Monday, December 12, 2016

Studying The Benefits Of Making A Homestead

By Virginia Stewart


In American history, people can often come across pioneers who started out by putting stakes on land in the public domain. The term is used for land that has not been titled by public or private owners or government. Only basic state sovereignty applies, even if the state in question has not inspected the land nor has uses or plans for it.

The land is by rights free and therefore anyone who thinks to build a home or farm there can do it. This is the way homesteading is defined actually, with a family or persons involved begin by farming on the subsistence level and hoping that it will get better for them. Alaska homestead is no longer supported by the great homestead acts that made this lifestyle a viable one for generations of immigrants.

Homesteading is not quite what it once was for the younger generation because there are so many options available to them now that the practice has practically died out. In the official sense, it went out with The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which served notice that government will not longer issue free land titles to homesteaders. But this is limited to areas outside the public domain.

People can do the experiment in Alaska as well as in other places, but it will be dependent on patience, passion and the will to succeed. However, it is often viable for only a select number who are prepared to take on the adventure. The Alaskan interior is snowbound, with very few inhabitants but mostly in the public domain.

It will be a grand adventure for those with the rare kind of mindset for the youth of today. There are so many other things to do for them, and the age of homesteading renaissance has already died down after the counterculture, the years when many of the young wanted to live simply and as close to the earth like the ancestors did.

This does not mean that the practice has completely died out. Or that the available areas in the public domain are no longer habitable or have been restricted by the government. As a matter of fact, people can turn in all directions in Alaska and simply choose the most promising locations and start putting out the stakes.

It can sound too simple for words, but the reality is not. For one, the climate there is very hard to deal with, and only the few adventures, old natives and those who know of no other life can have a sort of comfortable life on it. The applicable philosophy is that of the fittest surviving on for the place in question.

With people who are bent on taking on a living deep in Alaska, there are some basic must haves. These are the essentials for the simplest human activities like building, cooking, cutting and simple agriculture. Kerosene lamps provide light, while electricity is virtually unheard of in most places.

Imagination and creativity are also essential for surviving the place and taking on the harshest of physical and mental challenges. This really limits the persons who qualify for this still very interesting if not romantic kind of life. Most who have gone through the experience have never found it easy, and probably think that it was luck that was the operating factor, even if it was perhaps the greatest mental and spiritual achievement possible.




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