Healing the Land

Last week, I embarked on a wild ride through the northeastern United States. While my husband stayed behind to care for land and animals, I packed up the kids and drove out to surprise my mom for her birthday. It was entirely out of the ordinary for me – and it felt lonely leaving my cozy homestead behind and setting out on the road.

But the road is beautiful too. We drove on winding, two-lane highways through northern New England and then meandered along upstate New York. We visited the shrine of St. Kateri Tekakwitha and stopped to see Niagara Falls. On the way home, we visited my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville – which has spread and grown too much to feel like a welcoming place for us.

While in Steubenville, we reconnected with old friends and stopped for lunch on their homestead. Traveling homesteaders will understand just how refreshing it was to visit with the cows, sheep, and pigs of fellow “back-to-the-landers”! After days of travel and family time in urban areas, walking down a dirt road, looking at fencing, and comparing notes on winter preparations is almost like coming home again.

The Healing Land

Of course, as Catholic homesteaders we drifted into talk about the dignity of the land, and their attempts to share homesteading wisdom and support new homesteaders in their pursuit of a simple, rural life. Those of us living rurally are seeing a huge increase in Catholics looking to return to rural living. In the past two years, I’ve talked to five different families searching for land of their own, my friends have talked to dozens. In fact, they’ve even founded a non-profit to provide “ongoing education and mentorship in regenerative farm practice and homesteading skills” for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Their organization is joyful, welcoming, and incredibly timely. People are looking out from the cities and seeing hope for themselves and their children in the countryside again. Families, especially traditional-leaning Catholic families, are looking at the limitations of town life and wanting more. Parents are worried – their children are growing up with a love of screens and stores instead of a love of frogs and butterflies. But we are adrift, few adults have the skills that were considered commonplace just a few generations ago. The Healing Land offers events, workshops, and support for homesteaders and future homesteaders who want to work toward the good of the land they steward.

Land and Faith

Catholics have a rich and deeply connected relationship to the earth. Ember and Rogation days throughout the year called the faithful to pray for the land in each season. We have blessings for the land, for water, for bees, livestock, and homes. Our liturgical seasons are intrinsically linked to the natural seasons. Life on the land is an ideal way to reconnect with your faith and reconnect with your own inner life.

I remember the beauty of working on a dairy farm after college. The farm itself was struggling and understaffed. The work was hard. But every day I was working under the ever-changing sky. I heard birds and insects as I’d never heard them before. I got stronger as the months went on and my mind got quieter. I could spend all day with my thoughts because the cows needed my labor, not my conversation. When I left the farm, I was healthier – physically and mentally – than I’d ever been.

Homesteading offers the same opportunity – but we don’t always take that offer. Even now, with a homestead of my own, I see myself slacking. Like a life of faith, the homesteading life has moments of consolation and desolation, moments of activity and moments of failure. This year, with a goal of reclaiming my early enthusiasm, I’ve been thinking back to my dairy-farming days and trying to find inspiration for a new and more faith-filled homestead.

My visit to the heart of The Healing Land, Holy Family Farm, was the inspiration I needed. I’ve returned home reclaiming that “first love” of land and living.

Advice for the Catholic Homesteader (or Homestead Dreamer)

The Healing Land is a new outreach, Dr. and Mrs. Burke are relatively new homesteaders in the scheme of things. Their co-founders are long-term homesteaders. My own experience falls somewhere in the middle. They live on-grid, we live off-grid. But we’re all Catholic, we all love the land in a uniquely Catholic way.

Their mentorship inspires me because of that shared sense of respect for and uplifting of the land itself. Catholic homesteaders building intimacy and friendship with their land is a beautiful, life-long pursuit. As I drove away from the Burke’s little farm, I realized that it fit them the way our wild, brambly land fits my family. Like in marriage, homesteaders all start to share some of the qualities of their own patch of earth.

If you’re pursuing the homesteading life, or if you’re working to carve a tiny, urban homestead out of a city lot, I’d love to share my own advice – gathered through over 12 years on an off-grid, intentionally Catholic, homestead.

Be Slow with Permanent Change

Don’t sign a logging contract or clear cut trees. Don’t bring in a whole flock of sheep until you’ve got fencing and shelter. Move slowly. Get to know your land before changing it. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “Love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue…perhaps you will gradually…live along some distant day into the answer.” Your land is like that too – it’s full of mysteries and questions without answers. Get to know it, and let it unravel that mystery slowly.

Spend Time at Home

Homestead life is settled life. Like the Benedictines, who take a vow of Stability, homesteading requires us to be home most of the time. Cows, goats, pigs, and even chickens need consistent care. Don’t expect the homesteading life to come with two weeks of vacation time or plenty of time to get out and about. Between animal care, garden work, housework, and all the repairs that come up, expect to stay home often. We love the stability of homesteading, but it can be a challenge to adjust to.

Consider Homeschooling

Homeschooling and homesteading go together like honey-butter and homemade bread. Homeschooled kids learn so much just around the yard – everything from animal and butchering to seed starting and tree identification. Homeschooling also allows you to live life on your own schedule, instead of adjusting your family life to the demands of an institution.

Grow What You Eat

Don’t worry about raising pigs if you don’t like pork or keeping chickens if you hate eggs. Tailor your homestead to your family’s needs. If your family eats a lot of beets, grow rows and rows of them. We grow an abundance of pumpkins and garlic because we can eat them all. We don’t grow as many peppers or zucchini because they’re just not an essential part of our diet. Grow the foods you like to eat, and then eat what your grow.

Compost

Homesteading is about stewarding the land gently. Build up your soil with healthy compost so that your land will be ready to nourish you, your children, and your children’s children. Look at the earth as a gift you can give to the next generation. Healing the land is an act of love toward your family and your neighbors. St. Francis was called to rebuild the Church, and at first, he started with bricks and mortar. Later he realized that the call to rebuild was an internal one. Rebuilding the soil is a similar process. It’s easy to sift the earth, build a raised bed, and pour on fertilizer – but long-term healing is a slow, intentional process. Nurture your soil, build a compost pile, bring in manure from your animals, and rebuild the soil so it can nurture you in return.

Find Mentors

It can be a hard, lonely journey to step out towards the land and learn to live close to nature again. You may be the only one you know pursuing the agrarian life. One of the best ways to succeed is by finding people who can help you navigate this new path.

You won’t always agree with your mentors. Once you start meeting other homesteaders, you’ll find we don’t all agree on much. But you’ll have the opportunity to share ideas, borrow books, ask for advice, and grow together. Organizations like The Catholic Land Movement and The Healing Land can help you connect with other Catholics moving toward a more sustainable life and encourage you when your beets fail to come up, or you lose half your chickens to an enterprising fox.

Go For It!

I know, land is hard to find right now. Prices have gone up and everything is in a state of uncertainty. If you can find a patch of earth to call your own – go for it! If not, don’t be too focused on what you haven’t found yet. Work with your dreams to create an urban homestead that can help you live a nourishing life wherever you are.