Homesteading Is Hard–Is It Worth It?
The path to homesteading is not a straight line
Is there a trend of Americans “going back to the land”?
There certainly seems to be something in the air. Skyrocketing cost-of-living is certainly a factor.
Is it because of the meaning crisis?
The theory that mental health symptoms such as depression has been debunked. In his book, Lost Connections, journalist Johann Hari shares how the latest clinical research on depression shows that depression is caused by a lack of meaningful connections in one’s life.
Perhaps, what is first experienced as a “personal meaning crisis” in the form of depression, anxiety, or other mental health disorders, is also a tile in the mosaic of the global meaning crisis.
The meaning crisis is “the water we are swimming in”. Without the right context, you might fail to notice it completely.
I know I included the tweet below in the last newsletter, but I guess it’s still living in my head.
I think another way to say this is that meaning is found in our relationships to each other, and to the things that sustain us: food, air, water, shelter, our environment, our communities.
“I Want to Go Live in the Woods”
I seem to hear this constantly, from friends, acquaintances, and strangers.
I know it’s my own bubble, but I see memes like this constantly on Instagram.
Perhaps we are yearning to return to a lifestyle that our ancestors practiced for tens of thousands(or even hundreds of thousands) of years.
If you look at human evolution, industrialization is just a blip in our history. Pre-Industrial Revolution, small-scale farming and homesteading were the norm for the last 12,000 years. Before that, hunter-gatherer lifestyles were the norm, with many groups employing techniques like forest gardening.
As capitalism and a consumer economy beget a meaning crisis in the West, more and more people seek to go back to the rural environments of their ancestors, and to create meaning by adopting a self-sufficient, self-sovereign, and slower-paced lifestyle.
I have to resist the urge to proclaim that life in cities is meaningless.
I think I may actually be in the minority here on this one, or perhaps this is simply too personal and broad of a statement to make.
I also realize, cities are rich places. Cities are made up of the relationships between the people who live in them. Cities have history in a way that America’s rural lands do not since they were settled by White Europeans and the genocide of the ~10 million indigenous people living in N. America before the Europeans settled here.
There’s also the question of if it’s even ethical to homestead in a country that was stolen.
I don’t know how to answer that question. Maybe I will never be able to answer it in a way that feels final and complete.
I suppose I’ll put on my safety mask first, and then tend to my fellow passengers.
Tech and Back to Land
The price of housing has been on a tear, to record highs, and only recently has begun to cool off.
Recently, this piece exposed how apartment rental pricing software has artificially inflated the price of rented housing, and there’s even a class action lawsuit about it.
To boot, there’s chatter on the internet that Starlink will drive up the price of rural land in the US, because when you can get a fast internet connection anywhere, you can live anywhere.
Nonetheless, purchasing land in the US is not yet altogether out of reach for working class people. It can still be done.
But moving to a rural setting after living in the city is daunting for many who might consider doing such a thing.
One of the biggest reasons is politics.
As the social fabric of the U.S. continues to deteriorate, this is an even more legitimate concern than if we were living in culturally and economically stable times.
If you are not white, straight, and Christian, rural America can be a very dangerous place.
My first inclination was to say, “hey, it’s not that bad-just do your research and you should be fine”.
I realize that this will not be everyone’s experience, and the area you decide to move to could possibly mean life or death in the future.
I guess one thing I would like to say, is that not all rural Americans are terrifying, cultist Trump-worshippers, although they do exist out there. I met plenty of good people when I was living in a tiny town in upstate New York and Western Mass, especially the older folk.
That said, non-white friends I’ve had have disclosed the copious amounts of bullshit they’ve had to deal with while living in the retreat center community where I used to live. It was appalling.
The reality is that the whole of America was stolen by colonial-settler Europeans, and we are still dealing with the aftereffects of this today. If this makes you mad, go read a book.
I will say that there are homesteaders of all kinds out there. I’ve always thought Soul Fire Farm was the coolest. There’s also accounts like @blkhomesteader. Carrot Quinn is a queer hiking enthusiast, writer, and nomad, and writes incredible non-fiction about their adventures.
The Path to Homesteading Is Not a Straight Line
How it started:
How it’s going:
Perhaps the way to transition to a rural lifestyle is incrementally. This seems to reflect the Twitter survey that I posted about a month ago. My Twitter audience is mostly middle-class tech worker, or tech-adjacent folks.
In the survey, they reported that they’d be most likely to invest in land with friends to live on the land on a part-time basis.
Personally, I expect to work in tech until I can either make a living from writing and other side incomes until my land is paid off. Side income sources include: teaching guitar lessons, working in DAOs, possibly growing crops for sale at farmer’s markets at some point.
What I’m Reading/Listening to This Week
The Planet: Critical podcast and newsletter.
The tagline got me: “Investigating why the world is in crisis—and what to do.”
That’s in line with what I’m trying to do with this newsletter. I’ve listened to about 20 min of the podcast below and it resonates. Need to listen more to offer a critique.
I suppose if I had to offer one now, I would say that there needs to be media that addresses the practical concerns of survival in these times, which is really what I’m trying to do here, with TTSE.
It’s nice to look at things from a meta level, it’s a part of sensemaking what the hell is going on, but I think an unevenly distributed and prolonged decline is inevitable. I’ll listen to the rest of the podcast and report back next week.
Also, since Elon owns Twitter now, this list of decentralized social media platforms by @rabble:
