The Quaker Homestead at Freesong Farm

In the real world, there are facts—even in a world with a thousand shades of grey. These facts govern—and people who can accurately interpret the environment in which they find or place themselves in will have greater success and better outcomes than people who do not. The resettlement of the American countryside, what some people have taken to calling "homesteading," is governed by a set of environmental facts, and no amount of feel-good propaganda is going to have any impact on this set of circumstances. This article is directed at people who have amassed hard-won resources and capital and are considering moving from the suburban model of living to the American countryside. First, don't listen to the media. While it is true that most (there are plenty of wealthy landowners and businesses) of rural America is a disaster zone of government dependence, addiction, and obesity, disasters create opportunities. There are winners and losers in this environment, just as...

Is it your dream to live a contented life by removing complexity and distractions from it? Are you capable of making decisions and commitments and persevering? Have you lived providently and productively and have the means to do and not just dream? Are you physically fit enough to live the life you have imagined—and to be capable of being an asset to a community (and not just another liability)? Would you like to live in community with people who are an asset to each other and are committed to helping each other? Can you accept that there are hundreds of successful cooperative and interdependent communities in Amerca (but not a single successful commune) and that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel? Would you like to live a real life?  If you answered "yes" to all of the above, we would like to meet you and get to know you to see if there is a fit for you in our community. There are a number of posts on this blog that will be enormously helpful to real homesteaders ...

A homestead is a home. This simple fact is overlooked by essentially all of the homesteading books, websites, and social media homesteading groups. A homestead needs a real homemaker and she is the bedrock of her family and the home. The family needs a provider who does the heavy work around the homestead and brings in an income. This does not preclude the homemaker from actively bringing in an income, but it does preclude the homemaker from a 40-hour a week job and 10 hours per week commute. An individual leaving the home at 8am and returning at 6pm cannot possibly make a home or raise a family. No home and no family means no homestead. It means debt and wage slavery until you have accumulated enough assets to reach escape velocity—usually right about the age ( and body weight ) where you are no longer capable of doing anything. This is the corporate employment trap. I know it is harsh. Real life is like that. Because, in reality, "homesteading" is merely the resettl...

There are things that will make or break a family homestead. And there are trivial things that just do not matter. Like all the subject matter you see on the Internet. None of that stuff matters. The transition (from suburban debt and wage slave to independently productive businessman and homesteader) is fraught with risk—and the posts on chickens and tomatoes and puppies and questions—"anybody knows what kind of spider this is?"—are taking up valuable space and time in your plans. T here are real homesteaders out there , and there are real homesteading communities. REAL —not virtual—and you can go visit them and even work for them for a season and learn the socio-economic strategies necessary to occupy the American rural landscape successfully. And look, if this is all just simply beyond your reach and you enjoy talking with strangers online about tomatoes and chickens, have at it. But for those of you who are really thinking about making a huge change in your life and are...

In a real, cooperative, and interdependent community ("CIC"), a failure of one family causes great harm to all. When you rely on each other, a failure pulls everyone down, and it is for this reason that the successful CIC's have rules—and all of the failed communes and rebellious minded communities have long since circled the drain. Successful communities are comprised of people who bring something to the table, and the most important thing that they can bring is a future. This is not to say that communities cannot be formed around an ethos other than religion. Secular cultural norms, ethics, and expectations could work just as well. The Quakers had incredibly successful communities—both economically and politically—while rejecting dogma and eschewing creeds of any kind. Emphasis on "had". The Quakers gave America and the world the ideas of Liberty and the sovereignty of the individual, and then most of their communities fell apart for reasons I shall discuss ...

The Amish and Mennonite communities universally succeed at this homesteading thing, while 99% of English (non-Amish/Mennonites) will fail, most within a few years. The Amish and Mennonites have some obvious advantages—they have been doing this from birth—and some not so obvious (to modern English) advantages. Their first advantage is that they grow into functioning adults at least a decade before their English counterparts. At 14 years of age, the men begin an apprenticeship in a skilled viable trade and are expected to act like a man. The women begin their own apprenticeship with their mothers in how to run a functioning home in which three meals must be on the table for 10 to 15 children, all without the convenience of turning a dial or flipping a switch. By 20, they are pairing up and marrying and gearing up to stock a productive homestead. They need land and shelter and a barn. They need teams of workhorses, a couple of buggy horses, buggies, wagons, plows, cultivators, and tools...

A real homestead needs equipment, implements, and tools—and it takes years to acquire all of the things you are going to need if you are starting out from scratch. It takes a few more years to understand how to use them all in the climate and environment where your individual homestead is located. Northern Wisconsin is not Southern Middle Tennessee. Every real and truly productive homestead I have ever visited had a tractor or a team of workhorses (and workhorses need tack and a forecart) and the implements necessary to make hay, plow, disc, and cultivate a garden, move stuff like fencing, hay bales, and firewood, etc... and a workshop to repair and maintain everything. If you don't know the difference between a disc harrow, a chain harrow, and a spike-toothed harrow, you probably should spend a season working on a real homestead before setting off on your own. It is not difficult to learn, but you do have to know how, when, and why. And you have to have the capital to acquire th...

A real homesteader needs a real homestead—land that can produce and a homesteader who is physically fit and emotionally and intellectually capable of making the land produce. To work land you will need equipment, implements, and the tools to maintain and repair it all. (You cannot run a productive homestead with a garden fork, a spade, and a hoe. Your homestead will require all hands on deck in the growing season (8 to 12 weeks) and after that very little of your time. Feeding (and milking) the family milk cow, your chickens, and your workhorses just don't take that much time in the winter. Every real homesteader I know runs a local business or works off-farm during the off time of winter.) But first, you need land. Mountains, hillsides, steep terrain, and rocky ground has no productive value.  Neither—or should I say especially?— do small, wooded lots (where all of the good timber has already been harvested). That is why it is cheap and there is always so much nonprodu...

Real homesteading is the management of a meaningfully productive piece of land. "Radical Simplicity" is three unproductive wooded acres that were sold off by a logging company after they removed all of the timber that was worth anything. A dozen chickens (fed with bag feed) and a goat (that is not even milked) does not make a homestead. A homestead will provide you with your water (a well), your heat and hot water (firewood from your woodlot), and most of your food (milk cow, pastures, gardens, field corn for feed). Well, to do all of that means you must have a water well, a woodlot, a pasture, and a hayfield—not to mention a wood cook stove (and the previously mentioned wood-fired hot water kettle, otherwise you are just another dependent "Prol" pretending to be homesteading). And a hayfield is of no value unless you have all of the necessary haymaking equipment and a place to store the hay (a barn). First: A wood cook stove. How are you going to go "off...