I was a soldier for many years and had the opportunity to travel the world and see many different places; got to see many different cultures and how people lived and never really thought too much about it, I was just out there doing my job to the best of my ability and watching the backs of those around me.
Today, I have served my country honorably and am carving out my existence just like everyone else with an 8-5 job, a house, and a family to support. But all too often I am asked by friends, family, or others with whom I speak why I homestead; why I push myself so hard to convert my land, harvest my crops, and tend to my animals.
Sure I can say what every other homesteader says such as “to create a better life for my family” or “to provide a healthier option for my family” and I would not be wrong and there is nothing wrong with that explanation at all.
However I feel there is far more to it than just that, I could be relaxing and enjoying my life even more, after all, I have served my country as all veterans have, heck I have earned it. So why do I homestead? And why did I start up the Floyd Family Homestead website and struggle every day to build up its community?
Well, I will answer these questions for you now; but first I need you, the reader to do something and I need you to be 100% honest in doing so, do not just read it and move on, but seriously do this.
I would like you to get up from your computer, iPad, or whatever medium you are using to read this and go and just watch your child, or spouse just for a minute or two… just really watch them, don’t say anything, just take them in and search in your heart just what they mean to you.
I’ll wait here for you……
Welcome back, did you do it? Good now your heart is filled with love for your child or your spouse correct? They mean the world to you and you would do anything to protect them, correct?
Good as all human beings we protect and love what is ours, especially our children. Now I want you to picture your child like this:
How would you feel if your child was staring up at you with begging and pleading eyes and crying because they are hungry, and you have no food to feed them? And there is no food at the grocery stores. Could you bear to let them go hungry? Most people would say no.
It is not in our nature to let those go hungry, stay sick, or suffer because we want to give them a better life than our own. So on that premise, you give what food you have to your children and you go without.
Days pass in doing this, you are now so weak from the lack of food that you cannot even go out and look for more food, now who is going to feed your child? What will your child do if you perish during a crisis like this?
Would you want them to have to go and do this?
Ok, but there was no food to give out any more, or there wasn’t enough? You know what people will do when they are desperate to feed their families, do you want your child to live through this?
Well as most Americans and the majority of the civilized world believe, This cannot happen here, we are the greatest country on Earth, the land of Opportunity, let me ask you this: Did you think Tornados in Moore, OK couldn’t happen to us? Did you think Superstorm Sandy couldn’t happen to us? Did you think Hurricane Katrina couldn’t happen to us? Did you think 911 couldn’t happen to us? Do you think Pearl Harbor couldn’t happen to us?
The fact is that almost every single person on this Earth, no matter where you are from, no matter what race, religion, gender, or age thinks that nothing really bad will befall them in their lifetime until it does.
Folks, homesteading is not just about gathering our crops, feeding our animals, canning the leftovers, and farmer markets, it is about building a better life for ourselves and all those that are in it. Families, parents, and children all over the world live and survive on what they sow. We the ones who are fortunate choose to live the homesteading life, while others have no choice but to live it to survive.
We are not just building better soil, or healthier animals and food, but we are building a better way of life through community, through humanity, and through our selfless actions to help others live a better life. Families in torn countries work together, parents, children, neighbors, and friends to build a better life for themselves and their children.
Their children are not just laborers when they want the trash taken out or the lawn mowed, nor are they working because they are being punished. These parents and families are teaching their children skills on how to survive, how to thrive, and how to take nothing and grow something, they are working to build a better life for them.
We are blessed to live in prosperity, in secure homes with the freedom to choose to grow food or raise animals to better our lives, but are we teaching our children the skills they may need to survive? No one considers that their country or their towns would be destroyed in a war; neither did the families in Afghanistan or Ukraine, the fact is no one knows what the future will hold for anyone; no one knows when even a small tragedy may strike close to home.
So friends, to me homesteading is not only about growing crops, canning food, and raising animals it is also about raising our communities and most of all raising our children with honesty, integrity, and all the skills that they need to survive; Our schools teach them math, science and more, and we as parents teach them about morals, honesty and more but we should also be teaching them how to be a better person, how to reach out and help others in their community, about skills to help them live a healthier life, about how to provide for themselves not only in a 1st world country but how to survive if a tragedy has stuck.
Folks, this is why I homestead, this is why I struggle to keep my blog afloat and going month after month. I homestead and teach my children not only how to survive but to hold on to what is good in this world, to know what morality is, to know what decency is, to know what respect is, and to reclaim what this world has lost.
I homestead not only to fill their stomachs and minds but to fill their spirits, to fill their souls. I built this website not only to fill your minds, but to fill your spirits and to fill your souls so you will live a better life, so you will help build this community so that if the tragedy of a war, a natural disaster, or even that of a stroke happens in our lives that we all know that those around us, our friends, our children, our loved ones will be able to survive and carry on and together we can all reclaim our world… and leave our Homesteading Legacy.
Until Next Time.
God Bless
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