Not so self-reliant

It’s early fall, and the homestead is doing what it does best: making a lot of noise.

Wild plum trees bless the ground with neon pink fruit. Plonk. The downy-white tufted Roman geese, Kareema and Qaswa, chatter away as they keep vigilant watch over the hens — and me. Honk. The rooster, Iqbal, is engaged in his daily vocal competition with the neighboring cocks. A doodle-doo.

The garden is having its own moment. Jurassic-sized chard is ready to be boxed up and sent to the food pantry, along with carrots, lettuce and basil. My neighbor Rachel just dropped off a Clark Filbert hazelnut bush — she had an extra — and my beekeeping mentee Adrienne showed up this morning with a fresh fig, the first from her young tree.

This is the part of homesteading that rarely makes it into the glossy pictures: the connections, the generosity, the rhythms.

Was this the life I imagined when I set out to “homestead” 10 years ago?

Not even close.

Back then, I had a fairly one-dimensional idea of self-reliance: grow your own food, make your own heat, keep animals, preserve the harvest. Become the kind of person who could probably survive the apocalypse with a mason jar and a handsaw.

A decade later – after more poopy boots, dirty fingernails and rooster-related shin injuries than I care to admit – I’ve learned that self-reliance isn’t really the point.

The real surprise has been discovering how much a life rooted in land depends on other lives, too.

1. Observe before you act

To the outside observer, I must have looked slightly unhinged that first year.

I traced an invisible perimeter around a peculiar shape in my backyard, squinted at the sky to determine the path of the sun over the would-be garden, and pressed my boots into the earth to figure out where it was muddiest.

Back and forth I went, trying to imagine a garden among the nettles and mugwort.

For a whole year, I did what I’d been taught in many a permaculture and biodynamic lesson: I observed. I watched and walked. I stood still. I spent time with the land through every season, learning its rhythms and rules.

It turns out the land is a pretty good teacher, provided you stop talking long enough to hear it. The plants tell you where they want to grow. The insects tell you what’s out of balance. The water tells you where it wants to go. Even the weeds have opinions.

Patience is the slowest, hardest crop to cultivate, but it’s also one of the most sustaining.

2. Tend, don’t tame

Gardeners, let’s admit it: we like control.

There is something deeply satisfying about primly formed rows of carrots and lettuce, neatly pruned tomatoes and a woodchip path so tidy you could eat off it.

For a while, I tried to make the homestead look like the picture in my head. The land had other plans.

My first-year garden became a who-stands-taller competition: me or the mugwort. The mugwort won.

One bed of carrots produced roots so tiny I barely had enough to make a single jar of Indian carrot pickle. The root cellar was embarrassed for me.

Eventually, after a few years of trying to impose order on a piece of land that clearly had no interest in my management style, I began to wonder: What if I stopped trying to tame the place? What if I tended it instead?

It was a subtle shift, but a profound one.

I began to loosen my grip on what was “neat” and what was “messy.” Once I stopped trying so hard to put everything right, things began to flow, and the land began to work its wild magic through me.

3. Nothing wasted

The compost pile was the first truly homesteady thing I did.

I was ridiculously excited about it. I’d carry my little compost bucket out to the pile and toss in orange peels and tea bags with the glee of someone who had just discovered alchemy.

Hallelujah! No more kitchen waste!

My enthusiasm for the cycle of life expanded when I started cultivating mushrooms. I took a Game of Logging class upstate to learn how to safely operate a chainsaw, then began bucking my own trees to create a shiitake stand. I became mad for mushrooms.

Then my first chicken died.

Her name was Mouse. She was a sweet Light Brahma, barely a year old. I’d raised her from a one-day-old chick. She depended on me, and I had failed her. I was a horrible human.

My neighbor Joe, whose flock numbered around 300 chickens, talked me down from the ledge. Sometimes they make it, he told me. Sometimes they just don’t. You’re giving them the best possible life in your backyard flock. Don’t forget that.

That sentence changed something for me.

The compost pile, the fallen trees, the mushroom logs, the dead chicken — all of it belonged to the same cycle.

Nothing is wasted in nature. Not even death. Our job is not to prevent the cycle. It’s to participate in it.

And when we allow ourselves to experience the whole thing — the birth, the growth, the harvest, the loss — grief has a funny way of becoming gratitude.

4. Follow the unexpected

It was my first time planting green onions.

I’d germinated them from seed in February, which seemed like an excellent idea at the time. Now it was April, and I was on my knees in the garden, staring at about 1,000 tiny plants and a 50-foot bed.

I looked at the trays, then at the bed. What, exactly, had I been thinking in February?

As I started planting, a car pulled up. It was a random Sunday afternoon, and I wasn’t expecting anyone.

Heather got out. She was a forager I’d met on a farm tour in Westchester the previous weekend. She said she’d had an urge to hop in the car and visit. When she was growing up, she told me, neighbors would just show up — checking in, lending a hand, helping out on the farm.

So she did. And before I knew it, the 50-foot row was planted.

I’ve come to believe that land is magnetic. It draws to itself who and what it needs. The richest harvests are not always the ones you planned. Sometimes you just have to leave the gate open.

5. Know when enough is enough

Like many people, I began homesteading with a romanticized picture in my head.

You know the one: beautifully colored eggs every morning, crisp greens plucked from the garden just before dinner, maple syrup from your own trees, firewood stacked for winter.

Reflecting back on the last decade, I can attest: the fantasy is true. That’s what makes it so seductive.

There really is enormous pleasure in growing food, raising animals, making heat, and turning something you planted into something you can eat.

It is joy that fuels the work. But the work never ends.

There is always another bed to weed, another fence to fix, another jar to fill, another load of firewood to split. Even the garden, all on its own, will happily generate a new list of chores.

Chickens, meanwhile, understand something I’ve been slower to learn. They take a break from laying when the days get shorter. Mushroom logs need seven weeks of rest between fruitings. Soil needs rest, too.

The land knows when to stop. So I’m learning to stop, too.

Because somewhere along the way, joy can become obligation. You stop sitting on the porch because there’s still a bed to weed. You stop admiring the tomatoes because you’re already thinking about preserving them. You stop living the life you wanted because you’re too busy maintaining it.

That’s when enough becomes enough, I’ve learned. Sometimes the right thing to do is leave the weeds, taste the honey, sit on the porch, and let the garden wait.

At this point, I’m less interested in being self-sufficient than I am in being connected — to the land, to my neighbors, to the animals, to the people who show up with a plant, a shovel, or a fig.

Maybe that’s the real harvest: not doing it all yourself, but having a life you actually have time to live.