In response to Covid-era skepticism of everything and the Trump-Kennedy MAHA alliance, fresh food has gone mainstream. But things have gone wayward quickly.
Take the two ends of the “homesteading spectrum.”
On one you have the weird commune types. Almost like a cult, their idea of “going all in” is buying a plot in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of their friends and farming it together.
Besides the weirdness that comes from communes of any kind, I assume the prospect of mortgaging your life on friendships from early adulthood and living in all-too-close proximity to one another, is going about as well as one would expect.
On the other end of the spectrum is Instagram homesteading, or trad-wifing. It’s “back to the land” funded by social-ad dollars. Not a single thing happens without an iPhone in hand to capture them working the fields like peasants, only wearing white cottage-core clothing with a recurring sprinkle of clickbait innuendo.
The flight from the fakery of suburbia, Tyson, and Kroger has become another flight of fakery toward ridiculous homesteading.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, where I live, homesteading is not for the hippy commune or Instagram page. It’s normal.
It’s a Friday afternoon in early August, and I’ve just logged off for the weekend.
I get my two eldest into my 2005 F-150 and load some equipment we and six or so other families jointly own: a propane banjo burner, kill cones, a chicken plucker, food prep counter, and two coolers.
We then two miles to a friend’s property, and unload. We run an extension cord to the plucker, connect water hoses, and fill the stock pot. Then it’s home to dinner, prayers, and books with the kids.
Once the kids are in bed, I pull my truck around to my backyard. In the twilight, I load our three dozen meatbirds into the bed of the truck and cover it with fencing and an old blanket. I park it on our driveway and head to bed.
Come 7 a.m., my 36 birds and I pull into the local party store and pick up two big bags of ice and a six-pack of Two Hearted. Then we head out.
I pull up to my friend’s place, thermos of coffee in hand. My friend comes out with his coffee cup and a sleepy-eyed 5-year-old daughter in tow, the steam from the warming water in the stock pot rising in the cool morning air as the propane flame whirls.
We load ice into the coolers, fill them partway with water, and plop the beers on top.
At 7:30 a.m., I grab my first bird from the truck, carry it to the kill cone attached to the shed door, place the bird in upside down, hold its head through the bottom opening, and take up the processing knife.
For the next four-and-a-half hours we’re harvesting birds. Two are always in the cones, bleeding out while each of us has two in hand working their way through the stations: scalder, plucker, table, cooler.
We’re moving at about one bird processed every six or seven minutes. We use everything: the chicken, of course, but then feet, heart, gizzard, neck, and head to make the healthiest bone broth you can get. Entrails go to compost or hogs.
We pause here and there for coffee and, as the sun rises above the treetops, cold beers still bobbing with the birds in the coolers. By noon, we’re cleaning up, washing things down, and I’m heading home.
For the rest of the day, I’m putzing around the yard, grilling, and mixing a cocktail. This time around, my wife and I went for the 1995 “Sense and Sensibility” after the kids were asleep.
After Mass the next day, we bag the birds and get them in our chest freezer. In a few days, I’ll drive the equipment over to another family on the east side of town who are gearing up for a chicken harvest the coming weekend. Monday morning, I’m logging in.
In a world built on fakery, the desire to go back to taking personal responsibility for raising what you eat, for putting in the work, and for having the best-tasting and best-for-you food available is entirely justifiable.
But don’t make it weird.
We know dozens of families who work day jobs and raise their own large garden, chickens, hogs, sheep, and cows, mill their own flour, make sourdough bread, brew ciders and kombucha and beers.
But they’re not posting about it. They’re not awkward.
Pool your resources, jointly own equipment with others, team up to get it done. Integrate raising your own food into your life. Make the most normal thing in the world a normal thing.
Jordan Adams is a native Michigander living in south-central Michigan.
