Avoiding the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline: HOMESTEADING INFLUENCERS

Anybody who is new to the idea of prepping (prepping to be poor, that is) is going to consider homesteading eventually. When you do that first YT search, you're almost certainly going to get one of these channels recommended to you, so I want to pre-inoculate you against a lot of the nonsense that's out there.

My bona fides: I've been growing food and breeding/raising/eating animals for 45 years (since my parents let me get my first meat rabbits at age 6). I've done sheep, goats, rabbits and chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, horses, quail, guineas, and I think there are a few I've forgotten in there. I was a serious 4-H kid, then did a bio degree, then got married and started on my own; we currently have a micro-farm/homestead that produces about 75% of our non-dairy/non-grain food, including our own meat.

I can do other channels if you want me to, but these are some of the most popular (and that I am familiar enough with to be accurate in my rating).

I've scored based on...

Factual accuracy: Is this channel giving you good information that you can replicate at your homestead; will you get evidence-based data?
Grassroots or astroturf: Is this channel showing people who are actually surviving on a homestead? Or is it mostly a content farm that makes money implying that they are surviving on a homestead?
Animal and child welfare: Do they treat their animals well? Are their kids safe and well cared for?
Alt-right score: This is not a "conservatism" score. Pretty much all of these sources are going to be pretty conservative. Alt-right means science denial, misogyny, anti-immigrant/white supremacist sentiment, anti-LGBT, implicit or overt support of political violence, and/or pushing conspiracy theories.

FROM BEST TO WORST

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION PROGRAMS

Factual accuracy: 10
Grassroots or astroturf: 10
Animal and child welfare: 10
Alt-right score: 0

This is where you should be getting most of your information, and this is where you should go to check any information that content creators try to give to you. Every state in the union has a land-grant university extension program, which is mandated and funded to do agricultural research and give agricultural advice to the citizens of that state. Your Extension office will have reliable, evidence-based information on how to make homesteading work in your climate, in your soil, at your latitude, and with your growing days.

Extension programs SHOULD be getting millions of views. I think the reason they don't is that they're not going to comfort, entertain, or jolly you along. There are no slim cottage-core moms making salsa in white marble kitchens; there's a middle-aged woman in an apron telling you that you could kill your kids if you don't do this right, or an old dude staring you down and saying that he doesn't care whether you saw it on YouTube; you are never going to be able to raise no-spray peaches in Michigan. If most homestead channels are your sweet sister or your cool-girl friend, extension programs are your strict great-aunt - they love you, but they're tired of your crap and they're done waiting for you to shape up. Don't get turned off by this; Extension advice is without question the most factual, practical way to make homesteading work both financially and logistically.

SEASONAL HOMESTEAD

Factual accuracy: 8
Grassroots or astroturf: 6: Mostly genuine
Animal and child welfare: 8
Alt-right score: 1.5

They put a TON of existing money into buying their homestead, built a house, and put in the garden, but at least they don't try to hide that. It's not realistic for you to copy in year one unless you have half a million dollars to start out with, but they genuinely do feed their family from their harvest and they work like crazy on it. This is maybe the only channel I've seen that shows the size of garden you'd need to have in order to actually feed a medium to large family off your land.

LIVING TRADITIONS HOMESTEAD

Factual accuracy: 7
Grassroots or astroturf: 8; they really do live there and really do eat what they grow and not much else
Animal and child welfare: 8; no major red flags (kids were never content farmed, and animals look pretty good)
Alt-right score: 2.5

This channel is one of the few that is ultra-honest about what they're growing and what they're not; they are meeting just about all of their non-grain/non-dairy food needs off their property. They get a lower-than-perfect accuracy score because they are vocally anti-GMO (which is not scientific) and they will tell you with great confidence that something is going to work, and then they have to come back and admit that it didn't work. They get credit for admitting that stuff failed, but if you went and spent money on the compost they recommended or the quail barn they recommended or the trees they told you were going to solve your problem, you're going to have a lot harder time making up your losses than they will. They are now pretty big, and very sponsored, but they are still showing relatively achievable goals. Alt-right score used to be close to zero, but they've started asking viewers to "pray for our Country" and showing a lot more pro-2A hats and t-shirts and stuff recently.

ACRE HOMESTEAD

Factual accuracy: 7
Grassroots or astroturf: 5: Was 8 a few years ago, but she's kind of Martha'd herself with her current set-up.
Animal and child welfare: 8
Alt-right score: 2

Oh, Becky. A few years ago she would have gotten a much higher score, because she really was trying to use her own personal garden to nourish herself and her family while she worked as a hygienist. Then suddenly she got bigger than big, and they bought a huge house and put in a very unrealistic show garden. The information she gives about gardening is basically factual and she does show her failures and correct them, which is to her credit. She still cooks a ton, still does fantastic organizational stuff, still meal plans very well, but it's for content rather than because she needs to. I am not sure I'd call them homesteaders anymore; she's more "my rich friend who shows up with a week's worth of amazing food when I am postpartum and always has a guest room open, but she won't hold my baby because she's leaving for a quick weekend in Aspen and has to drop the dogs at the kennel first."

THREE RIVERS HOMESTEAD

Factual accuracy: 8
Grassroots or astroturf: 8: Almost all genuine
Animal and child welfare: 6; kids are not heavily content farmed and animals are fine; patriarchy focus is not super
Alt-right score: 4 for Jessica, 8 for her husband

Jessica, the main narrator, is a mom of many kids. They really are surviving on what they grow and bring in, and on dad's job; there's no mysterious source of income and there's factual continuity. She has absolutely excellent canning, frugality, and organizational content and doesn't veer into dangerous stuff without warning you. She is incredibly sweet, and her kids look like they're having a good time every time she shows them. The main reason she's lower down this list is that her husband is very problematic and when they do couple Q&As he scares the crap out of me. If you just watch Jessica's content you'll be OK, at least as of 2024.

HOMESTEADY

Factual accuracy: 6
Grassroots or astroturf: 3; mostly astroturf: inherited land, unrealistic views of income/savings, tens of thousands of dollars paid for rare/weird animals that then disappear, and they don't visibly farm food aside from meat
Animal and child welfare: 5: kids seem fine but animals seem to be content only
Alt-right score: 3 and rising

Great example of how easy and functional homesteading can be when you inherit land, have family money, and know how to produce videos. If you don't need to know how to actually save money, and like videos of gorgeous landscapes, this is a fine channel. They go over some basic livestock skills and talk a lot about homesteading topics, but don't do a lot of feeding of themselves or their family (at least on camera). My biggest beef with them is animal welfare; they acquire and get rid of a TON of animals, including very elderly, rare, pregnant, and high-needs animals that really shouldn't be passed along. They leap from pigs to goats, to more pigs, to cows, to different cows, to yet another kind of cow, to different chickens, to different pigs, to water buffalo - all in a year or two. And the ones they decide to discontinue just flat-out disappear, without comment, and it's not because they end up in the freezer. Alt-right score is relatively low for their own content, but I am hearing more dog whistles, and it's getting higher by the year for the people they platform.

ARMS FAMILY HOMESTEAD

Factual accuracy: 5
Grassroots or astroturf: 2 (mostly astroturf); inherited land, very little food production, mostly hunting/fishing, lots of big builds and equipment
Animal and child welfare: 5; kids seem fine but animals are constantly getting injured or killed, and that becomes content instead of them just putting some $$ into better fencing
Alt-right score: 3, mainly for 2A and paranoia about having to defend their land; can be vaccine skeptics

Arms Family won't turn you into a loon, but it's also incredibly unrealistic. They got super big super fast during the pandemic, so the channel has mostly become a way to showcase the massive dream builds, hunting/fishing trips, and pet animals that their YT money supports. Tons of sponsored posts and "partnerships" too. "Homesteading" really isn't the right label for what this channel is; it's more like if Bass Pro Shops had a baby with Tractor Supply.

HOMESTEADING FAMILY

Factual accuracy: 5 and falling; they went way off the deep end after Covid
Grassroots or astroturf: 6; she has a beautiful garden and they raise poultry and milk cows. However, it's strongly implied that they are getting all their food from the property and there's no way she has enough planted for that.
Animal and child welfare: 6, from what I can see the kids are healthy and cared for, but she uses "jurisdictions," the kids have younger buddies they are responsible for, she does "child training," and the family structure is very patriarchal.
Alt-right score: 3 five years ago; 7 and rising now

I used to love this channel. For a good long time, they were sort of "Republican hippies," so they griped a little bit about regulations but mainly just raised food and made wine and planted herbs and had kids. After 2020, they started with "here's a recipe for herbal cough syrup if you need it" and then went down the alt-right water slide from "we don't think the virus is as bad as people make it out to be" all the way to where they are now, which is "the government is putting toxins in your water; buy a gun." The kids seem to have increasing homemaking responsibility as the parents are putting out more content, which makes me uncomfortable.

ROOTS AND REFUGE FARM

Factual accuracy: 4; do not use anything she says about feeding, animal care, pesticides, etc. as a source for your own homestead. Most especially, do not assume that her animals are in good shape and it's OK if animals look like that; they aren't and it isn't.
Grassroots or astroturf: 3; mostly astroturf as of 2024.
Animal and child welfare: 5; kids seem fine but animals are not
Alt-right score: 7

This is another channel that itself followed the crunchy-to-alt-right slide over its lifetime. Jess used to have a bunch of little kids on a small homestead and was raising food on a budget of close to zero; some of those early videos are still there and still just fine. Starting around six years ago, she began to chase subscribers rather than just document the homestead, so you see her doing partnered posts and name-dropping some bigger channels. After COVID hit her popularity went bananas, and she has gradually moved to getting most of the family income from being an influencer, and of course moved to a massive multi-hundred-acre property and does massive sponsored builds for content. The farm still exists, and is beautiful, but they have full-time workers both doing a lot of the day-to-day and picking up the kid-and-animals responsibilities as Jess and her husband frequently leave for conferences and speaking engagements.

I have two major issues with using Roots and Refuge as an informational source: First, she does a REALLY crappy job on a lot of stuff, kills or hurts a LOT of animals, but frames it as being "real" and "raw" and "telling you the truth." She will cry for two videos about the fact that a cow died, when the reason the cow died is that they won't use vets and they ignored the problem for months. She has these disastrous kidding and lambing seasons and then says "Oh, wow, I guess maybe they had xx," as though this is the first time she's ever heard of issues that are basic, day-one, even the most introductory book or article is going to tell you about. There's an old saying that some people get ten years of experience and some people get one year of experience ten times, and R&R is very definitely in this latter group. I have NO idea if it's genuine and she really is this clueless or if it's for content - I've certainly noticed that the more fluttery and helpless she seems the more engagement she gets. But either way, nobody is allowed to sacrifice animals on the altar of either cluelessness OR engagement.

The second issue is that she's really quite alt-right, but it's couched in this warm-fuzzy-"I'm admitting something very intimate to you" language, and further wrapped in "our relationship with God must lead us to these conclusions," with the result that if you think (for example) vaccines work, you're personally attacking Jess, who is so very very vulnerable and sweet, AND you aren't trusting God.

JUSTIN RHOADES

Factual accuracy: 3
Grassroots or astroturf: 5; middling. They really do grow some food on their land and they definitely raise meat. However, they're also using the Salatin model of unpaid labor and they're content farming. Inherited land.
Animal and child welfare: 3: Kids are often injured/sick but they mistrust doctors; health care is lacking for animals; lots of animals in poor condition. His wife's mental illness, gramma's death, serious accidents - all content farmed.
Alt-right score: 7.5

Justin is a Salatin sycophant; he follows the same model of coming up with a gimmick and then publicizing that as content (like "one-acre pig farm" and "no-poop chicken coop") without actually having tested and produced with that gimmick. Constant brags about profit and claims that people can make money homesteading, but every person he claims is making that kind of money is using the Salatin content-and-free-labor model. Very, very anti-science; they will not treat their animals or their kids with conventional meds unless they are actively perishing, and then when those animals or kids get sick it's minutely documented and played endlessly for content.

FIT FARMER

Factual accuracy: 2 Very, very VERY anti-science
Grassroots or astroturf: 6; started out as actually poor people being actually poor and growing food, but more and more of their lifestyle is coming from content and not homesteading
Animal and child welfare: 3; kids are definitely content farmed
Alt-right score: 7

Mike at Fit Farmer is trying to latch on to the Salatin-Rhoades effect (he doesn't really hide this; they are constant guests and name-drops). They actually grow food, which is good, but I haven't seen genuinely useful information on homesteading on the channel for a while. Kids are content and they are mega-anti-science. Expect to see people claiming to cure cancer with baking soda and similar.

JOEL SALATIN

Factual accuracy: 2 out of 10
Grassroots or astroturf: 3 out of 10; mostly astroturf: inherited land, content farming, unpaid labor
Animal and child welfare: 4 out of 10
Alt-right score: 9 out of 10

Joel is the daddy of this whole movement, and you can see it happen in his own timeline. Years ago, he inherited some land and had the idea that he could pasture-raise chickens; he has parlayed this into presenting the impression that he is making a ton of money farming and you can too. What is unsaid is that most of his income is coming from selling content, and it relies on a huge system of unpaid labor that he calls "internships." In this time he has moved from being sort of anti-establishment to being incredibly and overtly racist, anti-science, and conspiratorial. Using Joel as a source of information is a major sign that whoever you're watching is further down the pipeline than I'd be comfortable with.

OFF GRID WITH DOUG AND STACY

Factual accuracy: 2
Grassroots or astroturf: 1 (they are pretty much just LARPing homesteading)
Animal and child welfare: 2
Alt-right score: 10

One of the absolute worst. Jewish space lasers and assorted insanity.