Yahoo Lifestyle A new generation embraces living off the land — with or without the land
FRONT ROYAL, Va. - Cassandra Daniel held a quail in one hand, nestling the yellowish-brown-feathered bird’s head between her fingers. In her other hand, she grasped a pair of kitchen shears. The slide on a large screen next to the bubbly, always-in-motion millennial hinted at what would happen next inside Tent A at the Warren County Fairgrounds. The title of the slide: Quail Dispatching.
As an audience of a few hundred people watched raptly from rows of folding chairs, Daniel turned to the four volunteers who had joined her. They were all women, one in a shirt with the Bible verse “Let all that you do be done in love.” Each held a quail they tried to keep calm.
“Ladies, I’m going to need you to commit,” said Daniel, 39, whose ordinarily cheerful face had turned serious. She didn’t want the birds, which she’d raised in her Maryland backyard, to suffer.
One by one, the four knelt over a white plastic bin and cut the necks of the quail. Within a few minutes, the women were holding up meat that wouldn’t look out of place on a foam tray in a grocery store. Daniel was jumping up and down, cheering the results as “beautiful” before handing out wet wipes. The quail would go home with the women in plastic food storage containers. They could serve it for dinner: fresh, homegrown poultry, with a taste Daniel described as delicious and a touch gamy.
Justina Geiswite, a 38-year-old Pennsylvanian who had raised her hand after being egged on by her best friend and cousin who joined her on this “girls trip,” was still running on adrenaline as the tent cleared.
“I honestly didn’t know I could do that,” she said, beaming. “I’m excited to try the meat out. I mean, I did it myself, so it means more.”
It was Day 1 of the sold-out Homesteaders of America Conference, and on the fairgrounds at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains on this cloudless Friday in October, more than 6,000 people were attending sessions on growing crops, home schooling, canning, using plants for medicine and raising livestock. Kids were labeling meat cuts on worksheets, and booths were selling chicken coops, wool products made with a spinning wheel and the occasional provocative T-shirt, like one that shouted, “PASTEURIZATION IS FOR WEENIES!”
Homesteading - going back to the land, living more simply, becoming more self-sufficient - has been with us since there were industrialized societies to leave behind. But it tends to see an uptick when people’s faith in society is shaken. Jason Strange, a professor at Kentucky’s Berea College who studied the lifestyle after his parents were part of a back-to-the-land movement, called these “times of disruption.” Think recessions, supply-chain disruptions, political upheavals, pandemics.
In an era of same-day delivery, homesteading has grown in popularity and broadened in scope, bringing together people who have traditionally been drawn to the lifestyle and people who never imagined they’d embrace it. Some are motivated by Christian, conservative viewpoints. Others worry about climate change or additives in grocery-store food. Some live on swaths of rural land. Others live in cities and suburbs. Daniel, who goes by her maiden name in the homesteading world and her married name in her professional life, grows everything she can from her three-bedroom townhouse about 25 miles from D.C. and has a full-time job as an assistant principal.
The Virginia conference, which sold out over a few days, is one testament to the hunger for homesteading how-tos. Another: its growing popularity on social media. Influencers with followings that can top a million walk viewers through chores: clearing land for pasture, butchering pigs, chopping wood, making soap. The homesteading subreddit boasts more than 3 million followers, putting it in Reddit’s top 1 percent of communities - not far behind one dedicated to Taylor Swift, and ahead of one on fantasy football.
In it, newbie and aspiring homesteaders seek advice:
“New to homesteading this year and have been raising several turkeys for meat since early spring. Yet here I am two days before processing and I’m having a really hard time not crying when I think about taking their lives.”
“Just wondering where I can find a partner who’s interested in this kind of lifestyle (city girls seem to get a distant look, or look at me like I’m crazy when I talk about it)…”
“Should I abandon a successful career with a 6-figure job and move to a homesteading community, or is the whole ‘simplicity’ notion a load of bunk?”
Strange, author of the 2020 book “Shelter From the Machine: Homesteaders in the Age of Capitalism,” said it was clear from the pandemic’s early days that homesteading would see another spike.
“The covid pandemic was exactly the sort of thing that gets people thinking,” said Strange. “They’re in a city, they’re in lockdown, it looks like food deliveries are getting a little shaky.
“They start thinking, ‘Maybe I should have a little patch of land.’”
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‘The house was secondary’
Elias Castillo wove through the green tangle of his suburban yard in Fairfax County, Virginia, pausing to point out all he was growing. Here, in a raised bed in front of his gray two-story home, was a cassava plant. Here, nestled on the side of the property that gets the most sun, was a fig tree. Here, along the fence he refers to as his “green wall,” were vines loaded with grapes, squash, beans and blackberries.
He plucked fruits and vegetables as he walked, handing them to his two young daughters. Luna, a ponytailed 2-year-old, popped peppers and cucamelons and figs into her mouth, while Maya, a blue-eyed 6-month-old, gnawed on an edible dahlia.
When Castillo and his wife were house-hunting in 2020, there were two non-negotiables on their list. No. 1: Their new home had to have land. No. 2: It couldn’t have a homeowners association.
“Almost, the house was secondary,” Castillo, 35, said on a recent weekday. “The plot of land was what we wanted.”
They wound up here, in a neighborhood not far from the interstate, on about a third of an acre he crammed with plants. With an approach he describes as “not chaotic gardening” but “very close to it,” he has managed to grow as much as 80 percent of the produce his family eats in a year. During the pandemic, as store shelves emptied out and people panicked, there was a sense of security in knowing food was right outside their door.
Although the word “homesteading” invokes the Homestead Act and the parcels of land that once came with it, homesteading in 2024 doesn’t necessarily require acreage. Definitions vary, but those trying it today say homesteading generally means producing food and other household necessities to meet one’s own needs. On one end of the spectrum are people living completely off the land and off the grid. On the other are those growing produce on their apartment balconies.
Lydia Craft, a 36-year-old Laceys Spring, Alabama, woman, only set out to eat healthier food.
She and her husband had a comfortable life in their suburban home, where their four kids all had their own bedrooms. But when she went from keeping a small garden to planting corn along the back fence of their yard, in a neighborhood where there happened to be a homeowners association and her husband happened to be the president, he suggested it was time to get some land.
A few short years later, they live in an old farmhouse on 84 acres - enough space to run a mile without leaving the property. They’re raising chickens, pigs and ducks. Their goal is to be fully self-sufficient. A city girl and former ballet teacher, Craft said her transformation has taken some acquaintances by surprise.
“People who haven’t seen us in, like, five years, who come to our property and see me pick up a chicken or pet a pig or do something messy, they’re like, ‘Oh, the prissy ballerina is doing this?’” she said.
Castillo, who calls himself a “suburban homesteader,” doesn’t plan on moving to a farm anytime soon or butchering animals. But he challenges himself to grow as much as he can at home.
In doing so, he’s built a social-media following in the homesteading movement. On his TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts under the name “gardenforaged,” he takes viewers through his garden and shares the growing skills that come naturally to him.
He’s noticed, clicking through profiles, that much of his audience is different from him. He’s an immigrant; he came to the United States at 13 from El Salvador, where his dad and grandfather were struggling farmers, worked his way through college, opened a juicery and then a restaurant and settled into a subdivision in a blue bubble not far from Washington. His followers live in rural areas; many of them are Republican. Some have views he privately considers “off the rails.” He wonders what they think about immigrants - do they believe the stuff about eating house pets?
Part of Castillo’s goal on social media has become to change perceptions. Food unites, he says, and he uses his platform to show people that this is what an immigrant looks like: someone working hard, contributing, securing his piece of the American Dream.
“We meet somewhere here,” he said, “where gardening is.”
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‘Hicks and hippies’
The politics and backgrounds of those drawn to homesteading can be hard to map. Strange, the professor, summed up the traditional breakdown as “hicks and hippies,” which, incidentally, was part of the working title for his book.
A 2022 Homesteaders of America survey found both liberals and conservatives among the group’s membership, with 44 percent of respondents considering themselves conservative, compared to the 27 percent who said they were liberal. The biggest common denominator was religion: More than 74 percent reported being Christian, Protestant or Catholic.
For Homesteaders of America founder Amy Fewell, it was health that started her on a path away from her life as a Northern Virginia suburbanite and media professional, toward farming and home-schooling her children on five and half acres. But faith came along the way. On her blog, she writes, “This homesteading movement isn’t just a trend, it’s literally a movement of God - getting back to the stewardship of the land.”
Since 2020, she said, her organization has seen a spike in the Christian, conservative demographic. There were signs of that at the conference, which opened with a prayer and featured an after-hours revival complete with baptisms.
Inside the “Big Barn,” the event’s main stage, a massive American flag hung next to an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which originated as a sign of American resistance during the Revolutionary War and has in recent years been embraced by some on the far right. Virginia state Del. Nick Freitas (R-Culpeper), a speaker who was something of a celebrity at the conference, carried a “Tread around and find out” mug he sold at a booth with other merchandise.
Most of Freitas’s comments centered on legalizing the sale of raw milk, which proponents claim carries health benefits lost in the pasteurization process intended to kill disease-causing pathogens. “Why is it easier to get fentanyl than raw milk in the Commonwealth?” he asked.
Other speakers focused on the nitty-gritties of homesteading, in talks with titles like, “‘Meating’ Homestead Goals with Rabbits” and “Pasture & Soil Management.” There were few mentions of specific political parties or politicians, and the most common red hats read: “Make Milk Raw Again!”
If there was a common theme across conversations with scores of attendees, it was a desire to be less dependent on societal structures. And the conviction that they could opt out - leave the “rat race,” stop relying on mass-produced food, get back to the basics - in their own households, right now.
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‘This is food’
Did Cassandra Daniel ever picture herself here, in the rural countryside of Virginia, handing quail out to strangers and teaching them what she calls the craft of humane harvesting and butchering?
“No way. No way,” she said when asked days after her tent demonstration.
On her blog, Becoming a Farm Girl, she writes of spending most of her life chasing big-city career dreams. By the time she turned 30, she had earned two degrees and quickly risen through the ranks in her work as an educator. But she had started feeling like she was “outsourcing much of my life in pursuit of the career ladder” at the same time she was going down the rabbit hole about the additives in grocery-store food. She thought back to stories she’d heard growing up, of life on her grandparents’ farm.
“It was always so striking in comparison to the life that my brother and I lived in the suburbs and away from all of that,” Daniel said.
She couldn’t pack up and move to a farm; for one thing, her husband, a Navy chief, was still several years from retiring. So, soon she was growing vegetables on her back deck, then filling her basement with 500 canned products, then composting with worms. It was a matter of time before she decided she wanted to raise livestock, since meat and eggs were also part of her diet. Quail - small, quiet, quick to mature (“Fast food,” as she wrote in her conference slides) - seemed doable even in a townhouse.
She learned how to “dispatch” them from a woman who sold quail eggs at a farmers market.
“I needed my dad to talk me up a couple times,” Daniel said. “After I did it, yeah, I felt proud of myself. Some people say, ‘How could you do that to something?’ There’s a purpose. This is food.”
She dreams of at least five acres of her own somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic. More animals: chicken coops, at least one cow, some lambs. Until she gets there, she’s making do with what she has.
For those who feel drawn to homesteading but aren’t sure where to start, her how-tos feel like a way in. Geiswite, who watches Daniel’s YouTube videos, said she was willing to get her hands dirty with quail because it seemed like something she could do from the apartment she rents.
She got interested in the homestead lifestyle after the pandemic but has not yet dived in, aside from following Daniel: “I’m still just learning from her,” she said.
One of the first lessons she would face: figuring out how to prepare the quail she had killed and defeathered - and how to do it from the Airbnb where her group was staying for the conference.
Pennsylvania-style chicken and waffles had been on the menu for dinner that night. With Geiswite holding the plastic container of fresh meat, they considered whether to change their plans.
Quail and waffles? She laughed: “Maybe now we’re going to have to.”
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