The Owner Built Home & Homestead
(Page 12 of 15)
Ed Robinson took over the idea from a School of Living
brochure entitled Have More Vegetables, and
developed his famous "Have More Plan" and country life
bookstore. After a flourishing business, this was
discontinued in the 50s.
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J. I. Rodale visited the School of Living in 1938, and
there saw the composted gardens, the use of whole foods,
the grinding of grain into flour and cereal, and the
regular baking of whole-meal bread. He went back to Emmaus,
Pa., and later changed his publishing emphasis to gardening
and homesteading. The magnificent growth and influence of
the Rodale publishing enterprises are well-known today.
Mildred Jensen (Loomis) was assistant educational director
of the Suffern School of Living (1938-40) and later
continued that work avocationally at her home, Lane's End
Homestead, near Brookville, Ohio. Her editing of journals
(The Interpreter, Balanced Living, etc.) began in
1944 and continues in 1966 with the monthly Green
Revolution and the bimonthly A Way Out. The
numbers of people who have been influenced to the homestead
way from these, and her book, Go Ahead and Live!,
are uncounted. Some of the successful homesteads which have
grown out of this work will be described and detailed in
The Owner-Built Homestead.
During the depression of the 30s and 40s, books like
Five Acres and Independence carried on Borsodi's
early emphasis. But unfortunately these early writers and
promoters of country life did not produce a dominant trend
in our country. Why?
The reasons are many. The technological drift of the modern
day had attained a momentum that could not be stopped by a
trickle of counter-ideas. And the form and content of the
discourse about rural living in the 30s and 40s were of a
pre-depression vintage. Traditional living-patterns were
dressed up in a "country living" format and presented as a
bonafide original. Many would-be homesteaders became
disillusioned.
There was no qualified, professional or educational
assistance in the homestead movement. One exception to this
was an architectural competition for a productive
homestead, sponsored by the early Free America
magazine.
So the first wave of homesteading interest in the late 30s
and 40s diminished. Some leaders in the movement seemed to
drift into specialized aspects such as organic gardening,
nutrition or craft production. This was probably aided by
the seemingly narrow and limited nature and understanding
of homesteading. People thought that no earth-shaking
revolution—or revelation—could ever come out of
a potato patch!
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