The Good Life Revisited: The New Back to the Land

In the 1970s my mom moved to the coast of Maine to be an apprentice on a small organic farm. The farmers were a young homesteading couple, swept up in the back to the land movement. Their goal was to be as self-sustaining as possible, in an effort to achieve a more simple and satisfying life.  They grew their own food, raised sheep, pigs, and chickens, harvested wood for heat, following the lead of Helen and Scott Nearing, the most famous pioneers of the back to the land movement. The farmers my mom lived with for a year soon realized that they needed external, paying jobs to support a growing family and their homesteading operation eventually waned, as did many like it.

Such movements have reoccurred throughout history. The Nearings, along with many others, fled the city to homestead during the Great Depression when jobs were scarce. Disillusioned with post-WWII materialism, self-exiled urbanites of the 1970s formed the next wave of "new pioneers." Within the past few years, we have seen a resurgence of young people (and not so young people) seeking a more self-sufficient existence, and an environmentally and socially responsible life.  Is this just another version of what happened in the 70s and tapered off by the mid 80s?

Yes and no. There are lots of differences between what's going on today and what my mom dabbled in 30 years ago. There are those who are moving out to the country to start farms and live sustainably, but the main difference I see, and find most exciting, is that our definition of going "back to the land" has morphed and broadened, encompassing new definitions of "the simple life." We find "land" in urban areas, on rooftops and in empty lots. There are chickens clucking in the sandbox-size yards of apartment buildings. We preserve enough tomatoes to last the winter in Brooklyn and give jars of homemade jam to our neighbors in Seattle. Rather than escape the urban setting to a remote Eden, we are bringing the spirit of back to the land to the city and the suburbs. We are adopting the principles of sustainability and self-reliance that guided homesteaders of generations past, but in a less extreme way, which may allow this movement to last a bit longer.

It is also exciting that our revived back to the land tendencies are backed-up (or inspired by? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?) by a louder food movement. Jeffery Jacobs' book New Pioneers, which analyzes case studies of back-to-the-landers, writes that the movement of the 1970s was a very quiet one, escaping the scope of the public eye. Today, food is very much at the forefront of a lot of minds. The buzzwords organic, local, sustainable are indeed buzzing, bouncing around the internet and splashed across magazine stands. Food is getting a lot of attention these days, much more than it was in the '70s. It is popular; it is dangerously trendy. Those who are serious about getting back to the "land" need to continue to harness all this energy while it's still out there in order to start a real, lasting food revolution.

In conclusion, this ain't your momma's back-to-the-land movement. This is something different, and it is something that might stick around for a while as we adapt the values of food sustainability and self-sufficiency to our diverse versions of The Good Life.