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In Search of Authentic Homesteaders:

- Or, What Does a Homesteader Look Like? 

Part Three

Part One  Part Two

By Sheri Dixon

An attempt to define the indefinable; that urge that starts deep in the gut and isn’t helped by burping, or chocolate, or anything but digging your bare toes into Mother Earth.  The impulse to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with something other than an acceptable occupation like Butcher or Baker or Candlestick Maker-

 The impulse to stand tall and announce:

“I am a Homesteader.” 

home.stead.er

  Spelled Pronunciation [hohm-sted-er] – noun

Origin:
1860–65, Americanism; homestead + -er ¹

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) -
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

 ~~~~~~~~~~ 

Of course the above is a very basic and unemotional definition.  It’s from a dictionary - it’s supposed to be boring. 

In the last few years, my family and I have had the good fortune to travel and meet a number of folks who share our homesteading dreams and visions.  

Some of these homesteaders have had the graciousness and good humor to fill out a survey I sent to them in search of The Real True Homesteaders - people who, for all intents and purposes, look absolutely (mostly) normal to society most of the time, but whose hearts beat with the rhythm of the seasons and whose fingernails are never quite clean. 

These are the surveys and their answers.  

These are their photos and stories. 

At the end of each survey, I’ve added my own comments and observations - most telling, and what seems an integral facet of the homesteaders’ character - is the tendency to downplay their actual accomplishments.    

Hobby Farm, Small Working Farm, Family Subsistence Farm - all titles for those pieces of land that are over 10 acres, and under 50 acres. With an area this size, there’s a good chance you can plant your house where your neighbors won’t be peering in your windows, plant your veggie garden most anywhere, grow enough to feed yourselves handily, and still have room for a yard, or flowers, or a swing set, or even (gasping at the luxury) a swimming pool.  

Although I can’t remember a swimming pool on any of the following homesteads, there is still the overwhelming feeling of luxury on all of them - the luxury of being able to spread out some, breath deeply, and think, “This is country, and I love being here”.

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"In 1930, the American physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Robert Millikan (1868-1953) said that there was no risk that humanity could do real harm to anything so gigantic as the Earth. In the same year, the American chemical engineer Thomas Midgley invented chlorofluorocarbons [CFCs], the chemicals responsible for thinning the stratospheric ozone layer."