Homesteading with Heart, Just exactly what does that mean?

Homesteading.  Urban Homesteading.  Modern-Day Homesteading.  Backyard Homesteading.  Sustainable Homesteading.  Self-Sufficient.  Back- to-Basics.  Back-to-the-land.  Agrarian Culture.  Simple Living.

These are just some of the keywords that are being used to describe the movement that is sweeping our nation and others.  Perhaps it is America’s pioneering spirit that is energizing the wave of people, men and women, entire families to seek an alternative lifestyle.  Perhaps it is the long-term economic downturn, of which is neither a recession, nor a depression, of which it remains nameless, but exists nonetheless.  Perhaps it is the unfulfilled restless nature of those who have been working for the man, without fulfilment-money can’t buy happiness phenomenon.  Perhaps it is the generations who have lived watching families fall apart, people succumb to the almighty dollar, the temptation of being happy….if only they had a little more fill-in-the-blank_________.

Perhaps it is just time.

Homestead, as defined by Webster:  noun.  A house, esp. a farm, together with the outbuildings.  A tract of land granted under the homestead act.  2.  To settle land and farm it…to settle land and claim it.

Homesteading as defined by Wikipedia:  Broadly defined, homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency.  It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs, and it may or may not also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale.

Time to get back to basics, back to the land, back to what built this country.  The self-reliant spirit of those who pioneered before us.  People are seeking fulfillment, the meaning to life.  Living with all the comforts you can buy apparently does not nourish the soul, as many, many professional, educated, people are leaving the work place, leaving corporate America to pursue a slow, simple, self-sufficient life where what it means to live fully, each and every day trumps the almighty dollar.

The dirt under your fingernails, tired back, whole food raised on your own land by your own hands kind of life.

This is Homesteading.

There is a pull not only on heartstrings, but at soul level longing, something tidal coming.  People, men and women alike are feeling it magnetic like a tide.  A coming home if you will, a longing to return to roots, to perhaps set root not yet established.

 Homecoming to the homestead. 

Slowing to taste life, straight out of a garden tilled by own hands.  Sweetness warmed round by sun, juice streaming down chins joyful.

To taste life straight from the Ball canning jar.

To craft a life from your hands, from your life, on your own terms, not someone else’s clock.  To start from scratch, chicken scratch to be exact.  To wake each sunrise to a crowing of the glory of days.  Not the dull droning of empty sameness.  To walk out to the coop barefeet, damp grass and sunshine, to gather warm eggs for breakfast.  Awaking over golden yellow yolks to a path less traveled.  Life lived in full color.  Awakening all senses, seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, hearing as though newborn, stirring the soul.

Warm milk in glass jars, warm bread on oven racks, sweet jelly picked by hand with loving devotion, satisfaction deep within.  Living daily in rhythms synced with creation. Natural routine playing out musical as the sunrises, feeling it in your bones, not just the blaring of the alarm sending you into survival mode.  An emergency looking to escape.

Notes of  living energy, emotion engaged, and moving with you, moving through you as the day.  The rhythm of rain on a steel roof beats with hearts just inside barn doors. Old wood framing views of vibrant damp green, electric and alive, lightening quickening muscle, feeling the dampness splash up, smelling sweet hay and manure, as warm milk steadily fills jars. Warm, damp skin felt deeply alive as toes dance through puddles to rain drops staccato rhythms.

Yeasty goodness wafts from ovens raising spirits as dough.

Days cyclical, calendars marked upon body upon soul,  upon earth’s seasons. Roots move down steadily as sun shines from above. Stillness comes as melody playing softly in golden sunlight refracting prismatic through leaves.  Dancing joy as evening graces.  Sweet time marked beautiful around eyes gazing gauzy love.  Veiled thin through years love shines through sheer streaming from hearts.  Living raw, open, fully alive, experiencing all there is, all life is, drinking it in on parched soul.  Filling as glass, soul washed baptismal clean awaiting another glorious crowing to mark the rhythm of days to come.

This is Homesteading with Heart.

Intentional living, radically pursuing self-sufficiency, creative living, and freedom.  A holistic lifestyle of nurturing body soul and spirit living in cooperative harmony with creation. Walking barefoot in grace, dirty toes standing upon grace as garden soil, leaning into seasons and cycles, confidently honoring personal independence with head and heart held high, stepping forward in faith to learn the art of intentional living.

Transforming a life into living.

 

Shared with: The Barn Hop

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com