Home-Cations for Homesteaders (& anyone else living a minmal lifestyle)

Hey y'all! So welcome back and if your new around these parts...well, welcome!

Two weeks ago, on our live @ 5pm Central Time from the homestead stream, we discussed the subject of Vacations. The "Social Norm" that "vacationing" has become and how it has come to be in our society. We talked about our life prior to homesteading and how we always felt a true "NEED" to "get away" and take vacations. We are NOT trying to tell anyone what to do or not to do here. Just sharing our experience and how our "Need" for vacations has subsided since moving to our property.

Here's the video of the LIVE stream if you'd like to hear the discussion in full:

So after the Live Show, we received a very well written note from one of our good friends and we thought it was so awesome that we wanted to share it! Hope y'all enjoy and Happy Homesteading wherever your at in life!

Our dear friend writes:

I just wanted to share with you my thoughts on this subject of vacations. The whole idea of modern vacations, is so people can get away from their everyday lives, and go someplace they would rather be. On a tropical island, or a far away country where they can relax and forget about their lives for a few days or weeks. Their dream is to stay there forever, but they can't because they have to earn money to pay for the vacation. And to earn money they have to return to there unsatisfactory lives.

But sometimes, some brave, fearless, faithful people see their old lives for what it is, and take a miraculous plunge. Suddenly, they find themselves living at the place they would rather be. Vacations become redundant, because why travel to someplace looking for where you would rather be, if you are already there ? In the case of homesteading, where you would rather be often comes as a complete surprise, but we learn to love our piece of land, and become intimate with its ups and downs. the good times and bad times, and our struggles in life becomes deeply connected with the land. It is then, when one day we realise that we are at one with the homestead that everything falls into perspective, Our own fate, and the fate of the homestead, its plants, its animals, become completely interwoven. Some might call it mutual interdependancy, but in truth we have become at one with the homestead. Not trying to sound silly, but that is real love, being at one. Be it wife/husband, children/parents, goats/goat-milker, dogs/dog-owners, or homestead/homesteaders. Our land becomes as much a part of us as our hands or feet. Without it, or them, we would be lost.

Why is this so close to my heart ? I have spent many years travelling all over the world to learn, and share, and have mutual understanding with the original homesteaders who have been seperated from their lands. Only true homesteaders can hear or understand their desperate pleas which are all too familiar. So, I propose a small prayer for those peoples. I have spent time with all of them. The Inca people of Peru, removed from their lands 400 years ago by Spanish invaders, still living in the mountains waiting to go home, today known as the Quechua people. The Aboriginal people of Australia, removed from their land by the British to make way for massive scale farming and mining. Today they live in reservations, and are a lost people, turning to alcohol and substance abuse in their sadness, Still waiting to go home. The First Peoples of North America, forced off their lands by the European colonists, they fought many bloody battles just to stay on their homelands, but were eventually overwhelmed, and forced onto unknown lands, and reservations. A people who even to this day, just want to go home.

Only true homesteaders can appreciate these groups when they tell the world that their land is sacred to them. Something worth fighting for. Something even worth dying for. The whole world, it appears, has somewhere they would rather be, Except for the homesteaders. And THAT is why I support you and all homesteaders. What you are trying to accomplish is sacred.