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Ask HN: Did I make a mistake jumping on the homestead bandwagon?

114 points by sigmaprimus ↗ HN
I made the jump from the "big city" with a good tech job to the homestead a few years ago and have found as much as YouTube and Amazon have provided an incredible amount of information and resources, I find myself questioning my decision.

I am beginning to feel that regardless of modern innovations when push comes to shove...the truth is homesteading requires an almost soul crushing amount of hard work and fortitude for very small gains.

I can't help feel frustrated when I watch my friends in the city enjoy all of the comforts it offers and seemingly pull away from me both financially and socially.

So I am looking for either some hard truths or encouragement regarding this matter.

Please be honest and refrain from judging those who are! I am a big boy and can handle the truth.

Thank You

187 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] thread
JonChesterfield
Could you provide a description of what you mean by 'homesteading'? Are we talking buy a small farm and try to live off grid?
jb1991
First time I've heard this term as well.
_gmnw
It's a fairly popular trend now, doing exactly what OP said. It usually involves buying a few acres and trying to be self-sufficient. Of course there's a subreddit for it https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/
ctdonath
It has been popular for a long time. Internet has made concept exposure & social networking easier. My parents did it as hobby and crisis management; two generations further back my relatives were living it in earnest as norm for immigrants and descendants.
larrydag
The traditional definition of homestead is an isolated farmhouse or ranch house. Typically refers to the residence on remote land for farming or ranching purposes. I'm not sure if it is the same reference in this context.
Veen
If you're not American, a homestead is more or less the same thing as a smallholding.
ctdonath
Optimally, it's obtaining a sufficient plot of bare land and building a roughly self-sufficient complex thereon (home, barn, workshop, garden, orchard, fuel/power, pond, robust kitchen, storage, and/or etc). One may buy a property already with any degree thereof, focus on operational near-self-sufficiency.

This is particularly ingrained in American culture as we're a very few generations away from such lifestyle being normal during expansion across an undeveloped continent.

ezconnect
It seems you're not enjoying it, cut your losses and end it.
chrisjc
There might even been a decent exit plan...

I'm sure there's many people out there ready to jump onto the homesteading wagon and pick up where this person left off. That is of course if they haven't already done so much that there's nothing interesting left to do.

lb1lf
-You're never done with a farm, it is a constant battle against the elements. (It's just doubly hard if you need to break the land first, making it suitable for farming - but maintaining land comes with its own set of challenges. (I've got approx. .4 sq miles of land to tend to beside my engineering job.)
chrisjc
Just to clarify that I didn't mean all work was done... more that the existing homestead footprint leaves nothing of interest left to do as far as homesteading goes.

But still, it's an important point to drive home to anyone thinking of doing homesteading or farming... you're right, the work is never done, and it's often really hard work.

Might be better to go off and work on a farm or homestead to see what you're in for before committing your life to it.

ezconnect
That seems to be a good exit plan, rent it out to people who wants to try homestead and find out if the hard work will fit their lifestyle or it's for people who wants to experience it and go back to the convenient life of the city.
sudoaza
What is the hardwork you are having to do? Will you have to keep doing it forever or it's just until you settle? Also if it's something you didn't use to do (like cooking??) maybe you get better/becomes easier in time. Maybe ask some homesteaders about it.
pryelluw
Dude, you tried and wasn’t a fit. Just get on with it.
oneoff786
What were you hoping to experience with leaving the city and your social circle?
hprotagonist
https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/love-humor/remote-cabi... has a writer who had a similar experience.

You’ve started to discover a kind of truth. It’s just not the truth you wanted to find. Which is part of what makes truth—deep emotional truth—annoying, and part of why so many of us avoid it as much as we can.

Authors you might want to read here on coming to terms with toil and place and work absolutely include Wendell Berry, who has basically made this his life's work.

h2odragon
Its only a mistake if you really hate it but stick with it. Otherwise, you learned some things, perhaps in an expensive and difficult way; and now you can go do different things and learn from them.

NFI about "homesteading" but I've lived out in the woods for a very long time, which has had tradeoffs and difficulties. For me "city life" was like wearing an inside out pincushion suit the whole time; irritations everywhere that never went away. Out here I can calm down and pay attention to things and be something other than a hyper-reactive rage monster all the time.

That's worth more than any of the inducements available in other lifestyles, to me.

ramoz
You weren’t expecting hard work?

I miss hard work. The need to go outside and get things done. My teenage self never would’ve thought I’d be 30 missing old rural Virginia and free lands, while sleeping in an overpriced brick enclosure near DC.

ph0rque
It depends on what you are trying to do. Grow all of your food? Go off-grid? Make it your full-time job (i.e. make money from farming)? The more you answer yes to above questions, the harder it will be. Especially the last one: it's very hard to make tech-levels amount of money farming.

I would advise cutting back and building up slowly. Stay on-grid (if possible), buy as much food from the grocery store as needed, keep your job (if possible). Then, if things get easier, slowly ramp up your self-sufficiency.

latexr
You haven’t mentioned why you made the switch. That is potentially the most important factor regarding how to proceed.

For example, if you did it due to an ingrained sense of moral responsibility, your current feelings may be temporary and you’ll get through them if you stick to it or hang out with different friends which align closer to your values.

If you did it because it looked like a fun challenge but ended up being more than you can take, the solution may be to abandon the experiment.

Perhaps it’s a mix of both, in which case maybe you can cut back without doing a complete reversal or hire someone to help with the hardest parts.

You mentioned YouTube and Amazon, but not local people in similar situations. Is there no one geographically close to you, a neighbour with a similar setup, you could talk to?

sideshowb
I long ago decided it's not for me, though I have friends who do it.

If you are going to stick with it, I get the impression you need a community above all else. Forget youtube, learn from people in person, and share the labour.

If you are motivated by ethical/environmental concerns - there are plenty of other ways to make a positive difference to the world. Some of these are jobs in tech, if you pick carefully. Either in a city, or remote (if you've decided you like country living but not the manual labour).

Or you can go for a hybrid lifestyle - live rurally, grow a little food, also work part time in tech so you can buy more of life's comforts. (or, y'know, other jobs - teach maths? work in tourism? my friends are building a business selling fruit wines).

But yes, I get the impression that fullon homesteading is hard, e.g. at least some WWOOF hosts couldn't survive without the free work of volunteers. Maximum kudos for giving it a go.

etempleton
As someone who grew up on a small farm I have absolutely no interest. It is hard work, all the time, for very little gain. Most small farms barely break even or lose money. You have to love the work. A lot of people do. It is not for me.

Now, do I enjoy nature and want to live away from the city? Yes, yes I do, but I don’t need to homestead to do that.

he_is_legend
I feel more or less the same I think. However, if the income was the same as with a tech job, I'd go back to it in a heartbeat. Sitting on my ass all day in front of a screen is soul destroying in many ways - I'd much rather be out doing something in the garden :)
sheer_audacity
The hard truth is that farming/homesteading is difficult, dangerous work which is even more difficult if you’re doing it cut off from a community. You have to be doing it for your own satisfaction rather than anything else, as the glory days of homesteading were almost 150 years ago in America.

Cities work great for many people, there’s no denying that. The main question should be what works for you, rather than anything else.

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ungamed
> I can't help feel frustrated when I watch my friends in the city enjoy all of

> the comforts it offers and seemingly pull away from me both financially and

> socially

If you don't find total value greater than your total losses in the situation, the solution is evident. Make a list, do the math. Revisit it periodically.

ergonaught
The truth is simply that you do not value the gains sufficiently to make the tradeoffs worthwhile.
satisfice
I just don’t understand why you would ask that question of perfect strangers on Hacker News.

And why would you call homesteading a bandwagon? It’s a major life decision, not a new kind of yoga pants.

It’s very simple, really. Are you happy? Are likely to be happy? No? Then come home Bill Bailey.

core-utility
> And why would you call homesteading a bandwagon? It’s a major life decision, not a new kind of yoga pants.

This is true, but I understand why OP would say it's a bandwagon. There's been a sharp increase in homesteading as a trend going around Tik Tok, YouTube, etc. People are seemingly more interested in it now.

satisfice
I want to encourage us to distinguish between something that happens to be trending, and you decide to do it, versus doing something BECAUSE it is trending. Invoking “bandwagon” sounds like you are doing it for FOMO purposes rather than because it is a fit for you.
pjc50
I think it's the result of being influenced by _youtube_. Are people just more impressionable or is there something different about all this algorithmic, highly personal media? Every kind of bad decision seems to have a youtube/tiktok following, who seem not to understand how "produced" their videos are.

It also seems that OP has done this on their own, without a partner? Makes it an even more terribly lonely path to follow. There's a reason people everywhere get out of subsistence farming as soon as possible: it's _hard_.

iqonq
Why do you think everybody lives in cities now?
dhumph
consider if there is a in between option that fits. Off grid but not self sufficient? No animals but huge garden? Try to find the things that do give value to you. If you did the whole thing just to be known as the homesteading guy then be honest with yourself and give it up.
lb1lf
I am by no stretch of the imagination homesteading, but I happen to live on a farm. It is not an active farm - the land is rented out to a nearby farmer and the only animals to be seen are a couple of cats and deer like you wouldn't believe.

Anyway, just keeping what land is not rented out and the buildings from degrading is nigh on a full-time job in itself; trenches need to be dug and maintained, forest kept at bay, houses painted, roofs mended &c.

I've much respect for anyone who decides to give it a go, but I believe your assessment is correct: It is an awful lot of work for little gain but subsistence, not leaving much time or money for other pastimes.

A couple of hundred years ago, the alternative to this back-breaking work might have been starving or succumbing to the elements.

Today, the alternative is just about any paid job, outsourcing all the backbreaking work to other, larger, more efficient units.

For most people, the choice is simple; for other, more adventurous people, trying out the lifestyle is tempting enough to actually go ahead and do it.

You've gone ahead and done it, found it not to be all it was cranked up to be.

Unless you find (or think you will eventually find) comfort and fulfillment in the work in its own right, I'd say cut your losses, find employment somewhere and try to use the lessons learned while homesteading to your advantage in phase II of your career in the big city.

maxduckworth
What you said about the work required to keep buildings from degrading and the forest at bay is so true, but it's something you don't realize until you live it.

The other option I've been playing with is to treat homesteading like a hobby. Outsource all the non-core homestead work and insource the gardening, animal husbandry, etc (which is harder to outsource anyway), all while keeping a remote tech job.

mitchell_h
I've tried the outsourcing part before. Unless you have fields you can lease out or some other basic need of other farmers, it really doesn't work. Especially today with the shortage of "blue collar" workers. The costs to have someone clear land, dig ponds, run water lines, etc is either too much or you simply can't find someone that's reliable.

I've seen a few folks move from the city in the last 5-10 years and try the "we'll just hire a landscaper to manage the drive way and cut by the trees". It didn't work out well. 10s of 1000s of dollars a year to have someone reliably do it, or they simply couldn't find someone.

lb1lf
-Except the 'remote' part, this is basically what I've done - I work for an engineering company 2.5 miles from home, then tend to the land with my father-in-law on weekends (and evenings if something comes up!)

We grow some fruit and veggies, tinker with the property, trying to improve a little here and there, leaving it in a slightly better state for the next generation (We live here as my wife's family has been living here quite literally since the dark ages; when Columbus wore diapers, my wife's ancestors had already tilled this plot of land for at least a hundred years)

I'd go nuts if it was all I did, though - farming is lonely, hard work. I'd much rather do engineering. Different strokes, &c.

datavirtue
The same can be said of large houses. They look fantastic and wonderful but many people don't think about the scale of maintenance. A smaller/modest house can have it's roof replaced for $4500...that fancy house down the street: $25000 for the low-ball.
0x445442
Heck most people won't even figure in the extra cost of electricity for a larger home, never mind understanding upkeep is a fairly consistent fixed cost that’s proportional to the size of the home.
dustymcp
Man the cleaning in itself is pretty crazy on big houses..
elliekelly
I can’t for the life of me remember the name but there’s a site that’s kind of a Couch Surfing/Airbnb/Craigslist mashup where people can post a room or a property available in exchange for a certain amount of work each day/week/month. Some people will post a typical home for a week on the condition the occupant feeds and walks the dog while they’re away but a lot of the listings were for rooms on a farm in exchange for a few hours of work each day. I used it once in Spain with a friend and it was a ton of fun. It was really hard work even though I suspect it was “easy” work by farming standards.

Perhaps someone here knows the site and will chime in with the name because if you have a spare room or two and enjoy meeting new people it might be an affordable way to get a bit of help.

jmacd
It's very difficult. If you don't LOVE it then don't fight it. If you loved it, you'd know. You might still dislike the amount of work or some of the work itself, but I think you'd know.

The other possibility is that you are re-romanticizing city life. Grass is always greener. Perhaps an extended vacation of a month or two back in the city will give you fresh perspective or the certainty you need.

ehnto
> The other possibility is that you are re-romanticizing city life. Grass is always greener. Perhaps an extended vacation of a month or two back in the city will give you fresh perspective or the certainty you need.

Like you alluded to, we tend to romanticize what we don't have, but I think the mistake is in attaching too much existential meaning to it, like we might get it wrong and fail to be happy. If you do it earnestly, with intentionality, it'll never be a period of failure if you end up changing your mind. Maybe you eventually find that an occasional trip to the city is all you need to satisfy the city dweller inside you. Or maybe a retreat every year and regular hiking is enough nature to calm the soul.

I can yearn for nature and crave a coffee in the city center all in the same day, I think that's pretty normal. While travelling and deeply immersed in another country, I'll get pangs for home, it doesn't mean I need to get on the first plane home but it doesn't mean I hate travelling either.

There is a bit of a false dichotomy going here anyway, there is a broad range between city life and homesteading, maybe just re-gearing to be somewhere inbetween is a good compromise.

lvl100
I do think there’s an opportunity for someone to homestead and incorporate modern technology. A lot of homesteaders are focused on doing it the traditional way, but I believe there is a good deal of money to be made from IoT and automation in farming and homesteading.
shimonabi
It's not like Stardew Valley.

My granparents were farmers, never had a tractor. When they were 50 they looked like 70. They had no other option.

You have other options.

auslegung
We’re planning to buy 10-20 acres about 30 minutes outside the city, have a few animals, have a large garden (0.5 acres probably), but I intend to keep my job. Our goal is to produce something instead of only consume, reduce our dependence on a supply chain that we think is untenable, and be able to grow most of our own food should we need to. We’re going to focus on growing food that’s easy to grow. I expect this will be work, but not a soul crushing amount. Is it possible that doing something like I’ve described would be a “best of both worlds” thing, or worst?
dkrudy
That is a good middle ground, but be ready to drive for SO MUCH more of your life. I grew up this way, and now, live in a city, where I'm engrossed in my whole life, except my job is 30 minutes away, out into the country. 1. You'll be shocked how much planning it takes to accomplish any little task. You'll need to plan days or weeks in advance in order to not forget to get little items that will keep your progress going. And the planning ahead and covering contingencies also gets expensive. 2. As much as it makes sense, it will be also somewhat exhausting to work a whole day, and then have to make 3 stops in town for provisions before getting to go home. Keep that in mind too. 3. Cheers! Weigh these cons, and if they're not bigger than your pros, then find joy in what you've picked. Make some of driving prayer time. Buy a jeep to love time on the road. Gain confidence and self appreciation for the planning and consciousness you're capable of when you're calculating and covering contingences. Nothing is perfect, only good.
auslegung
My job is remote so no commute, and we plan to homeschool. We’re going to start small, like a 10 sq ft garden lol, then get bigger slowly each season so we don’t get overwhelmed. Once we get to a place where enough is enough we’ll stop getting bigger and just maintain. We’d like to eat only our own food but we realize that’s more work than we want, so we’ll supplement with what local farmers are growing and butchering.
tjic
This is similar to how I've been living on my homestead for the last 8 years, and I'm enjoying myself.
maxduckworth
That seems like a great model for the modern world.

What is the food that's easiest to grow?

unnouinceput
Potatoes. They require the least maintenance and if you employ a small greenhouse (really, just a meter high, sticks and plastic sheets as cover) they can be grown all year round, yielding as much as 4 or even 5 harvests, depending on the potato type.
shireboy
Depends where you are. I like things I can grow vertical to maximize harvest per sq ft - okra and beans have been my most forgiving and pest free.
auslegung
It depends on the region. I don’t know much yet, but I’d like a lot of perennials that way it’s less to plant every season. But it might be the case that perennials take a lot of work, idk.