As our life changes our blogs change. Previously I wrote for The Small House Under a Big Sky blog which focused on my restoration of and hand-painting of vintage furniture. Recently I after realizing that our property and garden is a homestead and that we are really rural homesteaders I decided to change the focus of my blog.
For years the word homestead referred to a free government land program and the skills necessary for pioneer living. Today the word homesteading is more apt to refer to a lifestyle that promotes greater self-sufficiency.
By the 1970s, the word homesteading evolved to mean a back to the land movement and creating a lifestyle as tens of thousands of young adults and other adventurous souls threw off the cultural mantle of urban and suburban living and returned to their ancestral rural roots. Over the next three decades, the character of the term homesteading has emerged to include self-sufficient living in urban and suburban settings as well as on rural acreage.
Broadly defined, homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs, and it may or may not also involve the small-scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale. Pursued in different ways around the world — and in different historical eras — homesteading is generally differentiated from rural village or commune living by isolation (either socially or physically) of the homestead.
Modern homesteaders often use renewable energy options including solar electricity and wind power and some even invent DIY cars. Many also choose to plant and grow heirloom vegetables and to raise heritage livestock. Homesteading is not defined by where someone lives, such as the city or the country, but by the lifestyle choices they make.
In our case, we grow and put up organic vegetables, harvest rainwater, build soil, keep chickens for eggs, plant and grow native plantings and create eco-climates for the birds and invertebrates. We feel a sense of commitment to steward our small neck of the woods and to leave this land a better place than it was when we moved here.
We are truly part of this group of ‘back-to-the-landers’ who desire to live a greener and more independent and self-reliant lifestyle.
Thank for checking us out!
Donna & Gene Allgaier-Lamberti
Small House Big Sky Homestead 