'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy
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But holy shit am I repulsed by the influencer aspect that is growing with this "movement". Ways of Seeing taught that publicity (aka marketing) is tied to envy. There is such a deep schism between the Web 2.0 communities that exchange ideas on a forum and the vapid glamour shots posted on Instagram and Tik Tok. I think the takeaway is "Don't trust anyone in your hobby who is making money off their social media account."
Maybe this is why I like homebrewing: everyone is a bearded, chubby 35 year old nerd and there no way to make a 5 gallon carboy of bubbling alcoholic liquid into something "glamourous"
That is a remarkably accurate, but sad observation. There’s always been folks trying to hustle in various hobbies and interest groups, but these days they seem to take up all the oxygen in a space.
The glossy image/clip video nature of things seem unavoidable and make many people with humbler aspirations more reluctant to share their works, thoughts, and perspectives if they aren’t able to be turned into the visual equivalent of a sound bite.
Although epoxy river tables make me cringe everytime I see one...
More-so even than walnut-stained construction-grade plywood gaming tables? ;-)
Hey, I shouldn't poke fun, you got to start somewhere.
Give me a chubby 35 year old nerd who knows tons of stuff over a nice attractive couple who take good pictures to sell advertising.
1: the author disagrees (but may feel they can't do so directly), and
2: the author is clever (which of course is true of all HN users).
Anyway, that covers the number one question most people ask me about that, showers probably a close second. I just didn't shower as frequently, but did not mind it, since I was alone or with others who didn't mind. For showers, I went to gyms, dance studios, friends' showers, public showers, and so on.
It always seemed to me overkill to try to do all that yourself, when all you really need is a bit of personal space where you can lie down flat and sleep...
Except Ewan McGregor, you sexy bastard.
That, the average age of adventure motorcyclists, and the cost of this seasonal vehicle are enough to keep influencers out.
Alcohol is very prominent on Instik, don't give them ideas. They might not have the brains to actually make it but they sure can buy the equipment and use water pretending it's moonshine :D
Guess what gardening takes time and effort and ain't nobody got time for that!
Michael Douglas' "Greed is Good" movie speech had a bigger cultural impact than the actual plot of the film (Wall Street, 1987), where the exploitative nature of private equity takeovers is shown, and where both Douglas and Sheen eventually land in prison for insider trading.
More like the king among the minor nobility.
I don't think it's fashionable to actually dress well anymore.
Also, every year there are a few people who actually try to move to the village I am from. Most of them sell their house again within a few years because they don't understand that living in the countryside sucks if you're not trying to be part of the local community, and if you move in acting like you're better than the locals that's not going to happen.
Edit: I often think about buying a cheap old isolated house on a couple acres in Italy, fixing it up and just putting the world at arms length. Kids and wife make it impractical so I will continue to trudge :)
I agree that this the popular sentiment, but I think work is a smaller part of it than we like to think. I think people are simply overwhelmed with the always-on, always-connected lifestyles that fill our every waking moment with outrage-bait headlines and more entertainment media than we could possibly ever consume. Anyone with a phone is always seconds away from piping stress and bad news and drama and conflict and ragebait straight into their eyes for hours at a time. And many do!
Wage stagnation is one thing, but I think the actual amount of work we’re doing gets less and less each decade. When I was young I remember my parents making fun of me for working “bankers’ hours” because my job was 9-6. For them, 10-12 hour days were the norm. Before that, my grandfathers on both sides had to work two full-time jobs simultaneously at different points to support their families. Before that, my great-grandparents started with a homestead where every day was filled with hard labor just to survive when winter rolled around.
Cottagecore aesthetic encapsulates a romanticized version of the laborious homesteading lifestyle but in a way that assumes all of the modern amenities and none of the labor. It sells because most people are so far removed from the idea of how much labor it takes to survive and be self-sufficient that the idea seems downright romantic.
The notion that things would be easier if we simply rolled back the clock to simpler times is demonstrably not true, but the idea of “born in the wrong era” is a common result of romanticizing the past.
This has happened to me in my garden just this season with looper caterpillars, grasshoppers, aphids, spider mites, and rats. I've practically opened a grocery store for them so I can't blame them, but in knowing that my directed change of the local ecology leads to this localized response of more aphids or whatever, I am able to take preventative measures to make my crop less attractive to interlopers (neem oil and bt in my case), and combat the response that happens from me shifting the ecological equilibrium by growing all these tasty plants from all over the world in my garden in an area where they wouldn't normally be found naturally. Maybe in your case combating your blight pathogen in the future means work making sure the soil is free of spores, planting practices that might avoid blight to a degree, or selecting hardier varieties that are better suited to your local conditions or resistant to blight if such cultivars are available. The battle becomes less like a fruitless effort (pardon the pun) and more like a game of chess when you start studying this stuff a little bit.
Want to make a desk? All it takes is asking your dad if you can tidy up the garage a bit and finding some cheap wood. Want to plant some apricots? There's space out back near the veggie garden. Want to learn to drive? You've got a big paddock and the farmer you rent it to doesn't mind as long as you take care near his cattle. Want to build a hut and take photos for a school project? Sure, go down to the windbreak and look for sticks, just take a snakebite bandage with you.
The labour involved in keeping a modern rural property going isn't impossible to sustain, and there are a lot of tangible benefits, particularly if you've got kids. You can even pick a few old-timey hobbies like spinning or making jam if you want. You don't have to go all-in on living at an 1800s technology level.
Things might not be any easier, but they would definitely be simpler.
People are just tired of the commute, the mindless work and the idle time. They don't identify with their job, and don't expect any superfluous loyalty from their employer.
When things get complicated, nostalgia for the simplicity of rural life, without things like dirt or economic scarcity, tend to come to the fore [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi [1] http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/timeline-sw... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia#As_a_political_tool
To be fair, sometimes the government would allow urban households to garden in a 1/4 acre or so plot in designated areas as part of a program to help people be more self sufficient. Although my grandfather said not many people took advantage of that.
Those without farms overwhelmingly didn't need to. The only place in North America to have widespread hunger during the Great Depression was Newfoundland. If most people didn't take advantage of allotments it was because it wasn't worth it. After the fall of the Soviet Union lots and lots of urban ex-Soviet citizens grew their own food. They needed to.
My grandpa remembers many urban people during the depression complaining about food, but unwilling to work a garden on a government plot.
The one thing people who haven't experienced it can't understand is the taste of the food. I don't know what price I'd put on a breakfast made with fresh milk, eggs, home baked bread and salted pork but it would be at least a few hundred dollars.
If I didn't live in a region where any rural property is expected to burn down once a decade I'd have bought a weekend farm a long time ago.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
I think that sums it up better than I could ever do.
Don Quixote replied that he himself was to be called the shepherd Quixotize and the bachelor the shepherd Carrascon, and the curate the shepherd Curambro, and Sancho Panza the shepherd Pancino.
Both were astounded at Don Quixote’s new craze; however, lest he should once more make off out of the village from them in pursuit of his chivalry, they trusting that in the course of the year he might be cured, fell in with his new project, applauded his crazy idea as a bright one, and offered to share the life with him. “And what’s more,” said Samson Carrasco, “I am, as all the world knows, a very famous poet, and I’ll bealways making verses, pastoral, or courtly, or as it may come into my head, to pass away our time in those secluded regions where we shall be roaming. But what is most needful, sirs, is that each of us should choose the name of the shepherdess he means to glorify in his verses, and that we should not leave a tree, be it ever so hard, without writing up and carving her name on it, as is the habit and custom of love-smitten shepherds.”
How many large apartment blocs have you lived in? It's not a very enjoyable way to live, particularly with a family.
People want houses, garages, yards, and cars. Don't try to paint the selfish reality of human nature as being corrupted by some propagandistic force against collectivism.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/22/pruitt-igoe-h...
Not sure if you have ever lived in an apartment if you think grocery shopping is a “Herculean” task. You just take the elevator and walk a block or two to the grocery store. Furniture is actually easier than in a SFH because you don’t have to struggle to move it up stairs, you just pop it in an elevator. Package deliveries go to a concierge at the front desk rather than being stolen or getting wet on the porch if you’re not home, etc.
In general looking at trends of the 1960s to predict behavior today won’t work - there’s been a trend toward reurbanization in the last 30 years and white flight has reversed and been replaced with gentrification. The “slums” are now being pushed into city outskirts and suburbs themselves.
The reality is that land in desirable areas is scarce, so people ought to be free to choose the tradeoffs they prefer.
In Italy, my family and I actually did live in a home in a 6 unit building and it was just fine. 3 bedroom, 2 bath. Rather than the yard, the kids would go over to the local park, where they'd actually find other kids to play with, which is way more important to kids than the big yard in the house we rent here in the US.
None were decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard.
They were all cramped 2-bedroom units overlooking shopping malls, designed for people who didn't want to buy a house in the suburban sprawl around my Midwestern city. The courtyards were decrepit and unmaintained, the only nice green spaces had 'keep off the grass' signs. Obviously no one wants that, it worked as a college student and a newlywed but when we started a family I did, indeed, buy a house. But not because I actually wanted a house, because I wanted something other than the crappy apartments that were in my local market.
My parents recently bought a condo - it's in a green, forested neighborhood in some quiet residential streets, they have a two-car garage, they have four bedrooms - theirs, spare upstairs, office, one downstairs for visiting grandkids, storage space downstairs, upstairs they have a living room, dining room, and large kitchen. Theirs is a duplex, a few of the units in the neighborhood are larger quad-unit townhomes.
As relatively wealthy seniors, they were able to buy that outright. But nothing like that (except regular homes) is available to rent within several hundred miles, as far as I know. Nice apartments are just not a thing that we build, in part because culturally, "nice apartments" is an oxymoron.
You're right that families with children living in multifamily dwellings are under-represented on American TV, but that's not because they are rare in real American life. I can think of a few examples of course, like "The Jeffersons", the whole premise of which is how their success led to moving from a house in Queens to an apartment in Manhattan.
In reality, both are homes.
So sure, they aren't going to bars. But they are going to work. They are living in areas where their 6-year-old child can walk to school. Where they can take public transportation to work. And so on.
In suburbia, sure. In urban areas, 3+ bedroom apartments are definitely a thing, as are relatively spacious apartments for their bedroom count, and overlooking luxurious courtyards.
They are as expensive as you’d expect from places where studios are more expensive than suburban 3 bedroom single-family homes, though.
(Most families only need 2-3 bedrooms due to family sizes)
Absolute GHG emissions and impact are higher for higher incomes. GHG emissions are a function of wealth not geography. Urban areas have much higher concentraions of wealth. They also outsource much of their GHG creation to rural areas but are still the cause/consumer of it (concrete, energy, minerals, construction materials).
Also the perceived reduction in GHG emissions for urban areas is only true of late stage developed nations. Developing nations, those building out new cities, do not share the per capita efficiencies of full developed nations. The reason for this is that perceived per capita GHG reductions in developed nations were paid for by high GHG emissions of their past. New data on urban sprawl (sub-urbanization) sheds doubt on the idea that even developed nations cities per capita GHG emissions are lower than rural areas.
Ultimately, urbanization is a bulk consumer of Earth's natural resources and not a producer of those inputs.
Put simply: Cities are eating the Earth.
EDIT: Added point about sub-urban development negating efficiencies.
Also, suburban lifestyles are by far the most carbon intensive. Transportation by car and heating/cooling large houses uses a ton of energy.
The post you were replying to gave an argument for why GHG emissions would be lower in urban areas that, while not necessarily proven, at least passes the sniff test.
There are two primary forms of measuring GHG:
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A. Territorial GHG emission accounting
B. (Absolute) GHG footprint accounting
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A. Measures GHG released with in the territorial borders.
B. Measures upstream GHG released outside the territory but consumed within.
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Moving a coal plant across state lines doesn't reduce the GHG impact of a state, it merely removes the accounting from the states balance sheet.
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You can read more in the Reducing Urban Greenhouse Gas Footprints [1] paper below.
- https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-...
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_conc...
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/273367/consumption-of-ce...
So I very much doubt that road networks linking the cities with each other and with the surrounding rural areas are for the benefit of the rural areas more than for the benefit of the city, although certainly both sides obtain some benefit.
This goes all the way back to Rome. Why did all roads lead to Rome? For the benefit of the provinces, as an act of generosity on the part of Rome, or so that a stream of goods can be brought into Rome and consumed there?
Nonsense; cities are net consumers of food and people but net producers of goods and money (otherwise how would they buy all that food?), and rural areas benefit from the things produced there (otherwise why would they buy them?).
If cities were parasitical we'd expect areas with cities in to support smaller populations than equivalently-sized rural areas, which is false. You're putting the cart before the horse: why do people go to the city to seek their fortune? Because it's impossible for them to make a living in the country. Why are all the homeless people in the cities? Because in the countryside they'd starve.
The question we should be trying to answer is: for a fixed capacity of resources (land area, water, permitted GHG emissions, ...), how can we support as many people as possible. Having the majority follow efficient urban lifestyles does a lot better on that metric.
Let's be careful with our terms. Money is produced in the Bureau of Engraving. What you mean is that people within cities earn a higher income, which is true. Urban populations have higher incomes and consumption. But that means that money is flowing into the city from outside. Every time you swipe your credit card, someone in Manhattan gets a cut. Every time you buy an online ad, someone in Silicon Valley takes a cut. When you buy insurance, someone in Hartford takes a cut. Money from all over the country flows into cities.
So why does money flow into the city? For the same reason that a marketplace makes money or a platform makes money. It is a schelling point, helping to bridge the gap between intrinsic worth and market worth. The app you wrote is great but it wont make any money without a platform to run on. The baseball player may be a hall of famer but his pay will be determined by the stadium he plays in. Cities are generally where various professionals, managers, and administrators concentrate, and these earn higher incomes as they provide support services or organizational services to the rest of the economy.
> If cities were parasitical we'd expect areas with cities in to support smaller populations than equivalently-sized rural areas, which is false
I don't mean parasitical in a moral sense, but in the sense of the flow of real quantities (as we are talking about transportation along roads), because the value add of cities is organizational in nature rather than productive in nature. What we see is that if you create a high population rural area, a bigger city will spring up somewhere in the middle of it, just like if there are more producers, a bigger marketplace will emerge to be the focal point of those producers.
> why do people go to the city to seek their fortune?
Because that is where higher income/higher consumption opportunities lie. Just like why every company wants to be a platform. Or why ambitious corporate types want to be near the HQ. If you are a budding manager or would-be corporate lawyer, do you set up your shingle in Bullhead City, AZ, or in NYC? You want to be where all the money flows so you can be there to receive a cut. That's not to say you are stealing or being lazy. Obviously the competition to get that cut is fierce.
> The question we should be trying to answer is: for a fixed capacity of resources how can we support as many people as possible.
There is not a single pattern. You need a market place and you need producers to meet in that marketplace. Life is heterogeneous.
I assumed money was shorthand for value. If cities are running a balance-of-payments surplus compared to rural areas, that's because they're producing more value (I guess people move into the city when poor, do a bunch of valuable work that makes them rich, and then move out of the city), so it's weird to frame that as "parasitical on money".
> I don't mean parasitical in a moral sense,
Then why use such a morally loaded term?
> but in the sense of the flow of real quantities (as we are talking about transportation along roads), because the value add of cities is organizational in nature rather than productive in nature.
You're drawing an artificial distinction between "real" and not. The farmer who grows the food, the engineer who produced the fertilizer, the chemist who did the fundamental research, the banker who loaned them the capital... you can portion out the crop yields between them, but no-one's contribution is more real than the other, given that at the end of the day without any of them there'd be fewer kilos getting grown. If you want to compare the value of things that different parts of a society are producing, your measurement for that should be, well, value.
> There is not a single pattern. You need a market place and you need producers to meet in that marketplace. Life is heterogeneous.
Sure, but there are better and worse ways to do it. Put it this way: for someone on the margin at the moment, if they switched from a rural to an equivalent (and that's a whole other can of worms) urban lifestyle or vice versa, in which they were equivalently productive for society, would they be consuming more or less resources/GHG emissions/...?
I can't find the paper at the moment. I will try to get it posted here tomorrow.
The gist is that suburban grow is an overflow of city growth onto the surrounding area. When a suburban areas GHG accounting is taken into consideration it further removes any "apparent" per capita efficiency of the city.
It is really all just another case of Goodharts Law [1] with the addition that the measure was never comprehensive in the first place.
I'm happy to believe that suburban lifestyles are inefficient, but I don't find that a good argument for discouraging urban lifestyles - wouldn't that increase rather than decreasing suburban sprawl? (E.g. if you limit development in city centres, that's going to push more of it to nearby suburbs).
They don't clearly state their argument, so maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure they're arguing an inverse correlation. IE: Urban areas produce less because urbanites are on the whole a wealthier population.
If this is true, wouldn't it lead to ridiculous conclusions like a cow farmer being responsible for the GHG emissions of all his cows?
Oil industry spinned us to calculate personal carbon foot prints [1]. That’s a good tool, but at the same time it dissolves the responsibility. In one hand the people actually producing the harm get to blame consumer demand and consumer can aknowledge that what ever they do makes no difference in the big picture.
If you go to work somewhere and release lots of gasses heating the planet you should probably think long and hard why you are doing that.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi...
Are you saying this is actually how GHG calculations are done with respect to rural/urban, or that's how it should be counted?
>consumer can aknowledge that what ever they do makes no difference in the big picture.
a single consumer can't make a difference because they're one person out of 7 billion. consumers in aggregate can make a difference.
My city is heated with district heating, which comes from coal. Thats big chunk of my personal carbon footprint and makes living in a city look bad vs rural life.
I think focusing on consumers and making this about urban/rural lifestyle choices is only half the equation and to change things you need to go in and swap the power plants, farms etc.
I moved out to the country. Bought a big diesel. Started a farm. My GHGs went way up.
And yet, my lifestyle change has zero impact on climate change.
It's like voting--if you know game theory at all, you know it's a waste of time, just like it's a waste of a life to spend your time calculating and optimizing how "green" you're being. Zero real impact, beyond whatever it makes you feel.
Hey, I enjoy dirt bikes and the shooting guns on my land. My kids do too. Maybe you enjoy riding the bus and being efficient. To each their own. But don't live a lesser life just to live up to some lifestyle meme--whether it's the homesteading trend or the green trend--just do what you like.
I think the voting analogy is good, but I take a different lesson from it. Not that voting is pointless. Individual actions matter a great deal in their cumulative effect.
The only action an individual can take to have an impact at all is to lobby their government.
Maybe people who don't think voting is a waste of time will generate an environment where these decisions are made on a societal level and individual responsibility is less important. Which presumably you'd welcome. It's unlikely.
That's what exercising is. It's what gardening is. It's what having pets is. These are behaviors that mimic the surface characteristics of old ways of life (hunting, farming, animal husbandry).
Being out in nature, possibly. It certainly feels good for a lot of people.
": Cottagecore, a movement hearkening back to agricultural life, skills, and crafts, is on the rise. “As a concept, it embraces a simpler, sustainable existence that is more harmonious with nature. Aesthetically, it’s a nod to the traditional English countryside style, romantic and nostalgic,” says Davina Ogilvie, founder of Wovn Home, a start-up that makes custom (but affordable and accessible) window treatments."
Wiktionary [1] describes the "-core" suffix as a similar backformation from the musical genre name "hardcore", and as with "-gate", it seems to have developed into a general-purpose inflection denoting a genre or subculture - to the extent, I suppose, that those two concepts can any longer be distinguished from one another, at least.
All of these terms describe an aesthetic that references the stereotyped essence of a way of life. But these new uses reference a way of life typically stereotyped to be approximately the opposite of "hardcore."
All of them put a little smile on my face, but prairiecore is my favorite: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Prairiecore
Edit: Language is fun. There are eight replies to the parent comment so far, and almost as many interpretations of "core," with different connotations. We're all sitting here understanding the word "cottagecore" perfectly well, but having subtlety--yet importantly--different subjective experiences while doing so.
I must take exception though, as the American tallgrass prairie looks nothing like that photo. Checking wikipedia, that would be pretty indicative of perhaps the very thin shortgrass prairie from pretty far west (Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico) where the cowboy lifestyle was prevalent?
Tallgrass prairie is gorgeous and very colorful.
Also like other comment about hardcore maybe being part of the etymology
"a central and often foundational part usually distinct from the enveloping part by a difference in nature" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/core
I.e. a <prefix>core person is one whose central foundational part is based on <prefix>. Material related to <prefix>core is from/for/focused on that type of identity.
There's an entire wiki of -cores: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cottagecore
My parents own a 1600 sq foot house but live on a quarter acre lot and my dad has always regretted not purchasing an additional lot back when he purchased the land to build their house. They live in a suburb of New Orleans. They knew the neighbors and some of the people in the community who were from their hometowns.
I live in a 2400 sq foot house on a 1/5th of an acre lot and I am within a short drive from all the amenities of city life near Dallas. Can't say I know a whole lot of my neighbors. Everyone keeps to themselves.
Any time before second day shipping, if you had asked me if I wanted to live out on the land like my grandparents, I'd have looked at you like you had 3 heads.
Now though? I'd take it in a heartbeat. They had a garden that was over an acre. Trees filled with figs and oranges and pecans. A trellis built with railroad ties that was covered with grapes and blackberries and chayote depending on the time of the year. They always had enough root vegetables, cabbage, etc. to last through the winter months. No HOA to worry about, no zoning ordinances to mess with, you just live your life on your property.
Sacrificing your personal interests and goals because you want to be in a place with people where you fit-in is the very definition of popularity, regardless of your social rank within the group.
That's not necessarily bad, but it's not nerdy.
Wanting to fit in to me is about feeling a general comfort with your surroundings, not having social status. And by fit in, I mean not being ostracized for being yourself, a thing that happens to me in a lot of places, I don’t want to be popular, I just don’t want to be denied service or have my property vandalized.
Also, by socialize with people like yourself, I mean going to a user group for some tech you like, etc, these are fewer and far between in rural areas. So even accessing such a community in person becomes a hurdle. This is something folks may take for granted. Or maybe not, I don’t know any more :)
People back then knew how to farm their land, they knew went to till and when to harvest, what to plant when and where. They were handy, they were carpenters, but also plumbers, roofers, painters, tailors, mechanics, menders of all things. Skills acquired by being a young child and holding the tools for an adult doing the task, engaging in a de facto apprenticeship for all facets of life since they could first learn to walk on their own and follow dad or mom around their chores.
You couldn't learn all this even in a year of ownership of land like that. Its the product of lived experience. Years of dealing with one catastrophe to the next and having no one but yourself and a few local friends or family members to help fix the situation through experience and physical labor. This is why when most rich people decide to take up farming on some land they've bought, they hire an actual farmer to actually do the farming.
Surely not!
If I’m not being a hypocrite I certainly moved to the city for the comforts of the modern world, but I’ve learned a lot since to learn that consumerism is wrong and there’s much that needs to be changed about capitalism.
Right now you don't have to know anything about how to survive in order to survive. You just need to trade some of your time for money, somewhere, somehow.
I mean, even just the idea that people outside of cities somehow have more “human spirit” is kind of strange and absurd.
New band name!
No thanks - much prefer my modern sterile IKEA isocube.
I mean don't get me wrong, I can see the appeal in 'cottagecore', but at the same time I'm being realistic about things.
When I was in my 20s and put everything in storage and traveled for a while it was great. Now my wife and kid (and the grandparents who want to see the kid), etc would make such a move a lot tougher in a lot of ways.
Public toilet, camping toilet, or behind a tree, to answer your question.
But I then go camping and realize after a few days how much I would miss my modern amenities.
Nostalgia.
All in all, not a great experience, although it looked very cosy in Instagram photos.
On top of which, this "cottagecore" trend is one reason none of the locals in my area can afford to buy a house. The house prices have skyrocked since Londoners decided living in the middle of nowhere was cool.
The locally quarried stone used for the walls of the oldest buildings (which obviously made things difficult for accommodating additions containing bathrooms and kitchens).
The charmingly narrow and irregular front doors on some houses, making it an impossible dream to move a typical new couch or appliance in.
The turnbuckles used to stabilize some houses after all these years, and those cables being one more thing to hit your head on.
Then I get home from a walk and enjoy the central air conditioning, tall ceilings, modern windows and level floors of my home. I know some of my neighbors in the older houses really enjoy them. They research the history of the houses and are enthusiastic about maintaining them and keeping things mostly original. The house basically becomes a hobby. Just about everybody likes looking at quaint old houses, so you have to find out if that's you or if you'd actually enjoy living in one too. I know I just like looking at them.
1. P2P wireless means you can cheaply get a 50/10 internet connection in remote areas. This is plenty for most users. Also starlink is apparently pretty good.
2. Just pay someone to pump your septic. You don’t have to pay city taxes covering sewers so you probably come out ahead.
3. Plumbing and electrical is usually exposed, making it very easy to work on. For plumbing, shark bites and pex are way easier than soldering copper.
One thing that does suck about owning a cottage is needing to worry about mice…
Get a cat or two.
Trapping a mouse at 1am in the bedroom is not so endearing.
We are on septic despite being 100meters from the border of tokyo. Our costs for quatery inspections, and a yearly pumping are about 220 dollars. In exchange our water bill is about 40dollars every two months, so twenty a month. This is half what we paid in Tokyo while using much less water.
Now compare to many water bills in the states where many towns have over built sewage systems and you often year families spending a hundred or more a month. I strongly suspect cities hide the cost of sewage behind the water supply charge. They run the departments as one and assume all supplied water is drained.
I live in a very small town from the POV of what I perceive as the majority of HN - <15k people, and it’s the largest town in an hour’s drive in any direction. My home is in a neighborhood on the edge of town that was annexed only a few years ago, and as a result even though my property has city sewer access, I still have a septic tank. I dread the day that I’m unable to legally keep it operational and have to tie in to city sewer. It’s just one more monthly bill I’ll have to pay. The zoning here is such that a homeowner can do any repair work they please on their own without having to get a permit or licensed contractor.
I have gigabit fiber and solid, level floors though. :)
I could easily increase my income by $75-100k if I were willing to move to LA or SF. I’m not even tempted by it.
Wow, that's pretty strict for a "small town". Most places allow you to make repairs without a permit or contractor as long as you're not making changes.
For example, I needed a permit to put in an interlock and receptacle for a generator. If something breaks the receptacle, I can replace it with the same model/type/size without a permit. If I replaced it with a different type/size then I would need a permit. On a side note, the inspections are mostly a joke and just a way for the municipality to make money (permit costs more than the materials in many of my cases). The inspector had no idea about electrical stuff and didn't ask any questions about wire gauge/run, receptacle sizing, receptacle height, or how the breaker box was balanced. You know, the stuff that's important to do right to avoid fires, etc.
Where I live you theoretically need to permit the typical stuff but the official unofficial policy is that they don't expect anyone who isn't a professional to pull permits.
One thing to consider is that most insurance companies will not cover a house if it had unpermitted/uninspected work on it that could even possibly be the cause.
This usually (I'm sure someone somewhere has a cut rate policy that states otherwise) only matters if the unpermitted work was what causes the claim which basically just means responsibility is back on the owner. In practice this is mostly fine since people doing their own work for their own houses tend not to half-ass things.
Freedom, baby.
The floor boards do suck, and the electricity gets cut more often.
But I get 58.6Mbps down, 21.4Mbps up. Ground to ground satellite.
Plus, I can actually afford a house here, unlike the city I moved from. Fleeing the city has never been this good.
I'm sure there are plenty of other situations like this, nice semi-rural/rural towns on the edge of a metro and all it's services.
She told me one day that she never wanted to leave the current county (her home county). Now she is also determined to move into her old school district (much more expensive and more developed), even though the school scores aren't much higher than the current one and just with the money that we save in property taxes we could send a kid to a private school. Needless to say, this issue doesn't come down to having a rational discussion to find solutions that fit both of our criteria. I'm wrong, she's right, always.
and a ritzy private school not only would not get her into the higher status neighborhood, it would potentially expose the family to more scorn for not living there
It is interesting but it is very hard work to husband animals but they seem very happy.
Most states have legal definition to determine if you're a farmer, like if you make more than 30% of your money from farming.
That doesn't sound great.
my point is, there is a lot of complexity to different personalities interacting that is not captured by your somewhat idealistic view of giantg's life.
I frequently see this as an idle dream but assume most people who dream of it would not last a year before quitting or getting themselves seriously injured or killed in some manner.
Not quite. I understand how hard it can be. It also depends on just how off the land one wants to be, like a guy I know living in a self built log cabin in Alaska. I'm not going that far. It would be nice to have land for my wife's horse, to expand my beekeeping, and to expand my garden/fruits/mushrooms/etc. And like most people on small farms, I'd probably need another job to make ends meet.
Being out in the country where you can do whatever you want also means that your neighbors can do whatever they want. So some idiot setting off cherry bombs, or another one shooting skeet/target practice in his backyard, or heating a house with wood and smoking out the entire neighborhood when there's a temperature inversion is just as valid a use of property as your gardening. And when the various hunting seasons start, well, gunshots carry a pretty long distance at 6AM.
On a good day, I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. On a bad day, I just want to shoot everyone else, but that's me.
Buy her a dirtbike?
Things can get better.
There needs to be a Rule 34 variant which states that for any given thing there is someone saying it violates progressive principles.
Cottagecore succeeding, and the country being rich, the army will be strong.
Farming is a lot of work. It's a job, not a hobby.
Even the garden was a fair amount of work, but more importantly, it's a lot of veggies to eat after harvest. I had tomato sandwiches daily for months. Plus insects to control. Doable, but not glamorous like the "cottagecore" photos.
If I did a serious garden again, I'd focus on becoming a skilled grower of certain veggie strains over a period of decades, and not focus on quantity.
Also, know your soil. If you're in an urban area (or downwind) that used to have steel or auto factories, then your soil is contaminated with heavy metals.
That said, I agree with you. If I want X pounds per year of venison I'm gonna get it and I see no reasons to spend a few hours sitting in the woods during a particular part of the year to do it.
What grows, grows, what doesn’t, doesn’t - and this year, even through a bitter drought, we have enough that we’re giving it away. Harvesting involves rummaging, so it isn’t exactly scalable - but for feeding a household, it’s perfect.
We have deer and boar here - so we also plant hemlock around the border of the garden, which they stay well away from. Also helps to piss on their trails nearby - discourages them from visiting. The boar, we actually take advantage of - there’s a meadow they love to turn over every spring, digging for tubers - which we then throw potatoes in.
I mean, outside of that, off grid life is humblingly challenging - but I’ve never been in better shape, and growing food is easy enough if you just let nature do its thing.
My favorite piece of equipment is my wood chipper: I can turn all of the delivery boxes into mulch. And yard waste. And... basically any other biomass that will turn to dirt in 6-12 months.
We are not off-grid (dude, that's so much work). But I build most of my projects out of found materials (raised beds out of old fencing, etc). I tried my hand at making a basket out of grape vine, but grape vines are really "shreddy" and the basket is no fun to use. I was going to try coppicing some willow next -- baskets are really useful.
It's a fun hobby, but I am lazy. And I still end up with too much produce (though I have a lot of space, so that makes it easier).
Re: weaving, vines are impossible, rett them first - soak ‘em, maybe in lye, and then pound them with a rock to get fibres. Baskets, willow works great - we’ve goat willow all over, here, and use it for smaller stuff. Bigger stuff we use olive, as green it’s supple and dry it’s like a rock, and very rot resistant - we’ve made half baskets on a steep hill slope to catch runoff and encourage tree growth - the oldest ones (two years) are hosting self-seeded oak saplings now, which is kinda cool.
It can be challenging.
Cabbage doesn't do well without a fight here. Potatoes? Grow themselves! Carrots? Very finicky to get to grow at all here but if they do they are just so much better than store bought and hands off too. Cherries are awesome once I wasn't lazy enough to skip the netting. Not that much work in the end.
Not enough to run a financially viable headcount of stock. Maybe enough to run a midlife crisis horse for your spouse who desperately wanted a pony as a child but couldn't get one. Now you have a horse that's desperately lonely, and costs a metric shit ton to keep in reasonable health.
And then, you find out the maintenance required... ...how the local government will fine you if you let your grass grow to the "massive fire risk" level, so either you acquire sheep/goats etc. to graze it - and lose money on doing so, or you buy a ride-on mower / small tractor with mowing attachment, and spend one day a fortnight (at least) mowing, wondering what the hell the "lifestyle" you were buying actually is.
Oh, and of course, maintaining your own water supply. Nothing says "living the dream" like E Coli in your private well from your grass maintaining animals shitting too close to it (or your well being too shallow to avoid aquifer contamination from dairy farmers upstream).
We can make artificial fertilizer without fossil fuels, but the energy cost is atleast 10x what our current usage is for fertilizer and is already over 1% of global power. And we are still a ways off of producing an extra 10% of global energy output via completely clean power.
Where are you getting this from? I mean, chickenshit, etc., can be good fertilizer, but the stuff in a bag is far more predictable.
Not implying this with you, but I think it must be a trend of Australians to consider Americans "elitist"-- that the rich, obese Americans are the greedy ones ruining everything.
It's just funny to me, since Australians follow the same model of western-european-derived economics & western-european-derived government.