Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Homesteaders

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Have the events of recent years made you want to walk off into a grassy meadow, never to return? Does the idea of being in touch with nature, totally separate from the digital rat race of modern life appeal to you? Have you ever wanted to learn how to install a DIY sewer system for greywater? Then you’re a perfect candidate for today’s ever-growing cult. This week, Chelsea and Reese are getting their hands dirty and getting into the nitty gritty of Homesteading. Tradwives and rock climbers alike romanticize the nomadic lifestyle, touting freedom, survival skills, and an inner peace unachievable from civilization. But is the self-sustaining choice all it's cracked up to be, or does shoveling manure eventually become a little too culty for comfort? Come along with us as we learn from ex-homesteader Kirsten Lie-Nielsen (@kirstenlienielsen) just what homesteading is actually all about. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia.  Thank you to our sponsors! Shop plans at https://MINTMOBILE.com/cult Tear. Pour. Live More. Go to https://LIQUIDIV.COM and get 20% off your first purchase with code CULT at checkout. Head to https://acorns.com/cult or download the Acorns app to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This is Sounds Like a Cult. A show about the modern day cults we all follow. I am Reese Oliver, your resident rhetoric scholar. And I'm Chelsea Charles, an unscripted TV producer and a lifelong student of pop culture sociology. Every week on this show, we discuss a different zeitgeisty group that puts the cult in culture from Satanism to American Girl Doll to try and answer the big question.

This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or get the fuck out. After all, cult-like influence is everywhere in the 21st century, but it sits on a spectrum. Sometimes people do some really out-there stuff that reveals itself to be perfectly innocuous, and some groups look overwhelmingly drab, only to be pulling some secretly sinful strings. That's the premise of this show. We analyze and occasionally poke fun at how people find meaning, answers, and community in these strange times.

So you can tell the Live Your Life groups from the Watcher Backs, and they get the fuck outs. Oh, like a cohort of tradwives installing their own septic tanks, tending to their goats and giving themselves botulism with the pickling kit they bought on Timo. Yes, today we are getting into homesteading. The good, the bad, and the colty.

Mmm. Oh, Chelsea, what is your take on homesteading? So, when I see this resurgence of homesteading online, especially from brands like ballerina forms, I can't help but to clock the paradox. Because what's being sold as this dreamy, aspirational lifestyle is worlds away from the kind of homesteading my ancestors lived. And I'm sure a lot of ancestors of our listeners lived, one that was rooted in necessity and survival and feeding your family, not just vibes. So I would say, they cut to modern homesteading influencers who love to sell this idea that it's more, I guess,

cheaper and free and somehow outside of the system while actively profiting off of like merch drops and visibility online. Like if you go on Ballerina Farms website right now, clock how easy it is to buy merch about homesteading versus buying the meat that they are. actually supposed to be selling. I mean, I feel like you are not living off of the grid if you have Shopify and Instagram paying your bills. Yeah, if you're paying for your off the grid lifestyle with views that you need an internet connection to get. That's a really good point. I by and large agree. I think it's really weird and dystopian to see everybody getting into these like rather regressive aesthetics at a time when like politics and the economy feels regressive in a way that's

not very cute. I think it's just the juxtaposition of those two things. Or I mean, I guess they're not juxtaposed because they're very much happening in tandem. It just feels like we're being thrust backwards. Right. And I feel like a lot of us don't want to go backwards. But alternatively, I do kind of understand because I am very disconcerted with the current tech bro state of our landscape. Our public sphere has transformed so much that it is now almost entirely online. And now that our online discourse, the spaces in which we have these conversations, are almost completely dominated by dystopian tech bros, it feels like there's nowhere to have, like, good, safe public discourse. So I understand the impulse to shun everything and, like, be

self-sufficient and start from scratch and, you know, just wear a pretty dress and look at the sunset and pet your goats. Like, man, I really get it. I, too, am trying to reduce my screen time, but maybe there's a happy medium, darling. Like, I think we can find it. I could not agree more. So before we jump into this cult analysis, of course, we always have to talk about the history of said cult first. So from National Park Service, the Homestead Act of 1862 has been called one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the United States. The act was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln after the Southern States seceded. The Homestead Act of 1862 was a revolutionary concept for distributing public land in American history. This law turned over vast amounts of public domain to private citizens.

270 million acres or 10% of the area of the United States was claimed and settled under that act. The prime land across the country was homesteaded quickly. Successful homestead claims dropped sharply after the 1930s. Homestead Act remained in effect until 1976 with provisions for homesteading in Alaska until 1986. And I have a theory that the Homestead Act was shut down because as our guests will get into a little bit later, the 60s and 70s brought with them kind of a new wave of homesteaders that were embracing homesteading in a counterculture way.

Might have been the other side of the horseshoe than the wholesome Lincolnites were hoping for when they had put that law in place. But just to get a little bit more into the granular details of the Homesteading Act, a homesteader had to be head of the household or at least 21 years of age to claim a 160-acre parcel of land. That's a lot of land, you guys. That's all I have to say about that. That's a lot of land. The settlers from all walks of life worked to meet the challenge of, quote-unquote, proofing up.

They included immigrants, farmers without land of their own, single women, and formerly enslaved people. But, like, not very many of these people, because, again, you had to have enormous amounts of money, resources, and also citizenship. in order to qualify for the Homesteading Act. So let's keep in mind that this source that we're reading from is the National Park Service that's going to want to make this sound nice. So a filing fee was the only money required on paper, but sacrifice and hard work exacted a different price from hopeful settlers. Each homesteader had to live on the land,

build a home, make improvements, and farm to get the land. The patent they received represented the culmination of hard work and determination. Nearly four million homesteaders settled land across 30 states, over 123 years. It's important to note here that there were a bunch of different laws and exclusionary acts placed against indigenous people and minorities that had to happen in order for the Homesteading Act to be possible to make all of this land available to essentially be divied up and sold off this way.

So some of those legislative building blocks include a land ordinance of 1785, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 18851, and the Kansas-Nbraska Act of 1885. And I just want to insert here, and we're going to talk a little bit about this later with our special guest. But again, what fascinates me about these homesteader influencers is this romanticized lifestyle without ever really interrogating its origins. And it's like, how do you grapple with the disconnect between your modern privileges versus the original homestead act of 1862? And I think you said they had to live on it and the land had to be improved upon. But you did all of this by seizing land from indigenous people and while black Americans were legally still considered property.

Because this was in 1862 and emancipation proclamation wasn't signed until 1863 and then later wasn't made news till 1865. Yeah, I'm sure those people were starting up their homesteads without any unethical labor going on there at all. Exactly. So I'm like, this entire thing was built. on exclusion and racial hierarchy. So, sus, very sus. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible, but most homesteading occurred

between the period of 1900 and 1930. And as of 2017, around 93 million Americans were descendants of people who received land through the Homestead Acts. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 19, 1976 ended homesteading, and it continued in Alaska for 10 more years. In recent years, due to honestly throwing a dart at any of the billion causes of societal unrest and desire to go scream in a field somewhere, pandemic, president, economy, global warming,

AI, TikTok, the usual suspects of declinism, homesteading is back on the upswing, and the trad wives and blue-haired libs alike are abandoning their cozy townhomes in favor of cow shit and cold, hard freedom, baby. A subreddit on homesteading created in 2010 has 328,000 weekly members, 3,000 weekly contributions. No small hobby indeed.

So that is the current state of homesteading today, growing in the fringes of our society. And we are here to talk to an expert about it, an ex homesteader. She says she got the fuck out, okay? Mm-hmm. And she told us exactly why. Let's get it to it. Joining us today, we are so excited to welcome ex-homesteader and owner of the Instagram

account Hostel Valley Living, Kirsten Lee Nielsen. Kirsten, welcome, and thank you so much for joining us. Hi, thank you guys so much for having me. I'm a long-time listener, so I'm delighted to be on the podcast. I actually, in addition to homesteading, I also grew up homeschool. And so I remember listening to that episode and being like, I have things to say. So this time I can actually say them, which is kind of fun. So yeah, thank you. Awesome. Well, so excited to get into it. Could you start with just introducing yourself to the listeners and telling us about your relationship to the cult of homesteading in a little more detail?

Well, since I grew up homeschooled, I also grew up doing a lot of things like my parents had a big garden and things like that. So I was homesteading adjacent for a lot of my youth. And then when my husband and I got together, we sort of bonded over. We kind of wanted goats, maybe the idea of a dairy farm and, you know, some fun ideas like that. And those kind of escalated until we purchased a farm 93 acres in rural Maine. This was in 2015. So, much lower property prices than now. And it was also affordable for us because it had been abandoned for 20 years. So some people had had it as a subsistence farm for generations. And then eventually, you know, no one was left to take it over. So no electricity, no running water, no toilet, shower, nothing. So we moved here in the spring of 2016 and worked for several years restoring the house. We put in a garden. We had at one point, hundreds of animals here. I think at our height, we had 20-something goats, we had two pigs, four sheep, and then many, many birds, geese, chickens, ducks, you name it. And we like the idea of having a farm that would, you know, provide us with an income, but even more than that,

our goal was self-sufficiency, which is one of the sort of things that differentiates a homestead from a farm, at least in my opinion, is the goal of income versus the goal of self-sufficiency, kind of just removing yourself from the economy entirely. So that was always kind of our goal, never something we fully accomplished. And a number of things happened around like 2020. My husband's son actually passed away. We then lost our entire flock of birds to bird flu. And we just kind of ran out of steam.

I don't blame you. That sounds like a lot. Yeah. So we have slowly been transitioning. back to civilization for the past couple of years, rehoming animals and just kind of getting more integrated in society. And the more I have stepped away from the full on homesteading lifestyle, the more I've been kind of like, whoa, what exactly did I get myself into? So definitely excited to talk about the ways in which the lifestyle is pretty culting. Wow. That's great. I think

it's really important that you drew that distinction between a homestead and a farm because I think the layperson, those are too easily confusable terms. And not only that, but I think kind of the escapism and the self-sufficiency bit that comes with the homestead specifically is quite a culty piece of the puzzle. Yes, the sort of self-sufficiency obsession is definitely a part of the cultiness. And this, I guess I'd call it like a nostalgia trap where especially, I mean, I know I felt this way when I was starting out is like everybody used to do things better. Like, you know, we used to know how to cook and we used to know how to grow food and we used to know all these things. And when I step back from homesteading, there's kind of a sense of superiority of with homesteaders of, well, we do know how to do

that stuff. And especially during the pandemic at the beginning of the pandemic, the people I knew who were already homesteading were like, we're the ones who are going to survive. Like we've got the houses people want to go to when shit hits the fan, that kind of thing. But it's kind of a sense of superiority over a made-up difference because I don't necessarily know that those are skills we've really lost or that when we had to do all that stuff ourselves, it was actually better. And homesteading, the word itself comes from Homestead Act, which Lincoln put into effect in 1862, you know, mule and five acres or 15 acres or whatever it was. And, you know, it excluded women, minorities, anybody who had fought for the South, like it excluded so many people. And so

right from that point, homesteading feels like, first of all, they're kind of taking a government handout and they're just like white people. So right off the bat, it seems like there's something certainly exclusionary about the movement. And I don't think it's gotten too much better since then. You're touching on a little bit about like the origins of homesteading. And the origins can kind of seem hard to kind of like pinpoint to one specific thing. But can you give me like a brief recent history of homesteading in this more like modern iteration? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so we had the Homestead Act.

We also had like Thoreau who is still a big inspiration for people. They certainly like to quote him. And then in the 1970s, homesteading. had a big revival with the Back to the Land movement as part of the anti-war protests. And my mom, actually, that's how she ended up in Maine, which is where I was born and where I live. She came here because there was a couple named Helen and Scott Nearing. And they wrote a book called Living the Good Life. And it inspired many, many people to go back to the land in the 70s. And I want to pause on the nearings for now because while I don't know how many people like today are inspired by them, they're one of

the cultiest elements of homestead because they wrote this book and they had this homestead and they did all these things promoting self-sufficient living. But in fact, if you learn about them, you know that they went south in the winter and they had, you know, fresh fruit flown in in the summer. And their homestead was largely supported by all these people who were showing up to learn how to homestead and then would do free labor for them for the whole summer. So something a little sketchy there. And the movement died out a little bit like in the 80s and 90s. I don't think it was quite as popular. And even when I was starting, like when we moved here in 2016, there were people doing a kind of back to the land thing, but it wasn't trendy or whatever. It was really with the

pandemic that I saw a huge spike starting with, you know, maybe somebody started making their own sourdough or whatever. And then all of a sudden they're getting chickens and buying land and like jumping all the way into it. And something also happened, like, I think that's the kind of fun and harmless side of it, but something also happened around the pandemic where homesteading started to get interconnected with a lot of like anti-vax stuff, a lot of like, well, we grow our own food so we don't have to worry about health things and that kind of thing. And a number of people that I used to follow who were just homesteading content, people with a cow and a garden in the backyard, are now more like sort of full-on trad wife content. And even outside of the deeper trad thing, it's just

definitely become a much more politicized and I guess exclusionary kind of movement in recent years. Totally. And given everything that you have just laid out for us, would you say that the homesteaders of today are more or less culty than their 60s and 70s counterparts? That's a great question, maybe less. The one thing that I think is missing, I still think there's like a big sense of like moral superiority and a lot of rules around it and all those kind of culty things. But in the 60s and 70s, they did have that kind of guru. And I don't really know of a real guru character today.

So that's one thing that's missing that maybe makes the 70s a little more culty. Well, I guess, I mean, because you said it's interconnected with politics in a sense. So do you think maybe I would say like the whole. homesteader influencers kind of serve as that. Yes, I do think that's true. It's like less one sort of guru figure and more like this sort of conglomeration of influencers. And there's definitely the sort of Maha element and all of that in there. Yes. Yes, there is. I do think homesteading lays like right at the crux, this beautiful horseshoe that we talk about all the time between like the New Age left and like the crunchy right. So I think in that way, it can be kind of more culty because it's kind of covering both sides of

the equation, but I mean, I guess that's always been kind of true. Yeah, I remember one time visiting some other homesteaders, and this was like right when we moved here, like probably 2017, maybe, it was certainly before the pandemic, visiting some other homesteaders who turned out to be like extremely right wing and having a conversation on the drive home of like, everyone who does this is like extremely fringe. They might be left, they might be right, but they're like as far either of those ways that you can go. And that was back then. I think it's gotten more extreme now. And with that, I think there's kind of probably whoever your idol is depends on what avenue of homesteading content you're consuming, which I assume there are several.

Yeah, definitely. And like in that definition of homesteading being, you know, just trying to live self-sufficiently, there's certainly some people who do it at a balanced level and just have like a garden and just your little efforts to kind of take care of yourself a little bit. And of course, that's harmless. But a lot of people really do get in over their heads too, which I think is another culty element is like, you know, you do a little bit and then all of a sudden you're fully bought in. I think social media actually increases that a little bit too because, you know, you see,

especially with animals, at least this happened to me. I think it happens to other people. You see like, oh, they've got pigs and their pigs look so useful and they're so cute. Like, I've got to get a couple pigs and then, you know, you're taking care of pigs. You know, it really is easy to build up and get overwhelmed that way. I imagine. Do you feel like there are certain rituals? that exist that homesteaders know, but that would have like a normie like us. A little bewildered. Yeah, well, there's definitely like the daily routine and the seasonality of it, especially if you have

animals, but even with like a garden or a larger crop out in your fields, there's the daily routine of caring for like watering and feeding and those kinds of things. And then there's those huge seasonal routine where each season is like really different from the last. Like I'm stoking the wood stove every night during the winter and I'm putting hay away in the summer and it's really like marked out. Every day is kind of the same in like if you looked at a week, but every few months it's dramatically different because there's different tasks that need to be done. So there's a lot of things like that. There's also just a lot of skills and I think that's one of the big pluses of homesteading. You learn a lot of skills that as a normie, I definitely wouldn't, you know, from making

yogurt or bread, gardening, taking care of like clipping goats sobs, all those kinds of things. So there's a lot of that. That's wild. Ooh. I don't know. There is something I would say that is a little, I don't know. It seems interesting to want to get into. But hearing people talk about their experience, like ex-homesteaders like yourself and

talking about how much work it actually is, watching these people like romanticize this lifestyle is like, come on. I must see like every day someone on either Twitter or threads or whatever you're on these days saying, oh gosh, I wish I could just have like 15 acres in a little cabin. And I'm like, do you realize how much work that would be? A thousand yards stare. Right. And there is, I guess you could call it like an ableism element to homesteading as well. Because I mean, we dealt with grief on our homestead. And that was incredibly difficult because you can't stop. You can't take a day. day off to like process feelings. You also can't take a day off if you hurt yourself. I've joked, I've been working on a memoir, like a full memoir about this experience. And I went back and was rereading the manuscript and I was like, well, the walk-in clinic is actually one of the

recurring characters in our story. Because you're always getting sick from something. Like my husband had Lyme disease because, you know, you're out and you get ticks on you. You're working in the field. He also fell off a ladder when we were building the house and broke his ribs. And then like, I stab myself in the arm, clipping goat hobs. Like, all sorts of stuff happens. And fortunately, it never happened to the both of us at exactly the same time. Because if there was just one of you and, like, you broke your leg, you'd still have to feed the animals. And I mean, I think a lot of homesteaders have kids and thinks that their kids would be interested in the lifestyle. And so maybe that's a way to carry it on. But apart from that assumption, basically, there's no planning for you've just got to

be able to do this until you can't do it. And then what are you going to do? I think people are forgetting that like when we used to live like this, we also used to live much more communally and have like twice as many kids, which I mean, we're going back to that. But it didn't used to be one person or even one family's responsibility to like upkeep all these different essentially careers and also maintain interpersonal relationships and like being a human being. That sounds impossible. And it's like no wonder to me that so many people burn out doing it. Absolutely. And the people that I know who like have actually been successful at this or like seem like they're still happy after many years doing it are the people who are doing it in more of a small town environment or like they have a few neighbors that they're friends with who that community aspect of it. But the more rural you go, the more hard that is to develop just first of all in terms of lack of people in general.

And then even if there are a few people, are they really interested in this? You know, you've really got to pick your spot if you want to have community or like, I guess maybe if you can do it with an actual group of friends with a plan for that. But most people just dive in. That's so scary. Okay. And when you dive in, can you explain to us some of the jargon or lingo that you will have to learn in order to be a full dyed in the wool homesteader? Oh, goodness. I don't know if there's a lot of real lingo as much as it is just basing a life around certain. things. Like I mentioned firewood and haying, and it's like cutting hay and getting firewood put away for the winter are absolute focuses. The entire summer is like built around preparing for winter with those things. So if you bump into a homesteader or a farmer with livestock or whatever during the summer, it'll be a conversation about haying and the weather, no doubt, because you've got to get it right. You got to get it in that window. And then a lot of the other sort of lingo things are just like, I know a lot of like animal terms. You know the difference between.

not just like a ram and a you, but a weather, which is a neutered male goat or sheep and goat kids, and then they all have different colors and different breeds. There are so many breeds of chickens, goats, pigs, and each of them has their own, like, reason that you would want them or not, but, like, they have their own skills. Like, for pigs, we pick Tamworth pigs, and they are a breed from England, and we pick them because we were having our pigs, like, out in the woods, and they have this thick red hair. So they're more suited to sort of roughing it in the woods, basically. Like, they're better foragers and they don't get sunburned. Like a pink pig is going to get sunburned, because it's just skin out in the sun. Wow. And there's like the breed of chicken that there's

one for every color egg that you can get and you can get a lot of different color eggs and various things like that. So there's many different breeds of anything and specialities within that and people who swear by one or the other. The original Laboobo. was like, what color egg am I going to get? I have to collect them all. Like, that's where the gambling mindset came from. I'm convinced. Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.

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With new shows three times a week, you'll be up to speed in no time. Listen to the break room for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Kirsten, we talked a little bit about this earlier, but who would you say? are some of the big names in homesteading today? One of the big ones is definitely a guy named Joel Salatin. And if I remember things correctly, he's in the movie Food Incorporated. And he's also in some other stuff. Like I think Michael Pollan mentions him in a few of his books.

So he's got a bigger resume than a lot of homesteaders. And he would technically be considered a farmer because he has a large farm and he's farming for markets and like farming for profit, if you will. But he's written a number of books about sort of the easiest and most what's called permaculture. There's a lingo word for you. The most permaculture ways to take care of animals. Permaculture meaning utilizing something's natural tendencies for your farm. Like having sheep graze in an orchard.

So they keep the grass shorn down and the orchard is thriving and their droppings are making manure and it's all intertwined. So he's written some books on like that kind of permaculture. agriculture farming and general successful small-scale farming that makes him a bit of a guru for homesteaders because it's very applicable to smaller scale. And somewhat similar to the nearings, he has a lot of like interns at his farm. And there have been quite a few controversies about him and like some racism allegations that I don't remember enough to repeat, but he's like maybe not such a great guy. Homesteading festivals always have him as a speaker. He's one of the sort of big names. There's a few others that I'm less familiar with, but I know there was Farm Girl in the Making was her

handle on Instagram. There's certainly like Ballerina Farm, even though she's like full trad now. The crossover is big. Those are the ones I can think of. There's a lot of people who, it's not that they're that sort of guru thing, but they're all kind of intertwined and it becomes this, we're all just talking to each other kind of circle. Salatin is the one that's kind of like above and everybody's like, oh, wow, it's in. Wait, this is my ADHD brain.

This is an aside. You're talking a little bit about permaculture. How useful are these pigs on your homestead? What is their purpose? So I don't know if you're familiar with Jeremy Clarkson, who drove the cars, had a car show in the UK, and now he has a farm and he has an Amazon show about it. And he got pigs in the last season of the Amazon show, and he's talking to his, like, farm advisor.

And the advisor's like, yeah, they will regenerate your woods into, like, a stock car track. Damn. Okay. And that's, I just love that quote because I was like, yep, that's exactly it. So pigs root everything up. And so if you have like a lot of low brush or whatever, they'll get rid of it. But they also require a fair amount of following behind them and smoothing things out. Like it's not picture perfect. And that's generally been the sheep were pretty effective. But apart from that, that's been my general experience with hermiculture and animals is whatever they're supposed to do, they do. But just enough that it's like a little easier for you to go behind them, but you still have to go behind them. Can't clean up. Got it. A little performative, but, you know, it's cool.

We're here for it. Yeah, you get to look at the cute animals doing it. So that does count for a lot. Yeah, it's like when the little robot thing is bringing you your water and it's like running into the booth and you're like, oh man, you're trying. Like, I'm here for it. Okay. We talked a little bit earlier about maintaining healthy community as being like part of a way to do

homesteading right, so to speak, if there is one. And I guess that is my question for you. Is there truly a way to like escape late stage capitalism and live in a homesteading community that doesn't inevitably just become a Lord of the Flies microcosm of the world we're avoiding? I think that the best way to do it is if you have a group of people, like there are some intentional communities that homesteading is part of what they do. And so you might buy a big property with like five friends.

This already sounds super culty. I was like, if you have like the expectations at the beginning and you're like sort of really intentionally like, we're just going to make our own this, that and the other thing. And so and so really loves goats so she can do the milking and like, you know, sort of be very intentional in how you're starting it. And you have the built in community because you're jumping into it like with a group of people. And hopefully you don't have like one person in charge as your cult leader. I think that's kind of your best bat. And other. Otherwise, I would say keeping it small scale would be the other way. Like, just don't dive in all the way. Like, just do what you can reasonably manage. And have, like, a plan for getting out of it. I think that's a big part. Like, when I say, be intentional about it. And even if you think you'll never stop, have a plan for getting out of it, both because you will inevitably get old, quite possibly get injured, all of those things. And also because, like, a lot of these animals live a really long time. So that was one of our biggest struggles in getting out of this is, you know, you have like the pigs live 20 years.

So finding like the right person and like being responsible. I know some people would say like just eat them, but we weren't going to do that. And so if you're not going to do that, finding like a responsible way to get rid of or rehome animals and the land that you've taken care of, like have that somewhat in your mind when you start, even if you think you aren't going to need it. Think about it a bit. Okay. Good to know. And then follow up question to that. How are like social norms or like etiquette? How is that established amongst homesteaders? And what happens when these rules are broken or pushed back upon? I mean, one thing I would say is that within the homesteading community, people are pretty supportive. So the idea is to be as self-sufficient as possible. So it's not strictly etiquette, I guess, but it's certainly expected that you're trying to make as much as you can yourself and you're, you know, figuring out how to make bread and all. that people are very supportive of helping you figure that out. They're very helpful at sharing

recipes and those kinds of things. If you start to say, oh, I think I might be in over my head, you might get a lot of helpful responses, like, you know, kind of like, have you tried this responses as opposed to here's how to get out of it responses, you know? Yeah. But yeah, there is like the expectation that you are trying to do as much as you can yourself. So, Would you say, is there a stigma against members with more attachment to the real world within the homesteader community? Yes. And I think that is like the etiquette thing to homesteaders like to say like create a life that you don't need a vacation from like that kind of mentality. And it's homesteading like you can never leave because you have all these creatures and responsibilities and stuff. So, you know, of course you'd say that. And I wouldn't say there's completely a stigma.

but there is definitely a pride in showing up in your car hearts and that kind of thing. For some people, there's definitely more of a balance than for others, but for a lot of people, it's like, this is my badge and I'm proud of it. And like, I'm going to wear my flannels and my car heart into town. And he should know from looking at me like, that means I'm like a farmer and that means I'm cool and I can take care of myself. And can you remind me with your homestead specifically? Because you just said like going into town.

How far away were you actually from just like a store? Yeah. There are certainly some homesteads that are much closer to civilization than mine. And that's something if it is a lifestyle that you want to check out. Like think about how far you are from things. We are about half an hour one way to a store, like a grocery store. Okay. We are maybe 40 minutes to a larger town.

We're about an hour and a half outside of. Fortland, which would be Maine's largest town. And also like half an hour from like a hospital as well, which is important to consider, I think. Of course. And that isolation, like, it's funny how that there's the practical aspects like if you forget an ingredient, then you're not going to get it till the next time you go into town and go to the grocery store kind of the thing. But it also like builds up the isolation feeling if you are that far from community events like libraries, festivals, whatever it is, then all of a sudden you're starting to feel like it's hard. The goal for a successful homestead is maybe to like build a community, but it's hard to

connect with the community when every time you want to do something, it's like a full day's thing. So yeah, being more distance removed from places is obviously isolating in, I think, more ways than people realize. Hey everybody. My name is Bob the Drag Queen. And I'm on Exchange. And we are the host of sibling rivalry. This is the podcast for two best friends Gab, Talk, Smack, and have a lot of fun with our black queer selves.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we are family. So we talk about everything, honey, from why we don't like hugs to Black Lives Matter, to interracial dating, to other things, right, Bob? Yes, and it gets messy, and we are not afraid to be wrong. So please join us over here at Sibling Rivalry available anywhere. Well, anywhere you get your podcast, you can listen and subscribe for free. For free, honey. Hey, I'm Mike Barronholz.

On my new show, Funny You Ask, trivia starts the conversation, and then things immediately go off the rails. I ask a question. My guests think they know the answer. Sometimes they do. More often, they do not. And then the conversation takes a turn. One trivia question turns into stories about career highs, painful bombs, and behind-the-scenes moments that probably should have remained private.

You'll hear confidence. misplace confidence, bold guesses, wrong answers, quick laughs, and the slow realization that maybe this was a bad idea to say out loud. If you like smart comedy, sharp conversations, and trivia that exists purely to melt people's brains, this is Funny You Ask with me, Ike Barronholtz. Follow Funny You Ask with Ike Barronholtz on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm really interested in hearing about more of the entry costs to homesteading. What are some more of the things that you can kiss goodbye when you sign up? The costs are like hands down, one of the, like, so you want to do permaculture and you want to, like, have chicken so you don't have to buy eggs and have a cow so you don't have to buy milk and like it's all going to be wonderful.

It's so expensive to homestead. That's one thing. I truly, like, I can't stress enough. The animals are expensive. Like, you have to buy animals. Seeds and things like that aren't as expensive. But still, you know, you probably have to like till you. your garden. That's a mix, like, you know, there's various little things to get set up. And then

once you're in it, I mean, fencing, we've spent thousands of dollars on fencing. And like, each animal has, like, slightly different needs for fencing. So you can't always use the same thing. And, like, buckets for water and hoses. We have so many hoses, you know, sprays for whatever pest is bothering your garden, all of those types of things. And then if you have animals, feed for the animals, which is hay and grain and is incredibly expensive and really adds up. Some people have agreements, again, if you're like maybe a little closer to civilization with like a restaurant, you can get scraps from there. That might help with that a little bit. And you can like grow your hay, grow your grain, but that's still you're going to have to like then

invest in haying. It's just like everything about it costs money. And that's just the financial costs. That's not even like the emotional cost of like not having anyone around you or like the physical cost of the labor on your body, the time you're putting into it. And any little like sub-hobby of it that you want to get into like making cheese. Again, I've got to get all the specialized equipment. There's very little that doesn't have some specialized equipment aspect to it. When you think about it, everything you're doing, you're kind of reinventing the wheel. because the lobby is just living as if it were like however many years ago. So it's just doing it for the first time again.

I got to go back and reinvent it. Yes, that's one of the things I find very funny now about people on social media talking about homesteading too because a lot of the time and even some of the books about it, it's like, I figured out how to do X, Y, Z. And it's like, yes, but also people did a long time ago too. Right, right, right. Yeah. Same new.

Okay. So at the top of this, you were speaking about how you were in the process of like exiting homesteading and rehousing animals. So we talked a little bit about the entry costs. What are some of the exit costs of homesteading? Exit costs have not been that terrible. There's been a fair amount of time involved in like the rehoming of the animals. And I know some people might do it quicker.

I'm very picky about where my animals go. So it's taken us like a couple years to get down to. We still have three goats, which if anybody's interested. So mostly time expenses more than anything else. Certainly there are people who are deep into homesteading who are not going to like understand what you're doing. You may like lose a few friendships. I would say that most of the closer friendships I made through homesteading weren't with full on deep, like the kind of people who wouldn't understand by getting away from it.

But my interactions online and stuff, like there's occasionally someone who's like, why would you ever leave this? Especially now, like that kind of thing. So you might get a little bit of social pushback. Okay. So next question. What are some of the worst case scenarios you've seen in homesteading? Oh gosh. Well, just like overwhelm. I know some of the worst case scenarios I've seen are people who have gotten older and their kids have left and their kids have no interest and they're just trying to figure out what to do. some cases are more extreme than others. Some have set up homesteads that can run with how their bodies are functioning now and some have not. So that makes a big difference. But there's also like the pride aspect, if you will, like they've spent their whole lives building this and now like no one's interested in taking it over and that kind of thing. So there's an emotional toll as well.

So people sort of aging out of it and not knowing what to do is definitely something I've seen and is sad, essentially. And then in homesteads with animals, there's definitely a huge gamut of care given to the animals. So the other worst case is animals that are clearly not being cared for as well as they could be, you know, animals without proper food and pens that are too small for how many you've got and that kind of thing. That's something that it's bad. What is the moment that you realized this may be just a little bit too cold tea for comfort? The more research I did into the history of the movement and the more people just dove in during the pandemic. And those two things for me kind of happened at the same time.

I wrote a book about homesteading that came out in 2018 or 2019. And I was sort of touring places and talking about it. And like, for example, that's when I went to the Nearing's homestead for the first time. Or I was like speaking at an event that Joel Salison was also speaking at. Like I was getting more exposure to the guru figures past and present. And I went to a couple of homesteading fairs. And that made me start feeling like there's a lot of people who are just like, this is a best.

And diving in all the way. And then to then see even more people like sort of piling on that with the pandemic, kind of had a snowball effect for me. It's so weird because I don't know. It's like obviously due to everything that's happening with our government and all the things, it would be an appealing lifestyle to just kind of like live off the grid and say to hell with everyone. But I totally, totally understand this idea of kind of like, first of all, ignoring the origins

of this entire thing, but also kind of like becoming a part of this world and kind of ignoring all the other things that come with it. I guess that's a really like hard thing for the people that subscribe to homesteading to kind of grapple with, I would assume. Yeah, I read an article about a lady who was like trying to do all the stuff that the government does recently. And one of the things she said was like, I talked to the farmer and patted the cow, but like I really don't know if that made me understand how much healthier my milk is. Like, right. It was. Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, we talked about exiting a minute ago. And one of the potential costs of exiting, I feel like, is kind of self-esteem related, too, because this is all about self-sufficiency. This is about being able to do it all. And so you're admitting you can't do it all. And that really can be tough. Like, I think there's a fair amount of shame in getting out of the movement that isn't even exterior. because the whole thing kind of started as a self-sufficiency thing.

And they're sort of like, oh, I can't do it all myself. You have to be able to, like, admit that. You have hustle culture on one end shaming you if you're not, like, fully as technologically advanced as you can be. And like half bionic, have a chip in your hand at this point. And then on the other hand, you have like the homesteaders and the trad wives that are like, you don't know how to live like it's 300 years ago. What's wrong with you?

And it's like, can I just live? Jeez. Exactly. Yes. Given all of that pressure, our last question for you is what advice do you have for current homesteaders that feel a little bit overwhelmed in this current day and age? As much as possible, like try to keep things within a reasonable size or try to downsize. Don't feel this either social pressure or internal pressure to do everything yourself. Pick what you like really enjoy doing yourself. Lean into those things maybe and like let go of the rest of. One of the things I like to say is like there is such a thing as progress. Like there's a lot of things wrong with the world today, but also there's a lot of reasons that

it's good that we have made the improvements socially, scientifically, et cetera, et cetera. And so admit that to yourself. Go ahead and watch TV at night or buy pasteurized milk from the store. Like let go of some things. And like you don't have to give it all up. You can keep doing what you enjoy. But like admit that like modernity is not. all bad. My mother, I mentioned she homesteaded for a while and when she told her grandparents that she was going to do this, her grandparents who had been complete subsistence farmers were horrified, essentially because they had worked themselves to the bone their whole lives so that their children and their grandchildren wouldn't have to. And my mom was being like, oh, I want to

work like that. So like, just admit to progress. It's a mostly good thing. You said the pasteurized milk. I definitely went down a rabbit hole where I was like, there's a lot of misinformation within this entire thing because like I saw these videos of people like promoting unpasteurized milk and I was like, whoa, whoa there. Wait a minute now. Okay. Okay. So we want to get into a little game that we tend to play on every episode of Sounds like a cult. We call it culty. or cringe. So basically, we're just going to go back and forth and say a whole bunch of prompts, and you tell me, in your expert opinion, is it culty or is it just cringe? Okay, okay. First things

first, quitting your day job to become a homesteading influencer and expecting to make money. Oh, I think that's pretty culty, especially when you added expecting to make money. That's what pushed it over the edge for me. Second of all, and these are all real things that I found that people have done or said while researching for this episode. I want to just preface this with that. Eating raw chicken liver as you butcher, you're foul. Well, it's definitely cring. I don't know if it's culty or if it's just like a terrible personal choice.

That's true. I think it's guilty to maybe a different cult. Right, right. The next one is trying to can your own food based on one. TikTok and eating it fearlessly years later. Probably just cringe. I would encourage people to do more research. I was about to say, girl, I don't know.

I've seen a lot of like botulism TikTok that's starting to scare me a little bit. I'm like, are you canning this stuff correctly? Who knows? Where's, we need the TikTok audio, the one that's like you can't eat at everybody's house. That's how I feel. No, yes. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Referring to milking an animal as an art. Ooh, I mean, yeah, that's a little culty. Yeah, it's that sort of sense of superiority. It's difficult, but it's not really hard. I've been there, I've done that. Nothing to write home about. Flexing your dirty fingernails on IG stories.

That can get pretty culty. I don't think it has to be, but it can get pretty culty. It can definitely, again, just get very, like, look, I'm doing harder stuff than everybody else and that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. This one we've mentioned a few times, but it's time we get like a full evaluation.

Raw milk. Oh yeah. Raw milk is very, very culty. Like people should eat what they want to eat, but you have to admit there's obvious problems with it. And the sort of pushing it is like the healthiest like, you know, look at how everything because I drink raw milk. Like it's very culty.

And like people will drive all over the place to find raw milk. stands and like everything it's a whole world. Yes it is. Nasty little friend. Washing all of your clothes with a washboard. Yeah, that's kind of culty and just like so unnecessary. Like so much added unnecessary work. I mean, I think we don't need to be machine washing our clothes. I feel like I've read that like machine washing our clothes is like essentially doing way too much and we're destroying our clothes and you know, whatever. That means probably somewhat true. But you know, you know, getting down by the stream with your washboard is also extreme. Very extreme.

I was literally just going to say my grandmother was born in like 1942 and I will tell you that she had a wash machine, but she still washed a lot of things with a washboard. And when people would come over to visit, it was like a talking piece. Like people would like, your grandmother said the washboard. I'm like, listen. I don't know. She's swore by it. Right.

Yeah. Maybe there's something to it. Maybe I'll go to try. Okay. And last one, referring to scooping poop as therapy. Oh. Well, I mean, it is a little culty, but I probably have done that. So of everything you've asked, that's the one that I'm the most like, oh, yeah, I probably did that.

The thing is, like, it's not the scooping the poop. It's the, like, time by yourself with your headphones in that makes it. It's the ritual of it. Yeah. Yes, the ritual. Dun, done, done. Okay. Hey. Well, Kirsten, thank you so much for coming on the show today. If listeners want to follow you and join your cult, where can they find you?

Yeah, I am on Instagram at Hostel Valley Living. And I also have a website where I put all my writing work, which is hostile valleyliving.com and a substack, which is Hostel Valley Thoughts. And just as an explanation, Hostel Valley is the name of the road that I live on because people do always ask why. Awesome. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. for hopping on. Thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun. So Chelsea, out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back or get the fuck out. Where are you putting the cult of homesteading? It's going to be a get the fuck out for me. It's going to be a get the fuck out for me. Here's the thing. Well, dang it. I always do this. It's going to be. I do the same thing. Because after talking with our guest, Kirsten, it's the upfront cost for me.

If we are having this like in response to what's happening in our world and our society, and we're deciding, okay, I'm going to leave the machine. I'm taking a step back. The fact that this has been recently pushed as this lifestyle that's just so easy and less expensive to get into and you have all this freedom. And it's like that's not true at all. So for me, I'm like, get the fuck out. Straight up.

It very much gives MLM in that way where it's like, here, you can like free yourself from society and instead do all of the work yourself. And it's like, no, maybe there's a reason that we've built these systems when we depend on each other and that we like exist in communal structures already. So we don't need to go build our own. Yeah, I think I'm going to agree with you because, you know, you can learn to bake the bread without doing this. I don't think that we should be allowed to opt out of society if you have enough money.

I think that that's wrong and weird. I think you should have to pay attention. Because that's ultimately kind of what it feels like to me. It feels very like when all of those influencers went on vacation during the pandemic. And it's like, okay, let's think about why we're doing what we're doing here and what we're avoiding. Well, Culties, that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. And join us for a new episode next week.

In the meantime, stay Culty. But not too. Colty. Sounds like a cult. was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin. This episode was hosted by Reese Oliver and Chelsea Charles. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole.

If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it. If you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, it really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical O overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and word slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language.

Thanks as well to our network studio 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a cult pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.