HOMESTEADING

"Homesteading" used to mean qualifying for free government land because you lived on it, built a house on it, and so on. That program is mostly history now. The new meaning of "homesteading" is a lifestyle of choices that are frugal, healthy, sustainable, self-reliant, and good for the wider community. For most homesteaders the fulfillment of those goals includes a dream of living on the land and trying to produce at least some of your needs at home, especially food. Growing food isn't easy for city folks who have never done it before. The homestead lifestyle can be practiced in or out of town and with or without plants and animals because it is a view of life and a set of lifestyle principles which become habits when practiced on a daily basis. A homesteader, when faced with a choice, asks, "Is it...

1. Frugal? The ignorant may assume the the first step to a sustainable lifestyle is buying land. That's not true. The first step is beginning to practice frugality. Homesteaders try to consume less, buy plain, and recycle when possible. Most homesteaders tend to define their "good life" by non-material values rather than mainstream luxury standards. Homesteaders reject wealth, power, and status sought for their own sake. Thomas Jefferson wrote of a happy Virginia farmer whose "estate supplies a good table, clothes himself and his family with ordinary apparel, furnishes a small suplus to buy salt, sugar, coffee, and a little finery for his wife and daughters, enables him to receive and visit friends, and furnishes him pleasing and healthy occupation...To secure all this he needs but one act of self-denial, to put off buying anything till he has the money to pay for it."

Like Jefferson, homesteaders refuse to "buy now, pay later." Homesteaders may use a debit card, but they refuse to own a credit card. They buy with cash or do without. Therefore, they will NOT pay interest—except possibly for a home mortage. Of course, they prefer buying to renting (which is just throwing money away). I admire the homesteaders who will not use a mortgage even to buy property, choosing to save for their first property, and then gradually to work their way from the cash purchase of a lesser place to the cash purchase of a better and then a yet better one. It takes the average homesteader 10 years to save enough to make their longed-for move to a first home in the country. The good news is that cash, with careful shopping, buys approximately four times more land/house value than you could get in a conventional mortgage payment (interest included.

Homesteaders often choose to live on one income or two part-time incomes, especially if the family includes young children. They may choose a poorer paying occupation that is in a more satisfying location or situation over a better paying one that requires an unwanted lifestyle. They make practical buying decisions, never spending money just to acquire status. They can enjoy things without owning them: borrowing books, movies, and CDs from the library; visiting parks or friends for recreation. They refuse any product that produces addiction. They stay home and look after the homestead, refusing travel except to see friends and family. To quote Jefferson again, "Man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without." The homesteader is likely to choose principle over comfort, so he may do without television, public school, soccer, public power, etc.

They look for bargains in healthy food—buying in bulk and direct from grower or wholesaler, or growing it themselves. They practice the skills of food preservation and storage and from-scratch cooking to make best use of that healthy food.

Photo credit - Peter Crown for picture above and to lower right.

2. Healthy? Homesteaders care about their health, that of the planet, and that of future generations. They prefer to grow their own food, and/or to buy it from persons whom they know are growing it without pesticides and herbicides, or to buy "organic" and "grass-fed." They preserve the surplus of their healthy food, storing it so they can have this healthy diet year round. They prefer a midwife/home birth to hospital birth. They are reluctant to use drugs, prefering first to treat with lifestyle and diet adjustments. They prefer manual labor at home to formal muscle workouts in a distant exercise room. They know that people live longer where the air, water, and soil is cleaner and where people aren't crowded together. They know that people who live close to the land and away from urban decadance are morally and psychologically healthier. Homesteader parents have sensed what a current Department of Education study of childhood education choices is clearly demonstrating with nationwide statistics: Children raised in homes with no television or video or video games and who grow up helping older family members with chores speak earlier, read earlier, develop higher IQs, score higher on achievement tests, and bond more closely with other family members.

3. Sustainable? Homesteaders generally feel a respect, maybe even a reverence, for nature. They try to live lightly on the Earth's income rather than devouring its capital, practicing and demonstrating a lifestyle which is satisfying without being destructive of the planet's support systems. They want unpolluted air, water, and soil and they endeavor to maintain that unpolluted air, water, and soil for others. They work to minimize their garbage production, nourish their soil (never using pesticides, herbicides, or artificial fertilizers). They compost, mulch, and recycle. They look for ways to be frugal with water, fuel, and electricity. They may use draft animals rather than a tractor to cultivate a large acreage, a spade, hoe, or trowel to cultivate a small one. They install an independent alternative energy system if they can. When they build a home, they seriously consider using "alternative," "green" building options. Their choices slow down global warming, preserve species and forests, and preserve natural resources for future generations. (Also see the section on gardening philosophies at the beginning of the Introduction to Plants Chapter.)

They want to control choices regarding their home and land because they're experimenting with innovative, healthy lifestyle choices. They may settle for part-time, seasonal, or self-employed work (perhaps selling suplus food production) in order to live where they want, have time to do what they want, and not move when the company says so. Many use the cell phone and computer modem to reduce the commute and combine business with the pleasure of staying home. Most value a strong traditional family, often with defined gender roles and a welcoming attitude to babies. They view the homestead as an alternative to urban moral ambivalence or deterioration and the homestead as an opportunity to develop strong character, integrity, and a work ethic in offspring. They seek to bond as a family by working for common goals. Some value the opportunity to experiment with alternative family and community forms. Some seek to have as little connection as possible with formal functions of government.

Government representatives, in turn, may resist a homesteader's choice of home over public schooling, home over hospital birthing, and neighborly barter over taxed buying of goods and services. The homesteader's desire to do-it-myself may be a point of conflict with government clerks who sell permissions to build, grow, or whatever, and with experts who profit from society stratified into those-who-know-how and an ignorant and dependent public.

Some homesteaders believe that the corporation should never have been given legal status as a lifeform and resist corporate organisms that threaten the well-being of their own employees, their communities, or even the survival of life on earth in their pursuit of profit. Corporate leadership, in turn, may dislike people who would rather build it or grow it than buy it and who detest monopoly, the deliberate snuffing of small enterprises by big ones, and the marketing of addictive substances.

5. Good for the Community? Homesteaders live in a rich context of relationships that include family, animal, plant, church, and community relationships and responsibilities. They will organize to protect their homes and communities from would-be polluters, or from foreign corporations seeking to buy up local raw materials, such as logs, for export to foreign factories (to be returned as consumer goods for sale), or from an invading corporation which seeks to replace local businesspeople. Some work to shift government taxation from personal income to taxes on sulfur dioxide emissions (cause of acid rain); to industries and activities which emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (cause of greenhouse effect); to industries which pollute with lead, mercury, and dioxins (bleached paper products); and the plastics industry whose production process is a pollution, whose plasticizers leach into our food and make it unhealthy, and whose waste products cram our garbage dumps; as well as to producers of the pesticides and herbicides that are poisoning our water, soil, air, food, and farm workers.

Homesteaders are good stewards who take responsibility for their own bit of earth and act responsibly on whatever task they undertake. They are likely to value spiritual over material.They join with like-minded folks on a regular basis, working to make good-things happen in other people's lives. They strive in personal and community relationships to share and extend their blessings of frugality, health, sustainability, self-reliance, and community involvement! Some work to get bike/walking/rollerblading/and horse transport paths built alongside two-land roads or freeways. Many are involved in one or more of the hundreds of organizations related to alternative agriculture, especially those which campaign for frugality, health, freedom to grow food, freedom to sell it, and the opportunity to make a profit so doing. Networking is most important, though, when it's local. You help a neighbor who needs it. You let a neighbor help you. This exchange of real goods or service builds a caring extended family— "community."