Let Me Tell You All About...

When Et Ux and I had been married scarcely a week, her brother called and jokingly said, "Now that you're married, let me tell you all about how to handle women ...." I interrupted him with, "But,BIL, you've been married, what?, four times. Why on earth would I be listening to what you have to say about women?"

I just don't understand why I always got the impression my in laws weren't fond of me.

I'd early and always understood that our economic system in this modern age is based on individual dependence and looked for a personal alternative. When I began to investigate the notion of homesteading, I read all I could about it and a pattern began to form.

I will refer you to the reading assignments in an earlier post. The homesteads of the first three as described in the first group of books (You Can't Live on Radishes , Small Farm in Maine, Far Out isn't Far Enough) were begun with money from outside the homestead which was reckoned and depreciated as part of the cost of the homestead. The homesteads were sustained by outside funds while attempting to replace those funds with money generated by homestead endeavors. In other words, they mixed the coinage. They did not attempt to let the farmstead grow organically at Nature's pace but tried to set it up all at once. They used machines to do the heavy (and hurried) labor. Work and homestead yields were reckoned in terms of their cash equivaltents. Each of these three homesteads set up a suburban style life with a suburban style job, suburban sytle house, suburban style vehicles, suburban style ammenities. Each tried to make up for lack of success by adopting rare breeds, rare cultivars, or novel speculative methods.

The second group of homesteads described in The Good Life, Fat of the Land, and Payne Hollow set up a homestead from funds they had from whatever means and wrote them off completely. They each kept a separate accounting of the sustainable subsistence life and what they earned by trafficking with the outside world and seldom mixed them. Their operations started simply supported by the natural resources they had at hand. None of them used machines. They only mention cows, goats, chickens, corn, potatoes, cabbages, etc. in generalities rather than some particular breed or cultivar.

Since reading these and a couple score other books along the same lines and many years of observing attempts at homesteading and watching homesteads come and go, and having a bowing acquaintance with the lifestyle myself, I have had some basis on which to form some opinions and expectations. The six homesteads described in the six books of my bibliography tell it the best.

You see, another difference between the first three and the second three is this: The subsistence occupants of the second group died on their farmsteads at a respectably advanced age. Anna Hubbard died on the Payne Hollow homestead in 1986 at the age of 84. Two years later her husband Harlan, having declared that life without Anna was a waste of time, died at a friends house where he had been staying for four weeks, the only time spent off his homestead. He was 88. Only last year John Jeavons died on his farmstead in Ireland at the age of 90. Scott Nearing died in the house he and Helen built and in his final decline they warmed him with wood he had himself cut and fed him food he had himself raised. He was 100 years old. Ten years later Helen died in an auto crash just outside the Forest Farm homestead at the age of 90. All success to the very end. All living examples and proof that a quiet, sane lifestyle embracing a right livelihood can be had for all of one's life into extreme old age.

The other three? Who knows or is likely to note their passing. You see, they all failed at homesteading, gave it up, and were writing about it years later from the same persepctive as my BIL.

I have outlined this series of posts because homestead success or failure seems to be almost formulaic. I thought you'd like to know. At least a few of you.