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Taking Action: The Home in Homesteading

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 resettlement of the American countryside. Nothing more. Nothing less. Homesteading is not starring in the latest "Little House on the Prarie" on youtube. It is nothing more than living a contented life on productive land and away from corporate employment. But you still need to provide for yourselves and your family and you will need to think in terms of generations, not in terms of "saving for retirement," which is nothing more than a euphemism for old age. If you can figure out how to provide for yourselves in the Rocky Mountains or in a fishing village in New England or on a Tennessee farm without selling your youth and health for a car payment and a mortgage then you are on your way. But it is important to recognize that all of those possibilities require a physically fit, children producing, thinking man and woman committed to each other and to their family. And the only reason anyone thinks anything else is because of the endless internet and media propaganda they are subjected to designed by truly evil people to convince you that you will never get old and that you will never die. That you are all one big collectivist, socialist, and Feminist family. The reality is that such people are poor, childless, and angry—and that is before they get old enough to add pathetic to that list. 

We live in a terribly interesting time. People living in the West are no longer having enough babies to replace themselves. Why? What is the meaning of that? If you are young, you might not think a thing about it. But turning 40, childless, it will all come crashing down around you—and it gets worse as you get older. And corporate "elite employment" almost demands childlessness. You give up your family-line forevermore in exchange for a few luxuries today. That is a heck of a bargain. The only thing more pathetic than that are those people who give up their family line to "save the planet."

These are the reasons that people "homestead" online with a couple of chickens, a (very small) garden (that wouldn't feed them for a week), a mortgage, and a job (or a disability check) rather than live the life they are imagining. But somewhere out there is a real person. Someone who lives in reality and has the capacity to think ahead and is not completely full of baloney. I am looking to meet such people. If that describes you, leave an email address at my author's page gregorytjeffers.com.

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A homestead will not succeed without the right equipment. You cannot do this with a garden fork, a spade, and a hoe or you will be gnarled and arthritic before you can say "lickty-split." A real homesteader cannot waste time on silly stuff like arguing over which breed of chicken lays the most nutritious eggs. Here are some examples of helpful and informative stuff and waste-your-time stuff.


Sulky plow for big jobs. I would prefer a plow with a tongue.


Potato plow attached to a forecart. For small jobs.


Disc harrow.


I don't seem to have any photos of a spike-toothed or chain-harrow (I use both). But you need them too.

Here is a photo of some our garden veggies. These veggies have nothing to do with the success or failure of our homestead and this photo is a complete waste of your time.


Some candles from our beeswax. This might be something to amuse yourself with, but this will not make or break your homestead and this photo is a complete waste of your time.


Some of the garden harvest. Tomatoes and squash for the table are not going to make or break the homestead. This photo is just another complete waste of your time.



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