A growing number of Americans are rejecting processed foods and living off the land. Olivia Reingold meets the homesteaders who say ‘things mean more when you have less.’
Bari, this piece got me thinking about school lunches. PLEASE get someone to take that subject on. Like “Sold a Story” and its exposure of reading professionals disregarding proven methods of teaching kids how to read, the travesty of school lunch (breakfast) programs borders on insane. Colorful, sugar filled, additive laden food is dished out to kids on a daily basis (the poorest of which get this “food” for free). Those same kids are then required to sit and listen and learn when such a diet would have most of us either comatose or needing to jump on a trampoline. Each of our states has universities where students study nutrition but their knowledge is never utilized in the school lunch program. We are all aware of the unhealthy state of so many children - why can’t this issue get some play?
Its astonishing to me that ANYONE still trusts the CDC and NIH. They didnt get most of it wrong: they got ALL of it wrong, and given that their mistakes blatantly contradicted well known and long established SCIENCE, it can only have been on purpose. They all knew better. They were just told to lie, and they did.
And never forget the demonization of HCQ, which has been given to hundreds of millions of people yearly since 1955, with no problems. It is safer than aspirin—MUCH safer—and functions to get zinc into your cells efficiently.
And Ivermectin: its discoverers won the Nobel Prize.
And why did Big Pharma need to sideline those two medicines? BECAUSE THEY WORK, and if any nedicines had been advanced that worked, their gene therapy jabs would have had to go through normal safety testing, and it seems none of them would have passed.
More generally, I understand these homesteaders. Modern life is toxic physically, emotionally and spiritually.
I have mentioned before in a previous story, in a previous comment, my grandparents in southern Italy basically lived the life of farmers in every sense of the word. My grandfather grew everything. Tobacco, hazelnuts, fruit, corn that fed the chickens that gave them the eggs, that they would sometimes kill to also eat. The yearly slaughter of the pig, etc. on and on. My mother used to say when she was growing up there she and her grandmother would make cheese almost daily, "We had cheese as much as we had daily bread", my mother used to say - To this day it's one of my favorite quotes from my mother. These people are rich, rich in food and life.
Every summer I would go there and visit. I would see how hard work it was but I was extremely envious because the food was amazing and nothing like I was getting back home in America. They were growing and raising all the food they needed.
It was a very simple life. There was an Italian saying about the less you have(in material things), the happier in life you were. Sure, money pays the bills, but there is a lot of truth in that saying.
So I am not surprised at all with this article and what's happening in America.
Wondering why it was necessary to connect people genuinely concerned with our diet and food supply with the fringe elements of society. Because it is becoming increasingly clear that processed food is unhealthy, even our produce and meat is lacking because our soils are depleted and our meat is improperly fed and processed, our medical community knows virtually nothing about nutrition and our captured government pushes idiocy such as the discredited "food pyramid." So, although this article was mildly interesting, it almost trivializes the true problems with health in our society and the obesity and auto immune epidemic that is far more deadly than the "pandemic" that turned our nation on its head due to the nitwits we had in charge of it. A health profession and government that is captured by big pharma and agribusiness is antithetical to America's health.
Great article but I could do without the sneering. The positive elements come through despite the writer’s mockery. Maybe the writer is a vegetarian these sound like very nice, smart people to me.
As I read this article I can't identify a single black person, and it reminded me of a conversation I had. I was talking with a friend about my dream to buy some land in a rural area, build a house for myself and other family, and just live a nice life. We're both black, and he said he could never because of racists and that there isnt enough black people in that area. I simply replied with "Im an American too; manifest destiny". Im not sure if he actually understood where I'm coming from, and I partially believe its because he's a descendant from slaves. My parents moved to America from the Caribbean because life was better in America, settled here, and built a life for themselves on foreign land. If I feel as if life is better for me in rural areas, I should be able to do the same thing my parents did. However for him, his family came here unwillingly, so there's some form of hostility.
I see these photos without any black people and I don't see a place that I don't belong, but rather a place where I can be because there are people who I have a common interest in. If I were to view it on the angle of race, it would be a place where I can be a trailblazer in, like my parents were too.
Thanks for this piece. You’ve seen my little dairy herd. We milk one every morning and sell raw milk to many homesteading families in our area. Families who have no electricity, cook on a wood stove, hand wash clothes, homeschool, culture all their dairy from us because it keeps better. I personally think we work our tails off milking, processing milk by making our own cheese and butter, selling or bartering it to other families...hauling manure every day, moving fence line, hauling some more manure...so much manure. but the truth is I’m a soft city person compared to homesteaders. I have electricity, modern appliances, an electric water pump, indoor plumbing. Air conditioning. I can put my tomatoes in the freezer at the end of the season instead of canning them on my wood fired stove in 95 degree heat waves.
Looks like I'll be swimming against the tide, but here goes.
There is more beneficial, healthy, clean, wholesome and unadulterated food in today's world than there ever was and it's available down the street in most supermarkets. The food problem in today's society is an abundance problem, including an abundance of good and not-so-good foods that are fueling an epidemic of obesity and other health problems. (The average weight of a male in the US in 1950 was about 166; today it is about 199.) People need to start making better choices.
And please, we cannot let the recent fiasco with Covid blind us to the fact that vaccines have been a Godsend to the human race. There is a reason why the average life expectancy has gone from 47 years in 1900 to almost 80 years today. It is principally because kids no longer die in their early lives from diseases that ripped through homesteader communities like the Grand Reaper, e.g., measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, to name a few. Within the last month, a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus was added to the list. (If you don't know how deadly RSV can be, read up on it.)
Stories like this that focus on how idyllic the homestead lifestyle can be miss the larger picture that very few people are cut out for a life of hard physical work, sacrifice and privation. People who could not keep up with the demands of frontier life in 19th Century America found only early graves.
Gotta admit, I have given this some serious thought. If I were 28 or even 38 and not 58, I think I would go for it.
That said, I have been vacillating between retiring to Mexico and living in a small town house and buying a few acres of land in TN, KY or VA, somewhere rural, and growing my own food etc. Also been thinking about how to support that over the long haul. If I do it, I will likely still have to work in my current career in some fashion, perhaps as a gig worker, and then supplement with other things. Actually looking to learn how to turn wood and how to do blacksmithing. Been thinking about putting a shop on that land and doing handmade crafts with wood and cast iron. Maybe get good enough to sell some stuff online.
Either way, I am looking forward to a time that I can unplug from this ugly way of life shaped by master manipulators and liars.
I wish these folks the best ... all the farmers and ranchers and homesteaders. I sometimes wonder, here in my pleasant mid-size southern city, where city folks think the meat, dairy and grain products come from? How much effort goes into to it all? Every big and small store and market in the entire nation has milk, eggs, meat, dairy products and the daily bread of life - such an ENORMOUS mostly unappreciated undertaking. Meanwhile, the only products coming out of Washington, D.C. are rules, regulations, and taxes - bureaucrats fleecing the countryside harvesting money, tending their crops of memos and meetings feeding discord and division. The Capitol Pox infects us all. Poor George Washington is spinning in his grave.
I give these people credit, but let’s be real. When people had no other option than to live this way, they sought ways to make their food production more reliable and predictable. Sometimes crops failed, animals got sick, people went hungry. There’s no chance of that today. So yes, slaughter your own farm animals, milk your own cows, grow your own corn, but when disease wipes them out, when worms eat the corn stalks, there’s still Krogers for these new “pioneers”.
Bari, this piece got me thinking about school lunches. PLEASE get someone to take that subject on. Like “Sold a Story” and its exposure of reading professionals disregarding proven methods of teaching kids how to read, the travesty of school lunch (breakfast) programs borders on insane. Colorful, sugar filled, additive laden food is dished out to kids on a daily basis (the poorest of which get this “food” for free). Those same kids are then required to sit and listen and learn when such a diet would have most of us either comatose or needing to jump on a trampoline. Each of our states has universities where students study nutrition but their knowledge is never utilized in the school lunch program. We are all aware of the unhealthy state of so many children - why can’t this issue get some play?
Its astonishing to me that ANYONE still trusts the CDC and NIH. They didnt get most of it wrong: they got ALL of it wrong, and given that their mistakes blatantly contradicted well known and long established SCIENCE, it can only have been on purpose. They all knew better. They were just told to lie, and they did.
And never forget the demonization of HCQ, which has been given to hundreds of millions of people yearly since 1955, with no problems. It is safer than aspirin—MUCH safer—and functions to get zinc into your cells efficiently.
And Ivermectin: its discoverers won the Nobel Prize.
And why did Big Pharma need to sideline those two medicines? BECAUSE THEY WORK, and if any nedicines had been advanced that worked, their gene therapy jabs would have had to go through normal safety testing, and it seems none of them would have passed.
More generally, I understand these homesteaders. Modern life is toxic physically, emotionally and spiritually.
"either Catholic or Christian".. You might want to edit that to "either Catholic or Protestant Christians"
I have mentioned before in a previous story, in a previous comment, my grandparents in southern Italy basically lived the life of farmers in every sense of the word. My grandfather grew everything. Tobacco, hazelnuts, fruit, corn that fed the chickens that gave them the eggs, that they would sometimes kill to also eat. The yearly slaughter of the pig, etc. on and on. My mother used to say when she was growing up there she and her grandmother would make cheese almost daily, "We had cheese as much as we had daily bread", my mother used to say - To this day it's one of my favorite quotes from my mother. These people are rich, rich in food and life.
Every summer I would go there and visit. I would see how hard work it was but I was extremely envious because the food was amazing and nothing like I was getting back home in America. They were growing and raising all the food they needed.
It was a very simple life. There was an Italian saying about the less you have(in material things), the happier in life you were. Sure, money pays the bills, but there is a lot of truth in that saying.
So I am not surprised at all with this article and what's happening in America.
Wondering why it was necessary to connect people genuinely concerned with our diet and food supply with the fringe elements of society. Because it is becoming increasingly clear that processed food is unhealthy, even our produce and meat is lacking because our soils are depleted and our meat is improperly fed and processed, our medical community knows virtually nothing about nutrition and our captured government pushes idiocy such as the discredited "food pyramid." So, although this article was mildly interesting, it almost trivializes the true problems with health in our society and the obesity and auto immune epidemic that is far more deadly than the "pandemic" that turned our nation on its head due to the nitwits we had in charge of it. A health profession and government that is captured by big pharma and agribusiness is antithetical to America's health.
Great article but I could do without the sneering. The positive elements come through despite the writer’s mockery. Maybe the writer is a vegetarian these sound like very nice, smart people to me.
As I read this article I can't identify a single black person, and it reminded me of a conversation I had. I was talking with a friend about my dream to buy some land in a rural area, build a house for myself and other family, and just live a nice life. We're both black, and he said he could never because of racists and that there isnt enough black people in that area. I simply replied with "Im an American too; manifest destiny". Im not sure if he actually understood where I'm coming from, and I partially believe its because he's a descendant from slaves. My parents moved to America from the Caribbean because life was better in America, settled here, and built a life for themselves on foreign land. If I feel as if life is better for me in rural areas, I should be able to do the same thing my parents did. However for him, his family came here unwillingly, so there's some form of hostility.
I see these photos without any black people and I don't see a place that I don't belong, but rather a place where I can be because there are people who I have a common interest in. If I were to view it on the angle of race, it would be a place where I can be a trailblazer in, like my parents were too.
Thanks for this piece. You’ve seen my little dairy herd. We milk one every morning and sell raw milk to many homesteading families in our area. Families who have no electricity, cook on a wood stove, hand wash clothes, homeschool, culture all their dairy from us because it keeps better. I personally think we work our tails off milking, processing milk by making our own cheese and butter, selling or bartering it to other families...hauling manure every day, moving fence line, hauling some more manure...so much manure. but the truth is I’m a soft city person compared to homesteaders. I have electricity, modern appliances, an electric water pump, indoor plumbing. Air conditioning. I can put my tomatoes in the freezer at the end of the season instead of canning them on my wood fired stove in 95 degree heat waves.
Looks like I'll be swimming against the tide, but here goes.
There is more beneficial, healthy, clean, wholesome and unadulterated food in today's world than there ever was and it's available down the street in most supermarkets. The food problem in today's society is an abundance problem, including an abundance of good and not-so-good foods that are fueling an epidemic of obesity and other health problems. (The average weight of a male in the US in 1950 was about 166; today it is about 199.) People need to start making better choices.
And please, we cannot let the recent fiasco with Covid blind us to the fact that vaccines have been a Godsend to the human race. There is a reason why the average life expectancy has gone from 47 years in 1900 to almost 80 years today. It is principally because kids no longer die in their early lives from diseases that ripped through homesteader communities like the Grand Reaper, e.g., measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, to name a few. Within the last month, a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus was added to the list. (If you don't know how deadly RSV can be, read up on it.)
Stories like this that focus on how idyllic the homestead lifestyle can be miss the larger picture that very few people are cut out for a life of hard physical work, sacrifice and privation. People who could not keep up with the demands of frontier life in 19th Century America found only early graves.
Gotta admit, I have given this some serious thought. If I were 28 or even 38 and not 58, I think I would go for it.
That said, I have been vacillating between retiring to Mexico and living in a small town house and buying a few acres of land in TN, KY or VA, somewhere rural, and growing my own food etc. Also been thinking about how to support that over the long haul. If I do it, I will likely still have to work in my current career in some fashion, perhaps as a gig worker, and then supplement with other things. Actually looking to learn how to turn wood and how to do blacksmithing. Been thinking about putting a shop on that land and doing handmade crafts with wood and cast iron. Maybe get good enough to sell some stuff online.
Either way, I am looking forward to a time that I can unplug from this ugly way of life shaped by master manipulators and liars.
I wish these folks the best ... all the farmers and ranchers and homesteaders. I sometimes wonder, here in my pleasant mid-size southern city, where city folks think the meat, dairy and grain products come from? How much effort goes into to it all? Every big and small store and market in the entire nation has milk, eggs, meat, dairy products and the daily bread of life - such an ENORMOUS mostly unappreciated undertaking. Meanwhile, the only products coming out of Washington, D.C. are rules, regulations, and taxes - bureaucrats fleecing the countryside harvesting money, tending their crops of memos and meetings feeding discord and division. The Capitol Pox infects us all. Poor George Washington is spinning in his grave.
Wonderful piece. I admire people who chuck their degrees to live a more wholesome life and teach their kids how to live outside the matrix.
I give these people credit, but let’s be real. When people had no other option than to live this way, they sought ways to make their food production more reliable and predictable. Sometimes crops failed, animals got sick, people went hungry. There’s no chance of that today. So yes, slaughter your own farm animals, milk your own cows, grow your own corn, but when disease wipes them out, when worms eat the corn stalks, there’s still Krogers for these new “pioneers”.
Oh wow: most attendees were "religious—either Catholic or Christian." I was not aware Pope Francis' work had got quite that far yet.
We live in a small town, not on a farm but we have chickens and a good backyard garden, anything you can do makes a difference!
I like the idea of giving up processed foods and foods with added grams of sugar, but no way am I gonna start using an outhouse in the back.