After last year’s lockdowns and food shortages, a trend to be more self-sufficient has grown. Throughout the country, more and more people are moving away from cities to start homesteading.
The term homesteading in itself can be confusing. In 1862, The Homestead Act was created to distribute public lands for private use. The definition also refers to ancestral homes or houses occupied by a family with adjoining land. But most recently, homesteading has come to describe the practice of “living off the land.”
The owner of Sharingwood Farmstead described her experiences to The Epoch Times, “We moved out to a renovated home on 7 acres in 2018 to help us, as a family, cope with symptoms of anxiety and ADHD in myself and our kids. From the beginning, it was a literal and figurative breath of fresh air! It’s hard to explain, but there was an immediate sense of calm‒even though there was, and always is, a long list of things that needed doing. We started with fixing up the house and trying to control pests that had overtaken the property. It was natural to get a cat to help with mice, and a dog to help us keep coyotes away, and then chickens to help with ticks. When we realized that we could manage these three species, and that we enjoyed them, we started thinking of our new life from a big picture point of view. What else could we do? So we decided to try pigs, rabbits, and other fowl. We added a cow last spring during COVID and rounded out our ‘farmstead’ with sheep and goats this spring.”
The homesteading boom has led to YouTube channels about raising and tending livestock, growing and harvesting food, and preserving supplies. Some homesteaders are new to this practice, but in the Missouri Ozarks, it is a large part of the culture and heritage.
The Epoch Times also interviewed Cheryl Franklin of Beeman Hollow Farm. She has been homesteading since the 70s and is the creator of the Ozarks Homesteading Expo in Goodman, Missouri. – READ MORE
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