeds at the same time — for the bushes you have decided to plant between the trees. Then you can go over it again with the plough to fill in the soil. While the earth is still loose, you can adjust the position of each sapling to even out the row.”
“The only drawback is that until the hedge grows, it won’t deter any thieves. And people will have to wait a long time for it to grow. Especially in the case of oak and cedar.”
“But birch and aspen grow quickly, and the bushes between them will not take much time either. If you are in a hurry, you can plant tree saplings two metres high right away When the birches are grown, they can be cut up for household use, and their places will be taken by the maturing cedar and oak trees.”
3. Plant a Forest, Dig a Pond, and Build Other Structures — “It won’t be a forest we end up with, but more of a palace!”
“Let us say our lot is on a barren section of land, and is now enclosed on all sides by a hedge. Let us divide it, reserving half or three-quarters of the lot for a forest, and there plant a variety of trees. On the edge of the forest, where it borders on the remaining part of the lot, we shall plant a hedge in such a way that animals cannot pass through it and trample the crops growing in the garden plot.
“In the forest we shall set up a pen using densely planted saplings, which in time will be home to a goat or two. And we shall also use saplings to construct a shelter for egg-laying hens.
“In the garden plot we shall make a pond approximately 16 metres across. We shall plant raspberry and currant bushes among the trees in the forest, and wild strawberries around the edge. Later, after the trees in the forest have grown a little, we can set up two or three empty log hives there for bees. And we shall use trees to make a gazebo where you will have a cool place, safe from the heat, to talk with your children or your friends. And we can make a summer sleeping area out of living things, along with a creative workshop for you. And sleeping places for the children, and a living room.”
“Wow! It won’t be a forest we end up with, but more of a palace!”
“Only the palace will be a living entity, and continue to grow in perpetuity This is how the Creator Himself thought up the whole balance of things. And all Man has to do is to assign everything its task — according to his own taste, design and understanding.”
4. Establish Your Vegetable Garden, and Live In Paradise
“Believe me, Vladimir, even the vegetable garden can be set up so that it will not be an aggravation. You just need to keep everything under observation. Among the herbs, just the way everything grows in the forest, you could have the most splendid tomatoes and cucumbers under cultivation. Their taste will be much more appealing and healthful for the body than when they are grown simply on a patch of bare ground.” “But what about the weeds? And won’t they be destroyed by pests and beetles?”
“There is nothing useless in Nature, Vladimir, and there are no purposeless weeds. Neither are there any beetles that are harmful to Man.”
“What d’you mean, there aren’t any harmful beetles?! Take locusts, for example, or the Colorado beetle — a real vermin that eats away at potato crops in the fields.”
“Yes, it does. It is also thereby showing people how their ignorance is eating away at the self-sufficiency of the Earth, contradicting the designs of the Divine Creator. How can people keep stubbornly ploughing year after year in one and the same place, torturing the ground? It is like scraping an open wound, at the same time demanding benefits from the wound. Locusts or the Colorado beetle will not touch the ground-lot which you and I have outlined. When everything grows together in one grand harmony, the fruits accruing to the owner are also harmonious.”
“But if that’s the way everything is going to ultimately turn out, meaning that on the lot you have thought up there is no need for Man to fertilise the ground, or fight off vermin with various kinds of poisons, or do weeding, and everything is just going to grow all by itself, then what is there left for Man to do?”
“Live in Paradise. The way God wanted us to. Anyone who is able to build himself a Paradise like that will come into contact with the Divine thought and produce a new co-creation together with Him.”
“What new co-creation?”
“Its turn will come once the creation of Paradise has been completed in due course. Let us consider now what you and I still need to do.”
5. Build a Proper Home
“Only, your grandchildren will not need the kind of home you are building. They will understand on their own as they grow up. They will need another kind of home. That is why it is not worthwhile spending too much effort to make the house extremely big or solid.”
“When your grandchildren grow up, they will understand which materials out of all the ones thought up on the Earth will be the most pleasant, solid and useful for them. Right now you do not have those kinds of materials. Your grandchildren will build a wooden house using those trees which their grandfather planted ‘way back when’ and which their father and mother so loved. That home will start curing them, it will keep them from impurities and inspire them to what is bright. The grand energy of Love will dwell in that home.”
The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals + Kin’s Domains
Discover how the Kin’s Domain model thoroughly addresses all 17 of the U.N. SDGs.
NOTE: We are not promoters of the U.N. SDGs — we simply are using the general ideas as a framework for how Kin’s Domains address all of the world’s needs at the moment. We do not support Agenda 21 or Agenda 2030.
Goal 1: No Poverty
What are the conditions which cause poverty? Families don’t control their own land and their food supply, thus they have to work for these two basic human rights. If every family can provide suitable living conditions and a steady food supply for themselves (let alone when they are in community with like-minded families, and have the support of their government), then the causes of poverty, and poverty itself is eliminated. With families all provided an opportunity for income generation through small scale, local and organic agriculture, and small batch, high quality manufacturing operations, poverty cannot exist, as the conditions causing it have been removed.
Goal 2: Zero Hunger
With families practicing small scale regenerative growing methods, all of their food needs are met by themselves, and the community around them on their Kin’s Domain settlement. At the minimum, purchased food can be supplemented by food grown on the domain. With the Kin’s Domain model, there is greater opportunity than ever for world food security. For instance, one family in Los Angeles is able to grow 7000 pounds of organic food per year on a tenth of an acre, supplying 90 percent of their diet. They spend less than $2 per day per person on other kitchen staples and make over $20,000 a year selling excess produce. When people are properly re-skilled and educated on efficient gardening techniques, imagine what can be done on 2.5 acres. Then imagine what could be done if even 5% of America lived on Kin’s Domains, and the food surpluses that would create for the country.
Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being
As a result of families cleaning their environment, planting trees (purifying the air, attracting rain), gardens and orchards, consuming the highest quality organic produce, a tight-knit and supportive social environment where everyone is united in a common aspiration, families living on Kin’s Domains enjoy a substantially higher level of health and well-being than their city dwelling counterparts. They consume food of the highest, beyond organic, quality, engage in stimulating exercise while tending their land, and are daily engaged in the work which they feel is most meaningful to them: creating a corner of the Earth to hand down to their descendants.
Goal 4: Quality Education
On Kin’s Domain settlements, education is taken into the hands of parents who are invested and engaged in their children’s education. Since the “classes” are smaller, students receive more individual attention, and lessons are more participatory and engaging. Without the external stressors of the traditional school system used in cities, children living on domains will excel academically.
Goal 5: Gender Equality
Men and women uniting in love to create happy families will experience the highest form of gender equality that man has to offer. Men and women coming together for the purpose of creation of children, and of the establishment of a family domain where their kin will live in perpetuity, will respect and treat eachother with the highest dignity and fairness possible. Indeed, they would not even aspire to such things if they were not already thinking of the opposite gender with the highest respect. And the entire community around them thinks and acts this way.
Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
All families who are establishing kin’s domains are committed to maintaining clean and fresh water supplies. Lakes and other bodies of water are cleaned by residents of the settlements, and are never polluted by them. Sanitation is handled in the most eco-friendly ways possible. Large sewer systems do not exist on domains. Compostable toilets are used. All waste that can be composted, is. With less use of packaged manufactured good, waste generated per family decreases.
Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
Families living on domains opt for the cleanest and most ecologically sustainable forms of energy available (solar, wind, hydro, etc.) In some cases, families live without electricity and oil entirely. They keep use of such resources to a minimum.
Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
Families living on kin’s domains have decided to create a new ways of life for themselves and their descendants, and so by virtue of that decision, the work they do is inherently decent and becoming of them. With a myriad of options for generating income via their life on the land, all families are provided opportunities for long term, sustainable, and scalable economic growth. Not to mention that virtually none of the jobs are polluting the environment or detracting from society in any way. Examples of these economic opportunities include beekeeping, baking, growing and selling fruits and vegetables, making clothes, and so on.
Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
The inhabitants of kin’s domain settlements do not endeavor to set up large scale factories out of the desire to not pollute the environment. They provide their own infrastructure, usually on an individual family basis, and also on a settlement-wide basis. They create their own roads, provide their own electricity, water, etc. The kind of industry being practiced on Kin’s Domains is small scale and regenerative.
Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
Families living on kin’s domains have decided to create a new ways of life for themselves and their descendants, and so by virtue of that decision, the work they do is inherently decent and becoming of them. With a myriad of options for generating income via their life on the land, all families are provided opportunities for long term, sustainable, and scalable economic growth. Not to mention that virtually none of the jobs are polluting the environment or detracting from society in any way. Examples of these economic opportunities include beekeeping, baking, growing and selling fruits and vegetables, making clothes, and so on.
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
Kin’s Domains settlements will be completely sustainable and ecologically frienly in the highest way, by themselves. But the impact of the idea is far reaching. Not everyone will be able to transition to living life fully on the land instantly, nor should they, as haste breeds mistakes. There will be thousands and millions of people trying to transition to life on their very own Kin’s Domain, but they will start by cleaning up the places where they are. Inspired by a new vision of life, they will begin to take charge of the health and cleanliness of their cities. They will grow gardens where they can. Plant trees along the streets. Redesign whole sections of cities to be more beautiful and green. Also, those on Kin’s Domain settlements that are near cities will sell their products to those living in the cities, thus improving the quality of life of those in the cities. Those living in the cities will see the settlements near them and be inspired to change their lives.
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
People trying to establish Kin’s Domains take sustainable production and consumption extremely seriously. Since they will be living so close to the land, they are hyper-aware of what waste they produce, whether through consumption or production. Production waste created by those living on settlements is extremely minimal, since they aren’t engaging in any large scale industrial manufacturing processes. There is no industrial pollution — zero. Mostly all products made on kin’s domains are ecologically friendly and don’t create any waste — food products, handmade clothing, crafts, animal products like milk and honey, etc. All of these are very minimal in waste. And since kin’s domain settlers are the ecologically conscious type, they are keen to make as little waste as possible in their consumption as well. And lastly, since they are all attempting to become self-sufficient, they cut down on consumption where they can. They produce much more (green products), and consume much less (all products) than the average city dweller.
Goal 13: Climate Action
The Kin’s Domain model is the highest and most scalable method of climate action available. One of the first steps in establishing a Kin’s Domain is planting a “living fence” of trees that encirlces the land. This comes out to dozens of trees, bushes, and etc. planted around the 2.5 acre allotment. That’s only the beginning. One of the next steps is planting a small forest! The forests vary in sizes according to the plan of the family. But all the same, each family plants hundreds of trees over the course of years, which we all know will trap lots of Co2 in the soil. Every single family, without exception, does this of their own free will. Then they plant a vegetable garden, flower gardens, an orchard, and whatever else they desire on top of it. Needless to say, with hundreds of families living on a Kin’s Domain settlement, this has a tremendous impact on the environment, especially when scaled over hundreds of settlements, as we see in Russia. All the newly planted trees slow down the wind and attract rain, and eventually builds soil. It is a tremendously regenerative circle of action. There are already many examples of families taking marginal lands and transforming them into flowering oases’. The beneficial impact of one family living on a kin’s domain versus one family living in a city apartment cannot be understated. There is no comparison.
Goal 14: Life Below Water
Pollution of water is unthinkable for families on Kin’s Domains. They wouldn’t even think of it. They actively take steps to clean the waters around them, through physically removing garbage from bodies of water, and planting trees and other plants around them. Kin’s Domains families are predominantly vegan, and so won’t be using the sea for fishing or purchasing fish from the supermarket, which eliminates their contribution to pollution of the oceans through that industry. Families on Kin’s Domains do not engage in large scale industrial manufacturing of any kind, so they also will not pollute the oceans that way either.
Goal 15: Life on Land
Kin’s Domains are the definiton of “regenarative”. Families plants forests, orchards, gardens, dig ponds, and bit by bit transform their 2.5 acre plot into a flowering oases. They keep bees, plant all types of plants for bees, and do not use toxic pesticides which kills bees. All the plant life they care for attracts wildlife. They do not kill those animals.
One of the number one priorities for families on kin’s domains is soil health. They practice only organic agriculture, and most of them practice permaculture methods. Kin’s Domains transform arid lands into flowering forests in a matter of years. There is no cost to the government to do this, since the families do all of the labor for free themselves. The only cost to the government is the cost of land which they allot to the families. This is very significant because it means that the kin’s domain movement is a large scale, environmentally regenerative project which is carried out willingly and enthusiastically by citizens. This type of project has never existed before.
Animal welfare and biodiversity conservation is a top concern in this model. Using permaculture methods, families will sustainably manage forests and gardens on their own lands, therefore eliminating large scale infrastructure and maintenance costs for the state.
Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Kin’s Domains communities are self governing. They are tight-knit social webs where all families on the settlement are in closes relation with eachother. Families are accountable to each other. All decisions made in regards to the wellbeing of the settlements will be made by their inhabitants. Nothing can escape the watchful eye of close neighbors. Crime is non-existent on kin’s domain settlement, as their environment does not provide the conditions for it to breed. The basic human needs for food, shelter, water, clothing, and community are met in spades.
Their way of life is peaceful, right off. Their lives are about environmental stewardship and family. The Kin’s Domain model provides a framework for an ecologically sustainable and peaceful society of the highest type.
Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals
In review, we can see that Kin’s Domains throughly address each of the 17 SDGs, which is unique unto all other models, that may only address one, two, or a few. The Kin’s Domain model is a framework for a society which actively works towards the fulfillment of all the goals, in every aspect of their life, every day. This is unique, as no other model currently available can say it addresses all of the goals so extensively. The best part is, is that it is a movement which is truly by the people, for the people, and for the world. Families on kin’s domains take the health and wellbeing of the Earth and all of it’s beings directly into their own hands, and work their utmost to maintain and regenerate it in the best ways they know how.
