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The third of three chapters exploring the history of homesteading, this chapter analyzes the counterculture back-to-the-land movement in the area around Berea, Kentucky. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter illustrates that this is a major social movement, far more enduring and robust than stereotypes of “hippie” back-to-the-landers would suggest. The chapter shows that participants represent a multistranded left with diverse backgrounds, including a high proportion who are from rural Appalachia; that they take subsistence production seriously; and that homesteading represents a specific, “prefigurative” form of social activism. The chapter also explores the complex relationship between counterculture homesteaders and their rural neighbors, and argues the former are unified as a group by high levels of literacy and educational attainment; they represent, in effect, a rural intelligentsia.

This chapter explores the intersections between the breastfeeding movement, environmentalism, and second-wave feminism from the 1950s through the 1980s. Concern over environmental toxins was one of the first issues to draw breastfeeding supporters out of the domestic sphere and into the political realm as they advocated publicly and through their daily life-choices as consumers and household managers for a more “natural” life free from the destructive consequences of technological interventions upon the family. As this chapter also shows, however, the widening appeal of this natural ideology by the early 1970s not only helped expose more mothers to the breastfeeding movement, it also led to a polarization in the interests and political leanings of the community. As breastfeeding rates began to noticeably increase by the 1970s, the ideological connection between natural motherhood and breastfeeding became a point of contention as lower-income and working mothers increasingly sought the same kind of maternal experience as their wealthier, stay-at-home peers.

This chapter evaluates contemporary homesteading and rural subsistence in eastern Kentucky as a form of activism and resistance. It argues that homesteading alone is not a particularly effective means of changing larger socioeconomic structures, such as capitalism and plutocracy. However, homesteading, when pursued with skill, is capable of surprising achievements: it can be an effective means of reducing a household’s reliance upon the mainstream economy; shifting work away from wage labor; fostering frugality; bringing homesteaders into closer interaction with the natural world; and serving as a living laboratory for appropriate technologies. These are real accomplishments that explain the continued attraction of this particular form of activism.

This chapter traces the early history of the organic movement, emphasizing three debates that would persist to the present: what specifically defines organic practices, the role of spirituality versus science in organic philosophy, and the relationship between organic advocacy and broader social issues. Early 20^th century organic pioneers such as Albert Howard, Eve Balfour and Rudolf Steiner introduced this approach to farming in Europe. In the United States publisher J.I. Rodale trumpeted the cause and spread organic philosophy through his magazines starting in the 1940s, a time when industrial agriculture practices and the use of synthetic chemicals in farming were on the rise. Rodale built a small following, but organic remained fairly marginal until it attracted the interest of the counterculture in the 1960s. It was at this point that the organic cause began to take on the formal characteristics of a social movement.

The second of three chapters exploring the history of homesteading in the area around Berea, Kentucky, chapter 3 presents the story of rural subsistence from the late 1800s up to the economic boom generated by World War II. The chapter is framed in terms of the “parable of enclosure”--the idea that yeoman farmers would not voluntarily trade independent livelihood for capitalist wage labor--and argues that as industry and technology generated ever more advanced consumer goods (for example, refrigerators, radios, antibiotics), the peasant way of life became outmoded; once wage labor became available in the factories of the north, millions of Appalachians left the mountains. But, as the chapter documents, some chose to return to a homesteading life, forming an overlooked back-to-the-land movement.

Mark Schultz delves into the life of Benjamin F. Hubert, a rural reformer in Georgia who tried to stem the flood away from farming by establishing a viable independent black town, the Log Cabin Community. He allied with other African American agrarian reformers who urged blacks to separate themselves from white society and return to the land to live an independent life sheltered from white supremacy and unequal citizenship. Hubert's strategy based in cooperative farming, scientific agriculture, and industrial education transformed tenants into landowners, sustained rural communities, and allowed farmers to provide for their children. He founded the Association for the Advancement of Negro Country Life in 1928 and used his position as president of the black land-grant college in Georgia to promote his utopian ideal. Children raised on farms owned by their parents tended to get a better education than sharecroppers' children. The owners' children developed self-reliant habits of mind and a sense of optimism that they could succeed despite the barriers thrown up by white supremacy. Many of these children found their way into the northern urban middle class. In doing so, they demonstrated that farm owning offered both immediate security and a path out of poverty.

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter deepens the questions raised in the introduction with visits to a “country” homestead (during a pig roast) and a “bohemian” homestead (during a work party on a strawbale house), describing the overlapping but contrasting cultures and practices of the two places. The chapter argues that contemporary homesteads represent anomalous and exotic spaces that differ markedly from those common in mainstream American life, and discusses the stereotypes, both positive and negative, of “hick” and “hippie” homesteaders. It closes with a discussion of the challenges of defining homesteading, which is predicated upon intensified household subsistence but takes many forms, such as a minimalist homestead relying more upon frugality than production, or a parcel with an owner-built home but no garden.

The epilogue forms a coda to the previous chapter, which argues that contemporary homesteading in eastern Kentucky represents a serious form of activism and resistance to capitalist modernity, even though it does little to change the nature of capitalism itself. The epilogue suggests that homesteading should be seen as a form of anarchism, defined by James Scott as “cooperation without hierarchy or state rule.” The epilogue illustrates that anarchism is a foundational mode of human life--one that remains crucial today even as it is overlooked and eroded--and argues that the intentional practice of anarchism represents an important, capacity-building experience in “lived democracy,” which is too often lacking in our families, schools, churches, governments, and workplaces.