'I mean, my God'

'Get rid of this guy'

Most people don’t move to the country for rest. They come to take control of what they eat, what they build, and how they live. But the deeper homesteading truths don’t usually show up in garden planner books or social media posts. Some years go smoothly. Others bring setbacks you didn’t plan for. Your livestock might wake you before sunrise. A freezer full of meat might fail without warning. Whatever happens, the work continues whether the weather cooperates or not. These challenges aren’t because you’re doing it wrong. Small setbacks are actually part of what makes the homesteading system unique. If you’re just starting out or wondering why the early years feel heavy, below are the realities most people learn by living them. 1. Homesteading Doesn’t Save Money at the Beginning Most homesteaders spend more in their first years than they expected. Building fences, buying basic tools, and setting up water systems all take time and burn through cash. Even simple needs like compost bins, animal feed, and cold storage can considerably add to the total. However, you can save money by reusing materials and avoiding large purchases. Despite any savings, costs still come quickly. Repairs and upgrades don’t wait until it’s convenient. Food grows cheaper over time if you learn to preserve, rotate, and store it. But reaching that point takes full seasons of trial, failure, and adjustment. 2. The Work Happens on Its Own Schedule If you know a storm is coming, you get to check the fencing before bed. If an animal gets sick, you’ll need to treat it before you finish your coffee. When the cucumbers are ready, you’ll need to harvest them that day, no matter how tired you are. Meanwhile. tasks shift by season. Summer brings planting, watering, and harvests that overlap. Winter comes with thawing frozen pipes, hauling water, and checking barns before dark. With time, you build routines that fit your land and energy. In the beginning, the demands feel constant. Most days will not go exactly as planned. 3. Mistakes Cost You and You Learn From Them Miss a weather change and you’ll lose a row of beans. An unlatched gate might turn into a whole-day problem. You’ll invest in tools that don’t last or build something that needs a second try. Note that none of these problems means you failed. It means you’re adjusting. Homesteading rewards those who correct their errors and try again the next day. If you take notes, talk to neighbors, and lean on trusted resources like The Prairie Homestead or Mother Earth News, your process gets sharper. The hard lessons are the ones that stick. 4. Sometimes, It Can Feel Isolated Living far from town often means fewer conversations, especially when chores keep you home. During long stretches of work or harsh weather, it’s easy to feel the eerie quiet more than the. Social events may take a back seat to homesteading. It’s not always a matter of preference; it’s a matter of timing. You might skip a dinner or a weekend gathering because the fencing needs repair or the goats need watching. Connections help. Trade with nearby growers, join a seed exchange, or offer your space for seasonal work. These kinds of ties don’t happen by chance; they happen by choice. 5. Homesteading Changes the Way You Think Homesteading reshapes your sense of value. You begin to see time as a resource and effort as an investment. Weather patterns, soil texture, and animal behavior become part of your planning. As time goes by, you’ll realize that fixing a broken latch becomes more satisfying than buying a new one. Reusing scrap lumber becomes a habit. You look at problems differently because you now solve them with what you have. These shifts don’t happen in one season. But over time, your priorities change. You become more deliberate, more observant, and more capable of working with what’s already in front of you. What These Homesteading Truths Really Mean Most homesteading guides focus on the reward. Few talk about the frustration. But those who stick with it are the ones who understand that struggle is part of the process. You might spend more time, money, and energy than you expected. But you’ll also learn how to manage failure without needing to panic. You’ll build systems that feed your household, season after season. And more important, you’ll start relying more on what you can do than what you can buy. If you want practical tips from experienced homesteaders, the Homesteaders of America community is full of lived knowledge, not just theory. Already started your homestead? What homesteading truths caught you off guard? Reply and share what you’ve learned. We’d love to hear what helped you keep going. FAQ Is there a right season to start homesteading? Spring gives you the most flexibility with planting, fencing, and setup. But you can begin in any season if you adjust your goals. Winter is useful for planning, repairs, and building skills indoors. How big does a property need to be? Many start with less than an acre. Focus on what you can manage, not how much land you have. Even a quarter-acre can grow food and support small livestock if it’s well used. What if I have no background in farming or animals? Most people start without experience. Learn one skill at a time. Keep records. Start small and ask questions when things go wrong. There’s no substitute for doing the work yourself. How long before a homestead becomes self-sufficient? That depends on what you grow, raise, and build. Food systems can take two or more years to stabilize. Energy, water, and full independence take longer. Start with food and build from there. Can I homestead and work a full-time job? Yes, but it takes planning. Prioritize systems that save time—like drip irrigation or automatic waterers. Use early mornings, evenings, and weekends for tasks that need supervision.

‘How’s It Hanging?’ Electrical Worker Dangles Over Intersection After Semi Smashes Crane’s Bucket (WATCH)

Redwood Materials has launched a new business — taking old EV batteries to store energy and help power businesses.

Did she REALLY just say this?

Politics The Burgeoning Fight Between MAHA and the Tech Right The big business of medicine is trying to coopt the MAHA moment in the administration. Credit: image via Shutterstock President Donald Trump proclaimed victory in 2024 thanks in part due to his success at forging a broad coalition across both the country and political spectrum. Trump’s traditional MAGA base was joined by economic moderates, business opportunists, foreign favor-seekers, and anti-interventionists. Perhaps most notably, the Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement rallied around Trump to help push him over the victory line against Vice President Kamala Harris. Health-conscious and “expert”-skeptical, the Make America Healthy Again movement, or MAHA for short, was the result of an ideological split in the left-wing, environmentalist green movement.  Once upon a time, activists of the tree-hugging, organic food–purchasing, anti-establishment, hippie variety who had nothing but distrust for Big Pharma and the institutional status quo were widely considered to be as far from the Republican Party as humanly possible. But in the early 2000s, activists in the green and alternative movement found themselves joined—and soon essentially replaced—by a new breed of suit-and-tie, Trust the Science environmentalist. Epitomized by Al Gore and his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, these new activists were men and women of white coats, bar charts, and peer-reviewed studies with an almost religious devotion to “Science,” “Institutions,” and “The Data.” When Covid-19 hit in 2020, their mantra “trust the science” quickly morphed into “trust Big Pharma” and “do as you’re told,” and it became apparent that a split with the anti-authoritarian, pharma-skeptics who built the movement was inevitable. This group (for the most part) rallied around Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, and many of them stood by his side when, in August, Kennedy dropped out of the race to endorse Trump, attaching MAHA to the Republican MAGA coalition. With Trump’s electoral victory, and Kennedy’s elevation to the position of secretary of health, it is clear who won the battle in the end—the Trust the Science faction having been effectively decimated in the backlash which took place against the illogical authoritarianism of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, as old opponents lick their wounds, a new one looms on the horizon—an faction that has wormed its way, and continues to worm its way, into the Trump administration at an alarming rate: the ever-opportunistic tech-right. Fresh off Trump’s 2024 election victory (which was in part made possible thanks to donations from Silicon Valley allies, including Elon Musk), former adversaries of the America First movement were given passage into the new administration. Musk was appointed head of DOGE, giving him considerable power in government despite the fact this his “department” was officially nothing more than an advisory committee; senior executives from Facebook parent company Meta, OpenAI, and Palantir were appointed lieutenant colonels in the U.S. Army as part of a new detachment specifically formed for Big Tech; and Silicon Valley–backed health startups were also able to take advantage of the new political environment. Casey Means, an advocate of alternative medicine and the co-founder of the health company Levels, was nominated by Trump to serve as surgeon general after the president withdrew his previous nomination of Janette Nesheiwat. Her brother, Calley Means—a former NeverTrump conservative, lobbyist, and the co-founder of health tech company Truemed—was also made a special government employee. After Trump announced Casey Means’ nomination in May, praising her “impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials,” Kennedy’s former running mate Nicole Shanahan publicly criticized the move. “It’s very strange. Doesn’t make any sense,” said Shanahan, who wrote that there was “something very artificial and aggressive” about the siblings, “almost like they were bred and raised Manchurian assets.” “I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr. in his Senate confirmation that neither of these siblings would be working under HHS or in an appointment (and that people much more qualified would be),” she continued, before suggesting that somebody seemed to be “controlling” Kennedy’s decisions in the Trump administration. And it wasn’t just Shanahan who had concerns. The appointment of the Means siblings to positions of power within the Trump administration has sparked an all-out war in the MAHA movement, with several prominent activists raising alarms over their controversial business ties. “The Means siblings, I maintain, are representing Silicon Valley’s interests, and not ours,” wrote MAHA author and activist Naomi Wolf in an article last month. “I said — and again, I stand by every word — that they both appear to be tasked with representing Big Tech’s interests in the rush to exploit the gold mine that is the pristine, valuable data — especially our private medical data — that is currently held behind secure doors by the United States Government.” Wolf warned that “the Trump administration was facing a catastrophic security risk,” pointing to Musk’s unprecedented access to data under DOGE and the Trump administration’s already poor track record with cybersecurity, before suggesting that Casey Means had been tasked with “plundering our government data, and of rerouting US health policy, to align with the interests of Big Tech; especially in the booming realm of biometrics.” The Americans For Health Freedom founder Mary Talley Bowden also raised concerns about “conflicts of interest” within the MAHA movement—and Truemed in particular—while a six-month Vanity Fair investigation accused Calley Means of embellishing his history. Truemed’s business model takes letters of medical necessity—the sort of things that used to have to be written down with a pen and paper by a doctor—and automates the process. By filling out an online form, it’s possible to write off a huge array of expensive lifestyle products as tax-free health expenses, including indoor saunas, specialty mattresses, and, in the case of Truemed-partnered merchant White Oak Pastures, organic beef testicles.  From Peloton bikes to ergonomic mattresses—items which would usually cost thousands of dollars—Truemed’s website advertises a range of high-end, high-tech products which can now effectively be obtained for free (or at least as a tax write-off subsidized by the taxpayer). For its part, Truemed maintains they aren’t up to any funny business. Responding to an Associated Press investigation earlier this month, the CEO and co-founder Justin Mares said the company is “in full alignment” with IRS guidelines on tax write-offs. “Truemed enables patients to work with providers to use medical funds for root cause interventions like exercise and vitamin D to reverse disease under current law,” Mares said. Undoubtedly there are far worse abuses of taxpayer’s money, including the recently gutted USAID, which spent eye-watering sums on boondoggles such as sex changes in Guatemala, puppet shows in Iraq, and condoms for the Taliban. But it’s easy to see why MAHA enthusiasts aren’t happy about the rewards of their hard-earned victory being seized by well-connected Silicon Valley types. These tensions between MAHA and the Trump administration’s new Big Tech–aligned stakeholders mirror similar tensions between the populist base and the tech faction in the MAGA movement at large, which is probably one of the reasons why Wolf was invited to make her case against Truemed and Levels on Steve Bannon’s War Room– a show which has become the go-to media launchpad for skeptics of the tech-right in Trump’s coalition. “I do see that Silicon Valley is gonna kind of align, or has aligned with MAGA and MAHA, not because they share MAGA or MAHA’s policy goals at all, but because they can use those as cover for what they really want,” said Wolf. “Which is our data and a bunch of favorable legislation and policies out of the president and RFK Jr.” From the pre-inauguration spat over H1B visas, to Musk’s legendary crashout over Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, a burgeoning MAHA civil war can now be added to the growing list of fault lines between the tech-right and other parts of the MAGA coalition.   Just as the green movement was hijacked by Democratic Party operatives and Net Zero plutocrats in Davos, MAHA once again faces the prospect of having to fight for the spoils of the political victory it helped to create. The post The Burgeoning Fight Between MAHA and the Tech Right appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics The Great Mamdani Freakout Much can happen before November 4. Credit: Michael Santiago/Getty Images I was born and raised in Maryland, which is a pleasant way to be, but I’ll happily admit that New York is the center of gravity for my way of thinking. My father’s family was from the outer boroughs, and the city—New York, that is, unless you say it with capital letters, The City, which only ever means Manhattan—has been the distant background for me since my childhood in the DC suburbs. I lived in the city while I was in grad school and still try to make it back when I can. It’s a fine place. So it always depresses me to see the city going down the tubes—something it admittedly does from time to time, without lasting ill effect, but still no fun in the interim. The last time the city went down the tubes was the mayoralty of the weird, hateful Clinton crony Bill de Blasio (whom, I hasten to note, was not actually Italian, but adopted from a family of German extraction). De Blasio was an ideal study in how to be a bad mayor.  A New York mayor has to do only four things well to be considered a winner: don’t mess with the public schools; keep the subway basically safe and in basically good repair; support the police as they crack down on sickos and crooks, even when that entails a little light brutality; and keep the city solvent. De Blasio, who was the most hated mayor of my own lifetime, did the opposite of all those things. He introduced race-based admissions to the city’s magnet schools; the subway got so bad the state took it over from the city; the police were discouraged from doing anything about street-level disorder; and he strained the city’s fisc with novel, budget-busting welfare programs like universal pre-K. In addition to all this, de Blasio was a titanically off-putting weirdo who had come to power basically thanks to his longtime connection to the Clinton machine. No wonder New Yorkers hated the bum. De Blasio was followed by the current Hizzoner, Eric Adams, who is running for reelection as an independent. Adams is also extremely weird. He swore an oath to get an ear-piercing if he won the mayoralty, which he fulfilled on camera; he is a vegetarian; he is a single gentleman who is no stranger to the club; he has a distinctive rhetorical style that is—well, you have to see it to understand it. On the other hand, he reversed de Blasio’s school wokeness, has backed the cops (he’s a former police commissioner), and generally has gone about the business of being a C+ mayor. The fact that he was sort-of, kind-of accepting bribes from the Turkish government in a federally prosecutable way cannot diminish Hizzoner’s success qua mayor.  So anyway, New York’s cretinous, washed-up former governor, Andrew Cuomo, tried to take advantage of Hizzoner’s late difficulties to make a comeback as the Democratic nominee for the mayoralty (who invariably wins against the perennial Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, a kindhearted eccentric who runs a neighborhood watch group that wears red berets). The problem is that everyone—including normal, cynical New Yorkers who work for moving companies or accounting firms or the MTA—hates Cuomo, so he lost. He lost to the embarrassingly dated, 2018-style “scumbag left” tribute act Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Muslim of Indian extraction who supports rent control, LGBT rights, state-owned and -operated grocery stores, and all that jazz. Indeed, Mamdani seems in large part to define himself by opposing the Four-Point Way for mayors laid out above. So much more the humiliation for Cuomo. What next for Gotham? Well, Cuomo can run again as an independent against Mamdani alongside Adams, although reporting has it that he is unwilling to repeat the ordeal; the polling suggests that Cuomo would functionally tie with Mamdani, Adams in the third position. If Cuomo does not run, polling suggests that Mamdani will clobber Adams—I am actually skeptical of that, but the numbers are the numbers. If Adams withdraws and Cuomo runs in the general, polling suggests he’d beat Mamdani pretty thoroughly. Of course, poor, noble Sliwa’s quixotic Republican campaign hasn’t a chance. So the fight is far from over in the city that never sleeps. Cuomo is one of the most hateful figures in American politics—a pure cynic who faked Covid casualty numbers to cover up the fact that, while he was preening at his daily televised press conferences, New York’s nursing homes were being decimated. On the other hand, he would basically uphold New York’s Four-Point Way.  Mamdani has some of the worst political ideas ever tried, but he speaks well and hasn’t been accused of molesting any of his secretaries or assistants yet. Adams has nothing wrong with him besides being a crook. Much could happen before November 4; it seems to be anyone’s race. And, as in so much of American public life in 2025, there seems to be a singular question: Do you prefer the devil you know, or are you going to risk a change? My own money is on New Yorkers choosing one of the devils they know. The post The Great Mamdani Freakout appeared first on The American Conservative.

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