Living off the land: the new sisterhood of Black female homesteaders [View all]

From the South Side of Chicago to tiny Carolina farms, a growing number of Black women are reclaiming the land – and their wellbeing

The car made its way along a tree-lined gravel road. The sky was clear, and as the car drove by, the trees swayed from side to side, almost like a sign of welcome. The road opened up into a large pasture. In the middle of the pasture was a wooden pergola with grapes growing on it and a circular garden surrounding it. Tiny houses dotted the pasture, as brown children played merrily in the mud. In the center of all of this, planting in the circular garden like she was Mother Earth herself, was a Black woman.


For Chantel Johnson, this scene was “heaven”. It was actually Bear Creek, North Carolina, in May 2016, but more importantly, it was Johnson’s first glimpse into homesteading, and she was hooked at first sight.

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Johnson was grieving and depressed. It had been less than a year since her younger brother, who had been shot and paralyzed on the South Side of Chicago in 2014, succumbed to his injuries and passed away, in August 2015.

She carried that grief with her up the gravel road that day to visit her boyfriend’s friends, an interracial couple – Black wife and white husband, with kids – who owned a 30-acre homestead in Bear Creek. When the friends offered Johnson and her beau the opportunity to live with them on the homestead and help out, Johnson jumped at the chance. If this was heaven, then perhaps she could find the antidote for her grief here.



One of the first official uses of the term “homesteading” was in 1862, with the passing of the Homestead Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln to encourage western expansion and US agricultural development. But the act of homesteading – a focus on self-sufficiency dependent on the land, with an emphasis on subsistence agriculture – predates the Homestead Act, especially for Black Americans.

Much more here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/31/living-off-the-land-the-new-sisterhood-of-black-female-homesteaders

Three women. This is their story.

Beyond this shared intention, these women’s stories are connected in their origins – experiences with trauma as Black women in the US and a decision to return to the land for healing: sisters of the soil, victors of their destiny.

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Perhaps today more than ever before we need to seek changes in our lives. Earth is becoming unsustainable. Return to the land. The virus is about to wreck havoc on all our lives, the death toll, yes. Fact is we will not be able to go back to where we were. Change is coming.