When we moved from a city of 200,000 to a homestead in a hilly, Ozark town of 2,000 residents, my husband and I fully anticipated there would be an adjustment period.As I wrote in my first article for Insteading在美国,有很多“文化冲击”的时刻可能会影响到这个逃离城市的、有抱负的乡村乡巴佬。
At the time I wrote that article, I had only been living on our homestead for two weeks! Many of my conclusions and recommendations were based on the immediate transition. Now that I’ve been on my homestead for nearly two years, I have several seasons of retrospect under my belt and a lot more to say.
我希望我们的一些经验可以帮助你。当我们从市中心居民变成远离电网的自耕农时,以下是我的家人感受到的六个最大的长期生活转变。
Time Becomes Your Most Valuable Commodity
When you work a “normal” job in a “normal” lifestyle, your time is not your own most of the week. After all, the sad stereotype of “living for the weekend” doesn’t exist for nothing. So the sudden gift of autonomy is somewhat of a shocking realization when you find yourself in the country, especially if you have decided to homestead or farm full-time.
You may find that what your family lost in leaving your jobs and/or middle-class status, you gain back tenfold intime— a far more valuable commodity than currency in our book. Of course, with that sudden freedom comes the necessity — and responsibility — of self-determination.
If you are used to having bosses give you directives (even if you hated being told what to do) you may need to train yourself to manage your own time. Procrastination and laziness won’t get you “fired” from your homestead, but the effects of not using the gift of your time may result in overgrown hooves, gardens planted too late, or the workshop you still haven’t built because “you’re going to get to it.” As any homesteader will tell you, the best time to plant your orchard is twenty years ago, but the second-best time is now.
I have found that one of the most helpful activities for me as I drink my cup of morning tea, is to write a list of everything I want and need to accomplish that day. Alternatively, a “project whiteboard” is very useful with all the necessary goals listed out and super-visible.
Granted, I often write far too ambitious a list, but it is a thrilling thing that my husband and I, not some distant CEO, are the ones who get to decide how to use our days to do what we want to do. We don’t live for the weekend — we get to live every day.
There’s No Such Thing as a 5-Minute Interaction
Interactions in the city are often fast-paced. Five minutes at the checkout, three seconds thanking the barista for your coffee, a nod to your neighbor as you duck into your car. In that sea of people, you can spend an entire day interacting with strangers, and they’ll probably just stay strangers.
然而,在农村,事情要花更长的时间,这包括任何时候你遇到农村人。如果你的邻居开车经过时,你正在看你的邮箱,他很可能会放慢速度,把头伸出窗外,和你聊上整整20分钟。
Resist the urge to get out of these conversations — it’s often your city training nagging you that it’s takingtoo long, but not giving a reason why. Trust me, people are spread a lot further out in these wilder places and when they meet, they’re not too busy for each other. It is a precious thing.
Take the time to talk to the locals, and then listen to them. Friendships are slow-going in the country; many folks are a little wary of newcomers, particularly those who still have the smell of city-exhaust clinging to their clothes. Though it may take a long time, slow-growing friendships are sometimes a lot deeper than the easy-to-forge acquaintances that close, urban proximity can provide.
I know it personally. You may find, like I did, that many of your old friends back in the city don’t talk to you anymore despite efforts to stay in contact. The somewhat harsh reality is that without the glue of proximity and shared experiences, it’s really hard to keep relationships going, especially if you choose to not participate in social media.
Likewise, without the context of the working environment, you’ll probably drop off your former coworkers’ maps faster than they could say, “You’re quitting your job to dowhat, exactly?”
So when your neighbor rolls down his window and leans out, or when the guy selling fresh summer produce offers an anecdote about how he grew them, get comfortable and take the time. There’s a lot to learn from them.
Our conversations with these neighbors, cashiers, and farmers at the market have led to valuable information about our land, useful local tips that we couldn’t have found elsewhere, and a sense of community that we’re only now starting to feel. Best of all, we’ve started finding some real friends.
You are Surrounded by Life and Death
I was not prepared for the amount of real, visceral life and death that suffused every day on the homestead. Life is bursting at the seams in the country. It grows lush underfoot, filling every day with a riot of sound and smell and color, and the buzz of honeybee wings. Babies are born and hatched, sprouts grow tall into food for your family, mice scurry in the corners of the barn, and sweet smells float into the house from the warm fields.
Likewise, death is potentially around every corner, and comes in the forms of tragically cute runts, unexpected feral dog attacks, heatstroke, or butchering day. Many of us who were raised in urban environments lived in a world where nature was confined to the city park far from our living spaces, where death only reared its head when you passed roadkill or smashed a trespassing spider.
On the homestead, dealing with life and death isn’t a passive thing. Most of the time, you may find that you yourself are the one directing the flow of existence for many lives on your homestead.
Will you get a rooster for your hens? What will you do with the new doe goat who is having a desperately difficult time delivering her first kid? What do you need to do with the diseased trees that the loggers passed over? And when the feral dog that’s been killing the newborn lambs is finally in your cross-hairs, will you be able to take the shot?
You may find that you feel emotionally stunted when it comes to facing such raw existence at every turn. Take it in stride. You’re getting stronger. Homesteading can be a crash course in reality.
Reading About it is Easier than Doing it
When you’re sitting warm in your city house, dreaming homestead dreams, anything can sound possible. The mountains of books and resources on homestead living offer tantalizing explanations for a different sort of life and before you know it, you may be declaring, “Let’s get a herd of sheep! Maybe start a market garden enterprise? Oh, we’re totally going to use a composting toilet. And chicken tractors, Joel Salatin style!”
It’s all possible, but it is really, really hard work. And while that is not a bad thing in the slightest, it is very easy for the newbie homesteader to bite off more than they can chew with visions of homemade cheese, packed farmer’s market booths, and flocks of ducks dancing in their head.
Heating your home with a cozy wood stove requires months ofchopping firewoodBEFORE winter strikes. A composting toilet system requires you to either shell out multiple thousands of dollars to install a fancy modern one, or to lug buckets brimming with your own waste to your composting area. Every type of animal you add needs consistent daily care and protection, no matter how tired you feel or how crummy the weather.
So, you need to give yourself time to transition to every new task, especially if it is something you’ve never done before. If you want to have lots of livestock, start with a small flock of chickens — maybe six birds — and get used to the new rhythm FIRST before you add the cows and rabbits, and the sheep herd.
Go toan established homesteader’sfarm, watch them butcher their own birds, and make sure you still have the guts to do it yourself. See if you can have a successful backyard garden harvest before you launch your huge farmer’s market endeavors. And be patient. That vision of a productive, healthy, happy homestead can happen, but it may take longer than a few years to get it running. That’s okay.
No One is There to Do it for You
In the city, you can hire a service to do pretty much anything. Care for your lawn? Clean up your house? Cook your food? Investigate that weird noise in the middle of the night? A simple phone call can summon someone else to do what needs to be done. While that may lend a sense of security, it is both expensive and can leave you incredibly vulnerable when you leave those services behind.
Because in the country, those tasks usually fall squarely on your shoulders. The homesteaders of the past had a crazy sort of DIY resourcefulness and bravery because the options were to either figure it out or have it stay broken. So when you come out here, get ready to follow in their intrepid footsteps (and read up on someEric Sloane booksif you want historical inspiration!)
当狗在凌晨两点开始叫的时候,你应该穿上靴子,拿起猎枪,看看谷仓里发生了什么。当暴风雨过后,树倒在你的车道上时,你需要成为那个给电锯加油并重新进入主干道的人。当苹果需要从果园收割并为冬天保存的时候,就是拿起篮子开始工作的时候了。
But like the fable of the Little Red Hen, the result of all your labor is the deep satisfaction of being capable enough to take care of your own needs, and eat the literal fruits of your labor. As you become accustomed to that self-sufficient resiliency, gaining more skills every season, you may find that this sort of life is the most satisfying and fulfilling sort.
You Cannot Keep the Same Mindset
You may notice a trend in this list — all of the points are much more mental or psychological challenges rather than physical adjustments. Honestly, I think anyone can get used to new settings, given enough time. Getting used to a new mindset, however, that’s a far bigger endeavor.
Living in the urban landscape creates a mental scaffolding that you may not even be aware of until you have been removed from it. Then you might realize that everything you “knew how to do” isn’t applicable to the rural hills. I assume this feeling is common, and I am convinced it is part of the growing pains of the city-fled.
The quick jaunt to the cafe with friends, the clubs and social activities of the well-connected, the stress and tedium of working at a desk and then rushing home through traffic, are suddenly an echo and if you’re not prepared, may be one of the biggest hold-ups during the city-to-country transition.
You don’t need to be an expert on homesteading to homestead — goodness knows I am making it up as I go along half the time! But a willingness to be teachable, to be a hard-worker, and to admit your weaknesses and learn from your failures, are crucial for rebuilding your mental fortitude to face a rural lifestyle.
Yes, the internet is super-slow, there’s no sushi for miles, and the water sometimes smells like egg salad. Yes, the roads are rough, and the town basically closes at 6 p.m. Yes, the blizzard is still howling and the cows need you to break the water in their buckets.
是啊,浣熊杀了你的羊群,你得重新开始。这些嘛?如果是这样,那么你需要认真地考虑一下你是否真的想成为一个自耕农。如果不是,那么也许你向乡村生活的转变已经开始生根发芽了。
So if you’ve decided to throw in the towel on your “normal” life and set out to homestead, you need to have rock-solid reasons for why you’re doing it. Those resolutions are going to be tested, big time.
You cannot … I repeat, you cannot expect to transplant yourself to a rural place and live in a similar fashion as you did in the city with some extra chickens in the background. You will either fail or be miserable for a long time, and miss the joys hidden in the journey. I know it’s hard. Hard like climbing a mountain is hard — but no one climbs a mountain because it’s easy.
也许你们中的一些人发现了这篇文章,因为你们正在做和我三年前一样的谷歌搜索,你们想知道自己是否能够摆脱继承下来的城市/郊区/依赖他人的生活方式。
Maybe you’re wondering if it is worth it. Maybe you want to live more authentically, honestly, or responsibly, and the country is calling you the same way it did us. Maybe you’re new to the whole homesteading concept and wonder what it’s like, or you’d like to get off-grid as well but don’t know if you could do really it.
I hope this article can help. From someone currently in the trenches of the transition, but with a few years now under my belt, I can tell you it’s possible. It’s a crazy ride, but it’s possible. And I love it. I feel like this quote sums up the new feeling of this life nicely (and I hope you can know the feeling too):
“Our lives in Tibet were spent without haste, and without the strange force that presses people down here, so that they always seem to be doing one thing and wishing they were doing something else, as though they were being driven like animals. In Tibet I felt more free, and more alive, and although life may have been harder, living it was easier.” –Thubten Jigme Norbu
你们中有谁已经转变成一个自耕农,或者正在考虑这个问题吗?你同意我关于转变的观点吗?你不同意吗?请在评论中告诉我!
Michael Msays
Thanks for this. We are moving toward the same situation. The wife is more prepared than I. Most of my life has been for work. You hit the nail on the head when you say we live for the weekend. I am more worried about having too much time.
Michael
Wren Everettsays
迈克尔——我们唯一一次在宅基地有太多的时间是我们被雪困在家里两天,哈哈,即使那样,动物们仍然需要照顾。2022欧洲杯葡萄牙vs德国总会有事情可做的!我为你们家的搬家感到兴奋——这是我们家做过的最好的决定。我很高兴我们的故事能帮到你。
Lisa Lombardosays
Hi,
It is interesting to read about your experiences as a ‘new’ homesteader. I grew up on a farm, but was not able to purchase a rural ag property until 2010. I did as much homesteading as I could (and more than I was supposed to…meat rabbits, ahem) on a suburban lot for most of my adult life…all the while wishing we could afford our dream homestead. The reality was that a rural agriculutural lot was not in our price range until the housing collapse brought prices down for a few years.
现在我们有1英亩的土地可以养牲畜,但我们仍然受到土地面积的限制。对我来说,这是对我成长方式的回归,对我本源的回归。我的父亲教我如何屠宰鸡,种植花园,以及寻找野生食物。我妈妈教我装罐头,从零开始做饭,还有缝纫。我在郊区做了很多这样的事情,但我真的很高兴现在回到了更以宅基地为中心的生活方式!
Wren Everettsays
If we had been stuck in the city any longer, we would have done some quiet disobedience of our own and gotten some “illegal” chickens!
Thanks so much for your comment and for sharing your story. I am so happy to shed my suburban skin and try on this new one–I never want to go back to the city! I can imagine that you are much happier indeed. What livestock are working on your acre?
B.Asays
We are in the research phase for now. We’ve bought a 5 acre farm land in Hudspeth county ( Dell city, Texas to be precise). Although its near the mountains the area do get about 12 inches of rain. I hail from west Africa so I’m well familiar with the idea of living off grid. I am also familiar with rain catchment, waste management, solar power, few knowledge on gardening and livestock. We are excited to start this journey but we are taking our time studying and planning and with Gods help we’ll take that leap and take back control our dependency on the grid.
Wren Everettsays
恭喜你找到并购买了你的土地!当我们还困在城市里,但当我们买下我们的土地后,知道我们将去哪里是如此鼓舞和激励,终于有了那个祈祷的答案,即使这有时让我们有点坐立不安!
I hope the absolute best for you. It’s certainly an adventure, but I think your experiences and research will serve you well as you put them to the test. It’s a lot of work to finally take responsibility for your own needs, but as for us–we wouldn’t choose any other life. It’s wide-eyed, and full of unknowns, finally taking that leap of faith, but it’s worth it!
Thanks for your comment! I hope you will be Home soon!
Jasonsays
Hi BA, Glad to talk to another Texas import. I’m currently in Falls country, but headed to a very remote spot in Montana. The property I bought does not have a well, and the cost is far too prohibitive, so I’ll be building a rain catchment and storage system. If you are not on city water, will you use catchment or well?
Jasonsays
Hi Wren,
I found your perspective on taking time to talk an insightful reminder. It’s easy to allow the many tasks to be a false priority. I’m only a few weeks away from moving to my new property at a remote location in Montana where the freeway on ramp is twenty-seven miles away and the closest town another ten miles.
While I’m not planning on the homestead activities of animal husbandry or gardening and canning I will be self reliant on water (catchment and storage – to include building the ferrocement storage tanks), solar, compost toilet, building a rocket cook stove / mass heater, and cutting all the wood for the winter. It will be a very busy summer getting all the basic systems in place.
Wren Everettsays
我很高兴这对你有帮助!我们的邻居一直是关于我们土地令人惊讶的信息的源源不断的来源——从关于前主人的轶事,关于真正的边界在哪里(而不是它们看起来在哪里!)的启示,以及关于我们自己无法猜测的需要注意的事情的警告。我希望你在新家找到一些好邻居!这听起来确实像是你的工作,这是我们非常了解的,因为我们也仍然处于基础设施到位的阶段。顺便说一句,你看到网上关于密苏里州设计的砖石炉的免费计划了吗?Here’s the link–>https://energy.mo.gov/sites/energy/files/pub781.pdfWe’re working some elements from it into our house’s mass heater, and it’s just a nice resource to read through for some inspiration.
Hope the best for you! It’s a hard, and very worthwhile journey.