When the city lights have lost their luster and the so-called conveniences of urban life are beginning to feel more and more inconvenient, both for you and the Earth, it may be time for a significant change – a return to the land.
Listen closely and if you hear that nature is calling you back home, take it as a sign, direct from your intuition, that homesteading is your true calling.
It all starts with a dream: to have a few chickens, put in a garden, go foraging for some healing herbs as you walk barefoot on your own patch of land.
Next thing you know, you are milking a goat, raising ducks and stocking your pantry with homemade jams, pickles and chutneys.
A homesteader’s life is multifaceted, never with a dull moment and always with a hint of adventure.
It may happen that a fox chooses one of your free-range chickens as a meal to survive the long winter ahead, or that your garden seeds wash away in the rain, or perhaps it doesn’t rain at all and your greens are wilting, headed straight into seed.
Just as a city life has its ups and downs with traffic and too many people, so does a country life have blessings and distractions too.
A homesteader has to be resilient, tough, and determined to make it, no matter what. The choice to opt out of a consumer life, already puts you up there with the doers, the workers of the land.
Once you get your beliefs past the mindset that you need to buy everything in order to survive, then you are well on your way to leaving the city, so that you can provide for yourself, your family, even the local community.
When you choose to head out into the countryside, your quickly gathered homestead skills will begin to flourish as you thrive off of sunlight and the desire to connect deeply with the environment.
Becoming a homesteader doesn’t happen overnight and I can’t say that it will be easy, it won’t.
Be here for the challenge and the personal growth that follows, and your life will be changed in wondrous ways.
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10 Reasons To Leave The City & Start A Homestead
1. Connection to nourishing food
Nowadays, if you want to indulge in nutrient-dense food, you are either going to the farmers market to support local growers, or you can learn to grow your own.
The second option saves money and is infinitely more rewarding!
One reason that many homesteaders choose this lifestyle, is due to allergies or food intolerances, and in having the power to decide what you eat: organic, free-range, wholesome and nutritious.
Investing in small-scale farming is the way of the future, so get your growing skills ready by planting a food garden or orchard of your own.
2. Less stress
City life is busy, vibrating with tense energy and always on the move. Some people may thrive in this bustling environment, others not so much.
On a homestead, values and goals are different. There is no need to keep up with the Joneses, just a need to keep up with the skyrocketing grass and keeping the animals (and yourselves) well fed.
There is a beauty to living simply, with the seasons, that involves being outside everyday. Sit and watch the trees as they sway, relax by listening to birdsong and have all the time in the day to slow cook a nourishing bone broth or a pick-me-up apple pie.
3. A different kind of noise
If the urban sirens and bright street lights have you waking throughout the night, consider getting a good night’s sleep out in the country.
Replace the mechanical sounds with howls and rustlings of nature, gentle rain and darkness that cannot be beat. It does take getting used to quiet if you have been raised in a cityscape, yet it can be done, moreover it is healing for your body, soul and mind.
In this relative silence you will also discover calm and time for contemplation which brings us back to less stress and anxiety in life.
You’ll find that the benefits of homesteading readily overlap, making for one life-altering, health-promoting experience.
4. Independence
When you choose the homestead life, you gain the opportunity to remove the chains from the government and corporations that keep the world in check. It’s not just about growing your own food as you become more conscious of food miles and how our diets are affecting climate change, it is also about becoming energy independent.
If you are able to live off-grid, and use the power of sun or wind for your energy needs, then you are gaining independence in case of natural disasters or emergencies. Your health may even improve as you bring natural remedies into your life, from right outside your back door.
5. Self-reliance & Self-sufficiency
Whereas self-sufficiency promotes independence of the highest degree (for example: a family produces only enough energy and food for themselves to survive), self-reliance does not exclude the need to connect to others.
Relationships are critical to our survival, in fact, they help us thrive as a species. Good news is, that we can be self-reliant no matter where we live.
We can experience this out in the country with one cow for milking and sharing the excess yogurt and cheese, we can even enjoy self-reliance on our urban homesteads.
Cooperation, not competition, is how we must go forward into a sustainable future and adopting a self-reliant lifestyle will help us get there.
6. A different kind of life
A vast majority of people are born into city life after our parents and grandparents chose that as a way to find a job and make a living, but that does not mean that we should grow where we are planted.
No, not by any means.
Become a seed, and blow where the winds will take you, out to where the soil is pure and clean.
Learn homesteading skills before you take the plunge of moving out of the city by taking classes, attending workshops and finding out if a homesteading life is right for you.
With a love for the land, plants and animals, you will find a new kind of “quality” and freedom in life.
7. Quality
Minimalists know that quality over quantity is one of the most important things for a happy, stress-free life; homesteaders experience this improvement in lifestyle as well.
Rather than heading to the mall and searching for a sale on the latest fashions, you may find some quiet time to sit down and knit, relaxing with a glass of dandelion wine as you do so.
8. More time
If you find city life rushed and crazy, full of meetings, events and grocery shopping, know that you are not alone – and that you too can become a self-reliant homesteader.
Before making the shift to the countryside, try it out on the weekends to get a feel for the laid-back pace of life. Sure, the goats and pigs will try to escape (they eventually do) think of it as free exercise, and a reason to reinforce your fences and gates.
Farm chores aside, you will discover more moments to be by yourself, with your creative thoughts, further from the chaos and next to the ones you love.
9. Freedom
As you give up the 9-to-5 in favor of the homestead, you are free to live as you wish.
You can wake up as late in the morning as the animals allow you to sleep. You can head to the garden to make a salad with fresh greens and tomatoes for lunch. Not only that, you will also have more time to pursue the hobbies you’ve always wanted to try, only never had time for.
They say “time is money”, but time is really freedom.
10. The way we are meant to live
Grocery stores, as we currently know them, haven’t been around for all that long. Forgive our short-term memories, but self-service grocery stores have been in existence for only about one hundred years.
Before that, you could buy dry goods (tea, sugar, spices, coffee) from a purveyor, yet for thousands of years humans have had to fend for ourselves when it comes down to catching a meal.
It is essential for our well-being to work with our hands, to grow things, to experience life outdoors and off the screen.
Bottom line, homesteading is extremely beneficial for your physical, mental and spiritual health.
Are you ready to leave the city in search of a homestead? Are you willing to move further out into the countryside with room for extensive gardens and animals to roam?
Or have you already discovered the amazing benefits of homesteading for yourself? Share your story to inspire others in the comments below.
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