Why Farmstead? Why not Homestead or Farm?

I tossed this question around in my head for quite some time. Homestead implies a more self sufficient place, a balance of garden and livestock to support your family, certainly not at all a bad thing! I do not know what our future place may look like; I am saving to buy it and know the area I want, and I feel like having an existing living structure would be best, be it barn, trailer, mobile home, cabin or house.  I have no building experience and building a home by myself with just me and the kids seems like a fairly illogical choice at this time. But beyond that I am pretty fluid. I wouldn’t mind having acres to work with, my son wants pigs and cows and my daughter wants a horse so having a pasture would certainly be nice. Having land outside town limits frees up so many restrictions on having livestock so that would be great.

And yet, my family lives in those town limits; being close to them would be wonderful. The town is also the most likely place to get and maintain a steady job instead of living off unstable contract work. So living close would be great. That leads to the next question; what about urban homesteading? An Urban Homestead is doing it on a small-to-tiny scale within city or town limits. I had always found this idea fascinating-how much people could do with just their backyard-how inspiring! I can definitely get behind that idea! Though I must admit, I do not see why those same principles that make urban homesteading so fascinating to me could be applied on a larger scale.

So that brings the next question: why not call this future place a Farm? Well, I don’t know if it will be one. Farm bring up a mental image of acres rolling pastures and numerous outbuildings full of animals and tractors surrounding a white farmhouse. What are the chances of that being something I could afford for my first house/land/home purchase? Pretty unlikely. So what to call this dream? I was leaning towards homestead…but the thought of jumping right in and calling it that honestly is a little daunting when you think about all the facets of aiming for self sufficiency. Couldn’t I just ease into it? Dip my toes and gradually work towards the full monty? I wanted a name I loved for this blog, to document my goals and progress to making it reality instead of a hopeful someday dream. Mostly because I think better in writing and track life with lists, so written word sure helps! And partly…because I have been in a place in my life where this was the farthest impossible seeming dream. If I could inspire someone else in that place in life to dream big and work to get it, how could I not want to do that? This Post by Thoughtful Food helped lay all this term comparison out there in a much more pared down logical way and introduced me to the term “Farmstead” let us look at their definition for a moment.

“Farmsteading: Producing food to support your family and for sale. Think the farmer with a part-time or full-time non-farming job.”

Okay, doesn’t emphasize size or location or goals…sort of freeing and open to interpretation. Yes I can go with that! My goal is a better, healthier life for my family. Growing food and raising our meat. Am I opposed to the idea of raising market crops or having a farmers market stand or booth? Certainly not, my daughter wants to sell eggs from her chickens, and my son wants those cows, pigs, and has talked about having an apiary for honey and the possibility of selling it. Toss in my lifelong love of rabbits and knowing there is a meat rabbit market in my area…well sounds like we have a good dream cooking right? And this is the story of why I chose Farmstead.

Do you have a name for your place? What did you choose and why? Leave a comment and let me know, I love hearing the stories of others about how they chose their place’s name!

The Ms.