Why do I “homestead”?

And why do I dislike that word?

First, I want to make one thing very clear. I do NOT want to homestead as a nuclear family. I believe collaboration is crucial, even necessary, to maintaining a healthy “homesteading” life. We technically have 2 other landmates, but growing beyond that (legally) isn’t very feasible in our current situation. I’ll probably rant about that in my next post.

Second, why do I keep putting homesteading in quotations? Simply because, I want to acknowledge that the word has been used to describe my lifestyle-adjacent activities, but I wouldn’t say it encompasses the full picture of what I aspire towards. I don’t like using the word because it’s limiting, and almost misleading. There’s so much variation for such a broad concept.

So to answer the initial question - it’s because I saw no other way forward.

I dropped out of high school almost exactly 10 years ago. 6 months before I was due to graduate. I told my mother I didn’t know how to continue. I was depressed and craved a different life than what was set before me. My parents have always supported me listening to my intuition, and I chose to seek what made my heart happy.

Fast forward to 3ish years ago, I found my heart begging for a more intimate connection with the land I inhabited. I had been practicing farming, gardening, stewarding. But I was a transient person, and hadn’t committed to a relationship with the land I inhabited.

I reprioritized my life. I stopped traveling, I settled in one location, I grew food, and I slowed down.

However, it wasn’t until I met my partner Seth, that I was able to make big dreams become reality. Collaboration is the golden ticket. It doesn’t have to be a domestic partner, but that’s what worked for me. I had been trying to assemble systems of collaboration within communities for years, only to become scattered and uninspired. I needed someone to work with me, side by side, day after day. We had the same goals and we began working immediately together towards them.

I also need to emphasize one key detail - Seth already owned land. We would have continued farming land we didn’t own regardless of this, but moving to our own property changed the game. We began to maintain equity. Building soil, planting perennials, building a house - all things that take years to pay off. Unfortunately, leasing land doesn’t cut it if you want these things. We didn’t just want to farm, and we couldn’t afford all the “organic” products we believed in.

Simply put, ONE reason that we homestead is because we wanted to seize the means of production for the things we consumed but could not afford. However, land seems to be the one thing folks my age can’t afford anymore. Seth got this property just a couple months before 2020… and we all know what happened after that. We are extremely fortunate. I was looking for years for affordable property before Seth and I decided to move to this land. I detail all of the because it’s important to note that “homesteading” would have looked different without Seth. I was struggling to make a full-time job work while gardening, foraging, and preserving food.

This work is not meant to be done alone.

For the sake of a more holistic understanding of our situation, I also want to state other philosophical beliefs that led us to live the way we do. We both love the earth, the land, all the plants and animals. We love to feel apart of a system that has sustained human life for longer than we can comprehend.

But we also enjoy the work, just as much as the fruits of our labor!

This is a huge reason that “homesteading” has worked for us. We are never wasting our time if we make a mistake. We are learning. We love to tinker, problem-solve, and spend all of our time creating our “lifestyle”. We are essentially trying to teach ourselves systems that were created over thousands of years, but forgotten in just a couple generations. Take it a step further, we are trying to improve upon them with modern technology. It’s a huge task, and we love it. I find so much purpose dedicating my life to finding the way I fit, the way forward.

The third poster not shown says “AWE”. (Seth made this table out of repurposed wood from our old town library. I love to celebrate his work.)

Much love,

Scotlyn