Homesteading

 Ever since the Industrial Revolution, when millions of people left farming for work in the factories, there has been some sort of "back to the farm" movement.  People lose track of why they left the farm in the first place, and people who have never farmed, but want to break away from factories and urban life, think of farming with a sort of golden glow.

In recent years this "back to the farm" concept has been branded as "homesteading."  Originally American homesteading meant people getting a certain number of acres of unoccupied frontier land (at least land that was unoccupied once the indigenous people had been driven off), and they could keep it if they farmed it successfully for a certain number of years.  But more recently the term has come to mean making one's living on a farm, after having had a quite different sort of career.

It's easy to be nostalgic for a rural past, without the hurly-burly of modern life, without the noise and industrial pollution, living as self-reliant, close to home, interacting with one's family most of the day rather than just after work, eating wholesome home-grown food.  The rural population is often described as being the "real Americans."  Popular "country music" evokes the rural (or at least small-town) life.  The Middle Ages, when almost everyone was involved in farming, is often seen as epitomizing this rural past.  On this blog, the entry about medieval farm animals has been the most popular for nine years, ever since I first posted it.

 

 But farming is very hard work, and if you're imagining the fresh scent of clover as greeting you in the morning, add to that the fresh scent of the manure pile.  Modern homesteaders have advantages medieval peasants never dreamed of.  Starting with the fact that they live in the twenty-first century, even if they're engaging in activities that have roots going back ten or twelve thousand years.

Their farms have electricity, TVs, internet connections, and modern plumbing.  Their kids ride the school bus to get educated.  They have cars and/or trucks to get to town, for shopping, for entertainment, to settle legal issues, and to get medical assistance if needed.  Driving a tractor is a lot easier than walking back and forth across the field behind a plow.  They can sell their hand-crafted honey (or whatever) on their website for extra money.  If they haven't canned enough vegetables to last through the winter (recalling that modern canning was invented in the nineteenth century) they can buy fresh produce at the grocery store, imported from California or South America.

You've got to admire our ancestors.  They were tough and resourceful, and it's a wonder enough of them survived to produce the generations that led to us.  Few of us would survive a year as a medieval peasant.

Fortunately we don't have to!

© C. Dale Brittain 2023

 For more on peasant farming and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.