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April
23
2018

A Better Way To Live
Hardscrabble Farmer

Homesteading is a better way to live. Period.

I came to it later in life after trying- and doing fairly well at the so-called American Dream life of high income/big house/more stuff lifestyle. Living a life dependent on other people to maintain your home, teach your children, look after your health, clean your house is a form of bondage. It’s bad for your body, your family, your soul and the better you do the more people around you envy what you have. You don’t inspire them to new heights, but to drag you down. And because you don’t want to lose what you have you make compromises in what you say and how you act and what you wear or drive, the list is endless.

A homestead is a place of refuge where the life you ought to live is possible. it requires effort, sure and discipline and hard work, but those things are not burdens, they’re rewards. You spend more time with the people you love the most, you keep your body and your mind functioning at their peak, you work in the most beautiful and varied environment in all kinds of weather dealing with challenges and hardships, and reaping the benefits of resolving them on your own terms, by the sheer will of your determination and grit.

You eat better, sleep deeper, stay youthful longer, meet a better class of people who know more and share it freely. You depend upon your neighbors and they come to rely upon you, your life becomes one of the most useful tools imaginable, by solving problems and tackling projects and exigencies you could never have imagined before. Your skills sets continually expand and become better with each use. You improve the environment around you instead of leeching off of it, you beautify the world and inspire other people not to undermine your efforts, but to re-double theirs.

You start to understand your purpose in life as it was meant to be, not just as society or conventions or corporations or governments find useful, but as it relates to those worthy of your time and your energy. You stop being a commodity and become an industry. All around you you begin to produce not only a sustenance, but a surplus and instead of your energy flagging it builds up steam and gives you even more energy to tackle things you never could have imagined doing before because the only thing that ever stands in our way is our own doubt about ourselves.

And here’s another thing- most people ask themselves “am I cut out for it? Can I really handle it? The work, the sacrifice, the isolation, giving up the stuff that I like that I can’t take with me?

Of course you can. Think about the people who came over in wooden ships with nothing but a couple of hand tools. if they could hack it, you’ve got a huge advantage. And since we were designed to be problem solvers and tool users you’ll be surprised at just how easily it all comes back to you, those hundreds of thousands of years of passed down genetic predispositions to do those very things with an ease and familiarity that will blow your mind if you just give it a shot.

I always thought I was a fairly successful and intelligent guy and the way I lived my life was satisfactory by any standard, but until we decided to become homesteaders I had no idea just how much we were leaving on the table. Does homesteading prepare you? I suppose it does, but as with any eventuality you’ll only know when the time arrives, but what it does that is far more important is to allow you to live- to really be in the moment every waking hour between now and then and to do it without fear of whatever lies ahead.

I can’t imagine ever living any other way now and I pray that God that when my time comes he allows me to pass on with a shovel or a hammer in my hand, outdoors, doing what I was meant to do.

 

 

Hardscrabble Farmer is not about a man, a place or a lifestyle, it is about possibilities; that there is always time to turn your life around, that nothing is too hard, too mundane, too common to be fulfilling. That self sufficiency depends on others, that it is better to be a producer than a consumer, that the most rewarding things in life cannot be purchased for any price, that to move forward, it is often necessary to step back, and that more than anything else it is up to each one of us to define ourselves.

 

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