YOU CAN HOMESTEAD

This Post is a Match.

You can grow a sweater in your yard and no one can stop you, bb.

Disclaimer: Do not read this if you’re easily offended by someone trying to convince you there’s still time to change your life. This is a brass-knuckle post written with the ruthless intention of encouraging you to follow your homesteading dreams. There’s never been a better time. Here’s how to get started today, regardless of your circumstances.

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It’s 10AM on a winter morning here at the farm. A gentle snowfall has been gracing us since before sunrise. Everything outside is glistening and magical. The chores are long done. The animals are fed and resting in their shelters. The wood stove is slowly bringing the house to a comfort level that won’t require the oversized wool sweater I’m wearing; but for now I love the hug of it. I love what it means. The life I love is paid for with the things I thought I needed to be comfortable.

The dogs and cats are napping. They’ve also been up for hours. Gibson and Friday have already helped me with pushy lambs and chased off a fox. My cats are still keeping this house 100% rodent free. Everyone here works hard and everyone here rests hard.

I just put the last package of meat from last year’s pigs into a crock pot. I thought I had used all of the 25lbs I saved for myself, but two small shoulder steaks were hidden under some rabbits. I have learned that even humble cuts of good pork coated in cider, brown sugar, honey, and bbq sauce absolutely sings when poured over rice and herb-roasted veggies.

I won’t leave home today. I don’t have any reason to. There is plenty of grain in the feed bins and hay in the barn. There’s firewood stacked outside. There’s months of food on hand, a lot of it I grew myself. There’s entertainment all around me. I can pick up a instrument and play a song. I can put on a movie or podcast while roosters crow backup outside. I can invite friends over for tea and yoga and gossip. I can take my hot mug of coffee and walk the dogs along the snowy forest path. I can curl up with a blanket and read the first frantic chapter of a romance novel by the wood stove…

Yes, I have work to do and it will get done - but one of the perks of working for yourself is making your own hours, and nobody gets my mornings from me ever again, not unless they cluck or baa. I haven’t experienced what people call the “Sunday Scaries” in well over a decade. Do you have any idea how good that feels? How freeing? How wealthy?!

Do you want it, too?

If you’ve dreamed of quitting your job, moving to the country, and starting to farm I am here to encourage you. Because back when I started homesteading (over 15 years ago) the world wasn’t anywhere near as expensive, climate change wasn’t as aggressive, and political unrest and random violence wasn’t as common. There’s never been a better time to change your life from one of make-believe convenience to something real, something you can control.

But this isn’t a post about scaring you into learning to garden or bullying you into a decision you aren’t ready for. And it certainly isn’t a post trying to convince you my life decisions are better than yours. I am writing this because I believe a life with less materialism and more physical labor outdoors is better for you as a human animal.

If you can consume less and create more (especially the things you eat), you’ll find more contentment, peace, and happiness living on a homestead than you dared dream in the nicest mansion in suburbia. The hardest part is allowing yourself to believe it’s even possible.

If you would like to daydream with me a little, keep reading.

It’s Never Been Easier to Learn These Skills

With your smartphone, you've got access to more information in your pocket than farmers raising chickens fifty years ago learned in their lifetimes.

Let’s begin with what used to be the hardest part: information. During the Back-to-the-Land Movement in the ‘60s, learning to homestead was harder than buying one. A group of hippies could pool their summer job earnings together and buy ten acres outright. Now millennials with $85,000 a year salaries feel they’ll never own a home.

(We’ll address that issue in bit, but the good news is you can probably buy a house. The bad news is it’s not where you live right now.)

But when it comes to gaining the skills needed to homestead, it’s never been easier! Gone are the years of library trips, obscure resources, and hard lessons made from stupid mistakes. (You’ll still make stupid mistakes, but no where near as many as people did before the internet.)

I’m going to tell you something you already know, but it’s important to remind you of your power. Your phone, right now, has access to all the information you need to change your life and it’s so easy to access. Everything from applying to a new job to buying rural property to how to butcher a chicken (and all the recipes you can handle once it’s plucked) are at your fingertips.

What stops us from pursing homesteading isn’t the lack of information, it’s the overwhelming belief it isn’t achievable at all. And the older we get, the more impossible changing the direction of our lives feels. I get that. I hear you. But please, hear me out.

You don’t have to quit your job and live a life of a starving artist like me. You don’t have to fall without a net. Since 2020 the entire landscape of career culture has changed. Perhaps it’s time you made some changes, too?

It’s Never Been Easier to Work Remotely

It may be the only upside to the pandemic, how workplace life has shifted from corporate offices to living rooms. Your current job may not allow you to work from home (yet), but there are plenty just like it that do. Consider that. Now go read the bold sentence again, and for one second, consider that.

I’m not saying quit. I’m saying think about it. In most professional jobs, you have more negotiating power than you think. When I worked a 9-5 and was dealing with Barnheart so bad it was hard to focus, my first step was setting up a meeting with my manager and asking to go from 5 workdays a week to 4. Shortly after that, I was working for them part-time remotely from my farm. I did it slowly, cautiously. I did it while earning money on the side from my writing and workshops that could make up for what I was losing from the company gig. I know that my books and blog feel like decisions were fast and hard, but they weren’t. It was all baby steps. And I was terrified the entire time.

If you’re scared to even consider approaching your boss or leaving your job for another, that’s okay. Being nervous is smart. But dear, there’s no harm in looking at job listings tonight, at home, on your own time. Just to see what options are available to you. And there’s no harm, AT ALL, in uploading your resume to a job site and throwing a couple dream applications into the wind. Who knows, in a week someone could be flying you out to an interview in Vermont. Take a sick day or two, get on a plane, and see what could be. Twenty minutes cruising Indeed could change the entire trajectory of your life tonight.

Side Story: When I lived in Idaho during the 2008 recession, I lost my job along with 80 other recent employees. In two weeks I was on a plane to Albany and then driving a rental car in the snow to Manchester, Vermont. I was put up in a fancy resort/hotel and that hotel had falconry lessons. Taking that $50 intro lesson to falconry while waiting to head back to the airport not only resulted in a new job and cross-country move to the cabin in Vermont— it started me on the path to becoming a falconer. My entire life change because of 20 minutes on Monster.com in a library in Sandpoint, Idaho. It was s small decision, to apply to Vermont instead of New York or Boston. That decision changed everything.

Take some secret risks, darling. No one at your current job needs to know you applied for the same thing remotely for a company in Alaska. And if you get an offer, think of how much leverage you have with your current employer!? Saying you’ll leave this job for another if they won’t allow you to work remotely means they have nothing left in their hand to play. Tell them you’ll walk if they won’t change their policy. Darling, they need you more than you need them or you wouldn’t have the job in the first place.

So, if you’re not independently wealthy, I would encourage you to look for remote or rural options for your profession. If remote work is impossible because you’re a brain surgeon, librarian, or teacher - good news. All those jobs are needed in rural communities, too. Work up the nerve to tell your in-laws you’re moving out of state.

It’s Never Been a Smarter Time to Act

I feel safer with some control over my own heat, water, and food.

I have grown to despise the notion that anyone taking steps to be more self-reliant is a “doomsday prepper”. In our current society, anyone living rurally with more than a few weeks of food stored and a shotgun is viewed as a right-wing bunker nut.

I would never categorize myself as a prepper, mostly because I am not prepared for anything more serious than uncertain income over the next six months. However, that practice of preparing for hard times is (and always has been) my M.O. It’s the main reasons this lifestyle is possible for me at all. I ended my own civilized life a decade ago.

What I mean by that is when money is tight my basic needs of shelter, water, food, and heat are already taken care of. I never have to worry about putting food on the table because I have been turning my pantry into a grocery store for years. I can go weeks without having to spend money on food or gas, because I prepared for it.

Side note: Having a few months of food you like and eat all the time, set aside for uncertain times, is helpful for anyone. Knowing your family and pets have dinner no matter the state of your job status, income, or ability to get to a store grants a sense of calm because it’s one less thing to worry about if your luck changes. Most rural homesteaders are less dependent on things like heat, water, electricity (generators), and grocery stores than our urban counterparts. You may have a 2 million dollar townhouse and a living room that looks like something out of CB2 catalog spread and that’s great, but what are you going to do if things get…. complicated?

What if something happens to your job like what happened to me, a surprise lay off because of world economics outside of your control? What if there’s another pandemic lockdown, this time far more deadly and contagious? How long could you stay warm, fed, sated, and safe with your current life? Do you even have three days of food and water set aside for a bad storm? Candles for a power outage? Or do you live a life expecting everything, all the time, to be taken care of for you?

Climate change, political unrest, war, genocide, recession, mass shootings, pandemics, etc. These are real things happening right now. Just because they aren’t happening in your exact town in New Jersey doesn’t mean they won’t.

Let me offer an example. I think we all can imagine a big hurricane taking out the power grid in three major east-coast cities. Now, imagine if the infrastructure to those three metropolitan areas was too devastated to accept cargo ships in their ports or trucks on their roads for a few weeks? Wouldn’t you rather live somewhere outside the chaos of people in densely populated areas? People that probably don’t have enough water to live three days if their plumbing is shut off? People desperate and scared for their own lives? Millions?!?

The average grocery store has three days worth of food in it for it’s local customer base. They aren’t making food, they are stocking shelves from truck deliveries. If you’re entirely dependent on a system taking care of you, I suggest you read about anything, ever, in the history of human civilization. Everything can and will fall apart. There’s a reason everyone in Rome headed out to the countryside and learned to make pasta, babe.

When I lived in a city I realized how helpless I would be without my car and a grocery store. At this farm the entire power grid could go down tomorrow, and while it would be hard as hell, there is a winter’s worth of heat and light. There is six months of stored food in regular cabinets and containers, including extra if friends or neighbors need help. Not because I think America will collapse, but because, over and over, my personal life has.

There have been months of bad sales, bad luck, and foreclosure notices in the mail. I’ve had the electric turned off, threatening letters, and times so hard I couldn’t afford medicine if I was sick. Hell, right now I am trying to figure out the November mortgage payment and we’re two weeks away from Christmas. I know I can’t afford groceries or gas right now. And knowing I have a warm house, warm clothes, enough spare money to buy grain for my animals and enough food here to last months, holy crow do I ever feel less scared. I’m able to write this, focus on building this from the ground up, because I am not hungry or cold or afraid.

Let me be clear about something, I do not think anyone should move to the country and start raising sheep because they are scared of the news. Not at all. No decisions, especially something so big, should be based out of fear. And frankly, if fear is what brings you out here, you’re probably not going to last. But if you already have the desire to homestead, you already have the passion and drive for a simpler life - the timing couldn’t be better. You are better off in the country for a hundred reasons.

Things are bad and getting worse. If your homestead is years away and you want to feel better about this winter’s ice storms, Here’s a book written by a left-leaning urban homesteading woman I adore that can help you get started on simple family preparation for disaster without a single mention of zombies, Tr*mp, or AR-15s.

The Choice to Homestead Was Worth It

I bought that mare for one dollar. She’s one of 17 jillion lucky breaks fueled by hope.

Listen, there are a lot of regrets I have about choices I’ve made in my past, but choosing to farm sure as hell isn’t one of them. This is the life I have always wanted to live and I can’t tell you how satisfying it has been.

Every morning I am needed and rewarded. Every day I am surrounded by wildness and hope. Every night, even if I am scared and panicked, I look forward to the salvation of sunrise the eastern ridge delivers. I feel held by intention and purpose, connected to nature and community, surrounded by beauty. I am not rich. I just made different choices.

The cost of living in rural places is, and always has been, significantly less than urban locations. I am not one of those people that haunt Zillow like it’s Instagram, but if you are - you’ve already have played the game of what $200,000 gets you 20 minutes outside your city compared to 2 hours outside it. Why on earth, would you spend another day you in a life that makes you miserable? I will never understand doing what is easier if it makes your life worse.

Even if you fail you tried? What makes you think you don’t deserve to try?

I started homesteading on rented land when I was 25. I’m now 41, on my own farm, and still at it. If I can buy a farm by myself, anyone can. At least anyone willing to make themselves uncomfortable enough to make it happen. It may mean leaving the area you live in right now. It may mean a hard year of defending your choice to everyone you know. It may mean taking a lower-paying job in a more affordable location. But if you want it bad enough, you start, and if someone waking up with ice in their toilet bowl is telling you it’s worth it, it is.

I don’t have money, never have. I don’t have a spouse, never have. But what I always have had is uncompromising determination and the ability to ask for help. Did I sacrifice a lot? So much. Could I die tomorrow without regret. Absolutely. How many people with a 401k can say that?

Every day on this farm, even the hardest I’ve had, was better than the best day under fluorescent lights working a job I hated. I’ll herd pigs in the rain any day over another conference room meeting that could have been an email. Jesus Christ, we’re running out of time. Every day in that office I felt like a zoo animal in a cage; safe, contained, and slowly dying inside.

I gave up any chance of being rich, hell, solvent to pursue a life that matters to me. It’s too fucking expensive to be rich. I see these people on my social media that live in million dollar homes, wearing $300 jeans, starting their $600-a-month leased car, to spend $200 in gas a week to drive to a job that pays them just enough to afford it all…. You still think I’m the reckless one?

My only debt is less than 10k in student loans and my house, which in one year will be 15-years-paid down on my 30-year mortgage. I own the title on that 14-year-old Subaru parked with rust spots in the driveway. There’s no job I need to leave for that requires a better car, and I’m not in trapped in some office with sealed windows that demands all the sunlight the day offers.

Dude, when I hear about people paying $20 for a gallon of raw milk at Erewhon all I can think is how desperate they are for something real. I don’t care how much money you make, that is heartbreaking. When I see clips from the Housewives, all I feel is rotting compassion. Those impoverished women with all that money. What a shame.

I often think of my farm the way people do about starting a family. Choices get made because you want to have a family, not because you already saved for 18-years of food and clothes and their college educations. So why treat the choice to farm any different? Of course big swings are scary and hard, but ask any parent if having a family was worth it? Ask me if struggling to keep the life I love is? I literally can’t shut up about it.

You Can Start Today

Goats are a more realistic dream than a destination wedding and Carol from accounting achieved that and she’s an idiot. Dream bigger than Carol.

There are countless small steps you can take today. Countless. But before you start looking up properties or giving your two-week’s notice - my advice is to sit down in a quiet place and seriously think about exactly what you want.

Put yourself anywhere you think best. Take a long shower. Go drive your car to music blasting, run five miles, or before you drift off to sleep tonight - ask yourself, really ask yourself, what kind of life you wish you had?

If you’re wishing you had a farmhouse and sheep and woods for your kids to run around in, think about what specific state you’d want to live in. You’re just dreaming, so allow yourself to imagine that Maine coastal farmhouse making cheese even if it seems impossible. Think about people you’d want to live with. Think of the dream home craft, or partner, or cabin… just give yourself permission to even want them in the first place. Picture it in your head, and even if it’s just for fifteen private seconds, believe it can happen for you.

That practice is the best way to start. It may all be trick of brain chemistry, but if you’re laying in bed imagining laying in a field of grass at sunset while your mare nuzzles your boots to the sound of crickets, give yourself the secret permission to feel like you already achieved it, that you’re already there.

You have no idea how powerful giving yourself the chance to feel is. A little taste of hope can change the world, you think it can’t change your address!? Letting yourself believe change is possible will give you the gas you need to start opening some extra tabs on your lunch break.

Small things add up. What’s important is that you keep doing them, keep making small steps towards the life you want. Make it a point, every single day, to do one thing that moves you in the direction you want to go. Maybe all you do tomorrow is request a free seed catalog online to be mailed to your apartment. Maybe a trip to the library or bookstore is in order? Grab one title that you can set right by your bed that you can read two paragraphs an evening. By the end of winter you will know so much more about dairy goats than you do now. Get yourself a bucket of potting soil and some seeds and plant peas for your window. You can dream now, learn now, plan now, PLANT now.

You can visit farms now. You can join knitting circles and fiber tours now. You can sidle up to your favorite farmer at the market and confess that you want to farm so bad it hurts, and would love to volunteer a day this coming summer just to learn how it feels. Passion invites passion and weeding needs to get done. Ask for the opportunities you want. You have to ask. Nothing shows up at addresses no one places orders to.

So much more is possible for you than you realize. So much of the world opens up when you try, when you really try. You do not have to be scared. You do not have to be defeated because everyone around you naysays. The hardest part is accepting you’ll fail, but if you aren’t willing to even allow yourself to dream, you already have.

You can homestead. You can farm. You can do it broke, alone, and terrified. What you can’t do is live with the horrific regret that you used up your one life not even trying.

Take a deep breathe and get started. Your farm is waiting.
And please, let me know how I can help.

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God bless us, every one!