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Smith continues to work remotely as a professor full time.įor Dave Barrett and Amanda Caskenette-whose 40,000-subscriber channel, Wilderstead, is named after their forested 16-acre plot in Ontario’s Algoma region-self-sufficiency is paramount.
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These days, Smith’s husband is a full-time garlic farmer, their modest flock has grown to 60 heritage hens, and they’ve upgraded to a two-acre property with an apple orchard. She and her husband sold their condo in downtown Victoria, headed for rural Vancouver Island and invested in a few chickens. Smith similarly embraced homesteading-and blogging about it-in the wake of the downturn. James started his channel after losing his contracting business during the 2008 financial crisis. If we don’t like that kind of fantasy, we’ve got this escapist one, too.”
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“We’ve got the post-apocalyptic fantasy that’s playing out in movies and TV and conversations right now. “If people get disillusioned by capitalism or international politics, the simpler life comes to mind,” Smith says, citing similar back-to-the-land movements that sprang up after the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. The phenomenon of people diving headlong into homesteading in the face of societal uncertainty isn’t a modern idea at all, says Toni Smith, a homesteader and English professor at Vancouver Island University. After all, riding out the end times in your own personal Walden doesn’t seem too bad. There are plenty of other wilderness enthusiasts broadcasting their resourceful returns to nature in a steady stream of videos with titles like “BEST AND WORST livestock for beginners” and “DIY tallow magnesium lotion.” For a populace plagued by criminally high urban real estate prices, supply chain disruption, viral content of the COVID variety and the small matter of climate change, watching people happily grow produce, corral piglets and abscond to the wilderness is a voyeuristic dream. With just over two million subscribers to his YouTube channel, “My Self Reliance,” James, who is 52 and originally from Barrie, Ontario, is the rugged face of Canadian homesteading. James, who lives in the woods outside Huntsville, Ontario, can fashion a log cabin out of 100 trees, casually whip up a turf-and-turf meal of quail and beaver tail and build an entire copper sink under the watchful eye of his golden retriever, Cali. In a country known for its unforgiving wilderness, he has managed to make an empire out of taming it. To say Shawn James is well-suited to the outdoors is like saying water is suited to a lake.
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