We shook on it. After too many moves, my wife and I committed to move once more into a small cabin on the land. After years of false starts, it finally happened, as I wrote back in January. More than any of the practical things we hope to do, it was a move for our family, seeking to root ourselves in a rhythm of daily prayer and work. We were seeking a liturgy of life rooted in the land’s own ordering to God.
With the rise of remote work and growing frustration within American cities, the back-to-the-land movement is in full swing. Often, people arrive in the country with lofty or overly idealized expectations and are not ready for the hardships, skills and financial commitments involved in homesteading.
My friend and neighbor, Jason Craig, recently authored a book with Thomas van Horn on discerning whether and how to begin homesteading: The Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead (TAN Books, 2024).
The term “liturgy of the land” might sound unusual at first, but it recognizes that the entire cosmos has been created for the glory of God as his temple. Craig and Van Horn open the book by grounding their approach in the way faith should guide and direct all things:
“If it is the family that makes a piece of land a homestead, it is true Faith that makes the homestead Catholic. Our Faith is not merely a sort of religious branding that surrounds the practical work of the land; rather, it guides and sanctifies our work. We don’t just pray our work goes well, but the work itself becomes actual prayer. Our Faith is the very life of our homesteads, and the liturgy we work on our land is nurtured by and united with the liturgy of the altar. The teachings of our Faith shape how we approach and cultivate our land and homes. We often hear that you can’t separate work and ‘real life’ from Sunday Mass and your life of faith. The same is even more true when the liturgical seasons and the seasons of nature are more closely united” (4).
The authors show that the family’s common efforts on the homestead bolster their work and faith by letting nature teach us how to live while pointing us to the Creator.
The book is not simply a “how to” guide about homesteading. Rather, it serves as an apologetic for the blessings homesteading offers, though in a sober manner that recognizes the many challenges that arise along the way. The authors do not argue that everyone should homestead. Rather, they offer help in discerning if it is the right step for a family and guidance on what is needed to begin:
Understanding and examining our motivation for homesteading, therefore, is a helpful step in considering it as a way of life. This book’s contribution to that consideration is not in the technical aspects of growing and harvesting, though we will touch on that regarding broad decision-making. . . . What we want to do is point out that this life of integration – of work, land, family, leisure, and home – should be approached with a truly Catholic lens. . . . To do that, we must understand that the work of the homesteader, the liturgy of the land, requires a recalibration of both thought and action. The Catholic homestead is simply built on different foundations than those of today’s secular world, and we must understand those foundations, aided by faith, for the house to be built to last (25).
Craig and Van Horn offer practical wisdom learned from their own mistakes and successes, along with the examples and mentorship of others.
The book’s chapters continue to unfold the change in thinking and living that comes from a move out of the city, which constitutes an enormous lifestyle shift. Homesteading requires everyone’s attention and effort, meaning family members cannot keep going in different directions, with jobs outside the home, school, countless activities and constant entertainment and distractions. More than anything else, this led my family to the land, seeking to invest our time in common activities rooted in our homestead. Craig and Van Horn speak of the move as “an essentially practical reorientation of the home as an econom[ic] unit. . . . We are reconceiving not just how we think of a home but what a home is for” (153).
Because all Catholics need to reimagine the home today, mired as we are in the struggles of busyness and distractions, I would recommend The Liturgy of the Land even for those not considering joining the back-to-the-land movement. The book offers a beautiful experience of the land’s liturgy with its lavish photographs.
As the authors recognize, most people will remain rooted in the city and suburbia. Still, even there, we can learn the land’s liturgy, make changes to our family life and begin to live a richer and more integrated Catholic life in the home.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
So love the idea, so dislike “movements.”
Even folks living in more developed areas can produce a great deal of food from their yards, assuming they don’t face zoning or homeowner assoc. restrictions. (Or difficult neighbors.)
Bees, chickens, ducks, & rabbits are all possibilities.
When you travel to other parts of the world you don’t see the same bougie, First World standards applied to what folks do with their own yards.
Dr. Staudt writes (?) “Jason Craig, recently offered a book with Thomas van Horn . . .” Did he mean to write ” Jason Craig, recently AUTHORED a book with Thomas van Horn . . “
Subsistence farming/homesteading is wonderful, when that is all there is. I grew up on a small farm, so can speak from experience.
I also can speak from experience in that my mother became a nurse and worked full time, and I went to college, joined the Army, worked a civilian career in aviation, and too many interludes/trades to mention in between.
The reality is that by the time most modern adults make up their minds to give a whirl to living off the last, they will be lucky to be able to handle the work for another 10yrs.
Note, I said lucky, and they may be even more lucky and make it 20yrs, but many will begin to show signs of aging, bone degeneration, and too many other afflictions of getting older to list.
If this were times past, and that was all there was available, for them AND their children, their children would be there with them in a nuclear family to shoulder the load when parents age, the children marrying and also settling on the land.
But, otherwise, and sadly, this will likely be only a short interlude until the adults need move back where this is better healthcare, less travel time etc, or they and their homestead will decay together, buildings lacking maintenance, land going to seed and returning to the wild, until living or dead the parents carted off to town.
I did not make it clear, but manual labor both builds up the body, and tears it down. Living off the land is digging, hoeing, bending, stooping, carrying heavy loads, working on ladders, forking hay, mucking stalls, swinging hammers/sledges, clearing fence rows, running new wire, etc etc and adults not accustomed to such from youth will not have the bone mass, even when muscles build, and why I say lucky to make 10yrs or extremely lucky to make 20yrs.
And no matter when started, joints start wearing out, cartilage wears faster than it can be replaced, bone spurs and arthritis set in, and suddenly the work nearly impossible to do.
I am all for the romance, but these folk new to manual labor need a reality check.
For most, it will just be another fling, perhaps remembered with fondness and recounted to grandchildren with, “Why, when I was your age, we knew the meaning of WOIK.”…while neglecting to mention how long it lasted.
Mr. Bob I’m a grandma to 16 and I do all my own farm chores by myself. Everything is working great , praise God. I also work away from home and have had one sick day in over 20 years.
Exercise is a healthy thing. If you go to places like Sardinia, people work outside right through their 90s.
The least healthy thing we can do is to be inactive.
I need to go out now, feed my cows and unload some 50lb sacks of feed off my truck. You have a good evening. 🙂
🐂🐃🐂🐂
Yes ma’am, and I am 64 and failing fast due to numerous incurable issues after a hard working outdoors lifetime, and much of the problems due to the work.
Like I said at the start, it is luck if you can keep doing it, and it ain’t the majority who do, particularly the late starters..
Put another way, of older hard working folk, who do you know more of? Those broken down by the work, or those hale and hearty and going strong like someone half their age?
I watched people breaking down at work, hurt by the work, from waaay back, and watched friends and enemies drop by the wayside, knees shot, backs shot, etc and all apart from injuries of amazing commoness (look’em up), for pretty much entire life.
I always prefered to dodge desk jobs, turned down Harvard and corporate career with no regrets, but modern adults trying to play pioneer generally will only be in it for the short haul, and pretty much don’t know what they’re in for, and have a really good chance of messing themselves up permanently.
I’m very sorry to hear that Mr. Bob and I will remember you in prayer today. 🙏
Bob, thank you for your thoughtful, cautionary words.
Farming is among the most dangerous occupation in the United States. It always was hard on the bodies of those who farmed, as examination of pre-Industrial skeletons has confirmed.
Here in the Midwest, “family farms” are either huge and managed with precise scientific techniques or small and depend on a family member’s offsite job. Even among the Amish, more men work off the land than on in order to support families with modest needs.
The Land is not always fruitful, no matter how piously it’s plowed. I speak as one who spent her childhood on a tiny organic chicken farm and would never care to live that way myself.