JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

Today I learned that what I yearn for, what I am learning the skills to do, while it may go under many names (voluntary simplicity, back-to-the-land, homesteading, etc.) is really better thought of as voluntary peasantry.

Peasantry, from the 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays (countryside), is a pre-industrial agricultural way of life that is either not at all or only very loosely connected to a market economy. It is exactly what I mean (in it’s partially connected form) when I speak of the neo-pastoral.