I was having a discussion with someone the other day & saying how neat & informative this web site is. This person just made the blanket statement that you folks were not farmers. I know this doesn't make alot of sense but you have to know this person to understand her ststement. So this got me to thinking, as I had always considered you folks as homesteaders. I would like to know what you consider yourselves to be; a farmer or homesteader & why. What do you consider to be the difference between the two, if there is any. Have a nice day thanks

-- Jan Sears (jcsears@magma.ca), April 28, 2001

Answers

Your friend is correct. We aren't farmers by today's standards. Farmers today are folks that run commercial enterprises on their land. Even though us homesteaders often try to make a bit of money off of our place we normally can't support ourselves off of our farm. Back in our Grandparents and Greatgrandparents day we would probably have been called farmers. Back then homesteaders were people that had claimed land through the government. Since there is no more land to be claimed from the government we have sort of adopted the term homesteader. Actually we do kind of stake our claim and face hardships and challenges so the term is sort of appropriate. Normally folks just call me 'that crazy lady with the cow'!

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), April 28, 2001.

I agree with the previous answer. Years ago we would have been considered farmers, but now are homesteaders. Of all my "farmer" neighbors, only the Amish have chickens, large gardens, or raise most of their own meat. The rest are specialized, beef, crops, hogs, whatever. No diversity. So, your person is right, we are not farmers. Oh, and I would have to say, I would bet in a heartbeat that us "poor homesteaders" eat healthier and better than any rich man ever does. You can buy steak, morel mushrooms and asparagus, but I would bet it wouldn't be fresh like what we plan to eat tonight. Well, getting close to supper, better go cut my asparagus.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), April 28, 2001.

Makes perfect sense to me. I don't consider myself farmer, modern homesteader, electronics technician , daytrader or any thing else I have learned. I prefer instead to consider myself to be using available means and knowledge to become more self relient with each day so that I may continue to provide for myself and my family the comforts we are accustomed to while ensuring that changes in external forces ( layoffs, stock market slides, drought, etc.) can be accomodated so as not to adversly affect our lifestyle. When the Y2K scare was happening, I did as so many others and prepared to revert back to a basic agronomic lifestyle rather than the high tech world we live in. After the non event, I chose to suspend our lifestyle "in the middle", drawing from both the "modern homestead" world and the technology world to sustain our lifestyle. This way, we have easy and not so easy times to either side of the optimun allowing each day to be as good as the day before, but lacking the potential of days to come.

-- Jay Blair in N. Al (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 28, 2001.

What Jay said! Wow!

The question that popped into my mind (I couldn't tell from your post and didn't want to read too much between the lines) was if your friend was making some kind of judgment about the quality of information on this forum. Just curious. Personally, I don't think most folks on here really have labels for themselves, but I could be wrong!

I keep running in from the garden between rain showers and end up on my peecee. Weird day! You have a nice one, too.

-- sheepish (WA) (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), April 28, 2001.

I don't know what I am. I'm just enjoying the heck out of it. I grow some stuff, I build some stuff, I fix some stuff. I guess it depends on your definitions. Never could label myself.

Sheepish, please send some of those showers to Kentucky---I sure hope we don't go into a drought situation like we have for the last two years.

-- Doug in KY (toadshutes@yahoo.com), April 28, 2001.

Farmers loose money much faster than homesteaders.

-- Kevin in NC (vantravlrs@aol.com), April 28, 2001.

I work on a farm where they do diversify (maple syrup, vegetable and plant seedlings, perrenial plants, water gardening plants, vegetables, apples). They have wonderful fruits and vegetables to eat all the time and while not organic, have a strong organic leaning. The owners love what they do and are extremely enthusiastic about it. They have been doing this for 20 years or so, and the farm is in the hands of the 4th generation of the family. I can see 3 main differences. First off, they depend on other people a lot more than I do. Without their customers, they go under. I am my own customer, and seem to be able to find many willing victims to be customers of the things I produce! Second is scale. I have 3 acres. They have about 100. They have to have employees to get everything done. I never get everything done, but only have myself to blame! Finally, is paperwork. I have only as much as I feel like keeping (which is as little as I can conscientously get away with). They have so much paperwork that they have to hire people to do some of it. They have to document how much manure they put in their compost for their fields!!! (If anyone asked me to keep track of the amount of poop I put in my compost I'd laugh them off my property.)

-- Sheryl Adams (radams@sacoriver.net), April 28, 2001.

Hello Jan, Farmer is an occupation. You can be a homesteader and be a farmer but, you can be any other occupation and still be a homesteader. Me, I prefer to be called a homesteader as what I raise on my land is primarily for subsistance. As comes the phrase--subsistance homesteader. Sincerely, Ernest

-- http://communities.msn.com/livingoffthelandintheozarks (espresso42@hotmail.com), April 29, 2001.

We are ranchers.

-- Hendo (OR)r (redgate@echoweb.net), April 29, 2001.

Its another case like a question I asked earlier... About the semantics involved in "environmentalist"... If we aren't farmers, its because we don't have thousands of acres in 'commodities'.

It used to be that a rancher was someone who raised livestock, a farmer raised plants and a homesteader raised a little of both. I sort of like those old designations myself... Keeps me from being lumped in with all the greedy, profit-at-all-costs corporations!!

I guess you could say that we are really 'jacks of all trades' in light of my 'definitions' -

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), April 30, 2001.

I call myself a preserver of old skills. We modern humans are far too distanced from the basic skills our forefathers had to know in order to survive. This subject is a very deep passion for me. How do we know that we wont need that old knowedge someday? In that day, I want to be one who knows and can teach others.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), May 02, 2001.

I've always thought of farmers as people that are primarily raising animals and/or food to sell to others and homesteaders were people that raised them primarily for themselves. Obviously, a farmer raises food for him/herself as well and a homesteader can raise some for sale but I consider it as whether it is their primary focus or not.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), May 04, 2001.

I wouldn't care to be a farmer as it has "evolved" today. Most of them are too busy trying to make money and getting the chemicals applied to want to spend time doing most of the things I do. The majority of them would laugh at me for trying to raise Indian Corn or doing a lot of the other things I do.

-- fred (fred@mddc.com), May 04, 2001.

Farmer... a very vague term, I doubt you can "umbrella" them all in any definition. There are farmers which are nothing more than commercial property/project managers and there are farmers which live more like pioneers. Homesteader is probably just as vague. The difference between homesteader and farmer is the difference between any two folks which consider themselves a homesteader and a farmer. :) I live with 10 million people... I'm a mass consumer.

cheers and great forum,

-- Max (Maxel@inwindsor.com), May 04, 2001.

Ernest hit it on the head -- words have to have definitions, we can't just throw whatever meaning we want on one whenever we want, or nothing means anything anymore, and we can't communicate. Farmer is the name of an occupation. Some of us are both farmer and homesteader, some have other occupations, and their "farming" activities being mostly for the benefit of their own families, and no less important for that, can be called homesteading. I would never have said that ranching was animals and farming was plants. Ranchers often, depending on their location, grow some or all of their own hay, and sometimes also at least part of their grain. While farmers used to, in the olden days, have diversified operations, raising some crops and some livestock. Even now you still have dairy farmers, pig farmer, chicken farmers, etc., if you can really call those factory operations farms.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), May 09, 2001.