Showing posts with label Homesteads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homesteads. Show all posts

Monday, October 9, 2023

A thought about not thinking things through on Indigenous Person's Day.

Wyoming politician Bob Ide is saying he's going to sponsor a bill to take the Federal domain into state hands, requiring, as if Wyoming can require the Federal Government to do anything, the fulfillment of a promise that the Federal Government never made at the time Wyoming became a state.

In fact, the opposite was true.  Wyoming promised not to seek any more Federal land than it was getting.

But a promise was made regarding those lands. . . to the Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Sioux tribes. . . that being that they could keep them for hunting grounds.

And a larger reservation than they currently have was originally given to the Shoshone.

In her campaign to displace Liz Cheney, Harriet Hageman emphasized the hardworking nature of her family and forebearors, and has been a standard-bearer of conservative and populist values in her brief time in Congress. She's from, she related, a fourth generation ranching family.

But most families that have been in agriculture in Wyoming that long, outside the descendants of British remission men, are remote beneficiaries of a gigantic government system which used Federal agents, in the form of the U.S. Army and Federal Indian Agents, to dispossess the occupants of that land, sometimes by force, and remove them to where they did not want to go, so that the land could be transferred free or cheaply to European Americans.  Those original European American occupants, we might note, in the case of homesteaders, were not the wealthy and were perfectly willing to take advantage of a government program.

My point?

Well I don't mean to be one of those who are going to engage in hagiography of any one group of American people, Natives nor European Americans, but on this day it might be worth remembering something.

The "pull up by the bootstraps" argument that the middle class, or lower upper class, so frequently states, or imagines about themselves, fails pretty readily upon close examination.  Almost every class of American with longstanding roots in the country that have been here for quite some time benefitted from a government program, whether that be homesteading, Indian removal by the Army, the mining law of 1872, the Taylor grazing act (which saved ranching in the West), the GI Bill, and so on.

That is, in fact, the American System.  Not the Darwinian laissez-faire economics that libertarians so often proclaim.

I'm not demanding reparations, or that injustices committed to people of the past be retroactively lamented.  Indeed, that's pointless.  What I’m suggesting instead is that justice be done for those now living, and that as part of that we admit when we are vicariously beneficiaries of some Federal program in the past, as I am.

And as part of that, I'm also suggesting that we don't engage in myths or hagiographies about our own predecessors.  Nobody carved a civilization out of an empty wilderness, unless we go back in North America 15,000 years.  Nobody promised that Wyoming could have the public domain.  None of us are as independent or virtuous as we pretend, if we pretend that we are, and nobody's ancestors were hearty bands of go it alone giants.

Shoot, even Columbus, if you prefer to ponder him on this day, was on a state funded mission.

Friday, January 6, 2023

Western Farmers and Ranchers and the GOP? Why the loyalty? Part 1.

Dust Bowl farmers, from an era when the GOP would have done pretty much nothing.

TRIBUTE TO HARRIET HAGEMAN

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, it is fitting that Harriet Hageman will be inducted into the 2011 Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. Harriet is known across Wyoming and across our Nation as a stalwart promoter and defender of agriculture. With this honor, she is following in the footsteps of her father Jim Hageman, who was previously inducted in the Agriculture Hall of fame in 2002.

Harriet comes from a long history of agricultural producers. Her great grandfather homesteaded in Wyoming in 1879 and her parents bought their first ranch near Fort Laramie in 1961.  Harriet grew up on the family’s cattle ranches in the Fort Laramie area. Rather than pursuing a career in agriculture, she earned a law degree from the University of Wyoming. Yet she did not stray from the agriculture industry. Much of her legal practice has been focused on protecting agriculture’s land, water, and natural resources. She uses her Ag background coupled with her fine mind to effectively argue on behalf of Wyoming’s ranchers and farmers in courtrooms at all levels of the judiciary.

A few of her many accomplishments should be noted. Harriet was the lead attorney for the State of Wyoming in protecting its share of the North Platte River. She fought the USDA to protect Wyoming’s access to national forest lands. She successfully defended Wyoming’s Open Range Law before the Wyoming Supreme Court. Her clients include ranchers, farmers, irrigation districts and grazing permitees. Harriet represents them with a passion that can only come from love of agriculture.

I have had the honor of working with Harriet Hageman and have benefitted from her wisdom. I would ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating

 Harriet on this well-deserved honor. 

John Barasso in the Congressional Record, August 2, 2011.1 


CHUCK TODD:  You know, you actually vote less with Joe Biden than Kyrsten Sinema does. You're comfortable being a Democrat in Montana. Why is that?

SEN. JON TESTER:  Look, I'm also a farmer. And I can tell you that we would not have the farm today if it was not for the Democratic politics of FDR. And my grandfather and grandmother talked to us about that, my folks talked to me about that. And I will tell you that I am forever grateful for that, because I'm blessed to be a farmer, I love agriculture, and I wouldn't be one without the Democrats.

Meet the Press, December 11, 2022.

I wouldn't be a rancher but for the Democrats.  No Wyoming rancher born in Wyoming would be.

Harriet Hageman, born on a ranch outside of Ft. Laramie, Wyoming, wouldn't have been born on a ranch but for the Democrats.  If Herbert Hoover had won the election of 1932, she'd have been born in a city somewhere else, if she'd been born at all (and likely would not have, given the way twist of fates work).  She sure wouldn't have been born on a ranch/farm.

The Democrats saved agriculture in the 1930s in the West, Midwest and North.  They didn't do it any favors in the South, however.

My wife's grandfather, a World War Two Marine, and born on a ranch, remembered that and voted for the Democrats for the rest of his life.

So why do so many in agriculture vote Republican, even though Republican policies would have destroyed family agriculture in the 1930s and still stand to destroy family agriculture in the US today?

Well, a lot of reasons. But it'd be handy if people quit babbling the myths about it.

Indeed, when a person like Hageman states "I'm a fourth generation rancher", or things that effect, it ought to be in the form of an apology followed by "and yet I'm a Republican. . . "

Let's take a look at the reality of the matter.

Farm Policy from colonization up until the close of the Frontier.

Puritans on their way to church.  Something that's often omitted in depictions of the Puritans is how corporate early English colonization was.  English Colonists may have had individual economic and personal goals, and no doubt did in order to set off on such a risky endeavor, but they were often also sponsored by backers who had distince economic goals and expectations.  They remained heavily dependent upon the United Kingdom in that fashion. They also did not, at first, exist as individualist, but part of a community that featured very strict rules.

Up until January 1, 1863, farmers didn't acquire "virgin lands" by the pure sweat of their brow, as the myth would have everyone seemingly believe.

Let's start with a basic premise.

When the Spanish founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and the English Jamestown in 1622, there were already people here.

I don't think that's a shocker for anyone, but in recent years, the political right has taken this as a bit of a threat for some reason.  It's simply the truth.  Natives occupied the land.

The concept of the settlers, very loosely, was that the natives didn't have as good of a claim to the land as Europeans did, as essentially their agricultural exploitation, if existent at all, was not as developed as that of the Europeans.  In English colonies, it led to the concept of Aboriginal Title, which recognized that Indian nations did in fact have certain sovereign rights, including title, to land, but that it was inferior to that of the Crown, which was a more developed, civilized, sovereign.  The Crown could and did extinguish aboriginal title.2

After American Independence, this concept endured. The United States, not the states, but the United States Government, held title of lands.  States could hold title, but their title was co-equal with aboriginal title, not superior.  Generally, however up until 1862, the United States extinguished most, but not all, aboriginal title prior to a territory becoming a state, and upon statehood ceded the unoccupied public lands to the states. This gave rise to the wackadoodle concept in recent years that the Federal government retains an obligation to do that and must "turn over" Federal lands to the states, a position which should return the adherents of those asserting it to Kindergarten to start all over again in their educations.

After the Mexican War the United States found itself with a double land title problem. For one thing, it wasn't at all certain how to deal with the titles of New Mexicans and Californios who had title from Mexico or Spain.  That had to be recognized, of course, but the government was troubled by it in part because in defeating Mexico it hadn't acquired all of the Mexican administration along with that.

The other problem, in its view, is that it acquired a big swath of territory that nobody except wild aboriginals and nearly as wild courier du bois wanted to reside in.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was the answer.

It's no mistake that the Homestead Act was a Civil War measure.  In addition to the other problems the US now had a big population of rootless people it wasn't sure what to do with, and this provided a relief valved.  And the Southern States being out of the government temporarily opened up the door for the (then) progressive Republicans to really emphasize their use of the American System, which as a semi managed economy with lots of Federal intervention.  The Democrats, much like the current GOP, opposed government intervention in the economy.

So the GOP backed a new concept in which the US would directly give the public domain to homestead entrants if they put in at least five years of labor.  This too really struck at the South, as the pattern in the South had come to favor large landed interests which destroyed a farm through cotton production agriculture, and then bought new land further west and started again.

Note the essence of this here.  Prior to 1863, a farmer seeking land, or a would be farmer, had to buy it from somebody, or the Federal government, or the state.  Yes, people moved west and cleared land, but they didn't just get it for nothing.

After 1862 they could, by putting in the labor.

That system massively favored small, and poor, farmers, and disfavored large monied interests.  You could still buy the public domain, but entities doing that were in direct competition with those getting it for their labor.  It weighted things in favor of the small operator.

Which gave us, for example, the Johnson County War.

We don't think of the Johnson County War as an economic class struggle, and indeed it makes a person sound like a Marxist if you do, but it was.  Perhaps in Chestertonian terms, it was a contest between production agricultural and agrarians, which would be closer to the mark.  We've discussed the Johnson County War before, and will simply loop that dicussion in:

Sidebar: The Johnson County War








Water law was the domain of states or territories exclusively, and evolved in the mining districts of California, which accepted that claiming water in one place and moving it to another was a necessary right.  This type of water law, much different from that existing in the well watered East, spread to the West, and a "first in time, first in right" concept of water law evolved.  This was to be a significant factor in Western homesteading. Additionally, the Federal government allowed open use of unappropriated public lands for grazing.  States and Territories, accepting this system, sought to organize the public grazing by district, and soon an entire legal system evolved which accepted the homesteading of a small acreage, usually for the control of water, and the use of vast surrounding public areas, perhaps collectively, but under the administration of some grazing body, some of which, particularly in Wyoming, were legally recognized.  In the case of Wyoming, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association controlled the public grazing, and had quasi legal status in that livestock detectives, who policed the system, were recognized at law as stock detectives.


But nothing made additional small homesteading illegal.  And the penalty for failing to cooperate in the grazing districts mostly amounted to being shunned, or having no entry into annual roundups.  This continued to encourage some to file small homesteads.  Homesteading was actually extremely expensive, and it was difficult for many to do much more than that.  Ironically, small homesteading was aided by the large ranchers practice of paying good hands partially in livestock, giving them the ability to start up where they otherwise would not have been.  It was the dream of many a top hand, even if it had not been when they first took up employment as a cowboy, to get a large enough, albeit small, herd together and start out on their own.  Indeed, if they hoped to marry, and most men did, they had little other choice, the only other option being to get out of ranch work entirely, as the pay for a cowhand was simply not great enough to allow for very many married men to engage in it.

By the 1880s this was beginning to cause a conflict between the well established ranchers, who tended to be large, and the newer ones, who tended to be small.  The large stockmen were distressed by the carving up of what they regarded as their range, with some justification, and sought to combat it by legal means.  One such method was the exclusion of smaller stockmen from the large regional roundups, which were done collectively at that time, and which were fairly controlled events.  Exclusion for a roundup could be very problematic for a small stockman grazing on the public domain, as they all were, and this forced them into smaller unofficial roundups. Soon this created the idea that they were engaging in theft.  To make matters even more problematic, Wyoming and other areas attempted to combat this through "Maverick" laws, which allowed any unbranded, un-cow attended, calf to be branded with the brand of its discoverer.  This law, it was thought, would allow large stockmen to claim the strays found on their ranges, which they assumed, because of their larger herds, to be most likely to be theirs (a not unreasonable assumption), but in fact the law actually encouraged theft, as it allowed anybody with a brand to brand a calf, unattended or not, as long as nobody was watching.  Soon a situation developed in which large stockmen were convinced that smaller stockmen were acting illegally or semi illegally, and that certain areas of the state were controlled by thieves or near thieves, while the small stockmen rightly regarded their livelihoods as being under siege. Soon, they'd be under defacto  siege.

This forms the backdrop of the Johnson County War.  Yes, it represent ed an effort by the landed and large to preserve what they had against the small entrant.   But their belief that they were acting within the near confines of the law, if not solidly within it, was not wholly irrational.  They convinced themselves that their opponents were all thieves, but their belief that they were protecting a recognized legal system, or nearly protecting it, had some basis in fact.  This is not to excuse their efforts, but from their prospective, the break up by recognized grazing districts by small entrants was not only an obvious threat to its existence (and indeed it would come to and end), but an act protecting what they had conceived of as a legal right.  Their opponents, for that matter, were largely acting within the confines of the law as well, and naturally saw the attack as motivated by greed.



The invasion, as we've seen, was a total failure in terms of execution.  It succeeded in taking the lives of two men, with some loss of life on its part as well, but it did nothing to address the perceived problem  it was intended to address.  The invaders were much more successful in avoiding the legal implications of their acts, through brilliant legal maneuvering on the part of their lawyers, but the act of attempting the invasion brought so much attention to their actions that they effectively lost the war by loosing the public relations aspect of it.  For the most part, the men involved in it were able to continue on in their occupations without any ill effect on those careers, a fairly amazing fact under the circumstances, and, outside of Gov. Barber, whose political career was destroyed, even the political impacts of the invasion were only temporary.  Willis Vandevanter was even able to go on to serve on the United States Supreme Court, in spite of the unpopularity of this clinets in the defense of the matter.  Violence continued on for some time, however, with some killings, again engaged in with unknown sponsors, occurring. However, not only a change in public opinion occurred, but soon a change in perceived enemies occurred, and a new range war would erupt against a new enemy, that one being sheep.  The range itself would continue to be broken up unabated until the Taylor Grazing Act was passed early in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, which saved the range from further homesteading, and which ultimately lead to a reconsolidation of much of the range land.

That got ahead or our story a bit, but consider this.

The homestead act brought the small operators in. The big operators kept coming in. When small operators were the beneficiaries of a Federal land program.  When the inevitable contest between the two came, the Federal government sided with the small operators through the intervention of the U.S. Army.

Now let's consider the role of the Army.

All this land was available in the first place as, after the Mexican War, the Federal Government had provided the Army to "deal with" the Indians. Dealing with them meant removing them onto Reservations.  Prior to the Mexican War, Native Americans were mostly "dealt with" by the states or even simply by individuals, which made the Indian Wars prior to the Mexican War ghastly bloody affairs, something amplified by the fact that the invention of the Rifle Musket (not the musket, or a rifle, but the Rifle Musket) gave industrialized Americans a real weapons advantage over the Natives for the very first time.

Now, in complete fairness, the Army didn't enter the West like a German SS Division, and the Army spent a lot of time just trying to keep the age-old warfare between European Americans and the Natives from going on.  But it was a massive Federal intervention with the result of removing the Natives from their lands even if the reality of what occurred wasn't seen that way, fully, or by everyone, at the time.

The net result is that agriculture in the west was the beneficiary of a massive, liberal-progerssives set of agriculture policies that favored poorer agriculturalist, if not necessary poor agriculturalist.

Put another way, it wasn't the rugged pioneer finding unoccupied virgin soil in the west and creating a farm or ranch out of the pure sweat of their brows and dirt on their fingers.  That was involved, but they were given the thing they needed the most, the land, for nothing but that work, and their presence was backed up by the Federal Government, including in an armed fashion if necessary.

The close of the frontier until the 1920s.

The US has always had some sort of farm policy and a lot of it is monetary in nature, and I'm not qualified to really expand on that.   What I can say there I basically already have.

In 1890 Frederick Jackson Turner, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier was closed.  This was one year after the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush which had opened up a vast amount of Indian lands to settlement again on the basis that they weren't in productive use, as European Americans saw it.  In 1890, they all were, according to the Census Bureau.

At that point, the Homestead Act should have been repealed, having succeeded in its goal, but its in the nature of Federal programs that they always live on well after they should die.  Guaranteed Student Loans provide a current example.  So nothing changed

Then came World War One.

World War One sparked a global agricultural crisis.

Little noted, by and large, the world's economy had globalized to an extent which was only recently reestablished (and probably surpassed, maybe).  The Great War destroyed that, and part of what it destroyed was global agriculture.  The massive Russian and Ukrainian wheat supply was removed from the market as part of that, and this in turn started a massive American homesteading rush, with people who had little knowledge of farming flooding the prairie's to be dry land farmers, something which boosters insisted couldn't fail.  At first, in fact, it didn't.  The crisis carried on through the war, along with a massively boosted demand for agricultural commodities of all kids.  The 1910s saw the largest number of homesteads filed of any decade, and 1919 saw the last year in which farmers had economic parity with urban dwellers.

And then it collapsed.

The Farm Crisis of the 1920s and the Great Depression


For farmers, the Depression really started in 1920, not 1929.  Farms were failing, and yet homesteading, at a smaller post Great War rate, continued.

Then came 1929. 

Still suffering from a post-war economic crisis, 1929 brought a flood of new homesteaders as desperate town and city dwellers left their homes, having lost their jobs, and sought to try to homestead, not knowing what they were doing.  This was destroying the farm and ranch lands of the West.  Finally, with Franklin Roosevelt's administration having come in, the Federal Government stepped in to save the situation by repealing the Homestead Acts and passing the Taylor Grazing Act.

The Taylor Grazing Act protected the existing farms and ranches against new homestead entrants, meaning that they could keep grazing that part of the Federal domain which they were, in exchange for a reasonable preferential lease. That's the system we've had ever since, and its what keeps real ranchers in business to this day, although here too times have caught up with the system and at least some farming states, like Iowa, have passed laws preventing absentee corporate ownership of farms. Wyoming should do the same, but wedded to a blind concept of property rights that doesn't meet the reality of our history or the situation, it hasn't and likely won't. 

The Roosevelt farm policy went far beyond that.  The Agricultural Adjustment Act dealt directly with prices, although it was ruled unconstitutional at the tail end of the Depression in 1936.  Programs that resulted in some crops being "plowed under" took products off the market that were depressing prices, and price supports for landowners were put in place, which helped farmers in the West and North, but which were devastating to sharecroppers, who didn't own their own land, in the South.

And now today.

The net result of this, once again, is that the Republicans, by now the conservative party, were doing nothing for agriculture and would have let the occupants of the land go under. The Democrats, now the liberal party, saved them.

Since that time, it's been largely the same story, except not that much help has been needed.  The Defense Wool Subsidy was passed in 1954, for defense wool needs, under the Eisenhower Administration, so there was an example of a Republican program that helped farmers, although it was designed to really do so, and it was eliminated in 1993 while Clinton was in office, so a Democrat operated to hurt sheep ranchers.  This gets into the complicated story of subsidies, which are not as extensive as people imagine, and which have been part of a Federal "cheap food" policy that came in after World War Two and which is frankly a little spooky when looked at.  Overall, the policy is unpopular with free marketers, who tend to be Republicans, but it's been kept in place with it sometimes being noted that the overall post-war history of "cheap food" is an historical anomaly.  Anyhow, it gets a bit more complicated at this point.

Which takes us to this.

Looking at the history of it, Progressives and Liberals have kept ranchers and farmers on the land.  When Harriet Hageman notes she's a fourth generation Wyomingite from an agricultural background, she's implying that she's a direct beneficiary of a massive government program that 1) removed the original occupants of the land to open it up to agriculture; 2) opened it up to the poorer agriculturalist and kept its hand on the scale to benefit them; and 3) operated to save them in times of economic distress.

Given that, it's been the Democrats that have really helped that sector since 1914, when they became the liberal party, and Republicans before that, when they were.

But that doesn't comport with the myth people have sold themselves very well.

There are lots of reasons not to be a Democrat.  I'm not arguing that economic self-interest should dictate how a person votes, nor am I stating that the history of a party should control present votes.

But what I am stating is the current Agricultural loyalty to the GOP is misplaced based on its history.  When a person states that they're fourth generation in agriculture, they're stating that they've benefitted from the Democratic Party, and really not so much from the Republicans.  A lot of Republican loyalty is therefore based on something else, including a multi generational grudge against policies that saved them.

What else might be at work?

Footnotes

1.  I don't know the circumstances of the Hageman's purchasing a ranch in 1961, but the date is interesting, as it would put this within a decade of the last era in which average ranchers in Wyoming could still buy land.  This is almost impossible now, something that the current holders of family ranches often completely fail to appreciate.

It's also interesting in that Hageman, who is married but who retains her maiden name, doesn't work on the family farm/ranch, as Sen. Barrasso's accolade noted.  She's followed the path of many younger sons, which of course she is not, in agriculture of entering into a profession as there really was no place else to go.  This has been less true of women, who often marry into another agricultural family.

Hageman started off following an agricultural career, going to Casper College on a meat judging scholarship, something often oddly omitted in the biographies of her that I've seen, although it is occasionally noted.

1879 is a truly early Wyoming homestead entry.

2.  In spite of all the criticism that various European colonist have received, it's worth noting that French and Spanish colonization was quite a bit different than English colonization.

French colonization particularly was.  It was done on the cheap, for one thing, and almost all of the French colonist came from Normandy alone, bringing Norman culture, which was much more independent than English culture, with them.  French colonist, like Spanish colonist, were also devoutly Roman Catholic, and it was emphasized in their faith that the natives were co-equal to them as human beings, endowed with the same rights before God.  For this reason, French colonist mixed much more readily with the Natives than the English did.

This is true of the Spanish as well, who began to take Native brides (and mistresses) almost immediately upon contact.  Spanish colonization is more complicated than the French example, however, as it was not done on the cheap and was part of a massive economic effort.

Monday, January 2, 2023

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1, 1863

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day: Today is New Years Day. 45 BC  January 1 celebrated as the beginning of the year for the first time under the Julian Calendar.  Recogni...

One I missed on its anniversary:

1863  Daniel Freeman files the first homestead under the newly passed Homestead Act.  The homestead was filed in Nebraska.

While the original Homestead Act provided an unsuitably small portion of land for those wishing to homestead in Wyoming, it was used here, and homesteading can be argued to be responsible for defining the modern character of the State.

Friday, November 26, 2021

Rerun: Dugout

Lex Anteinternet: Dugout

Dugout

Dugout

This is a dugout. That is, this is a very early dwelling by some homesteader, most likely.

A lot of homesteads started in this fashion. For that matter, quite a few started and failed having never become any more built up than this. I've seen dugouts that I could date to as late as the 1930s.

This gives us an example of many interesting changes that are hard for modern Americans to really appreciate. The conditions of living expectations were simply different. Not far from this example, I know of another one in which a stone dugout was built, and about a mile away another wooden framed dugout, which were the homes of families. Not single men, but families. Man, wife, and children. And this was their bedroom and kitchen.

Early homesteading was hard, of course. But homesteading continued on up until about 1934. The peak year for homesteading was 1919. The dream of owning a place of ones own was strong (it still is) but making it in agriculture was hard in ways we can hardly imagine. Movies and television have liked to portray mansions on the prairie, but that was very rare. More typically, they have liked to portray white clapboard houses on the prairie, but frankly that was somewhat of a rarity too. For a lot of people, this was their starter home. A log structure likely came later. If it was a 20th Century homestead, and the homesteaders were Irish, a house in town was actually almost as likely.

To add a bit, another thing that is hard for some to appreciate is that in the mid 20th Century there were a lot of little homesteads. They were being filed, proven up, and failing, in rapid succession. Almost all of these little outfits have been incorporated by neighboring outfits now. A few hang on as rentals to neighbors. There is no earthly way these small outfits could survive economically today, on their own, and they barely could earlier. But, while there were many of them, they were also very isolated in an era when a lot of people still traveled by horse, and those who had cars, sure didn't have speedy cars.

Friday, November 19, 2021

The weary Agrarian looks at modern "Homesteading"

I have a love/hate relationship with the modern "homestead" movement, right down to the use of the word "homestead".

Laramie Range ranch house. This is a high altititude setting and this was almost undoubtedly homesteaded late, probably after World War One.  Nobody lives there now.

Allow me to explain.

First, I'm an agrarian.

What's that mean?

Well, it can mean of or pertaining to agriculture, but that's not generally what is meant in the American context.  Indeed, it's hard to define, even if it's easy to know.

The problematic 1930s agrarian tract, I'll Take My Stand, [1] defined it as thus:

Opposed to the industrial society is the agrarian, which does not stand in particular need of definition. An agrarian society is hardly one that has no use at all for industries, for professional vocations, for scholars and artists, and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps, an agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or for prestige-a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that becomes the model to which the other forms approach as well as they may. But an agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous industries are not allowed to rise against it. The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers.

Well, that sort of gets it, but only partially.  At least to Western Agrarians, there's another element, and that is what Aldo Leopold called the "Land Ethic".  He wrote a great deal about it, but perhaps defined it most succinctly as follows:

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Leopold bowhunting in Northern Mexico, 1948.

Now, Leopold had a great deal more to say about it than that, but the basic gist of his thought was that man was part of nature and things were ethnical if they served all of nature, including man.  Leopold was a hunter and a farmer, so he was not a cubicle dwelling urban vegan or anything of the sort.  Indeed, he took his land ethic from being a hunter, as he made plain when he stated:

Perhaps no one but a hunter can understand how intense an affection a boy can feel for a piece of marsh…. I came home one Christmas to find that land promoters, with the help of the Corps of Engineers had dyked and drained my boyhood hunting grounds on the Mississippi river bottoms…. My hometown thought the community enriched by this change. I thought it impoverished.

Indeed, that the hunter's view of the world.

And that's the Western Agrarian's view of the world as well.  The two Weltanschauug combined make up the ethic of the Western Agrarian.

But what about the "homesteader"?

Nebraska homesteaderes, 1884.

I don't really think so.

Let's take a look at the work "homestead" for just a second. It originally from Old English but its roots go all the way back to Saxon.  It's a German combination word, as so my German words are, combining "home", meaning a dwelling place, with "stead", meaning, basically, a location.  Stead is used in at least one other surviving English word, that being "farmstead", although it's not used a great deal.  

Where the word really took off in modern American English is with the Homestead Act of 1862, which was a Civil War era radical act which was designed to vest settlers in the West directly with real property, if they worked the land for a time.  We note this as a "radical" act, as it could have only came about due to the Civil War, which makes our citation to the Southern Agrarians a bit ironic, as they Southern Agrarians didn't understand the irony of the Southern historical pattern of land ownership.

The South of the 1860s was largely populated by yeomen farmers, i.e., agrarians, but the power in the South was vested in the planter class, which was a class that was making money from production agriculture.  The average Southern yeoman of, let's say, 1859, was consuming with his family most of the production from his farm and selling the surplus. That gave him a fair degree of independence, as those who have lauded yeomanry have celebrated, but it also never made him rich. Indeed, that's one of the social benefits of agrarianism, the masses are independent but neither rich nor poor.  So agrarianism vests them in decent family lives, but it never allows them to really lord it over their neighbors.

The planter class, however did just that.  Planters were engaged in production agriculture as their focus, producing first tobacco and then later cotton.  Yeomen also produced cotton as a cash crop, but not really much of it.  In comparison, planters produced a lot, and both tobacco and cotton depended upon slave labor, as is very well known.  It also depended upon land being continually available further west, as cotton is a soil destroying crop, at least when grown in the 18th and 19th Century manner.  Planters had the capital to buy land further west by selling their land that was depleted.  

Abandoned post World War One homestead.

If the land, however, was going to be given away to those who worked it, that crated a big problem in that it meant that planters would never be able to buy land economically.  Yeoman couldn't afford to buy land from governments like planters could, but planters really couldn't afford to amass land from prior individual occupants either.

Often missed in this story is that yeomen were the dominant class in the north too.  Indeed, so much romantic slop has been oozed out about Southern yeomen over the years its been nearly completely missed that in the North most farmers were yeoman as well, and more prosperous ones.  This was in part because the planter class had never really grown powerful in the north and, by the time of the Civil War, it had been supplanted.  Northern farms, therefore, were bigger, better, and wealthier, while also being agrarian units.

Leading up to the Civil War the US engaged in an enormous struggle on what the country was going to be, and how the West fit into that.  The Southern political class simply imagined it going forwards as before, developed by private enterprise, with that private enterprise larger planter driven.  In the North, however, there was not only opposition to slavery, which allowed the planter class to exist in the form in which it was found, but also a budding desire to apply the American System to the West.  We've dealt with that elsewhere, but the quote from the Congressional website on it remains well worth reading, as does the earlier post:

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

The American System remains very much with us today, and the recent passage of the massive Biden Infrastructure bill gives a good example of it.  Its interesting that we understand our own history so poorly that we tend to accuse people of "socialism" while still lauding events and people who directly took advantage of the American System.  Homesteaders provide one such example.

The Homestead Act of 1862 read:

APPROVED, May 20, 1862.

CHAP. LXXV. —An Act to secure Homesteads to actual Settlers on the Public Domain.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall, from and after the first January, eighteen hundred and. sixty-three, be entitled to enter one quarter section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a preemption claim, or which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to preemption at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre; or eighty acres or less of such unappropriated lands, at two dollars and fifty cents per acre, to be located in a body, in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands, and after the same shall have been surveyed: Provided, That any person owning and residing on land may, under the provisions of this act, enter other land lying contiguous to his or her said land, which shall not, with the land so already owned and occupied, exceed in the aggregate one hundred and sixty acres.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the person applying for the benefit of this act shall, upon application to the register of the land office in which he or she is about to make such entry, make affidavit before the said register or receiver that he or she is the head of a family, or is twenty-one years or more of age, or shall have performed service in the army or navy of the United States, and that he has never borne arms against the Government of the United States or given aid and comfort to its enemies, and that such application is made for his or her exclusive use and benefit, and that said entry is made for the purpose of actual settlement and cultivation, and not either directly or indirectly for the use or benefit of any other person or persons whomsoever; and upon filing the said affidavit with the register or receiver, and on payment of ten dollars, he or she shall thereupon be permitted to enter the quantity of land specified: Provided, however, That no certificate shall be given or patent issued therefor until the expiration of five years from the date of such entry ; and if, at the expiration of such time, or at any time within two years thereafter, the person making such entry ; or, if he be dead, his widow; or in case of her death, his heirs or devisee; or in case of a widow making such entry, her heirs or devisee, in case of her death ; shall. prove by two credible witnesses that he, she, or they have resided upon or cultivated the same for the term of five years immediately succeeding the time of filing the affidavit aforesaid, and shall make affidavit that no part of said land has been alienated, and that he has borne rue allegiance to the Government of the United States ; then, in such case, he, she, or they, if at that time a citizen of the United States, shall be entitled to a patent, as in other cases provided for by law: And provided, further, That in case of the death of both father and mother, leaving an Infant child, or children, under twenty-one years of age, the right and fee shall ensure to the benefit of said infant child or children ; and the executor, administrator, or guardian may, at any time within two years after the death of the surviving parent, and in accordance with the laws of the State in which such children for the time being have their domicil, sell said land for the benefit of said infants, but for no other purpose; and the purchaser shall acquire the absolute title by the purchase, and be en- titled to a patent from the United States, on payment of the office fees and sum of money herein specified.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the register of the land office shall note all such applications on the tract books and plats of, his office, and keep a register of all such entries, and make return thereof to the General Land Office, together with the proof upon which they have been founded.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That no lands acquired under the provisions of this act shall in any event become liable to the satisfaction of any debt or debts contracted prior to the issuing of the patent therefor.

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That if, at any time after the filing of the affidavit, as required in the second section of this act, and before the expiration of the five years aforesaid, it shall be proven, after due notice to the settler, to the satisfaction of the register of the land office, that the person having filed such affidavit shall have actually changed his or her residence, or abandoned the said land for more than six months at any time, then and in that event the land so entered shall revert to the government.

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That no individual shall be permit- ted to acquire title to more than one quarter section under the provisions of this act; and that the Commissioner of the General Land Office is hereby required to prepare and issue such rules and regulations, consis- tent with this act, as shall be necessary and proper to carry its provisions into effect; and that the registers and receivers of the several land offices shall be entitled to receive the same compensation for any lands entered under the provisions of this act that they are now entitled to receive when the same quantity of land is entered with money, one half to be paid by the person making the application at the time of so doing, and the other half on the issue of the certificate by the person to whom it may be issued; but this shall not be construed to enlarge the maximum of compensation now prescribed by law for any register or receiver: Pro- vided, That nothing contained in this act shall be so construed as to im- pair or interfere in any manner whatever with existing preemption rights : And provided, further, That all persons who may have filed their applications for a preemption right prior to the passage of this act, shall be entitled to all privileges of this act: Provided, further, That no person who has served, or may hereafter serve, for a period of not less than fourteen days in the army or navy of the United States, either regular or volun- teer, under the laws thereof, during the existence of an actual war, do- mestic or foreign, shall be deprived of the benefits of this act on account of not having attained the age of twenty-one years.

SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That the fifth section of the act en- titled" An act in addition to an act more effectually to provide for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States, and for other purposes," approved the third of March, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, shall extend to all oaths, affirmations, and affidavits, re- quired or authorized by this act.

SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That nothing in this act shall be 80 construed as to prevent any person who has availed him or herself of the benefits of the fir8t section of this act, from paying the minimum price, or the price to which the same may have graduated, for the quantity of land so entered at any time before the expiration of the five years, and obtain- ing a patent therefor from the government, as in other cases provided by law, on making proof of settlement and cultivation as provided by exist- ing laws granting preemption rights.

There were later expressions of this act that were somewhat different, such as the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916, but they all worked in a similar fashion.

Okay, so what's that have to do with modern homesteading?  

I don't think very much, really.

Mountain West Farm Bureau, trying to answer the question for its members, has published the question, and tried to answer it thus:

What is Homesteading?

Homesteading is a way of life based on self-sufficiency and the idea of living off the land. It's been around for hundreds, even thousands of years – but most people in the US associate homesteading with Westward Expansion and pioneers. Your mind’s eye might picture something like “Little House on the Prairie” when you think of homesteading, and you aren’t wrong. A homestead is all about people living and working together to do things like grow and preserve food and do other things without being so dependent on modern amenities.

This way of life is fruitful and rewarding, as what you make and what you do directly benefits and impacts you and your family. It can also be incredibly challenging. Thankfully, there are plenty of successful homesteaders out there who have put in the work themselves and are now helping others on their homesteading journeys. More on that later!

Modern Homesteading

Homesteading is becoming increasingly popular; and it's no wonder why! In today's modern world, the idea of getting back to ones' roots and living off the land is attractive to many people. Modern homesteaders tend to be focused on self-sufficiency through growing, raising, and preserving their own food. Many homesteaders today use renewable energy sources, too; like wind or solar. The homesteader lifestyle can be incorporated in small pieces or big chunks, and ranges from getting off the grid entirely to keeping backyard chickens or a rooftop garden. If you or your family is working towards becoming more self-sustained, you just might be modern homesteaders!

Does this define it? Well, maybe. . . but I think while MWFB got the recollection of the 19th Century right, something else is at work here.

Indeed, while modern homesteaders like to call themselves that, and I think are trying to make an intentional association with 19th Century homesteading, they really owe a lot more to the 1960s "back to the land" movement. [2]  

"A Member of the Family".  English idealized agrarian panting.  While highly idealized to be sure, the painting does hit upon actual features of the agricultural and agrarian family.  Fresh food, a connection with animals, and a close working family.

And that's what's wrong with it.

Modern homesteaders are highly romantic concerning what they are doing, while also seeming resistant to knowing about the past, although they'll deny that.  Now, a person has to be fair about that as there is no central set of tenants that homesteaders subscribe to, so they vary a great deal.  But one thing that seems to really be a distinct aspect of it is a rejection of the land ethic, combined with a "me and my own against the world" type of mindset.

These both come through, I think, by the constant posts, if you follow any homesteading thing at all, based upon the concept of "here's where I (or perhaps more often, me and my 'partner') are going to build our homestead!", by which they tend to mean that's where they intend to plop a house and outbuildings, with little foreknowledge on how to do things, in a pristine pasture.  That's bad farming, and its contrary to the land ethnic.  A yeoman wouldn't do that.

Which gets to the irony that there are some agrarians in towns who exercise the land ethic better than "homesteaders" out in the sticks. [3]  

Additionally, and this is really hard to define, there's a rejectionism that seems to infect homesteaders that doesn't agrarians.

Perhaps that's best summarized, in away, by the concepts of  G. K. Chesterton, the famous polymath, who was an English advocate of Distributism.  All agrarians are distributists, even though not all distributists are agrarians. [4]  Chesterton advocated for "three acres and a cow" for English agrarians, which was based upon the high production of English farmland which, at the time he poses this, still featured large-scale aristocratic ownership.  His advocacy wouldn't have really changed the viewshed of English agriculture much, but it would have allowed for Jeffersonian yeomanry independence for English yeomen including, in the case of English Catholics, the freedom to practice their religion independently.  What it wouldn't have done, however, is to free them from being English.  They would have still been participating in village and national life.

Illustration of Chesterton's English Agrarianism of the early 20th Century.

Modern homesteaders, however, heirs to the "turn on, tune in and drop out" culture of the 1960s, don't see things that way.  Indeed, they're often trying to create a world of their own, rather than live in tune with the world.

If we take the example of modern agrarians, for example, both great and small, we see how they were still part of their world, at least in a letter to Diognetus fashion. [5]  That is, agrarians are independent and agriculturally focused, but as we've defined it, and indeed as their example shows, cognizant of the land ethic. They're also aware of and part of things outside themselves.  In all true Western World Agrarian societies, and we're really only dealing with those here, they've all been deeply religious.

The examples of this abound.  Quebec was agrarian and deeply Catholic up until post Second World War economic forces eroded its agrarianism and ultimately the allure of worldly greed intruded, injecting a cancer into its society.  Emiliano Zapata's movement in Southern Mexico was also deeply Catholic and marched under the banner of the Virgin Mary in the Mexican Revolution.  Post independence Ireland was deeply agrarian and deeply Catholic.  Scandinavia up until after World War Two, to include Finland, was deeply Lutheran and deeply agrarian.  Southern Agrarianism in the U.S. had a strong Protestant Christian culture to it.  Perhaps only in the Western United States, with its remaining What Was Your Name In The States atmosphere to it, was there an exception, but it may also be noted that Western Agrarianism always existed alongside and in competition with a very laissez-faire industrialist view of the world, in spite of the massive influence of the American System in the region.

In contrast, modern homesteaders often reject much of that for a sort of hippy dippy metaphysical view of the world that's remarkably shallow.

They also tend to be ignorant of tradition.

Abandoned homestead.

Now, tradition is sometimes called by critics of it "the democracy of the dead", seemingly without those speakers realizing it's a Chesterton quote in its defense.  It actually comes from Chesterton’s book, Orthodoxy, and can be found Chapter 4, “The Ethics of Elfland.”  The actual quote states:
Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
What tends to be omitted is what Chesterton went on to say about that democracy:
Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.

Tradition is true conservatism, we'd note, the conservation of what's worthwhile.  Not everything is worth preserving, whether it's a tradition or not, but before tossing any tradition out, it should be given the same test that tools should be given.  Does it serve a purpose or not, and what is that purpose? 

Now again, this doesn't apply uniformly, and you see varying degrees of this, but the rejection of tradition aspect of things is definitely there in the homestead community.  You can see it in some of the links that I link in here on agricultural topics that are homestead oriented, and a tour of Reddit's homestead subs shows it really clearly as well.

All sorts of expressions are there, both great and small.  On the large end, homesteaders often seem to have a blistering ignorance of agricultural practices and no concept of learning them from the locals.  I've actually seen this in print, and heard it otherwise, from self professed homesteaders  who went in to an area convinced that they knew how to grow all organic whatever, often to find that Farmer Bob who lived three miles down, and who is engaged in production agriculture, already knew all about how to grow free-range kale and what the pluses nad minuses are.  For this reason, homesteaders often fail, after ruining a pasture and building on it, going back to their former cubicle lives, often with the odd observation that "farming is hard work".

Yes, it really is.

A real ignorance of animals is often part of this.

This is not to say that they lack animals. They don't tend to.  Indeed, you'll frequently find sort of an eclectic mix of them, some of which speaks to ignorance on the topic they're engaged in, and some of which does not.  Boer goats, Dutch Belted Cattle, Donkeys, and more frequently chickens and rabbits.  Indeed on the latter, I'm frequently surprised by how many homesteaders opt for rabbits which, in my part of the country, are so prolific some years that they can genuinely be regarded as a nuisance.

And I'm not criticizing that.  Rather, what I'm criticizing is the lack of knowledge that sometimes accompanies the acquisition of the animals, but more than that, the lack of knowledge on the usefulness of large animals.


Indeed, it's that last one that really surprises me.

Lots of homesteaders will acquire a cow, or cows, depending upon what they're intent in regard to the bovine is.  The cow may or may not, depending upon the homesteader, then take on sort of a pet characteristic.  This isn't universally true, I'd note, as at least one local homesteader is now packaging and selling meat.

That same homesteader, however, who has a popular podcast in that community, recently published something about preparing a pasture.

Frankly, in this country preparing a pasture is pretty rare, as generally grazing is on natural prairie, with some exceptions. A pretty common exception, I'd note, is where the pasture was previously mined or reseeded during a period of time in which that was popular with the government, for reasons of which I'm unaware.  Ranchers, however, will very rarely "prepare" a pasture.  To the extent I've known any to do so, it consisted of broadcasting seed in a pasture that could use some grass introduction. Also, there will be efforts to eradicate noxious weeds or unwanted grasses, and sometimes the government will seek to knock down the amount of sagebrush in a pasture or even the number of confers in it, up in the mountains.

Now, I'm not criticizing preparing the pasture. That's probably admirable.

What I'm interested in here, however, is a sort of missing the point aspect of this.

First of all, if you really want advice on preparing a pasture, you are probably better off calling the university's agricultural extension officer, not getting it from a "homesteader".  Another good option would be just to ask a local rancher.

But what really bothers me here is that the blogger and podcaster in question puts a lot of emphasis on freeing herself from "systems".

Now, by this, she means all sorts of what she deems systems, but maybe is missing an obvious one here.

In her blogging and writing, this homesteader notes she's freed themselves of the pharmaceutical system (more on that in a moment) and the education system (maybe more on that in a moment), the industrial food system, and the consumer debt system.  In a recent episode of her podcast, she noted that she'd flown to a homesteader conference back east and when return travel was disrupted, as will occur, she and her husband drove back home, which was presented as being freed from a system.

That may not seem to be related to the pasture preparation, but it seems to be the case that all sorts of homesteaders have an attraction old tractors.  I'll confess that I too at one time had a fascination with old tractors, but I like old combustion engine stuff.  Old tractors, I'd note, are quite dangerous.

Anyhow, if you own a tractor, you are part of a huge system, that system being, for one thing, the petroleum infrastructure system.

Now, I’m not criticizing the overall goal of being self-reliant. . . as long as it's thought out, not self deluding, and you don't really exhibit a sort of price, if you will, for seemingly thinking you haven't' tacked on to something agrarians have been doing. . . in a thinking manner, for darned near forever.

Indeed, as my views in this direction are pretty far developed, or far gone, depending upon how you look at it, it may seem surprising to readers that I'm levying some criticism here at all, and for good reason. And yet I am.

I'll get back to the petroleum "system" in a moment, but an essential essence of agrarianism is a focus on subsistence on your own.  I.e, your vegetables came from your own field, your beef or pig, or whatever, was as well, assuming that you weren't eating a deer or rabbits, etc., that you shot. Self-reliance is an agrarian thing.

And that seemingly is where an agrarian would at least stop to talk about, in this instance, maybe preparing that pasture with a horse-drawn implement.

Indeed,  I used to subscribe to Rural Heritage at one itme, and it was packed with agrarians who did just that.  And it wasn't all "implements of bygone days" by any means.  Looking it up, the current issue features the following:
Features:
Barns on the Move for Horses and Hogs
Pack Saddle Building
Facing Problems with Soil Health in Mind
A Sweeping Success at Horse Progress Days
Cowboys and Indians
2021 Summer Suffolk Gathering
Tales from Carter County - Old Lily
Midwest Ox Drovers Association Gathering
Horse Progress Days Field Equipment
Horse Progress Days Seminar: Horse Health
Horse Progress Days Seminar: Pond Management
Horse Progress Days Seminar: Maple Syruping
Horse Progress Days Seminar: Logging
Horse Progress Days Seminar: Horses and the Amish
 
Horse Progress Days Seminar: International Meeting
The thing about Rural Heritage was that it was, at least when I last subscribed, a tour de force of modern implements made for or adapted to horsepower, in the original sense.  

So I guess my beef here is that, as with so many other homestead type things, modern homesteaders are missing the deep and reinventing the wheel, and just flat out fooling themselves on some things.

I think the freeing ones selves of the pharmaceutical industry is just one such prime example.

I'm pretty back about going to the doctor, I'll note.  It's not because I’m an opponent of going to the doctor so much as it's an odd family trait, even though a lot of men in my family have an association with medicine.  We just don't.

And I rarely take medications.  I'll sit in pain rather than take Tylenol, for example.  A lot of medications make me sick, and I'm leery about all of them, not because I don't think they work, they do, it's just me.

But I sure avail myself of medicine where I need to.  For example, I'm fully vaccinated for COVID 19 and have the booster.

I downloaded some of this individual's podcasts and in two successive episodes there was dissing on masks.  Indeed, one of the same ones in which she decried "systems" where she'd flown out to the East coast and then drove clean across the US.

Now, masks and COVID 19 have been hot topics, to be sure, but being a neo homesteader does not mean that you need to tap into the subtle massive medical conspiracy line of thought.  Indeed, trying to find some good agrarian podcast (which I haven't) I downloaded a different person, who had also just been to the same conference, and met with, once again, the medicine is a conspiracy line of thought.  

Solzhenitsyn, a sort of agrarian/distributist, Orthodox thinker, may have held that there was no progress, but there sure is in medicine.

The education one baffles me a bit also.

This podcaster lives in Wyoming and Wyoming has excellent schools.  I know that this is not true for every location in the US.  But it sure is here.  That doesn't mean that there aren't good private schools too, there are.  Which gets more at homeschooling.

I don't know what the podcaster specifically was concerned about regarding the educational "system".  I've known people who lived in other regions of the country who were pretty concerned about the education system in their regions, and for good reason.  A friend of mine once lived on one of those "island paradises" in which everyone who could send their kids to private schools, as their schools were a wreck.  Another couple I’m friends with sent their youngest child to the big city Catholic school in their city, leading to their return to the church. They did that as the education was better there than in the  public schools.  Another couple I know sent their kids to the Catholic school locally as otherwise, for some odd reason, they were going to have to send them to two different grade schools.

That all concerns the topic of private schools, of course. But when people say they're opting out of the "education system", what they're usually doing is homeschooling.  I really feel leery about that.

Now, I've known one couple who homeschooled all of their kids because the local schools were again, bad.  The couple was highly educated themselves and well suited for this task.  But I've also known, although not nearly as well, others who homeschooled in grade school, and actually beyond, as they feared what their kids would learn in schools.  I.e., it wasn't that they were worried about the schools educating them poorly, or the schools having bad elements in them, it was rather that they feared the schools would teach them something that conflicted with their Weltanschauung.  

Now, to some limited, although it is limited, extent, I understand that in some places.  For children of orthodox (small "o") Christian families, there's going to be something in regard to moral conduct that's going to come up.  This used to be limited to a discussion at some point regarding sex in some expanded form that parents worried about being contrary to their moral values. But in recent years its definitely expanded well beyond that.  The entire transgender movement presents, for example, a social view, not a scientific one, that's highly problematic from a Christian moral prospective.

Those would be good arguments, I'd note, for sending children to a Christian school if there was a good one in your neighborhood.  But rather in regard to homeschooling, it seems to go a bridge further.  In that case, the parents seem to have a secondary concern on actually giving their kids an education at all and worry instead that their kids are going to learn about evolution, or that the United States didn't spring forth fully democratic and flawless in 1776.

And this seems to circle back to what is worrisome about the "homesteading" movement.  It seems very self-centered, as in the "me and mine and to heck with the rest of you" view.  I.e., I can wreck a pasture, I can live on my own, I can teach my children only what I want them to hear (their later lives in the world be damned), and I can do whatever I want on my little slice of earth.

Which is pretty much the opposite of what agrarians think.

And maybe that's what it gets down to.

Maybe the difference between agrarirans and homesteaders is love.

Agrarians conceive of agrarianism as being ideal for individuals as its natural to the human, and therefore its natural to us all.  Agrarians lament to the loss of agrarianism not only for what it means to us today, but for what it means toe everyone.

Homesteaders want an individual homestead. Agrarians want an agrarian society.  One is extraordinarily individualistic, the other is the polar opposite.

And hence the concern of the latter over the former.  We agrarians will tune into the homesteading podcasts, and read the homesteading blogs, and check out the homesteading subreddits, but they're always baffling to us and frequently disappointing.  We love nature, and the farm.  We don't invision the world as tiny individualist kingdoms.  A lot of us like to be left alone or to our own, but that doesn't mean that we don't know that there are others, and the greater whole. [6]  

We're not seeking to drop out.  We think that everbody else took a wrong turn, and hope for the turn back, and forward, even though we know it unlikely.

But, that's a philosophy that's pretty deep, and not based on me and mine.  No successful philosophy can be.


Finnish farm, 1899.

Footnotes:  

1.  I'm always leery of quoting I'll Take My Stand as it was by the "Southern Agrarians", written in the 1930s, and it really shows it.

The context of its being written is particularly interesting in comparison to today, as in fact it's a good mirror to modern times.  The writers thought, with good reason, that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies were wrecking Southern Agrarianism.  They were, accidentally, but in fairness they'd really be polished off by the farm policies of the early Cold War.

Roosevelt had no such intent, of course, and he had a massive economic crisis to deal with and, by definition, dealing with it was going to help some and hurt others, with the thought being that at least you were helping the many and hurting the few.  What the Southern Agrarians recognized, however, was that the policies were, no matter how phrased or conceived, industrial capitalist at their heart.  

That's significant as many "progressive" policies of today also are.  It's a bizarre byproduct of left wing social thought that it tends to reinforce a capitalist economy.  By removing hazards, economic, personal and moral, the risks of capitalism are essentially insured against and the need to fully participate in it dramatically increased.

Anyhow, the real problem with the Southern Agrarians is that they were Southern or Southern in sympathies and still living in the Lost Cause era.  It's not the main focus of their work, but they tended to be apologists a bit about Southern racism in some instances, although again it wasn't the focus of their writing.  There's no excuse for that, but it comes through and taints them, and it continues to taint some of their followers today. 

The full introduction to the work states:

INTRODUCTION: A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

THE authors contributing to this book are Southerners, well acquainted with one another and of similar tastes, though not necessarily living in the same physical community, and perhaps only at this moment aware of themselves as a single group of men. By conversation and exchange of letters over a number of years it had developed that they entertained many convictions in common, and it was decided to make a volume in which each one should furnish his views upon a chosen topic. This was the general background. But background and consultation as to the various topics were enough; there was to be no further collaboration. And so no single author is responsible for any view outside his own article. It was through the good fortune of some deeper agreement that the book was expected to achieve its unity. All the articles bear in the same sense upon the book's title-subject: all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian versus Industrial.

But after the book was under way it seemed a pity if the contributors, limited as they were within their special subjects, should stop short of showing how close their agreements really were. On the contrary, it seemed that they ought to go on and make themselves known as a group already consolidated by a set of principles which could be stated with a good deal of particularity. This might prove useful for the sake of future reference, if they should undertake any further joint publication. It was then decided to prepare a general introduction for the book which would state briefly the common convictions of the group. This is the statement. To it every one of the contributors in this book has subscribed.

Nobody now proposes for the South, or far any other community in this country, an independent political destiny. That idea is thought to have been finished in 1805. But how far shall the South surrender its moral, social, and economic autonomy to the victorious principle of Union? That question remains open. The South is a minority section that has hitherto been jealous of its minority right to live its own kind of life. The South scarcely hopes to determine the other sections, but it does propose to determine itself, within the utmost limits of legal action. Of late, however, there is the melancholy fact that the South itself has wavered a little and shown signs of wanting to join up behind the common or American industrial ideal. It is against that tendency that this book is written. The younger Southerners, who are being converted frequently to the industrial gospel, must come back to the support of the Southern tradition. They must be persuaded to look very critically at the advantages of becoming a "new South" which will be only an undistinguished replica of the usual industrial community.

But there are many other minority communities opposed to industrialism, and wanting a much simpler economy to live by. The communities and private persons sharing the agrarian tastes are to be found widely within the Union. Proper living is a matter of the intelligence and the will, does not depend on the local climate or geography, and is capable of a definition which is general and not Southern at all. Southerners have a filial duty to discharge to their own section. But their cause is precarious and they must seek alliances with sympathetic communities everywhere. The members of the present group would be happy to be counted as members of a national agrarian movement.

Industrialism is the economic organization of the collective American society. It means the decision of society to invest its economic resources in the applied sciences. But the word science has acquired a certain sanctitude. It is out of order to quarrel with science in the abstract, or even with the applied sciences when their applications are made subject to criticism and intelligence. The capitalization of the applied sciences has now become extravagant and uncritical; it has enslaved our human energies to a degree now clearly felt to be burdensome. The apologists of industrialism do not like to meet this charge directly; so they often take refuge in saying that they are devoted simply to science! They are really devoted to the applied sciences and to practical production. Therefore it is necessary to employ a certain skepticism even at the expense of the Cult of Science, and to say, It is an Americanism, which looks innocent and disinterested, but really is not either.

The contribution that science can make to a labor is to render it easier by the help of a tool or a process, and to assure the laborer of his perfect economic security while he is engaged upon it. Then it can be performed with leisure and enjoyment. But the modern laborer has not exactly received this benefit under the industrial regime. His labor is hard, its tempo is fierce, and his employment is insecure. The first principle of a good labor is that it must be effective, but the second principle is that it must be enjoyed. Labor is one of the largest items in the human career; it is a modest demand to ask that it may partake of happiness.

The regular act of applied science is to introduce into labor a labor-saving device or a machine. Whether this is a benefit depends on how far it is advisable to save the labor The philosophy of applied science is generally quite sure that the saving of labor is a pure gain, and that the more of it the better. This is to assume that labor is an evil, that only the end of labor or the material product is good. On this assumption labor becomes mercenary and servile, and it is no wonder if many forms of modern labor are accepted without resentment though they are evidently brutalizing. The act of labor as one of the happy functions of human life has been in effect abandoned, and is practiced solely for its rewards.

Even the apologists of industrialism have been obliged to admit that some economic evils follow in the wake of the machines. These are such as overproduction, unemployment, and a growing inequality in the distribution of wealth. But the remedies proposed by the apologists are always homeopathic. They expect the evils to disappear when we have bigger and better machines, and more of them. Their remedial programs, therefore, look forward to more industrialism. Sometimes they see the system righting itself spontaneously and without direction: they are Optimists. Sometimes they rely on the benevolence of capital, or the militancy of labor, to bring about a fairer division of the spoils: they are Cooperationists or Socialists. And sometimes they expect to find super-engineers, in the shape of Boards of Control, who will adapt production to consumption and regulate prices and guarantee business against fluctuations: they are Sovietists. With respect to these last it must be insisted that the true Sovietists or Communists-if the term may be used here in the European sense-are the Industrialists themselves. They would have the government set up an economic super-organization, which in turn would become the government. We therefore look upon the Communist menace as a menace indeed, but not as a Red one; because it is simply according to the blind drift of our industrial development to expect in America at last much the same economic system as that imposed by violence upon Russia in 1917.

Turning to consumption, as the grand end which justifies the evil of modern labor, we find that we have been deceived. We have more time in which to consume, and many more products to be consumed. But the tempo of our labors communicates itself to our satisfactions, and these also become brutal and hurried. The constitution of the natural man probably does not permit him to shorten his labor-time and enlarge his consuming-time indefinitely. He has to pay the penalty in satiety and aimlessness. The modern man has lost his sense of vocation.

Religion can hardly expect to flourish in an industrial society. Religion is our submission to the general intention of a nature that is fairly inscrutable; it is the sense of our role as creatures within it. But nature industrialized, transformed into cities and artificial habitations, manufactured into commodities, is no longer nature but a highly simplified picture of nature. We receive the illusion of having power over nature, and lose the sense of nature as something mysterious and contingent. The God of nature under these conditions is merely an amiable expression, a superfluity, and the philosophical understanding ordinarily carried in the religious experience is not there for us to have.

Nor do the arts have a proper life under industrialism, with the general decay of sensibility which attends it. Art depends, in general, like religion, on a right attitude to nature; and in particular on a free and disinterested observation of nature that occurs only in leisure. Neither the creation nor the understanding of works of art is possible in an industrial age except by some local and unlikely suspension of the industrial drive.

The amenities of life also suffer under the curse of a strictly-business or industrial civilization. They consist in such practices as manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, romantic love-in the social exchanges which reveal and develop sensibility in human affairs. If religion and the arts are founded on right relations of man- to-nature, these are founded on right relations of man-to- man.

Apologists of industrialism are even inclined to admit that its actual processes may have upon its victims the spiritual effects just described. But they think that all can be made right by extraordinary educational efforts, by all sorts of cultural institutions and endowments. They would cure the poverty of the contemporary spirit by hiring experts to instruct it in spite of itself in the historic culture. But salvation is hardly to be encountered on that road. The trouble with the life-pattern is to be located at its economic base, and we cannot rebuild it by pouring in soft materials from the top. The young men and women in colleges, for example, if they are already placed in a false way of life, cannot make more than an inconsequential acquaintance with the arts and humanities transmitted to them. Or else the understanding of these arts and humanities will but make them the more wretched in their own destitution.

The "Humanists" are too abstract. Humanism, properly speaking, is not an abstract system, but a culture, the whole way in which we live, act, think, and feel. It is a kind of imaginatively balanced life lived out in a definite social tradition. And, in the concrete, we believe that this, the genuine humanism, was rooted in the agrarian life of the older South and of other parts of the country that shared in such a tradition. It was not an abstract moral "check" derived from the classics-it was not soft material poured in from the top. It was deeply founded in the way of life itself-in its tables, chairs, portraits, festivals, laws, marriage customs. We cannot recover our native humanism by adopting some standard of taste that is critical enough to question the contemporary arts but not critical enough to question the social and economic life which is their ground.

The tempo of the industrial life is fast, but that is not the worst of it; it is accelerating. The ideal is not merely some set form of industrialism, with so many stable industries, but industrial progress, or an incessant extension of industrialization. It never proposes a specific goal; it initiates the infinite series. We have not merely capitalized certain industries; we have capitalized the laboratories and inventors, and undertaken to employ all the labor-saving devices that come out of them. But a fresh labor-saving device introduced into an industry does not emancipate the laborers in that industry so much as it evicts them. Applied at the expense of agriculture, for example, the new processes have reduced the part of the population supporting itself upon the soil to a smaller and smaller fraction. Of course no single labor-saving process is fatal; it brings on a period of unemployed labor and unemployed capital, but soon a new industry is devised which will put them both to work again, and a new commodity is thrown upon the market. The laborers were sufficiently embarrassed in the meantime, but, according to the theory, they will eventually be taken care of. It is now the public which is embarrassed; it feels obligated to purchase a commodity for which it had expressed no desire, but it is invited to make its budget equal to the strain. All might yet be well, and stability and comfort might again obtain, but for this: partly because of industrial ambitions and partly because the repressed creative impulse must break out somewhere, there will be a stream of further labor-saving devices in all industries, and the cycle will have to be repeated over and over. The result is an increasing disadjustment and instability.

It is an inevitable consequence of industrial progress that production greatly outruns the rate of natural consumption. To overcome the disparity, the producers, disguised as the pure idealists of progress, must coerce and wheedle the public into being loyal and steady consumers, in order to keep the machines running. So the rise of modern advertising-along with its twin, personal salesmanship-is the most significant development of our industrialism. Advertising means to persuade the consumers to want exactly what the applied sciences are able to furnish them. It consults the happiness of the consumer no more than it consulted the happiness of the laborer. It is the great effort of a false economy of life to approve itself. But its task grows more difficult even day.

It is strange, of course, that a majority of men anywhere could ever as with one mind become enamored of industrialism: a system that has so little regard for individual wants. There is evidently a kind of thinking that rejoices in setting up a social objective which has no relation to the individual. Men are prepared to sacrifice their private dignity and happiness to an abstract social ideal, and without asking whether the social ideal produces the welfare of any individual man whatsoever. But this is absurd. The responsibility of men is for their own welfare and that of their neighbors; not for the hypothetical welfare of some fabulous creature called society.

Opposed to the industrial society is the agrarian, which does not stand in particular need of definition. An agrarian society is hardly one that has no use at all for industries, for professional vocations, for scholars and artists, and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps, an agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or for prestige-a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that becomes the model to which the other forms approach as well as they may. But an agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous industries are not allowed to rise against it. The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers.

These principles do not intend to be very specific in proposing any practical measures. How may the little agrarian community resist the Chamber of Commerce of its county seat, which is always trying to import some foreign industry that cannot be assimilated to the life-pattern of the community? Just what must the Southern leaders do to defend the traditional Southern life ? How may the Southern and the Western agrarians unite for effective action? Should the agrarian forces try to capture the Democratic party, which historically is so closely affiliated with the defense of individualism, the small community, the state, the South ? Or must the agrarians-even the Southern ones-abandon the Democratic party to its fate and try a new one? What legislation could most profitably be championed by the powerful agrarians in the Senate of the United States? What anti-industrial measures might promise to stop the advances of industrialism, or even undo some of them, with the least harm to those concerned? What policy should be pursued by the educators who have a tradition at heart? These and many other questions are of the greatest importance, but they cannot be answered here.

For, in conclusion, this much is clear: If a community, or a section, or a race, or an age, is groaning under industrialism, and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find the way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if the whole community, section, race, or age thinks it cannot be done, then it has simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence.

2.  It's rarely noticed that the peak year for homestead entries was actually 1919 and the various homestead acts were not repealed, and even then not fully, until 1932.  There was more 20th Century homesteading than 19th Century homesteading.

The back to the land movement was a pretty big part of the hippie movement, although it doesn't seem to be all that well recalled in the history of the 60s generally.  The degree to which it shares similarities with the current homesteader movement, as will be noted, is pretty pronounced.

3.  American farmsteads usually feature dwellings on the farm, but this isn't the case everywhere and indeed it isn't the case everywhere in the United States.

Irish farms, for example, often have traditionally featured a house in town, although not always  Many Irish farmers walked to their fields daily, and they did not want to ruin valuable farm land by building an unnecessary house on it if they could avoid it.  In some regions of the US where farming and ranching was initiated by Irish immigrants, that pattern remained.  Indeed, in central Wyoming there were quite a few ranchers of Irish descent who always lived in town, not on their ranches, with some traveling considerable distances to their outfits daily.  I still know of one descendant of an Irish rancher who still does so.

While this no doubt is inconvenient in all sorts of ways, it did and does offer some advantages as well. For one thing, such ranchers were part of their communities.  It's notable that Irish American ranchers in Wyoming tended to be quite active in their local communities and retained their Faith, while out in the hinterlands both is much less true of the ranching demographic.  Town headquarted Irish American ranchers also placed a high value on education, with many of their children ending up in the professions.

4.  As a Distributist as well as an Agrarian, I'd note that the modern Distributist community is flat out weird, or perhaps contains a fair amount of weirdness.  Having said that, everything in current American economics and politics is pretty weird right now.

Anyhow, while all agrarains are distributists, some distributists pride themselves on not claiming to be agrarians, in large part because they don't grasp what agrarianism is. That's understandable enough, as distributism also tends to attract a lot of romantics who envision returning the economy of the globe or perhaps their region of it to Medieval monarchies, something that at least G. K. Chesteron would have laughed at.

5.  The letter:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign. 

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.  

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred. 

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments. 

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself
6.  Not worth putting up in the main text, but as a minor irritating aspect of this, one of the aggravating, at least to me, aspects of this is the weird, weird, rejection of time proven clothing.

Mormon farmers, Oneida County Idaho.  The Salt Lake Valley was the center of outward colonization from there, which is fairly unique compared to the settlement of the rest of the West.

It used to be said that all men's clothing came from one of two fields, the plowed field or the battlefield. That was pretty much true, up until recently.

More recently, a lot of men's clothing comes from the nursery or from test tube, including the clothing of "homesteaders".

Again, like everything else associated with homesteading, in the modern context, there is no one universal rule here.  You'll find "homesteaders" wearing broad brimmed hats and Levis, or the like, showing an adoption of time tested agricultural clothes.  But you'll also see smiling faces of young homesteaders wearing wool pull on hats and baggy sweaters with shorts in the middle of the summer, showing that they adopted their sartorial approach to rural work more from the dorm room  than the field.

While the feedstore truckers cap has tragically, and even somewhat lethally, become an agricultural clothing staple, almost all clothing actually worn by rural people in rural activities reflects a process of evolution.  Cowboys don't wear fur felt broad brimmed hats as an affectation.  That hat keeps the cancer causing rays of the sun off your head, and it sheds rain.  Levis and boots protect the rider.  And so on.

I know that its a minor matter, but coming in rejecting thousands of years of evolved agricultural dress sends a sort of statement about a person, and not a sensible one.

Related Threads:

The "Homestead" movement