As someone who enjoys gardening: there's so much fucking money to be made in scaring (largely white & nervous) suburbanites into gearing up to grow fear gardens.

ain't no capitalism like "here's a catalog of stuff you can buy to fuck over the capitalists" capitalism

Meanwhile p much anytime you actually dig into the bio of someone claiming to have "homesteaded their way to independence," there's a whole-ass story they're hiding.

Thoreau: Mom did his laundry

Laura Ingalls Wilder & her dad: made living as gov't employees not homesteaders

Scott & Helen Nearing: trust fund babies

At this point maybe some of the peanut gallery are thinking "But isn't it good & virtuous just to garden for its own sake?? How dare you attack gardening like this"

I said it's worth doing for its own sake once, nay, twice within this very thread, fair reader.

That was- as a matter of fact- the entire argument of the article that kicked off this hellscape of a thread.

"Yes gardening is good & worth doing. Just don't do it out of a hope for financial payoff or food security bc that will be disappointing."

Congrats on finally arguing yourself into the OP from like three days ago

In conclusion, there is a HUGE difference between the age-old tradition of BWABFG (burghers with a big fucking garden) and the relatively new, short-lived, & unhappy history of homesteading.

But modern homesteading/self-sufficiency culture deliberately conflates those two things for the purpose of profit.

And even taken at face value, homesteading is self-parodying poison & always has been. The end