Is homesteading a genuine, viable, feasible, permanent lifestyle? I have
intended to find out. I read a lot of homesteader's testimonies in books, and I
have two abrevieated lists of books use as references:
List one:
Far Out Is Not Far Enough (Tomi Ungerer)
You Can't Live on Radishes Alone (Jerry Bledsoe)
A Small Farm in Maine (Terry Silber)
List two:
Payne Hollow (Harlan Hubbard)
The Good Life (Scott & Helen Nearing)
Fat of the Land (John Seymour)
This is a partial list in both cases. I have found many things in the books
in the second list to be insightful, useful, and have stood the test of time.
For example, all the homesteaders in the first series of books had the notion
that they would be mineature agribusiness farmers. They would raise
vegetables, sheep, what have you, pay all their expenses with the proceeds, and maybe
eat a little of what was left. All the homesteaders in the second list
disparaged the notion of selling food off the homestead. Not only did I try this
and found the latter authors were correct, but I do not know of a single
instance of the paradigm of the former authors that has ever worked, although it is
tried or at least planned often enough.
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