It's good to dig into the details of why this is all so plainly inauthentic. I keep wondering - what will these people do when (as it surely will and must) the cottagecore and homestead aesthetic trend dies, because something new is coming in? How fast can you turn a ranch and barn into an intergalactic space docking pod? (Or whatever's coming next as a lifestyle aesthetic vibe)?
What a great essay, rebuffing that tiring make-believe trend! Your summers (with Barbs, no less) sound idyllic, although I'm sure they were also hard work.
I have to admit I have no memory of ever having an unpleasantly cold shower there. I do remember the esoteric kitchen at the back where butter lived in water and snails disappeared.
You - the baby - always had the right to warmer water. The privileges of being the tiny one in the family (outset from the inability to catch me when I was sneaking up a tree, at least when you were very little!)
In no way was I ever a homesteader but I did spend many years in the Pacific NW. Summers involved foraging for whatever bounty could be found in the fields, spending long hours at u-picks, and utilizing the wonderful produce kindly gifted from neighbors who had a glut on their hands. Plus tuna bought from the fishermen at the coast.
Processing always fell to me and it was hard work slaving over a stove in an unbearably hot kitchen with no a/c and a poorly insulated house. With small children and animals underfoot in various stages of dirt and undress.
I felt rich indeed with all this to play with on a limited income but it was tiring, messy and definitely not the stuff of pretty pictures.
I have a truly healthy respect for anyone who does homesteading for real. The trad wife craze annoys the hell out of me for the skewered view it presents of a hard life.
It's good to dig into the details of why this is all so plainly inauthentic. I keep wondering - what will these people do when (as it surely will and must) the cottagecore and homestead aesthetic trend dies, because something new is coming in? How fast can you turn a ranch and barn into an intergalactic space docking pod? (Or whatever's coming next as a lifestyle aesthetic vibe)?
This exactly. I am looking forward to the re-glamorization of their spaces. From Positano to the barn and back
What a great essay, rebuffing that tiring make-believe trend! Your summers (with Barbs, no less) sound idyllic, although I'm sure they were also hard work.
Thank you so much! Idyllic and hard work are not antithetical but can coexist - in real life, not in the TikTok reels of these gals.
I'm sure they can, and really what is getting to an idyllic place without hard work?!
Exactly! Like the recompense for a hike is the view, and the recompense for hard work is a fine good cake or something :)
I have to admit I have no memory of ever having an unpleasantly cold shower there. I do remember the esoteric kitchen at the back where butter lived in water and snails disappeared.
Snails disappeared in butter sometimes.
You - the baby - always had the right to warmer water. The privileges of being the tiny one in the family (outset from the inability to catch me when I was sneaking up a tree, at least when you were very little!)
In no way was I ever a homesteader but I did spend many years in the Pacific NW. Summers involved foraging for whatever bounty could be found in the fields, spending long hours at u-picks, and utilizing the wonderful produce kindly gifted from neighbors who had a glut on their hands. Plus tuna bought from the fishermen at the coast.
Processing always fell to me and it was hard work slaving over a stove in an unbearably hot kitchen with no a/c and a poorly insulated house. With small children and animals underfoot in various stages of dirt and undress.
I felt rich indeed with all this to play with on a limited income but it was tiring, messy and definitely not the stuff of pretty pictures.
I have a truly healthy respect for anyone who does homesteading for real. The trad wife craze annoys the hell out of me for the skewered view it presents of a hard life.