Looking For a Few Real Homesteaders

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 (and terribly offensive to virtual homesteaders). If you are truly interested in this way of life, take the time to read this blog in its entirety. Read my books, "Prosperous Homesteading" and "Seven Years of Famine." After you have read the blog and the books come and visit our community. You will see something real. And you will learn something useful.

You can leave a comment here, send a message on FB here, or leave your email at my author's page here.

Comments

Never, Ever, Invest in Solar

A homestead has a significant capital budget requirement. Dead last on that budget list is an expensive solar array. Wean yourself off of all of the heavy electric load appliances and conveniences. You will be healthy and thin and wealthier too. That stuff costs money, and it is these comforts and conveniences that are keeping the average American severely overweight and broke. Get rid of your dryer and put up a clothesline and use drying racks when it rains. Don't use an electric stove to fight your AC system. In winter, cook on your woodstove. Buy a stainless steel wood-fired cooking station for summer weather. Don't use an electric water heater in spring/summer/fall and buy a wood-fired hot water kettle. Do not pay for an AC system!!!! When it is hot just deal with it. Never cook indoors in the summer and make your house unbearable. (Homesteaders do not live in places that are uninhabitable without AC.) Do not pay for a heating system—that is what your woodstove is for!

Start Up Costs and Expenses

Real homesteading, by real families, interested in real success, needs a real plan. A plan that takes everything into consideration—where you are now and where you will be in the future. And every responsible plan for any purposes has an exit strategy. Mature and rational people know it is easy to get into something—getting out of whatever you got yourself into is "a whole different breed of cat". I am going to try to attach a Microsoft Excell spreadsheet of the start-up expenses for a real, productive, and economically viable (prosperous) homestead, but I don't know how FB feels about spreadsheets or if it supports them. But this is a good estimate of what it would take for a young family in their early 30's to start the transition. For a couple just starting out, say early 20's, all of this could be accumulated as they went along. The older you are, the more capital it takes to make it. I got it from someone who is threatening to make the move

Things That Matter and Things That Don't

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

The Quaker Homestead at Freesong Farm

Search This Blog