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Broadly defined, 'homesteading' is a lifestyle of simple, agrarian self-sufficiency.

Contents

History

North America

Current practice

See also

Influential People

Notes

External links

Magazines

Websites

History

North America

In the United States, the Homestead Act (1862) allowed anyone to claim up to 160 acres (64.7 hm²) of land. After clearing and working the land for five years, the homesteader would receive title to the land from the government. In this sense, homesteading provided a legal and viable means of obtaining land and precluded widespread squatting on the frontiers, and was the most important and prevalent means of settlement in the late 19th century. The Act was an embodiment of the broader legal homestead principle. Daniel Freeman (1826–1908) was the first person to file for a claim under Homestead Act of 1862. Similar provisions were in place for what is now Western Canada (see Last best West and Dominion Land Survey).

Current practice

Currently the term ''homesteading'' applies to anyone who is a part of the back to the land movement and who chooses to live a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. While land is no longer freely available in most areas of the world, homesteading remains as a way of life. A new movement, called "urban homesteading," can be viewed as a simple living lifestyle, incorporating small-scale agriculture, sustainable and permaculture gardening, and home food production and storage into suburban or city living.
Homesteading may also refer to the practice of squatting — occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use.^[1]

See also

★ Self-sufficiency

★ Simple living

★ Permaculture

★ Back to the land

★ Foxfire books

★ Seasteading

Influential People

★ John Seymour (author and smallholder)

★ Carla Emery

★ Henry David Thoreau

★ Wendell Berry

Notes

1. Gregory Heller, "Self Help Housing: An Historical Overview of Squatting in New York City," no date. Accessed Feb. 1, 2007.

External links

Magazines

★ Backwoods Home Magazine

★ Countryside & Small Stock Journal

★ Down to the Roots Homesteading Magazine

★ Mother Earth News - Changed over the years but still helpful.

Websites

★ Carla Emery - Memorial and Encyclopedia of Country Living

★ Deliberate Life

★ Homestead.org: Rural Living Principle and Practice.

★ Homesteading Information Directory

★ Homesteading Today Bulletin Board - a 16,000 member virtual community

★ Notes from the book Country Property Dirt Cheap

★ Organic Homesteading & Gardening Group

★ Path to Freedom - An Urban Homestead Model

★ Survival Strategies

★ The Homestead Forum Conversations with Homesteaders

★ The Modern Homestead Modern homesteaders who share a community. New articles on homesteading regularly.

★ ''The Free-Soil Movement'' by Wendy McElroy A history of the homestead movement

★ Homesteading Times Community - Virtual Community - Faith Based

★ HomesteadBlogger Front Porch

★ The Good Life - self-reliance in an uncertain world

★ Seasteading--homesteading on the oceans