Am I a Homesteader?

So here I am, making my very daunting first post on this shiny new blog. With the rollover of 2024, the start of a new year, it is a good time to make goals. Especially because we’re just beginning to become established at our new property, and it seems reasonable that before I get down to sharing our progress, I want to make sure I explain who I am and what we’re about.

But who am I? Categorically, I mean. Is this to be another homestead blog? Am I a homesteader? Reflexively, I want to answer that question in an eager affirmative, but I feel somewhat fraudulent. I was born and raised in the city, and suburban life is all I know. What is a homesteader and is our property a homestead? What defines these words? Am I legitimate? As a homesteader?

What is and what is not a homestead? It isn’t acreage, because many homesteads are proudly on extremely modest parcels of land. It isn’t distance from large cities, because some homesteads are urban or suburban. Is it cattle? No, as many homesteaders have none of those. Gardens? Chickens? Many people who definitely do not consider themselves homesteaders have these.

Does pasture make a homestead?
Unmowed pasture.

I was discussing this with Scott yesterday on another one of our 6 hour drives between the city and the farmstead. This led to more fundamental questions. What distinguishes a homestead from a farm? Is it volume of crop? Is it a particular amount of gross farm income? Scott seemed to feel there were discrete definitions for farm and homestead, but I argued for the homestead as a subcategory under the broader classification of farm.

Wikipedia, at this moment in time, begins the entry for “Homesteading” thusly: “Homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craft work for household use or sale.

What subsistence farming looks like
Cans on a shelf

Homesteading is a lifestyle? With chief characteristics of subsistence farming, food preservation, and small scale crafts? This seems reasonable, I think.

Again, this leads to more questions. Do I have a homestead lifestyle? When one starts out on a quest from pure consumer to successful subsistence farmer, how far along that path must one be to be living the homestead lifestyle. Is it making the first step, having the first success, beginning to mentor others or provide food to the surrounding community that gets us there? Or, are we merely homesteaders if we think we’re homesteaders?

For those of you who have been homesteading for some time, particularly those in rural areas, can you recall the way most of the local native population seems unimpressed with your goals, treats you like a bit of a freakish outsider, and seems suspicious of your intrusion onto their home turf? This is a factor in feeling alienated and caught in between your new vision and idealism and the reality of the gaps in your knowledge and the even deeper gaps in your connection to your new community and home.

After much personal contemplation on the matter, my though is this: in modern parlance, “homesteader” conjures up a sort of a Joel Salatin-inspired movement of people who want to go back to a more basic lifestyle, closer to the resources necessary for their survival. I feel that I align very well with these same goals, but I’m hesitant to associate myself with a movement. It is of benefit to me that so many others are doing what I have been working towards doing, and passing on their knowledge by way of internet and social media. I love watching the vlogs, listening to the podcasts, reading the books, and just simply talking to homesteaders, but at the end of the day, what I most want is not to feel connected to other people, but to the earth. To time and antiquity.

I sit on our land and grow in my love for it. I want to carve out a life here. Just that.

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