The Story
Youre either buried with your crystals or your shotgun. That laconic comment captures the hippiesversushicks conflict that divides, and in some ways defines, modernday homesteaders. It also reveals that back tothelanders, though they may seek lives off the grid, remain connected to the most pressing questions confronting the United States today.Jason Strange shows where homesteaders fit, and dont fit, within contemporary America. Blending history with personal stories, Strange visits pig roasts and bohemian work parties to find people engaged in a lifestyle that offers challenge and fulfillment for those in search of virtues like selfemployment, frugality, contact with nature, and escape from the mainstream. He also lays bare the vast differences in education and opportunity that leave some homesteaders dispossessed while charting the tensions that arise when people seek refuge from the ills of modern societyonly to find themselves indelibly marked by the system they dreamed of escaping.
Description
Youre either buried with your crystals or your shotgun. That laconic comment captures the hippiesversushicks conflict that divides, and in some ways defines, modernday homesteaders. It also reveals that back tothelanders, though they may seek lives off the grid, remain connected to the most pressing questions confronting the United States today.Jason Strange shows where homesteaders fit, and dont fit, within contemporary America. Blending history with personal stories, Strange visits pig roasts and bohemian work parties to find people engaged in a lifestyle that offers challenge and fulfillment for those in search of virtues like selfemployment, frugality, contact with nature, and escape from the mainstream. He also lays bare the vast differences in education and opportunity that leave some homesteaders dispossessed while charting the tensions that arise when people seek refuge from the ills of modern societyonly to find themselves indelibly marked by the system they dreamed of escaping.
