When we first moved to our home in ruralish Maine, a lot of folks asked why — we didn’t seem like we were the homesteading type. Which means they didn’t really know us, but sure, at that point we had lived in a lot of cities, big and small. But it was time. We were ready to hideaway a bit, do a different kind of work, especially when the kid showed up.
Most of it was what some folk call ‘political’ (we don’t agree with this word for many reasons) but leave it to say, we wanted to have more control over our food and health systems and move away from commercialism. Overall, it’s been great — we love the life. Much is hard because if you don’t start the process with some sort of gain (or a really really small scale, no kids or maybe more self youth), there is a lot of struggle. We were weekend warrior-homesteaders for a bit but it was too hard to get anything done. When we quit our jobs and homestead full-time we still had bills to pay which also became too hard to do when you aren’t taking in any money. Now we’re in sort of this middle place where we work for ourselves (and so again, are back to having no time and now we have little money either). Frankly, our ‘civilization’ isn’t built for people to take care of themselves.
We’re looking to change that dynamic again. We’re not sure how yet but a change is coming. We’re not less interested in self-sufficiency because it’s been hard, we’re more interested. We’re less interested in playing games with our lives. We’re less interested in compromising. We’re less interested in the complication of capitalism and more interested in the complexity of living an intentional life with an integrity of care. It’s a hard road to navigate to get there — not everyone can walk this path for a myriad of reasons. It’s a lot, and a lot to give up. And the systems we’re set up to support, forced to participate in, don’t always take care of us.
It’s a decision we all have to come to in our own way.
Rock Bottom Homestead 