11 ms·

Something I've noticed among the "successful" youtube homesteaders is that they almost all invariably have property "in the city" that they rent out (generally

by bane 5y ago

Something I've noticed among the "successful" youtube homesteaders is that they almost all invariably have property "in the city" that they rent out (generally unseen, usually unspoken, and always off camera) for significant passive income and treat homesteading like a virtuous hobby. Many of them also have side hustles like giving paid talks on homesteading, renting out "farm experiences", or offering classes on various farming skills etc. Farmlife is hard as hell and successful farms find ways of leveraging what they grow into hired cheap labor and other efficiencies that takes much of the burden off of the owners. In the case of the popular homesteaders, they don't like to show this much as it takes away from the idyllic lifestyle they are literally making money pushing -- where tilling a field, cutting back brush, or fixing a field drain are 10 second activity clips. If you want to farm, just go farm, but the homesteading trend in my opinion has smells of a kind of grassroots pyramid scheme where the only way to be successful at it is to bring other people into it.

seanc 5y ago
Any time one is consuming "lifestyle media" where a person is advocating a way of living you have to ask these questions: 1) Are they making a non-trivial amount of money just from the advocacy? Are the living off the farm or off YouTube? 2) What other supports might be invisible? Do they have family money? Do they have a cadre of volunteers? tl, dr; Is this person Talking Their Book?
snarf21 5y ago
I've always said, the only people who think farming for a living sounds fun have obviously never farmed. It is more tenable if you have income sources so you aren't depending on farming for your dinner. If you are independent wealthy and can pay others to do all the farming for you, you aren't a farmer, you merely own a farm. It is a tough life. The best part is the half days, just pick any 12 hours you want to work!
- newyankee 5y ago
  Homestead may not work if you depend on your own farm for all of your food needs. However, I feel off grid life with solar, storage, EV etc. combined with a remote job and hopefully cheaper Satellite Internet in the future may work for a lot of people. If I lived in a scenic country I would've at least tried this lifestyle, but may be that is because I am inherently introverted.
  - wildzzz 5y ago
    I could see myself having some land out in the country. I'd still have a day job but maybe I'd have a small vegetable garden and use the rest of the land for things like hunting, hiking, or 4x4 offroading. I doubt I'd ever want to have a real farm. I grew up with family friends that had horse farms and even though I'd help out occasionally, I knew it was hard work for marginal benefits. They'd make their money boarding horses but even taking care of their own horses and land was a full time job. You had to be good at fixing things yourself or else you'd go broke trying to hire someone to do it. I think my ideal spot is 10 or 20 acres in the mountains and a small cabin. It would be a place only a couple of hours away from my main home. I'd be able to pack a big cooler and get away for the weekend. Somewhere I can go do my hobbies and maybe pickup a few more. Because I'm not living there constantly, I don't need luxuries like nearby grocery stores or even gigabit internet.
  - Nbox9 5y ago
    I think you might be missing a lot of the amenities of modern towns/cities. Let’s ignore energy and internet/cell service. * You’ll want to live close to a grocery store. * You’ll want to live close to doctors —- not only hospitals and ambulances but also any specialist you or someone in your family mind need. * You’ll want access to tradesmen/craftsmen. Plumbers, auto mechanics, carpenters, electricians. Things break, can you fix everything? * You’ll want some degree of liquidity in your property. Selling a house in a town is way easier than selling a house 50 miles from the nearest town.
    - vwcx 5y ago
      This exactly. The level of austerity that comes with traditional homesteading can be shocking to most Americans.
      - jethro_tell 5y ago
        There's a reason kids sold their parents farms to Monsanto and moved into the city.
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
- he_is_legend 5y ago
  I'm not disagreeing, but having worked for 20+ years now as a web dev, and also on and off on farms (parents, relations, neighbours, friends, and 30 acres behind my house), I'd move to a farming job that offered the same income in a heartbeat, no questions asked. There is something much more comforting about having worked yourself to physical tiredness and a feeling of having accomplished "something useful" instead of having fried your brain yet again over some bizarre node.js ritual for the benefit of some capitalist ecommerce overlord. I'm willing to admit that there are fulfilling jobs in software development that aren't directly feeding the capitalist beast, but they seem to be few and far between.
  - jethro_tell 5y ago
    where are you going to get a farming job that pays the same as tech without also feeding the corporate beast?
    - he_is_legend 5y ago
      perhaps if agriculture and food generation was priced more in line with its value to humanity, rather than along the lines of cheapest product wins, there would be more feasible careers in homesteading, simpler lives and farming. but in a world where NFT based companies are claiming to be worth billions what hope is there of that? :)
      - text70 5y ago
        NFTs backed by real fungible property. Own not only the picture of the zucchini, but the zucchini itself, which can be transferred or used independently as an asset. I am joking of course, but stranger things have happened. You can own a farm, but have conveyable mineral rights, and land use rights, that render the whole of the property unusable by the owner.
      - jethro_tell 5y ago
        The same could probably be said for software. You can't make any money homesteading software either. Get a half rack 22 u servers, install the os (set up a pxe boot server and golden images plus a bootstrap script). Build out your storage, app server database server, load balancer, write your app, get customers, do support, fix bugs, release features. You could probably break even with a well targeted market and not hire anyone else (maybe keep it in the immediate family) but you're constantly competing against products whose costs are built on economies of scale. Even if your not up against a giant corp, your up against someone with funding that's probably using giant corp tech. Even if you do use giant corp tech (which isn't a thing you can do with physical land so I didn't factor that in) bootstrapping a boutique software company has some long odds and long hours. Bits tough work to know and do everything. That's why people specialize and companies hire specialists.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  Just stick with the garden that is plenty of work, homesteads are highly overrated..
- sigmaprimus 5y ago
  I have read through most of the comments regarding my question. I must admit I was amazed at the number of responses I got, so many I was nervous about reading them, but after a day I have read them and think your comment hits home to my current situation. I would not say I am independently wealthy but I am not carrying a mortgage or any debt and do have enough squirreled away to last me another two years (Depending on inflation) at which point it will have been 5 years since beginning this venture. I would estimate between the property value, equipment and infrastructure I would have between 400K and 600K USD if I was to sell it all today. I think part of the reason I asked the question is that I have experienced a grave loss and what used to be a shared dream that two people were working towards, now feels somewhat like an overwhelming task that I now must face alone. I have decided that I will stick it out for another year and then reevaluate my situation, one good thing about my living situation is there is no outside pressure to change it. Also I know you were joking about the 12 hour days but truth be told from the time I finish my coffee and get to work till the time I put the last logs on the fire and crawl into bed, it is more like 16 hours and the days only get longer from here. (The animals don't care if I'm discouraged they want their food and water and let me know it, especially the roosters which being someone who never lived on a farm, I thought they only crowed when the sun came up, not two hours before!!)
spaetzleesser 5y ago
The successful youtube homesteaders also usually have a good looking woman walking around in not much clothing all the time :-). I always get the feeling that this is just show and that a lot of them have plenty of resources they don't talk about. I wonder how many of them really make a living of homesteading.
Veen 5y ago
One of my favorite YouTube channels is an off-grid homesteader in the UK. I once thought the idea was compelling, but watching the incredible amount of work this guy has put in over many years has discouraged me, as has the toll it took on his body. Plus, he is massively more competent than I am at just about everything: he built a hydraulic post holer and a log miller from scratch, built several buildings, planted thousands of trees, miles of fence, built and installed a hydro-electric system, and so on. And even with all that work, the smallholding isn't self-sustaining—his real income is building hydro-electric systems for other people (and YouTube I suppose). https://www.youtube.com/c/KrisHarbour https://www.youtube.com/c/KrisHarbour
- oigursh 5y ago
  Kris the embodiment of a grafter. He started on that land in a tent, p*ping outdoors. He's in the UK where's it's cold and wet half the year. Yet he got up, every day for years and made the land a bit better. No way do I have that in me and I doubt most people do either.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  A lot of what these YouTuber's do looks fun as side-projects or hobbies on an on-grid plot of land. The fun gets taken out when you have multiple "must-do" tasks adding up.
- audiometry 5y ago
  Yea, his channel is great. Another one is My Self Reliance ( https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnJamesMySelfReliance https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnJamesMySelfReliance ), located in Canadian forest. The amount of labour required to build cabins, food supplies, etc. is nearly endless. No wonder man evolved to living in tribes and eventually cities -- doing it all by yourself is just absurdly hard. I'm not saying any of this is bad, but if you have romantic notions about living like this and having lots of free time to pursue frivolous things, you're probably going to be disappointed. Perhaps there is a better point somewhere along the spectrum of Manhattan to solo cabin life in the mountains.
mahogany 5y ago
> Something I've noticed among the "successful" youtube homesteaders is that they almost all invariably have property "in the city" that they rent out (generally unseen, usually unspoken, and always off camera) for significant passive income and treat homesteading like a virtuous hobby. Another thing is that the most successful ones are making a bunch of money from their YouTube channels. So how self-sufficient can that path really be? You can't really say "anyone can do this!" if you're relying on hundreds of thousands of subscribers for passive income. This kind of gets at your last point, that it smells like a pyramid scheme. I think it's best to view most YouTube homesteaders as entertainment, and not take it too seriously as a "how-to" manual. There are other sources for that. Homesteading can be done, of course, but it doesn't look like 30 minute clips.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  there are two ways to make money in farming, write a book or scale to thousands of acres.
ConfusedDog 5y ago
You guys have talked me out of it... thank you. I have really considered to live in the woods last past few months.

by bane 5y ago

seanc 5y ago

Any time one is consuming "lifestyle media" where a person is advocating a way of living you have to ask these questions: 1) Are they making a non-trivial amount of money just from the advocacy? Are the living off the farm or off YouTube? 2) What other supports might be invisible? Do they have family money? Do they have a cadre of volunteers? tl, dr; Is this person Talking Their Book?

snarf21 5y ago

I've always said, the only people who think farming for a living sounds fun have obviously never farmed. It is more tenable if you have income sources so you aren't depending on farming for your dinner. If you are independent wealthy and can pay others to do all the farming for you, you aren't a farmer, you merely own a farm. It is a tough life. The best part is the half days, just pick any 12 hours you want to work!

newyankee 5y ago
Homestead may not work if you depend on your own farm for all of your food needs. However, I feel off grid life with solar, storage, EV etc. combined with a remote job and hopefully cheaper Satellite Internet in the future may work for a lot of people. If I lived in a scenic country I would've at least tried this lifestyle, but may be that is because I am inherently introverted.
- wildzzz 5y ago
  I could see myself having some land out in the country. I'd still have a day job but maybe I'd have a small vegetable garden and use the rest of the land for things like hunting, hiking, or 4x4 offroading. I doubt I'd ever want to have a real farm. I grew up with family friends that had horse farms and even though I'd help out occasionally, I knew it was hard work for marginal benefits. They'd make their money boarding horses but even taking care of their own horses and land was a full time job. You had to be good at fixing things yourself or else you'd go broke trying to hire someone to do it. I think my ideal spot is 10 or 20 acres in the mountains and a small cabin. It would be a place only a couple of hours away from my main home. I'd be able to pack a big cooler and get away for the weekend. Somewhere I can go do my hobbies and maybe pickup a few more. Because I'm not living there constantly, I don't need luxuries like nearby grocery stores or even gigabit internet.
- Nbox9 5y ago
  I think you might be missing a lot of the amenities of modern towns/cities. Let’s ignore energy and internet/cell service. * You’ll want to live close to a grocery store. * You’ll want to live close to doctors —- not only hospitals and ambulances but also any specialist you or someone in your family mind need. * You’ll want access to tradesmen/craftsmen. Plumbers, auto mechanics, carpenters, electricians. Things break, can you fix everything? * You’ll want some degree of liquidity in your property. Selling a house in a town is way easier than selling a house 50 miles from the nearest town.
  - vwcx 5y ago
    This exactly. The level of austerity that comes with traditional homesteading can be shocking to most Americans.
    - jethro_tell 5y ago
      There's a reason kids sold their parents farms to Monsanto and moved into the city.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
he_is_legend 5y ago
I'm not disagreeing, but having worked for 20+ years now as a web dev, and also on and off on farms (parents, relations, neighbours, friends, and 30 acres behind my house), I'd move to a farming job that offered the same income in a heartbeat, no questions asked. There is something much more comforting about having worked yourself to physical tiredness and a feeling of having accomplished "something useful" instead of having fried your brain yet again over some bizarre node.js ritual for the benefit of some capitalist ecommerce overlord. I'm willing to admit that there are fulfilling jobs in software development that aren't directly feeding the capitalist beast, but they seem to be few and far between.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  where are you going to get a farming job that pays the same as tech without also feeding the corporate beast?
  - he_is_legend 5y ago
    perhaps if agriculture and food generation was priced more in line with its value to humanity, rather than along the lines of cheapest product wins, there would be more feasible careers in homesteading, simpler lives and farming. but in a world where NFT based companies are claiming to be worth billions what hope is there of that? :)
    - text70 5y ago
      NFTs backed by real fungible property. Own not only the picture of the zucchini, but the zucchini itself, which can be transferred or used independently as an asset. I am joking of course, but stranger things have happened. You can own a farm, but have conveyable mineral rights, and land use rights, that render the whole of the property unusable by the owner.
    - jethro_tell 5y ago
      The same could probably be said for software. You can't make any money homesteading software either. Get a half rack 22 u servers, install the os (set up a pxe boot server and golden images plus a bootstrap script). Build out your storage, app server database server, load balancer, write your app, get customers, do support, fix bugs, release features. You could probably break even with a well targeted market and not hire anyone else (maybe keep it in the immediate family) but you're constantly competing against products whose costs are built on economies of scale. Even if your not up against a giant corp, your up against someone with funding that's probably using giant corp tech. Even if you do use giant corp tech (which isn't a thing you can do with physical land so I didn't factor that in) bootstrapping a boutique software company has some long odds and long hours. Bits tough work to know and do everything. That's why people specialize and companies hire specialists.
dustymcp 5y ago
Just stick with the garden that is plenty of work, homesteads are highly overrated..
sigmaprimus 5y ago
I have read through most of the comments regarding my question. I must admit I was amazed at the number of responses I got, so many I was nervous about reading them, but after a day I have read them and think your comment hits home to my current situation. I would not say I am independently wealthy but I am not carrying a mortgage or any debt and do have enough squirreled away to last me another two years (Depending on inflation) at which point it will have been 5 years since beginning this venture. I would estimate between the property value, equipment and infrastructure I would have between 400K and 600K USD if I was to sell it all today. I think part of the reason I asked the question is that I have experienced a grave loss and what used to be a shared dream that two people were working towards, now feels somewhat like an overwhelming task that I now must face alone. I have decided that I will stick it out for another year and then reevaluate my situation, one good thing about my living situation is there is no outside pressure to change it. Also I know you were joking about the 12 hour days but truth be told from the time I finish my coffee and get to work till the time I put the last logs on the fire and crawl into bed, it is more like 16 hours and the days only get longer from here. (The animals don't care if I'm discouraged they want their food and water and let me know it, especially the roosters which being someone who never lived on a farm, I thought they only crowed when the sun came up, not two hours before!!)

spaetzleesser 5y ago

The successful youtube homesteaders also usually have a good looking woman walking around in not much clothing all the time :-). I always get the feeling that this is just show and that a lot of them have plenty of resources they don't talk about. I wonder how many of them really make a living of homesteading.

Veen 5y ago

One of my favorite YouTube channels is an off-grid homesteader in the UK. I once thought the idea was compelling, but watching the incredible amount of work this guy has put in over many years has discouraged me, as has the toll it took on his body. Plus, he is massively more competent than I am at just about everything: he built a hydraulic post holer and a log miller from scratch, built several buildings, planted thousands of trees, miles of fence, built and installed a hydro-electric system, and so on. And even with all that work, the smallholding isn't self-sustaining—his real income is building hydro-electric systems for other people (and YouTube I suppose). https://www.youtube.com/c/KrisHarbour https://www.youtube.com/c/KrisHarbour

oigursh 5y ago
Kris the embodiment of a grafter. He started on that land in a tent, p*ping outdoors. He's in the UK where's it's cold and wet half the year. Yet he got up, every day for years and made the land a bit better. No way do I have that in me and I doubt most people do either.
SkyPuncher 5y ago
A lot of what these YouTuber's do looks fun as side-projects or hobbies on an on-grid plot of land. The fun gets taken out when you have multiple "must-do" tasks adding up.
audiometry 5y ago
Yea, his channel is great. Another one is My Self Reliance ( https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnJamesMySelfReliance https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnJamesMySelfReliance ), located in Canadian forest. The amount of labour required to build cabins, food supplies, etc. is nearly endless. No wonder man evolved to living in tribes and eventually cities -- doing it all by yourself is just absurdly hard. I'm not saying any of this is bad, but if you have romantic notions about living like this and having lots of free time to pursue frivolous things, you're probably going to be disappointed. Perhaps there is a better point somewhere along the spectrum of Manhattan to solo cabin life in the mountains.

mahogany 5y ago

> Something I've noticed among the "successful" youtube homesteaders is that they almost all invariably have property "in the city" that they rent out (generally unseen, usually unspoken, and always off camera) for significant passive income and treat homesteading like a virtuous hobby. Another thing is that the most successful ones are making a bunch of money from their YouTube channels. So how self-sufficient can that path really be? You can't really say "anyone can do this!" if you're relying on hundreds of thousands of subscribers for passive income. This kind of gets at your last point, that it smells like a pyramid scheme. I think it's best to view most YouTube homesteaders as entertainment, and not take it too seriously as a "how-to" manual. There are other sources for that. Homesteading can be done, of course, but it doesn't look like 30 minute clips.

jethro_tell 5y ago
there are two ways to make money in farming, write a book or scale to thousands of acres.

ConfusedDog 5y ago

You guys have talked me out of it... thank you. I have really considered to live in the woods last past few months.