The Christian Homesteading Movement

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If you think the back-to-the-land movement is attracting only young freaks, misfits, the alienated and disenchanted revolutionaries . . . the Christian Homesteading Movement will set you straight. Membership is for god-fearing people only, though the rest of us are welcome to learn and participate at CHM's homesteading "school."

Like the Amish, Mennonites and other fundamentalists, the CHM believes living close to nature and to the land, and working only with hand tools, gives life the simplicity most conducive to spiritual development. Unlike the Amish and Mennonites, however, the CHM is a relatively new group. It was founded in 1961 and has yet to achieve its goal; the establishment of full-fledged homesteading communities.

The CHM school and headquarters is a 68-acre farm on top of one of the rolling hills of south central New York, just outside the town of Oxford. I first learned of CHM in the Contact columns of MOTHER and when I saw a full-page article about the movement in an upstate daily, I decided to check it out.

Fortunately I didn't show up unannounced, otherwise I would have been required to spend a day sawing wood. Unannounced visitors must saw wood for a day or they are invited to leave. It's a rule that keeps tourists and crashers away.

There are other rules, too: no cameras, no "gadgets" of any kind (flashlights, radios, etc.), no hard liquor or drugs, no cars or machinery and no "profanity" or vulgarity. Tobacco is "tolerated but not encouraged" and women wearing anything but kneelength skirts and dresses are not allowed to visit. Women in shorts or pants "will be advised to go home and get dressed properly."

The homesteading school is not managed—as you might expect—by hoary Bible thumpers but by bearded, 28-year-old Richard Fahey, who has apparently. been the only continuing resident of the farm-school. I arrived during one of Richard's Saturday morning classes on homesteading skills.

Seven of us huddled in a nine-by-nine log cabin used as a tool shed, animal shelter and "temporary" living quarters. (I later learned there are only two other structures on the farm: a four-by-eight chicken coop and a seven-by-twelve log cabin containing the CHM's 1,000-volume homesteading library) while Dick, 20ish, one of the transient residents, gave a lesson about the care, raising and habits of bees. Then Richard brought in one of the school's two goats for a talk about them and a demonstration in milking. At the end of each "class", both teachers randomly called on us to answer questions about the lesson. What would happen if one of us didn't have the right answer? Everyone had the right answer.

After-classes, we inspected the farm's four bee hives, named the Amish, Benedictines, Christian Homesteaders and Dominicans. I chatted with another visitor, with Richard and a couple of transients, then went walking in the fields to pick wild strawberries with Dick. He had a copy of an Alan Watts book in his pocket, said he was "on the road" and came to the farm once or twice a year, staying a week at a time. I don't know how it came up, but Dick expressed some admiration for Tim Leary and I began to suspect he wasn't a fundamentalist. I wondered what Dick was doing there and what it was like to live at the Christian Homesteading Center.