Chris McCullough 🇮🇪 🏳️‍🌈

Almost every homesteading channel posts an explainer video on the why and how they chose to take up homesteading. Obviously I think homesteading is great and everyone should be producing something in their yard, but there's an underlying problem we're not addressing:

Juche

According to a a 2022 Homesteaders of America survey about 44 percent of homesteaders are conservative. The aesthetic of homesteading overlaps with conservative culture in general, one aspect being self-sufficiency. Conservatives and homesteaders both love to dream of being off-grid and being able to do everything themselves, never needing anyone else to get by. Ask just about anyone their opinion on North Korea, most likely they'll express their lack of support for the country; but at the same time they're practicing basically the same ideology.

What do I mean? Pretend a person's homestead is a country like North Korea's: the food mostly stays in-country, energy is created in-country, the homesteader (supreme leader) is armed and watches the country for predators (South Koreans). This system might work for North Korea, but we can all agree it's not a great system; homesteaders shouldn't be practicing juche. Conservatives definitely shouldn't be practicing juche.

To explain myself better I'll grab one of the many homesteading videos on YouTube and walk through it.

Time to 🪄 criticize ✨

By criticizing this channel I am in no way saying they shouldn't be doing what they're doing; I want to encourage people to grow food, but I want them to do it without limiting what they're doing to self-sufficiency.

This video titled "We Live Like It's The 1800s (On Purpose)" starts with why they chose homesteading, let's go over each point:

"Back to normal"

Trying to "go back in time" to a better period is a dangerous line of thought. The creator of the video said they wanted to go back to a time when "humans were allowed to be useful", and back to when people weren't looked at as expendable to corporate businesses. That's fair, but isn't invoking the 1800s when talking about homesteading sort of problematic? Why talk about the 1800s when homesteading in the U.S. was more common between 1900-1930?

The video then goes on to talk about the small barn they purchased, cash, no loan. Even a small barn will run you about $8k. The antique ice box they use as a root cellar will go for $500. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 77% of Americans holding some form of debt. It's very nice that the creator was able to do this, but I can't imagine there are many Americans that can throw that kind of money at a barn, or even save up enough money to do that.

Can you imagine that towards the end of the video the creator says this:

You might look at the world right now and feel like it's hopeless. I understand that feeling, I lived in it for a while. But the most hopeless thing you can do is spend your life complaining about problems you refuse to do anything about. Playing the victim of a system while staying completely inside of it.

This comes off as putting blame on the viewer. You did nothing but complain, you could have just chose to go back to the 1800s, you didn't drop $8,000 on a barn, you chose to struggle. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps.

It would be nice to achieve self-sufficiency, and it would be nice to say you did it yourself, or with just your family. The reality: this is next to impossible without getting help from your community. Ask a rich person if they made their millions on their own, they'll lie; afterwards you should go ask the same question to one of their employees.

During WWII people started growing Victory Gardens, communities would organize and share/exchange food. Victory Gardens grew about 40% of all produce consumed during the war according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. No way you'll do that on your own.