Homesteaders - Colonial Style

    Did colonists just wander out into the land between the Atlantic shores and the Mississippi River and plop themselves down in a promising spot and got on with the business of farming? Not in the slightest! 

    There were trappers and traders and those who wanted to get away from civilization, but generally, they either camped rather than settled or they went into such difficult terrain, such as mountainous regions, that no one contested their right to build a cabin and live there. 

    Colonial settlement and farming was mainly done in groups of families chosen to be included in the settlements. Farmlands were either sold to the family (by the European government who had claimed the land) or provided with the promise of development for the benefit of the colony.

    Colonists had the advantage of goods from Europe, like-minded neighbors, and trade with indigenous people. This trade was not just in commodities but knowledge of how to live on a foreign land. That knowledge revolved mostly around food and medicine. 

    Food and medicine, along with religious worship and children's education, were the four posts that held up the home of the colonist. Household days were filled with producing food, preserving and cooking food, preventing or fighting illness, attending religious services and gatherings, and training up the children.

    The women of the house would tend a kitchen garden for culinary herbs and everyday vegetables. Medicinal plants and fruit could be gathered from the wild and from orchards and vineyards. Meat was the matter of a pig or two or it was hunted or fished. Beef and milk cows required grazing land and not many people had access to that, so cheese and butter were traded for or purchased from larger farms.

    Turkey, goose, duck, and pigeon were widely available and so chickens were not popular until the 19th and 20th centuries.

    Is there anything like colonial living these days? I would say that Amish, Mennonite, and Hutterite communities are similar to colonies. They enjoy, to varying extents, goods and services they do not produce within the community yet also farm and share and worship and teach within their boundaries.

    There are also intentional communities of like-minded people. The Sovereign Village Project has been a dream of Matt Hundley's for some time. The goal isn't to create a commune but a network of homesteads that have bought land close together and can create a like-minded community of small family farms.

    Recently, I have felt drawn to colonial style life with its simple diet and minimalist household utensils and supplies. 

    I have drawn on that time to develop methods and stores now filled with drying plants and tinctured medicines, food, and essential supplies. The supplies are meant to provide an ability to live without modern goods should they not be available due to natural disaster or breakdown in supply chain. The goal is to be able to provide for ourselves. If we relied on a pantry full of canned soup, we would not last long once those ran out.

    Like later pioneers, I do have chickens. We grow and forage pounds and pounds of fruit and berries, nuts, edible wild and native greens, culinary herbs, and medicinal plants. And our plan is to grow enough native, wild, and domesticated tubers and roots to provide starch rather than grain, should that become unavailable.

   Once those are established, it is possible that we will only need to buy salt and fat to get through a winter as was the case in the 17th through 19th centuries.

A pantry blending old ways and modern products

    This is our experiment. What are the basics? What is truly needed and what is extra? What is luxury? What is economy? 

    Does that mean everything in my plan is "early American" or "old-fashioned"? No, we are using modern permaculture techniques as well as age old medieval techniques. We have scientific studies to explain how wild plants work as medicines. We are drawing on knowledge and practices from all times that fit out needs and climate. And we still love to eat out as a treat. We went out to the local BBQ place in town just last night!

    But I would say, it is all underpinned by the simplicity, and, yes, the romance, of the colonist living on the edge of civilization, perhaps in the Appalachian mountains, who is blending a very simple life with native and local knowledge and a peace that comes with dancing with the seasons and at home rather than work a life apart from them.