Amy Dingman of A Farmish Kind of Life shared in a fairly recent podcast that homesteading is about producing more than consuming, meaning that we are to make more than we buy. I have been thinking through this ever since I heard it, and honestly, I think it sums up what homesteading really is, what the lifestyle is really about, more than anything else I have heard or read.
Homesteading isn't just about living in the country on many acres with all the animals and a huge garden. One can homestead anywhere, really. It isn't about a set to-do list that all of us must do in order to call ourselves real homesteaders. It's about the mindset of producing more than we consume. We live in a consumerist society here in the United States, having moved past capitalism starting in the 1980s. After 9/11, our own president told us to fly on planes and go shopping, mostly to make sure that our consumer-based economy kept going. We are seeing that now with the pandemic, as people struggle to afford needed items with loss of jobs or high medical bills as well shortages in things people want to and need to buy. The problem with consumerism is that, after awhile, there just aren't enough people or resources to keep making more and more and more and feeding that always starving monster, the American consumer, especially as that consumerism spreads to other countries. In a lot of ways, homesteading is a direct response to consumerism. Many in the homesteading movement take "making do or doing without" very seriously, making sure to reuse items until they can't anymore, reduce what they buy, and recycle various things on the homestead until they finally have to go into the waste stream. Turning a plastic jug into a feed scoop so we don't have to buy a feed scoop at the farm store is just one example of this kind of thinking and lifestyle. For homesteaders, it goes beyond that, though, as it really is more about producing food, bathroom products, cleaning products, clothing, and items for the home and barn and trying to produce more than we buy. Do homesteaders buy a lot? Sure, we do! We need jars and lids for canning, crocks and all for fermenting, seeds and plants for gardening, baby chicks and ducklings for meat birds, and on and on. There's a reason why farm stores can be so big: there is a lot of stuff that we need in order to work more efficiently in our homes, barns, sheds, gardens. Certain clothing items really help, from overalls to quilted barn coats. Certain tools make it so we can do our jobs at all or, at least, in a more timely and efficient manner. In order to raise baby animals, we need to buy the right supplements, feed, waterers, and more to make sure that they have what they need to grow up strong and healthy. It doesn't help that we are bombarded with messages even from other homesteaders of how we need to buy this, buy that, buy this other thing in order to be happy, popular, good homesteaders. The thing is, our goal is to produce more than we consume. My goal every year for the garden is to grow and put up enough food, of what I can grow given that we're in Michigan, to feed our family. I didn't meet that goal last year due to disability and health problems, and it hurts to see that we're down so many jars or running low on bags in the freezer. So, this year, it's all about meeting that goal and working together to take it more seriously and get more foods on our shelves and in our freezers. One of our homestead goals this year, as well, is to raise more meat ducks so as to produce more meat than we buy at the store. With the prices of meat these days, we don't have the ready cash to buy from another homestead or do much more than hit the sales at the cheapest, best store and stretch that meat as much as possible. Raising more of our own, producing more here on the homestead, will not only help with that but provide safer foods for my health issues and make us more producers on the homestead than consumers at the store. If I knit a sweater, especially from local wool I've spun up, I've produced that sweater rather than gone to the store and bought some fast fashion item that I could afford and been simply a consumer. If I grow tomatoes from seeds, especially from seeds I've saved, and then I can those up in jars I've been reusing with lids I've been reusing (Tattlers really are amazing!), then I've produced food that I could have bought at the store simply as a consumer. When my husband takes a used part to fix one of our vehicles, he not only hasn't been the average consumer just taking it to a shop, but he's also kept the total cost to our family down and kept the vehicle useful for us. The goal is to think through what we eat, what we use, what we wear, and then produce as much as possible. A corollary of that goal is to buy used as much as possible. My husband and I constantly keep an eye on Facebook Marketplace and similar sites, not to mention estate sales, garage sales, and resale shops, for the things we need for the homestead. If we have to buy parts for a car or tools for the garden, we would rather buy used and in good condition. Honestly, I've started keeping an eye out for fabric remnants, used clothing, yarn from people de-stashing for personal reasons, and other crafting and clothing, as well, since I personally find fast fashion very problematic and want to avoid it when I can. If we have to be consumers, it's best to use that power to keep things out of landfills. That minimizes the effects our consumerism, and we often end up with better stuff that lasts longer anyway. In the end, the question we need to ask ourselves as homesteaders before deciding on any plan of action is: how much does it produce for us in the end? If it requires us to buy a ton of stuff but produces very little, then it isn't in line with our philosophy unless it produces more and more over time. People who got into homesteading with the pandemic and dealt with failures talk about the $100 tomatoes, sharing how they bought all the containers and soil and plants and mulch only to have plants hardly produce anything, or the $50 eggs, sharing how much they spent on their three or four chickens only to have them produce few eggs in comparison to how much was spent on them. Once that infrastructure is in place, though, and the one-time costs are paid, how much are we really producing? If we're consuming more at the farm store or at the grocery store than we're producing on our homestead, it's time to revisit how and why we do things and to ask ourselves if we're really homesteaders.
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CarinaI'm a 40s something disabled mom living the life on our small urban farm. Archives
April 2022
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