There is always somebody out there bitching about urban homesteaders. Usually it’s a woman bitching about other women that choose to grow vegetables and preserve their harvest. Sometimes it’s some dude bitching about urban homesteaders being elitist and out of touch because they don’t want to eat the corn-and-soy-laden-pseudo-food.
Why don’t those stupid locavores just shut up and eat the damn Big Mac already? We all know they want to but their guilt has overtaken them like a monster in a horrible B-movie.
This week is no different than any other week. Some self-congratulatory woman has decided that homesteading is a worthless activity that doesn’t break out of the status quo and shouldn’t be bothered with. After all,
… the damage to a generation of women who are tending (and butchering) rabbits and chickens, and raising vegetable gardens (often along with children) has already been done. These activities are obviously more creative ways to spend time than watching soap operas, but urban homesteading and “the home arts” should not be confused with real art-making, which involves challenging the status quo, not feeding it.
Please.
She goes on to discuss how all too often women judge each other but isn’t that what she’s doing herself? She’s judging women by focusing on food and wrongly assumes that it is all they do in their lives. She sums her article up pretty nicely in the last paragraph.
My point is this: if women are spending all of their time planting gardens, tending chickens, and canning (i.e. living our lives in the most laborious ways possible), how are we ever to catch up as writers, visual artists, composers, and directors?
Some of us like the process. We love the pride we feel in growing our own food, preparing and preserving it and serving it to our loved ones. But that isn’t all that we do. When people ask me to describe myself I’m funny, smart, and loyal to a fault. I’m a stepmother and a wife. I work full time as a design consultant and project manager. I like to party with my friends and I can make a mean mojito. And I have an urban farm and like to cook what I grow and raise. But that isn’t all of who I am or all of what I do. I don’t know anyone that is just an urban homesteader. I have friends that are activists and professionally trained chefs. Friends that are in marketing, and friends that are researchers. I even have friends that are writers and business owners. We all have something in common but we also have many things that aren’t in common, and that’s what makes us fabulous people. We’re multidimensional and I’m proud to say that I’m not an urban homesteader. I’m so much more.
I think another thing that is undervalued is the appreciation of where things come from, and especially for kids, the value of life and what death is (yep, those chickens).
Why does this author even write this? There is no value, fortunate people live the lives they choose. Her article is not worth reading.
I’m all in favor of intellectualism but find no virtue in willful ignorance of basic domestic skills.
I think people who publicize these kinds of negative posts, do so because they’re afraid that this “craze” might catch on even bigger than it already is and someone might actually expect them to join in. My goodness, they might get their hands dirty. I know a few women like that. Thankfully, though, they don’t look down their noses at what I do, but they wouldn’t be caught dead with chickens and a garden in their backyard or “toiling” over the canning pot. They’re content buying their good from me instead, lol!
Oh, and the guy about Big Mac cracks me up! I once told someone that we didn’t eat fast food. He very seriously replied, “Don’t you love your children?” I couldn’t even stop laughing long enough to answer him that because I love my children, we don’t eat fast food! It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world!
I seriously read (most of) that article written by some high and might feminist. I really don’t care what she does with her time and I am so glad she isn’t wasting her precious time tending gardens and plants. I wouldn’t want her to figure out how peaceful and satisfying what I do is. She clearly is special and has better things to do. Oh yea… and I am a graphic designer, mother of two, a shoulder to cry on, and enjoy many hobbies including screen printing with plans for a home business. Excuse me while I go feed my chickens. Goodness!
I say home arts ARE real arts! Life can be as artful or as full of nay-saying as one wants it to be. We have choices.
For me, growing my own food is not about about living my life “in the most laborious way possible” it is about taking some processes back from corporate america, so my household can become a unit of (quality) production rather than a unit of (junk food) consumption.
I just started reading “Radical Homemakers” by Shannon Hayes as part of an online bookclub at Walden Effect Homesteading blog. The book talks much about feminist history and the perception that working outside the home for pay is the only way to be valued in our modern society. This attitudes seems backward to me…..the home should be valued so much more!
Gee, sounds like this women has a creative block….
I’m an ‘Urban Homesteader’ and I must say it works quite nicely for me. I have 2 home based business’, were I design and create fine jewelry and teach wellness education, am a Reiki Master, work with essential oils and help my clients with their healthy journey towards better health thru cleansing, rebuilding and renewing the body, mind and spirit. The example I set with my quarter acre homestead serves me AND my client base.
Sounds pretty creative to me, wouldn’t you say?
Denise
Ugh. I hated that article enough to try to find contact information for the author (merechner@comcast.net, if you want to know — from her own website). Seriously? I’m intelligent enough to know what a polemic is, intelligent enough to understand her erudite reference to the the “classic Dionysian/Apollonian divide” and Edith Wharton… and intelligent enough to be incredibly irritated by her entire article. She lacks logic. She criticizes people for judging, and yet judges people she’s never met without really understanding what they’re doing.
Well, apparently I’m doing damage to myself, my unborn child and all of the women, children, and men who visit my farm to gather their weekly share of produce and pick cherry tomatoes to their heart’s content. But at least I’m not an arrogant, judgmental, self-congratulatory writer who seems to think that homesteading and creativity (or, mercy me, literary references and scintillating conversation!) are mutually exclusive.
/rant.
PS — Once I’m no longer pregnant, I want one of your mojitos.
Personally, I enjoy finding time to do it all. Sometimes I fail, as the darned days only come with 24 hours in them, but it’s fun to try. Contrary to what this person may think, we do all have much more than compost for brains. Some of us are Doctors, or Engineers, others may be Lawyers, Research Scientists, composers, directors or whatever. The labels don’t matter, you can be more than one thing in life, the most important thing is to be true to yourself. Growing your own food doesn’t mean you cease to become an important or valuable member of society. Sitting there bitching about the choices of others just makes her look like she’s the insecure one, that as yet hasn’t managed to fulfill her own dreams.
This is the 2nd time I have read a farm blog based upon what this woman wrote. Why? I want her to pursue her art, I want her to be happy on her path and not define for her what or were satisfaction for her life can be found. Actually, I see women like her as potential costumers rather than snobs. Let her rant while I pick a mess of beans. Someone needs to earn top dollar (I know I am not) to buy the produce that allows me to keep doing what I do.
Sticks and stones
There’s nothing wrong with her pursuing her art and being happy on her path but she clearly is not and her way of dealing with that unhappiness is to be demeaning towards those that chose another path and pull other people down publicly (all while railing about how bad it is to do the very thing she’s doing). I’m all for calling people out when they’re being jerks, which is why I wrote this.
And it is a good post Rachel. I’m jus’sayen, so many seem so insulted by someone who otherwise has no power over them. She isn’t a suicide bomber, she is not running a sweatshop or (as far as I know) stealing copper fittings to support her addiction. I don’t think she is trolling blogs; she is just making a difference by being read on her own blog. We have brought her into our space.
Rachel I LOVE your blog, you write with passion and humor, you bless my eyes and if you want to respond with your heart through your finger tips, go for it (wait, you already did) but I appreciate you for so much more than your irritation about cyber spit-balls. I love your heart for apple trees and celery lessons. Some little girl wants attention for what she does and gives the cyber world a piece of her mind which she cannot afford to lose because of the success woman like you have, can only smack us down if we let it.
What you are doing you do VERY well. That is why I keep coming here. To the best of my knowledge she did not post on a farm blog but she is getting a lot of reads on them. I do not know why. We are women who nurture.
Thank you so much for space to respond.
Seriously puzzled here. Why do you call her a “potential costumer”?
Breathe in, breathe out :). She’ll be the first one knocking on my door at the start of the zombie apocalypse (2012 if Obama is re-elected). Seriously, I would think an elitist snob would be somewhat sympathetic to food security and independence not to mention being environmentally responsible.
Barbara Kingsolver – one of our greatest living writers in my opinion – said in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I am paraphrasing) that the wholesale dismissal of “women’s work” was the biggest sham in recent history. We work outside the home to pay for other people to raise our kids, tend our yards & clean our homes. Then we eat over-processed foods and imported vegetables with no attachment to the value or importance of any of these things. We work to pay for the things we wouldn’t need if we didn’t buy into this nonsense. My land works for me, and I have plenty of time to raise my kids, make art, serve others and eat as if I were at Chez Panisse every night. My partner has cancer and I have my priorities straight – our increasing self-suffiency allows me the freedom to be at every treatment, help my kids with their homework and manage our non-profit. I wouldn’t trade my late night canning sessions for anything.
I am educated and have worked in the corporate world, now I take care of my kids, my elderly grandfather, a garden at my house, the garden at his house, and a bunch of critters. We hunt, fish, raise poultry and do all of the processing ourselves as well. I cook because I love it and I love that I’m working for my family, not to make someone else more wealthy as I go broke paying for my kids to stay with someone else all day. What I’m doing is what makes sense for me, if someone can’t understand that, it’s their loss I suppose.
How many times do women have to do this to each other? In 35 years of marriage, I see it go back and forth every few years. Homemakers judging “working women” (all women are working women IMHO)as selfish women who are looking for glory. Working women judging homemakers as ignorant and/or unfulfilled dolts who are not doing anything “important” with their lives. Bottle feeding moms judging breastfeeding moms and vice versa. Home schoolers vs. public school advocates vs. private school advocates.
Really, ladies? Will it ever stop? I say if you homestead full time, GOOD FOR YOU! Hurray! I say if you devote all your energies to developing a career and/or artistic persuits, GOOD FOR YOU! I say if you have a balance of the two that work for you, GOOD FOR YOU! I celebrate your successes, encourage your efforts, and feel no need to tout my choices as superior.
Whatever your pursuits – You go, irl!
finger slip – that’s “pursuits” and I don’t know what happened to the “G” in “Girl”