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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] HOMESTEADING, by Carla Emery
  • Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 20:36:38 -0700


as good as it gets

HOMESTEADING, by Carla Emery
http://www.carlaemery.com/homesteading.htm

"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.

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.)

4. Independent/Self-Reliant? Homesteaders tend to value independence and
self-reliance. They are committed to lifelong learning because you can
never know enough. They refuse debt because debt enslaves you. They want
freedom of thought and political freedom, as Americans always have. They
value religious freedom, including the right to teach their children
peculiar beliefs, as Americans always have. Homesteaders enjoy producing
for themselves what they will consume. Nobody can produce everything they
use, but, to the homesteader, trying is good enough, and whatever
self-reliance is achieved is a satisfaction and a pride. Many also value
preparation to endure and survive possible unexpected loss of income or
failure of outside support systems, either from extreme weather or manmade
disaster.

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."






  • [Livingontheland] HOMESTEADING, by Carla Emery, Tradingpost, 03/15/2005

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