The Self-sufficient Homestead

Image Gallery Steve works with his son Joseph.

By Steve Maxwell

With motivation, hard work (and an Internet connection), the dream of going back to the land is more attainable than ever.

I used to daydream about going back to the land and building a place of my own. When I finally did it, I discovered the reality of homesteading was even better than I had imagined.

My grandfather took me to see the original Grizzly Adams movie, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, when I was 12 years old. As I watched the story of a man learning to survive in the wilderness, for the first time in my life I glimpsed a way of living that was in harmony with nature. That idea was extremely compelling to me, even if the story was contrived from a Hollywood director’s chair. One of the main attractions for me was freedom from the need for money. As a youngster, I thought the prospect of a money-free lifestyle in the wilderness looked like a great alternative to the few dollars I earned each week cutting grass and painting garages.

I grew up in a sprawling Toronto suburb, where I was fortunate enough to meet my wife, Mary, during our last year of high school. But by the end of my teens, I couldn’t wait to move away. More than anything, I was thirsty for a piece of land. I wanted a place with plenty of scope for my imagination, a patch of ground with enough room to dream big, get my hands dirty, and forge a sustainable and beautiful partnership with the natural world. More than 20 years later, I’m here to tell you that such a life is possible, and that here in the country there’s room for you, too.

Building a Home

When I was 23, Mary and I bought a 91-acre parcel of farmland and forest on Manitoulin Island, nestled along the north shore of Lake Huron in Ontario. Five years after that, we settled into the mortgage-free stone-and-timber house that we built for ourselves on the property. Today we share this home with our four island-born children: Robert, 14; Katherine, 10; Joseph, 7; and Jacob, 4.

Manitoulin Island is almost 100 miles long, and it’s an uncommon mixture of small farms, clean lakes and healthy forests. About 12,000 people live here year-round; the summer population swells to about 50,000. A few books have been written about the island, but the most telling title is Forever on the Fringe. From one end to the other, this island is the kind of rural area without a whiff of the city anywhere.

One of my founding principles always has been to avoid debt, and this is especially true when it comes to buying land and building a home. When Mary and I bought this property, we economized and bought land without buildings (it cost $16,500 in Canadian dollars back in 1986, which would have been about $12,000 in U.S.ollars). Then, we built an uninsulated 10-by-20-foot wood-frame shed for $550. It was big enough to offer both tool storage and living quarters, but just barely. We lived there for several years while we crafted our house, moving out just a week before our son Robert was born.