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I went all the way to the Philipinnes, deliberately to find a woman who actually KNOWS "primitive". She cooked with wood all her life, hauled and boiled water, butchered chickens, and hogs, speared fish, the works. I don't ask anything like that of her here, but it's nice to know that she knows HOW. :-)
We just purchased my dream home. It's a 2/1 cabin 60 miles from the nearest paved road. I have the woodstove of my dreams and the hubby is building an actual bathroom for me! I've always grown and canned my own food, make my clothes. I have a cistern pump at the sink and solar power for the light and fridge. It's got a huge greenhouse attached to the barn, where the mule team lives. The only thing that stinks is riding my motorcycle to that paved road!
I guess we're all so different! I love not having televisions and telephones (with the exception of my cell phone, which I use for work and it's a hotspot)...now if I can sell that big house in Florida I'll be thrilled, lol.
We just purchased my dream home. It's a 2/1 cabin 60 miles from the nearest paved road. I have the woodstove of my dreams and the hubby is building an actual bathroom for me! I've always grown and canned my own food, make my clothes. I have a cistern pump at the sink and solar power for the light and fridge. It's got a huge greenhouse attached to the barn, where the mule team lives. The only thing that stinks is riding my motorcycle to that paved road!
I guess we're all so different! I love not having televisions and telephones (with the exception of my cell phone, which I use for work and it's a hotspot)...now if I can sell that big house in Florida I'll be thrilled, lol.
It's so cool to see what each other enjoys!
Very cool. Good luck with your adventure/lifestyle!
I went to the Philipinnes to get the sort of woman that I wanted. I may well lose her after she gets in her 5 years here and becomes a citizen, but it will be 5 years that got spent MY way and if I do lose her, there's millions more just like her, where she came from. Repeat as desired/necessary.
What women are not interested in is being free slave labor for a man whose idea of homesteading is to have a woman who will do all the food preservation, grow the garden, tend all the animals, do all the house cleaning and laundry, make the soap, candles, and clothing from spinning all the way to a finished garment, chop split, and stack the fire wood, and perform, on demand, all the personal relations stuff.
+1 Especially if you add bearing & rearing children onto that already hefty list. A huge amount of effort and largely unappreaciated drudgery goes into daily life "chores" around the homestead, and most of that ends up on the woman's shoulders if you go by conventional gender roles.
If Jack's idea of self-sufficiency is just doing the periodic glorified "muscle" work, expecting Jill to "take care of the home" everyday it's not in any way and equal division of labor. In a 9-to-5 world, Jackmight get away with this attitude going out and earning for the family while Jill stays home to take care of the house & family, with Jack pitching in at home now and then with the manly muscle chores. But on a SS homestead, Jack's got to pitch in on the daily domestic homestead chores because he's not out earning a wage. He can't sit on his duff between the fun chores like hunting & fishing or building stuff. If Jack wants a warm clean home, clothes to wear and food to eat everyday then he's got to do a portion of nonglorious work to provide it.
All gender aside, no one wants to get shackled into a relationship and lifestyle where they have to shoulder most of the workload. There are plenty of women interested in self-sufficiency, even off-grid homesteading, but they're looking for a PARTNER who does a fair share of the workload.
No division of labor will ever be seen as completely 50-50 fair.
The wife may not like laundry, I don't like mucking out barns, but both have to be done.
She may not like housekeeping, I am not real happy when I have to spend days digging and repairing irrigation ditches that have been ruined by gophers or badgers.
She may not like making candles, I don't like having to be up at 3:00 AM in a freezing cowshed stripped to the waist trying to pull a calf that a heifer is having trouble birthing, but if I don't do it, I lose both the cow and the calf.
She may not like mending clothes, I don't especially like having to tear an engine down and rebuild it, or pull a rear end out from under a truck to replace the gears, or rebuild a transmission or low range when they break.
She may not like spending hours over a hot stove canning produce, but I don't see that as much different than the days I spend over a forge trying to rebuild parts or make something to sell so we can make a payment.
There will never be an A=B division of labor on a homestead, you both work towards a common goal. I can and do cook, and do most of the smoking/dehydrating/butchering/meat cutting, she does most of the weeding in the garden and canning.
We both hunt and fish, I do the gutting and dragging which when you are talking about a large animal like a bear or elk, is a lot of work, she cooks it.
If you work together, its a tough lifestyle for all concerned. Worrying about if one is doing more than the other is just counterproductive and creates divisiveness that harms the relationship.
Not saying I couldn't do dishes, or she can't chop some wood, but to have a time clock or stamp to make sure everything is equal, well you won't be working together long in that situation.
I understand Silvertip. I'm answering for women in general which of course is impossible but I'm fairly representative of my sex. My sister-in-law spent 20 years in a self sufficient community and could have written my previous post, line by line as would many of her friends there. She wanted to sell out years before my brother was ready to go, the burden falling on the women as I describe. It's not systematic but it evolves into drudgery for women.
The things that you describe that you do (that guys do on every homestead) are more episodic in nature. You don't birth calves everyday 365 days a year, same with ditch digging (and I've dug my share of ditches by hand so I know) or tearing down machinery. The closest thing described to daily is mucking out barns and forge work, not so with cooking, cleaning, childcare which are daily duties, the same thing every day. Even for people that like cooking, it gets to be a grind.
I won't go into equity, it's not really about equity, it's about freedom for ceaseless toil, women or men. Like I said, I don't mind toil, it's the ceaseless part that gets to me. I don't think I'm alone in that. I and the majority of women I know want clean homes, good food, clean clothes, well cared for children but they also want time to tend to themselves, to engage in pleasurable activities that aren't chores. This is why most women are not attracted to homesteading life. Men seem to be constructed differently. They see themselves in their work be it at home or in a career, there is often a tangible product produced which is satisfying (like canned goods in a row for women as opposed to the daily meals) and as I observed they don't feel chained to their duties and often aren't by the hour.
I have a husband that I trust and we have decided to go about building a more independent life (stopping short of the whole self sufficient thing) and I know that when I'm working, he won't be holding a coffee cup. It's the partnership that matters. In your case you have extended family on which you rely and they on you. Everyone must be at least nominally satisfied with the arrangement and that's great for you. The whole thread started with the inquiry about why women aren't attracted to the "life", not that there is anything wrong with the life for those that choose it willingly. To view it as such is a misunderstanding.
I have a husband that I trust and we have decided to go about building a more independent life (stopping short of the whole self sufficient thing) and I know that when I'm working, he won't be holding a coffee cup. It's the partnership that matters. In your case you have extended family on which you rely and they on you. Everyone must be at least nominally satisfied with the arrangement and that's great for you. The whole thread started with the inquiry about why women aren't attracted to the "life", not that there is anything wrong with the life for those that choose it willingly. To view it as such is a misunderstanding.
That would be the key wouldn't it....
Your relationship with your partner.
Not if it's canning over a stove, or cutting the grass on 1/10th of an acre.
I'm always amused when women post things like this (although this one has more merrit than most) complaining about the division of labor between men and women....
Well this guy ALSO cooks EVERY DAY. Because if I don't... I don't eat!
Same with the laundry, the cleaning, and also things like the wood pile I was just stacking.
Some how I manage!
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