By coincidence your newsletter on homesteading as a through line in our history arrived on the heels of the death of another homesteader. Rosalyn Carter died in the small house in Plains, Ga. which she and Jimmy shared as home for 77 years, even when they were living in the White House. She still walked in the little garden everyday weather allowing. That garden they had kept together was still kept up. In her illness it was tended by the National Park Service in what she referred to as “her best perk ever.”
My personal brush with homesteading probably had its roots in the pages of MAKE magazine. It's fun to see how many tomatoes you can get out of a self watering 5 gallon bucket gizmo https://makezine.com/projects/building-subirrigated-planters-from-recycled-materials/, or a modified window box. Truth be told, the squirrels got as many as I did, but I had my revenge the following season when I planted a selection of super hot peppers instead. I still love to peruse the pages of heirloom seeds available from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange www.southernexposure.com , although I rarely plant anything these days. It would most likely end with me finding out just how much meat there is on a squirrel first hand!
I LOVED this entire article. I've been seeing a lot about this topic lately, and I find it really fascinating. You might be interested in the articles "A Growing Fear of Nature Could Hasten Its Destruction", "How We Learned to Be Lonely", and "America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That's Not a Coincidence" all from The Atlantic, which are similar to this idea, but different in that they focus on how our separation from nature affects us (I've only been able to read little snippets because I don't have a subscription but they seem good). But I also keep getting recommended this page on Instagram of a guy who is "bending back to nature" as well. It seems to be all around me lately.
All of this makes me think about a book I read when I was 11 about a boy who ran away from home to live off the land, made a home in a hollow tree, and made friends with the animals. For a moment, as an 11-year-old, I thought about doing this too. It just seemed like the coolest thing to me and such a lovely life. Luckily, I didn't do it lol—I have no outdoor skills whatsoever and am very allergic to mosquitos—but, like you said, there are other ways to bend back to nature that are less drastic. I think people just forget that you don't have to go so extreme to make a difference sometimes.
The opening made me laugh until snot came out my nose. Thanks.
By coincidence your newsletter on homesteading as a through line in our history arrived on the heels of the death of another homesteader. Rosalyn Carter died in the small house in Plains, Ga. which she and Jimmy shared as home for 77 years, even when they were living in the White House. She still walked in the little garden everyday weather allowing. That garden they had kept together was still kept up. In her illness it was tended by the National Park Service in what she referred to as “her best perk ever.”
My personal brush with homesteading probably had its roots in the pages of MAKE magazine. It's fun to see how many tomatoes you can get out of a self watering 5 gallon bucket gizmo https://makezine.com/projects/building-subirrigated-planters-from-recycled-materials/, or a modified window box. Truth be told, the squirrels got as many as I did, but I had my revenge the following season when I planted a selection of super hot peppers instead. I still love to peruse the pages of heirloom seeds available from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange www.southernexposure.com , although I rarely plant anything these days. It would most likely end with me finding out just how much meat there is on a squirrel first hand!
I LOVED this entire article. I've been seeing a lot about this topic lately, and I find it really fascinating. You might be interested in the articles "A Growing Fear of Nature Could Hasten Its Destruction", "How We Learned to Be Lonely", and "America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That's Not a Coincidence" all from The Atlantic, which are similar to this idea, but different in that they focus on how our separation from nature affects us (I've only been able to read little snippets because I don't have a subscription but they seem good). But I also keep getting recommended this page on Instagram of a guy who is "bending back to nature" as well. It seems to be all around me lately.
All of this makes me think about a book I read when I was 11 about a boy who ran away from home to live off the land, made a home in a hollow tree, and made friends with the animals. For a moment, as an 11-year-old, I thought about doing this too. It just seemed like the coolest thing to me and such a lovely life. Luckily, I didn't do it lol—I have no outdoor skills whatsoever and am very allergic to mosquitos—but, like you said, there are other ways to bend back to nature that are less drastic. I think people just forget that you don't have to go so extreme to make a difference sometimes.