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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/shaye-elliott-homesteading/570796/
I stumbled across this article and braced myself for another backyard homesteader wannabe Millenial blogging about how she found herself by returning to the land.
Actually, it was pretty interesting, and then I got to this part:
Unlike the pioneers, however, she enthusiastically broadcasts her life to an audience of Instagram followers, YouTube subscribers, book buyers, and 100,000 monthly readers of her blog, The Elliott Homestead…
Like many young women who’ve amassed large online followings by documenting their lives as homemakers, she is her family’s breadwinner. In 2014, a fellow blogger recruited her to sell essential oils for doTerra, a multilevel marketing company whose logo is plastered across homesteading sites. Within a year, her business was so profitable that Stuart quit his job; Elliott now makes $500,000 a year selling to fellow “oilers.”
Whoa! Good for her, but “pioneer living,” my ass. Okay, I’m jealous. 🙂
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Now that I’ve read the article, I can comment more intelligently.
Wow – I wonder how on earth she keeps up with all she has to do? I know myself that running a busy blog is more than a fulltime job. I’ve done all of the things – homesteading, homeschooling, and blogging, and it was truly exhausting. There were many shortcuts we were forced to take due to a simple lack of time. For example, I learned to butcher chickens and did some myself, but when I had 40 to do, I found a guy who did them for $2 apiece. I paid someone to build my fencing. I had a person come out once a week and do some of the maintenance tasks I couldn’t manage.
I think once upon a time, the pioneer lifestyle was all you did. That was how you made a living, how you fed your family, and how you kept sheltered. These days, it’s nearly impossible to do just that one thing. For most people, I suspect the homestead is a hobby that is paid for by an outside job.
I signed up to her newsletter. She has a pretty cool website!
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You hit the nail on the head. She IS a hobby pioneer whose oil sales support that. Nothing wrong with it and at least she IS homesteading. I imagine also hubby does a lot of the scut work around the homestead and is happy to do so, being supported on 500K a year.
Daisy, please update this thread after you read a few of her newsletters and tell us your impressions. It would be very interesting!
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Routine is what it is all about. I grew up on the family farm/ranch with my parents in one house, my grandparents in another house a few acres away, and my great grandmother in the old home place over the swamp behind our house on the hill. My brother lives in the old home place now, and I now own my grandparent’s place caring for my grandmother who has late stage dementia, my father and grandfather passed away some years back.
My grandfather ran cattle over several pieces of property (he had a rotation on pastures) we had multiple very large gardens that we tended by hand and the occasional hog for butchering and chickens. My parents worked outside the home (my mom worked at the school-she went to school to work when my brother and I started going to school so that was nice) my grandparents worked outside the home, yet we all pitched in and everything got done…might be exhausted at the end of everyday but dang we had fun. We kept a routine on the cows, watering, drip irrigation on the gardens etc. It worked out. I run a similar situation here, now along with homeschooling my two youngest and a few friend’s kids. It is doable with enough hands. 🙂 -
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