I’ve written before a few times here on this blog that homesteading is a mindset. And it is! Also, no one owns homesteading. The term, the movement, the community. Homesteading 125 years ago was just living.
Sure, homesteading has risen in popularity in the last 10 years or so but let’s take a look at why:
To start, know that I have not gone out and done any research on the web. I’m using my own personal experience (what this blog was started on and will continue as a shared learned experiences place to hang out) with my eyes open to the world around me in 2025:
- people are fed up with the crap society is feeding us, quite literally
- we have tasted and seen convenience living and no thank you
- when homesteading you’ll find people like you with your same goals and likely, same mindset (this isn’t a bad thing)
A blogger, author, and podcaster I follow very loosely who has been homesteading for close to 2 decades now (I know because she never misses a chance to tell you how many years she’s been doing it before homesteading became “cool” and “trendy”)…
Someone who refers to herself as “an influencer (ugh)“…
Now says she doesn’t identify with the homesteading movement because it has become like a cult. I believe she used a different term but a reader commented “cult” and she concurred.
Fine. Your opinion is totally fine.
What’s not fine, in my little ol’ 6 year homesteader opinion, is to say that the homesteading movement in the last decade or less is a cult with everyone having the exact same mentality and thinking. A lot of similarities, sure. But to be identical in thinking… an echo chamber? No.
First of all, homesteading has always been about working with your hands to steward the land and animals God gave you, helping your neighbor, sharing your talents and gifts. Ever read Little House on the Prairie? I’ve only read that one book, not the whole series. Laura’s dad had help from the nearest neighbor a brisk few miles’ walk away to build out parts of his homestead.
He built community with who he could. I have to believe Pa had to have some sort of common interest with his neighbor to get help digging his well. Something to start the conversation. Something to build trust on.
That’s how you make friends. You may not always agree on every thing or think exactly the same, but somehow, some way, something clicked for the two of you to realize you have a shared interest.
That, my friend, is how you start building community.
The homesteading community of 2025 that I have been a part of seems to be one of building community and trust and sharing learned experiences with others to encourage, inspire, and educate; to share their talents with others.
Hence why there are homesteading conferences all over the US and other parts of the world right now– to teach one another and inspire one another. And also, to keep alive trades that are trying to die. Things we (millennials and probably Gen X too) weren’t taught growing up! My own lineage skipped a generation of “doing it yourself because there is no other option”.
Now in 2025, I get to CHOOSE to do it inconveniently, the hard way. My Nana is 97 years old, Lord willing, later this month. She didn’t have a choice but to work with her hands, raise her girls, put dinner on the table at lunch every single day at 12pm, and supper later too. Handmade biscuits every morning, slicing bacon from the belly that always was hanging in the smoke house, and flagging down the next male passerby to come kill this chicken so she wouldn’t have to.
Funny story about my Nana: she didn’t love killing chickens. She was the youngest in a family of 7 by a long shot (a menopause baby whose oldest sister delivered her first child at 19 years old just four days after Nana was born). She was babied a little bit being raised by her mama and her much older siblings. So back to the chicken killing– she didn’t like it. She would flag someone down to help her do the deed then she’d process the rest. One day she could not find anyone driving by but needed that yard bird on the table by noon. So she grabbed up that hen, put her head under Nana’s foot, grabbed firmly both wings and pulled up. Broke neck = dead hen. She managed to do what she didn’t like doing. That’s resilience.
I’ll be honest: I don’t like killing chickens either! I’ll do all the rest but the kill is not something I want to do. No one does really. That’s a skill I can learn but don’t prefer to do. That’s where COMMUNITY comes in. Someone who wants to do it, can do it, and will teach others how to do it. My husband is that man. In our family community, I’m the chicken tender for 8 weeks, he’s the chicken slayer for one day. Our son manages the scalding and plucking. Our daughter is fantastic at removing the feet by finding that tight spot between the knee joints. Her little fingers locate and remove lungs better than any $14 lung scrapper I’ve used. Our community within our family discovered our talents and shared them with one another. We don’t all think the exact same either. Killing the bird isn’t my talent, tending to them is.
Back to building community in the homesteading world. Communities are built on common interests. Communities within communities can be built as well and often are. Friend groups are created out of communities. Think about your church or local Ruritan clubs or commercial farmers. Our local town even has a farmers hunt club. Local commercial farmers who share their land and rented lands for hunt club members to run dogs on and hunt together. That’s a community built on a common interest. A community within a community. I imagine they don’t all think the same. Some are Christians, some aren’t. Some like whiskey, others don’t touch alcohol. But they all love running dogs to hunt deer. You get the point, I’m sure.
To say that the homesteading community has become a cult is an unfair portrayal. The Bible even calls for us to be careful the company we keep. Yes, we are called to love our neighbor and serve them too. Even if I don’t like them most days, if a neighbor needs my help, I will do what I can to help them. I’ve seen that in the homesteading world.
The problem I see most within the homesteading movement is that though we do share what we are learning, we often times fall into the “self-sufficiency” trap. Not that it is bad but I’m seeing that term go from sufficiency away from society and convenience to sufficiency away from other people. I can do it myself. I’ll just learn all the skills and trades myself so I don’t have to call on anyone and thus OWE them something in return, thank you very much. But we need one another. We weren’t called to go it alone.
Another issue I’ve seen inside the homesteading realm comes from “elder homesteaders” who think they are holier than thou. A very popular 10th generation homesteader in the mountains once called out and trashed talked two different kinds of homesteaders:
1- the cottage core homesteader who loves her linen aprons and cotton dresses
2- the homesteader living in a sky rise city apartment
In this elder homesteader’s eyes neither of those ladies are true homesteaders. “Real” homesteaders wear jeans and tee shirts. Real homesteaders own lots of land and livestock. Probably a tractor too. Say what?!
Homesteading is a mindset and a lifestyle choice. Go look up the definition. If you are committed to working with your hands, cooking from scratch in an attempt to get away from convenience living… in today’s Door Dash world, that’s homesteading. When you find other people out there like you, you want to make friends and do life together. Where’s the harm in that?
It’s a common interest– it doesn’t make you a cult member. Service and fellowship are two things Christians are called to do. The way those fall into the “homesteading” realm are no coincidence, in my opinion.
I’ll end this opinion piece with this: I’ve unfollowed that long time homesteader who thinks we are now a cult she doesn’t identify with on all platforms. I’ve selected “not interested” when she inevitably pops back up in my FYPs AFTER I’ve unfollowed. Because that mindset is toxic. That mindset is not as inclusive as she thinks it is. She’s so involved in her local community (good on her) but willing to ditch (or at least dog them) her homesteading community of which she has a voice and platform, an “influencer (ugh)”.
To find goodness in her because I do think she means well, I have learned from her what I’ve been having my own suspicions about lately– in a world full of AI and polished blog posts, people are returning to real and raw.
Authentic, I guess you could say. Letters to a friend style blogging is going to make a comeback. Will those posts make the monetized blogger a lot of money? Probably not but also, a steady reminder of why I started blogging to begin with– to own the content I share with the world on social media and the internet. To write long form recipes and how-tos from our homestead to yours. And now more letters to you, friend. So I’m grateful to her for that confirmation. I’m also reading one of her books gifted to me last year. It’s taken me all year to crack the spine because this homesteader didn’t just say this one thing one time that rubbed me wrong. She’s been adamant about it for over a year now and vocal about it to her following. That mentality made me not want to read her writing. BUT… I know I can learn something from people I don’t agree with.
I think that’s a statement she would also agree with.
No one owns homesteading, the name, the movement, the mindset. No one living today in 2025 was the originator of homesteading. Homesteading was LIVING and it IS living. We saw how convenience living is killing us, wasting away our God-given skills and talents, numbing our brains with devices, stripping us of the joys of working with our hands and helping a neighbor, of building community of true friends. We saw that we wanted something more from this one temporary earthly life, something money can’t always buy.
Something, I believe, God is calling His people back to.
What are your thoughts on the homesteading community?
With love & encouragement to start homesteading where you are inside these ramblings,
Katie, author of the Johnson Home NC blog
UPDATE: I originally started writing this post one week ago and I had to let it sit before publishing because I wasn’t sure if I was projecting something, angry, offended, or just annoyed. None of those are Fruits, are they?
As I stated in this original post, I have unfollowed this veteran homesteader on all platforms so WHY is she still coming up as suggested posts for me? Well, this morning I clicked on her suggested post to see what she had to say today in her new, improved “letters to a friend” style of blogging. Wouldn’t ya know it? It hit me right in the feels.
I see you, God.
Sure, she still reminds me that she’s been homesteading since before it was trendy but in this post she also shared how she has hopes for those pretty, cottage core, new-to-homesteading “influencers” will one day see that there’s more to it than stunning sunset photos of children frolicking in the fields, etc.
There eventually comes a desire for more and simple at the same time. For gatherings AND solitude. For community AND staying home. Like there’s a balance of sorts to find and it comes with time. Almost as if it’s a new level to unlock in homesteading.
Perhaps she is right. Perhaps I agree with her today. Perhaps that’s okay. Because I feel it too. A new desire to keep it simple but also bring others in… not in a cult style fashion but more as the encouragement I once received by an “influencer” on the internet to just do it. Just get started. Just jump in where I was.
That homesteading is for every one willing to give it a go.
