The American homesteading movement is surging in popularity. A 2022 survey by Homesteaders of America found that 40 percent of current homesteaders had embraced the homesteading lifestyle within the last three years. The rediscovery of more old-fashioned ways of living seems to appeal particularly to young people: Almost 50 percent of survey respondents were younger than 39. The growth of interest in homesteading—especially since the COVID-19 pandemic—marks a cultural sea change. During the 20th century, most Americans were busy moving off the farm in search of a better life in the city. Now, in the 21st century, an opposite trend is emerging. But why this reversal?
One newly-minted homesteader who made the trek from city to countryside is Carl, a high school teacher who works 20 acres of land in rural Wisconsin. Carl has long felt the call of living off the land, and that desire increased as his family grew. “I was first introduced to the value of living on the land through the English Distributist authors, in particular G. K. Chesterton,” Carl told The Epoch Times.
“This interest only increased over the years as I got married and began to raise a family of my own. As my family continued to grow in number and age, I felt an increasingly urgent need to offer my children the possibility of adventure, meaningful labor, and beauty that life in the countryside could provide.”
Finding land where they could live out this vision proved to be a challenge, but the family’s patience eventually paid off. The move to the country gifted Carl and his family new experiences of age-old practices.
“The biggest surprises, especially at first, were encounters with reality that ought to have happened long ago. Whether it is chopping wood or wrestling stubborn pigs, I have felt a tremendous delight in doing this that the vast majority of humans have always done—things that I believe we are built to do!” The journey to the countryside reconnected Carl with the kind of work his ancestors performed for centuries.
Mind Over Material
Biba Kayewich
But of course, modern homesteading isn’t confined to the country. Homesteading is more about mindset than having a lot of land. “Being a homesteader doesn’t necessarily mean that you live on many acres of land and grow many crops. In some ways, being a homesteader is a state of mind just as much as it is a state of being,” Jessica Shelton, editor of Homestead.org says, as quoted by The Washington Post.
Homesteading—especially in its contemporary form—demands a broader definition than just living in the hinterlands on 30 acres and producing everything from your own cabbages to your own clothing. According to Nathanael—a father, husband, and maintenance worker who writes the homesteading blog, “Peasant Ways for Modern Days,” some homesteaders live in apartments. What defines the homesteader is less about where they live and more about how they live, the types of activities they engage in.
When you homestead, “you’re making your home your center of operations, the center of production,” Nathanael told The Epoch Times. At least to a small degree, this reverses the typical economic and cultural model today where the home is where homeowners consume goods produced elsewhere. Nathanael added, “[Homesteading] is not just growing food. I mean, food is the building block of culture and family life, but it extends to many different other aspects as well.”
For Nathanael, homesteading involves “taking the initiative to be able to produce some of your own needs, and kind of step up to that dignity of being able to provide for yourself in some way or another.” That might be as simple as growing a few tomatoes on your back porch or knitting a scarf.
Modern homesteading may look different than it used to, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still pioneering work. Nathanael believes that homesteading still involves a frontier—except now, instead of taming the wilderness, modern homesteaders are reclaiming fallow land, depleted and run-down farms, or even weedy corners of suburban lots. They’re finding ways to adapt to modern life and integrate it with the old ways. This is a cultural frontier, a way of living that breaks with the conventional contemporary model while drawing on deep cultural roots.
This brings us back to the central question: Why are so many people today turning to yesterday’s principles for a more fulfilling life? Why are they plowing against the prevailing cultural furrows?
The Homesteaders of America survey uncovered a range of motives. When asked, “What prompted you to begin to homestead?” 59 percent of respondents said food security. Almost as many respondents cited “healthier food” as a motivation. Another 56 percent and 52 percent of responses mentioned the desire for simpler living and concern over political unrest, respectively.
Certain homesteaders argue that the yearning to return to the land cuts deeper than just pragmatic concerns over the food supply. Nathanael believes the back-to-the-land movement taps into something inherent in human nature. “It’s deep in the human soul to want to be connected to the land,” he said. “People are starting to realize that more. After 150 years of this trend of progressivism that is like a runaway train of the American dream of just monetary gain. Now, people are more and more discovering the void that is leaving in their lives.”
For Carl, homesteading represents a way of tapping into aspects of our human nature that modern culture tends to minimize or suppress. “The more modern culture departs from what it means to be human, the clearer it becomes that families face a fork in the road. They can either follow modern culture or they can turn to tradition and rediscover what it means to be human … to build a real human culture.”
As the homesteaders pointed out, true culture flows from the implementation of heritage skills and crafts. Handmade goods are stamped with a distinctive local flavor, a unique “way of doing things” that’s passed down from generation to generation like a precious heirloom. When whole communities share generational wisdom rooted in the local flora, fauna, and human custom, rich culture develops.
With that culture comes a sense of belonging. “In these old crafts, old ways, there lies true culture,” Nathanael argued. “We’re in an age now where we’re completely lost in our identity as a culture. Throughout the whole West, we don’t know what our cultural identity is.” Homesteading and traditional crafts are linked to a heritage and a particular geographic location, anchoring modern people to a sense of identity and rootedness that often feels elusive in a world of mass-produced everything.
Old Roots, New Shoots
The 20th century witnessed a great cultural amnesia. Much cultural and agricultural know-how disappeared as technology rapidly advanced. Previous generations understandably embraced the ease, convenience, and security promised by technological development—and many benefits flowed from that—but in the process, many customs and crafts that stretched back hundreds or even thousands of years got bulldozed alongside the forests that were cleared for the freeways.But that’s not the end of the story. Nathanael compares the leveling of the “cultural tree” in the 20th century to coppicing, a tree management practice where trees are intentionally cut to ground level to encourage new growth.
“Certain types of trees, you can cut them down, but the roots stay alive and they shoot up suckers. And it’s still the same roots. And there’s root systems, like in Europe, that date back to the Neolithic era … you still got the same root systems shooting up new growth. … I'd say it’s a good illustration for now. It’s not the same tree trunk, per se. But it’s the same root, still drawing life from your ancestral roots … growing up new shoots, new ideas.”
For many homesteaders, the return to in-home production or living off the land doesn’t entail a complete repudiation of modern life. It’s not incompatible with innovation either. Rather, it involves reconnecting to some important things—land, animals, manual labor, cultural heritage—that we may have lost sight of, without, however, trying futilely to turn back the clock.
As Nathanael put it, “Our feet remain firm in the 21st century. But that doesn’t mean the past is dead.”
