U.S. Homesteading Versus U.K. Smallholding

Reader Contribution by Cathie Ackroyd
Published on February 5, 2013
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Since joining MOTHER EARTH NEWS blogging community as one of the ‘Happy Homesteaders’ I have been musing about the term Homesteader as it is not one that is in use here in the UK.

I love the term hugely as it feels so accurate in describing the lifestyle we have decided upon which strives to make home the heart of everything we do and therefore is a place we long to spend time and energy in rather than wanting to escape from it when we have spare time.

Here in the UK I think the closest term to describe a similar way of life to that of a homesteader is ‘smallholder’ but to me this has quite different connotations.

A smallholder is officially a farmer with a small agricultural holding in order to raise animals and/or vegetables and fruit but for me, the word doesn’t evoke the associations of home spun crafts, cottage industries, food preservation, thriftiness that ‘homesteading’ does.

For some reason also in my mind the two terms have different gender associations. A smallholder is a quite a masculine term being one of pure animal husbandry and land management whereas a homesteader seems to be a more feminine label encompassing pursuits which in the past were traditionally the domain of the matriarch in a family.

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