Homesteaders: Crunchy and Racist?

If you're growing any of your own food, you're now anti-government and more

Far left digital rag, Media Matters, published a hand-wringing article claiming that people who grow (even just a little bit of) their own food demonize immigrants and have a hard anti-government mindset. Justin Horowitz, the article’s author, even went so far as to call out “crunchy culture.”

Horowitz stated, “Crunchy culture, which is the foundation of the homesteading movement, is deeply rooted in anti-government sentiment and ‘anti-modernism,’ which strives for independence from the mainstream.”

In fact, I’m a member of a private group filled with women from our small country parish called, “Crunchy Mamas,” on the GroupMe app. Here we exchange advice about growing, preserving, herbal medicines, raw milk, and just about everything else. What’s Horowitz trying to say about us, exactly?

I got a chuckle when he says that the movement “promotes self-sufficiency, and some advocate for traditional gender norms as well, aligning themselves with the adjacent ‘tradwife’ sect…” Gasp! Crunchy homesteaders advocate for traditional gender norms? I resemble that remark!

I bet Horowitz is a blast at parties. He laments that a faction of these people “also produce content around doomsday preparation and the supposed collapse of society, which often leans into deep conspiratorial thinking.”

Photo of our zucchini, which is blossoming and thriving here at Gluck Farms

Face it, you’re a racist

He goes on to cite another author Kathleen Belew (never heard of her) who says, “…radical right-wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan have used back-to-basics living and ‘opportunistic social movements’ to recruit new devotees in the past.” Not the sharpest machete in the barn, Horowitz is clearly implying that since the KKK employed a self-sufficiency mindset, today’s homesteaders must be racists like them, or members of the KKK, or something else really really bad.

I mean, I bet members of the KKK used toilet paper as well, and probably brushed their teeth. I think most people with homesteads or who grow any of their own food use toilet paper and brush their teeth. Does this make them racists, since the KKK did these things?

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Finally, Happy Horowitz goes on and on about how homesteading influencers have figured out how to make and promote their own content across the various social platforms. He even lists (with links) the platforms he deems the most dangerous purveyors of white nationalist propaganda and more.

However, Horowitz isn’t totally horrible. In a second section, he kindly links to several homesteading influencers I hadn’t come across. He gives examples he claims illustrate their nationalist, racist, conspiratorial flaws. He even calls one viral homesteader, An American Homestead, out for saying that 5G cell service is dangerous and makes people very sick.

I can’t wait to check them out and maybe subscribe to them. If you’d like to read the entire article — and get links to the homesteaders the author hates — click here.

News from Gluck Farms

Our crops are coming along great, all glory to God. We’ve had quite a bit of rain lately, which keeps our rain barrels full. Our chickens are laying like crazy now that the colder weather is over, so we’ve got a lot to sell.

Our cucumbers are already vining out. The tendrils always remind me of tiny hands reaching for something to grab.

The herbs in our herb garden are really taking off as well. I have a couple of new herbs — winter savory, lemon balm, and hyssop — that I’ve never used. A friend gave me a cutting from her lemon balm because I need it to make some new medicinal salves this season.

It’s still quite a while before we start drying herbs, canning, making tinctures and salves, etc., but it seems to be going quickly this season.

Since it’s Holy Week, I’ll leave you with a poem from GK Chesterton, a favorite in our family.

Courtesy of chesterton.org

Mortal Answers

G.K. Chesterton

From the Wood of the Old Wives’ Fables

They glittered out of the grey,

And with all the Armies of Elf-land

I strove like a beast at bay;

With only a right arm wearied,

Only a red sword worn,

And the pride of the House of Adam

That holdeth the stars in scorn.

For they came with chains of flowers

And lilies lances free,

There in the quiet greenwood

To take my grief from me.

And I said, “Now all is shaken

When heavily hangs the brow,

When the hope of the years is taken

The last star sunken. Now—

Hear, you chattering cricket,

Hear, you spawn of the sod,

The strange strong cry in the darkness

Of one man praising God,

“That out of the night and nothing

With travail and birth he came

To stand one hour in the sunlight

Only to say her name.

“Falls through her hair the sunshine

In showers; it touches, see,

her high bright cheeks in turning;

Ah, Elfin Company,

“The world is hot and cruel,

We are weary of heart and hand.

But the world is more full of glory

Than you can understand.”

*Chesterton wrote this poem as a response to “The Stolen Child,” by W.B. Yeats