I’ll start with a brief history. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acre parcels of unappropriated federal land to applicants. This was a way for the government to encourage people to settle and develop new land. There were other homestead acts and land claims around that time that worked in a similar fashion. The owners of these homesteads lived off the land and produced their own foodstuffs, textiles, clothing, tools, ext. They lived subsistence lifestyles often in physical isolation from others. This was a very rough and tough life.
Modern day homesteading is quite different. It can incorporate some of today’s modern conveniences. Electricity is a big one. Homesteaders can now capture renewable energy via solar panels, wind turbines, or hydropower as electricity. This enables them to have running water, power tools, and computers with the internet. Modern day homesteading is much more comfortable then the pioneer homesteaders of the past.
I like to think of homesteading now-a-days as a gradient or sliding scale. Some people go all in, quit their jobs, move to the middle of nowhere, live off the grid, and produce all their own food. Others identify as urban homesteaders. They still have jobs working for the man and living in the city but they have transformed their lawns into gardens, started keeping bees, and/or have started keeping chickens.
To me homesteading means working toward living a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. I’m not saying you have to be 100% self-sufficient to be a homesteader but you should be able to do many things for yourself that the average American can’t or won’t. Even though I live in the suburbs and am working for a large corporation I consider myself a homesteader because I am constantly working towards learning how to be self-sufficient. I have a large garden I expand every year, I do my own car repairs, I can design and build things with wood, I built a 3D printer that helps me build other things, ext.
What does Homesteading mean to you?
What do you do that makes you a homesteader?