Any homesteaders left?

There was once a time when each American was promised 40 acres and a mule. I'm afraid the techno world has swallowed the rest of us whole as these American ideals have passed away.

I'm not sure if a website is the most likely place to find such homesteaders... ;-)

IRL, I know a few people who like to live "off the grid." There is a lot I admire about it.

Actually, when I was young I traveled across America. I hunted, fished, learned which vegetation was edible and actually stayed very healthy. I still pick my own mushroons once in a while.

Sozobe...I said we were homesteaders not cavemen. lol I like having a computer to do my recordkeeping and writing and the interrnet to do shopping for specialty items. We live 30 miles round trip from the nearest town and with gas prices the way they are, I let the UPS guy do all the driving. I thought maybe if I hung out a worm here a few like minded individuals might respond.

Nickfun--

I believe at one time there was a suggestion that the Union Government offer every freed slave forty acres and a mule.

Harmonyfarm--

Welcome!

A2K may be short of Official Homesteaders, but we're a fine collection of lively minds.

Living on a farm, we are not so much homesteaders as we are preservers. We dont live on the edge of civilization , but are an enclave of "simpler life" in the middle of a huge megalopolis. We often have tourists from cities stop and watch us or the Amish as we go about our field work. I use tractors, and the Amish use iron wheeled tractors for putting up crops in the barns or silos but they must use horses for plowing and seeding.

We dont grow all our foods since, the Amish economy derives much of its income from market gardens, we buy many veggies such as sweet corn or "big batch crops from them" . Our garden is mostly the treats like tomatoes, radishes , endive, mixed greens etc.
We dont practice strict organic because I use a lot of roundup.

We provide a market product, wool, to spinners and weavers who demnad a certain quality . My wife is also an importer of Alpaca from CHile and Peru.
We arent so much self sufficient as we are agriculturally networked.

Now, for July and august we are living in an RV in the <Maine woods and we see how many "last standers" still live up here. This is probably the worst climate and soil for living off your own produce. Its too humid and not really consistantly warm like in Pa's growing time. Stuff rots before it ripens unless you only grow root crops and collards.

The farmers who have it the worst up here are those that insist on growing "hay". Ive tried to convince a couple of the goat and dairy farmers to switch to haylage and "greenchop" in these white silo bags. They don t seem to wanna try and I dont appreciate being told to "bug off" cause this is the way theyve always done it.

We enjoy the country and its surrounds, but If it got developed around our home, Id sell in a heartbeat. Im always getting offers and am a bit scared about neighbors intentions. Fortunately most of my neighbors have ample financial means or are Amish so the life styles are as important as are the land values. However, once a "developer" gets his grubby mits into convincing one farmer to sell, it becomes a stampede and Im not immune either..
Now that the housing market is cooling, the developers arent as quick to buy large tracts on spec and then sell off the engineered plans. They know damn well that they are buying "futures" and they arent quite sure of it now.

I hope your homestaed is safe enough from development for it to be there for years to come if that is your wish.
So, if they wanna feed their stock blueberries, lettem go for it.

Hi Harmony,

Homesteading is alive and well in America today. I did it for a number of years. Here are some of most popular sites:
Homesteading Today (forums)
Country Concepts (forums)
Countryside Magazine

If you need more resources just let me know - I have a zillion of them.

Farmerman...I live in Southeastern Ohio in a very rural county. The "big guys" are getting close, but still at bay. I have issues with "the big guys" building a 4th power plant within a 30 mile radius of us. But aside from all the rednecks in our neighborhood that like to store garbage and junk cars in their yards, we are pretty content. Closest neighbor is 1/4 mile away. We have 28 acres and we are very close to having it paid off...JOY!....the roads are so bad and it floods out here whenever there is a hard rain, I can't see "the big guys" coming out here soon. The one thing that worries me the most is the NAIS. National Animal Identification System that Uncle Sam is planning to invoke. That would REALLY put a damper on our activities....I feel safe here and that is what matters. The birds still sing and the sun still rises........

AlthoughIm not religious, Each day is a blessing hat only folks like us can know. Ohio is good farming country I did a lot of work hunting for sandstone for glass making in and around Zanesville. I was always impressed by the dark podzol soils and immediately adjacent there were glacial outwash deposits, so you could grow wheat and right next door someone had a watermelon farm.

My husband and I recently bought a lightly-treed acre with an 88 year old 600 sq ft poured concrete schoolhouse on Manitoulin Island. Talking to a local guy about upgrading the hydro he asked if we were going to be "homesteaders". I'll admit I was confused. It's only an acre, it's on a year-round access road, and the only somewhat open space (the old playground) is incredibly rocky and (as we learned when digging a hole for the outhouse barrel) has less than two feet of topsoil! (At which point you hit limestone -- Manitoulin Island is an alvar, or built on an alvar, or something like that...let's just say there's lots of rocks...) Then I realized that "normal" folk from "down south" would have immediately started digging up the landscape to put in a septic system and plumbed in the building. So while we're not homesteaders, I guess we're not typical. (Maybe it was the tie dye T-shirt I was wearing). We're looking for a laid-back escape, as low-tech as possible. We've got a brand new state-of-the-art outhouse and were lucky to already have a drilled well with great water and a hand pump. The solar shower my husband designed works great (when it's sunny ) and we don't have to worry about frozen pipes this winter. I'll be checking out the web sites with interest as we're hoping to retire in the next 10 years. For now we'll just kick back and relax, feel our blood pressure dropping, watch the deer and rabbits, listen to the birds, battle the red squirrels in the attic, co-exist peacefully with the garter snakes sunning on the porch....

MORE POWER TO YOU WANNABEE! Solar power I guess......lol :wink: