The Garden: Making Ends Meet
9 ways homesteading provides abundance that money can't buy
We have a lot of abundance in our lives and around our home but it’s not the type of excess that money buys.
I live this way because much of it brings joy and fulfillment, but much like my ancestral roots in homesteading, it’s out of necessity.
I just finished The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, about an 18th-century midwife named Martha Ballard. Martha was a real woman (as in she existed outside of this fictional world created by the author), and while this story is not a biography, it has many true elements of her life woven into it. I felt a kinship with Martha from the very first page - her perspective on motherhood and her mothering, her relationship with nature (Tempest might be my favorite character), her grit, and her relentless pursuit of justice. I have since read and discussed some criticism of the book, the most common being that Martha was too progressive. I believe this was on purpose - our way of life is so different from just over 200 years ago. I am also choosing to believe that Martha did have the courage and backbone that Ariel Lawhon chose to portray her with. I often think about how patriarchal our society is these days - I would have been hanged in the 18th century FOR SURE.
Anyways…I bring this book up because the whole time I was reading, I was thinking of my great-grandparents. They were alive 100 years after this book was written, so things like the legal system and societal structure were largely different, but they still relied on homesteading for survival.
Over 100 years later, I, too, rely on homesteading for survival. With one big difference.
It’s my choice.
When my first child was born, I decided to work part-time until she was 6 months old. I haven’t gone back to a full-time schedule, and she is now 4 years old. That’s a financial sacrifice that we have made as a family, but in my mind it’s not a sacrifice at all. It has allowed me precious time with my children as well as the opportunity to scale our garden and time for other homesteady activities.
Since becoming a mom, I have learned to make soap, make shampoo, practice herbalism and introduce a lot of herbal preparations into our routines, cook more of our meals consistently from scratch, bake sourdough, preserve food, eat with the seasons, permaculture, and so much more.
We have food in the yard and the pantry. We have to prep, cook, and preserve it. But we have it.
We have soap in the bathroom and for the laundry and dishes. We have to infuse oils with herbs, make the soap, cure it, and mix it with other ingredients as necessary. But we have it.
We have tinctures for allergies, stamina, and cramps. We have to forage the plants, infuse them in alcohol, strain them, and bottle them. But we have them.
We have bread (and waffles, tortillas, crackers) to eat. We have to ferment the flour and water, mix the dough, patiently wait while it rises, shape it, and then bake it. But we have it.
We have fertile soil to grow our food. We have to listen to the signs of nature, compost our food scraps, and intentionally grow our food. But we have it.
My husband and I made the decision to live closer to the land, and accept the sacrifices that come with it, when we first searched for a home to buy. Our realtor took us to development after development where I could hear the buzzing of a neighbor’s tv from the kitchen and see into countless yards from the back door. No shame if this setting works for your family, it just doesn’t work for us.
The key word is “closer” - I don’t want our homesteading to be confused with self-sufficiency, not because anything is wrong with that pursuit, but because it doesn’t describe our lifestyle or goals. The truth is that money does buy a certain amount of ease in this society. Most of the time it boils down to convenience. To which I am not immune.
What we do have in abundance:
Time together – not always “free time,” but time spent side by side, working, learning, and building a life with intention.
Skills – ones passed down, sought out, practiced, given in community, and earned through trial and error.
Connection to the seasons – we grow, harvest, rest, and rise with the rhythms of the earth, as much as possible.
Resilience – built through doing hard things, solving real-life problems, and living with nature instead of against it.
Pride– a life built with our hands, chores that feel like they matter, tasks that feed us literally and spiritually.
Deep appreciation for “enough” – “The type of abundance that homesteading provides is full. Full of hard work. Full of creative solutions. Full of love and pride.” - from this piece, shared last fall:
A slower pace (by choice) – intentionally carving out days so the clock is irrelevant.
A home that reflects our values – not one built to impress, but one built to hold us and our dreams.
A community – local and virtual, that values connection over competition.
We don’t have it all. But what we do have is ours—and that’s its own kind of wealth.