Modern homesteaders reject mainstream consumerism by cultivating their own sustainable, community-oriented farming practices, proving it’s never too late to embrace the holistic lifestyle.
By Dustin Staggs
The gravel crunches under my tires as I turn on Mechel and Barry Wall’s driveway, dubbed It’ll Do Road, a whimsically suitable name that reflects Mechel’s easy-going demeanor. Before the Wall’s house appears, a shed, a lush greenhouse, and perfectly-placed soil beds reveal the presence of their cherished garden.
When Mechel and Barry moved to Pea Ridge and began to lay down roots, their first project on the land wasn’t their house, but to cultivate a garden.
Mechel, 55, opens the door and greets me with a warm grin. “Did you bring a box for strawberries? You’re getting strawberries, right?”, she asks, briefly mistaking me for another guest.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know I was getting strawberries, but now I’m happy. I love strawberries,” I say. “I’ll still take some strawberries since you brought it up,” I say jokingly.
Though the Walls only moved here in September, their home already radiates a lived-in charm. Sunlight from every window penetrates the open area, greeting me and the indoor plants. On some of the beige walls are real-life moss tapestries that Mechel has created and hung up at other places like the Co-Op.
“How cold is it outside?” Mechel asks me.
“It’s not too cold,” I tell her. “I think once we start sweating a little bit, it’ll feel good.”
“Oh, you’re planning to work too,” Mechel says with a slight grin on her face. With a delicate grace that conveys knowledge and experience, her face, sun-kissed and weathered, emanates ageless elegance. Behind the polished lenses of her spectacles, her eyes glitter with vivid interest.
“I will,” I respond. “Yeah, put me to work.”
In this period of increased urbanization and reliance on commercial food systems, a noteworthy shift is emerging. A generation of adults is interested in rediscovering and modernizing the benefits of farming, gardening, and sustainable food practices.
According to Mechel Wall, the younger generation is thirsty to reconnect with the land and take stewardship over one’s food sources and environment. That’s why she and her husband, Barry Wall, are hosting the first Northwest Arkansas Farm School and Homesteading Conference at the Benton County Fairgrounds April 18–20.
I asked Wall why she thought the younger generation has a thirst for this kind of knowledge. Even though I know there’s a lack of knowledge, I am eager to learn myself when it comes to growing my own food and sustainable living.
Wall clarified that she is part of a number of local gardening and farming groups on social media. So many of the posts, she said, are coming from these young single and young married families.
“Inevitably, there’s a question that comes up nearly every day,” Wall said. “‘I really want to start some seeds. Where do I begin?’ and ‘I really want to have one or two chickens in my backyard. I don’t even know where to start.’”
The underlying sense that Wall said she gets from reading their posts and responding to their questions is that they are yearning for this knowledge.
“They wouldn’t be asking on social media if their moms knew the answers or if they had grandparents to ask,” Wall said. “So it tells me that they’re turning to social media, local organizations, and people like Master Gardeners and their neighbors that have gardens. So it’s time for us to just link arms and come together with the information that people are asking for and make it accessible to everyone.”
At the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, Grants and Program Manager Karen Reynolds said around the time of the pandemic, she noticed a trend of more people, not just younger adults, but older ones as well, interested in farming. Reynold’s said this could be because companies stopped hiring during the time and people were working from home, but also a lot of people just wanted a change. Reynold’s got calls from people as far as New York, who said they bought farms in Arkansas and was wondering how to get started.
“From the past five years, it seems like there is an uptick and there is some interest, but not only in the young people,” Reynolds said.
Even older adults who worked years in the corporate field left their fast-paced jobs to replace it with the peaceful lifestyle of farming.
The modern farming that we’re seeing today, Reynolds said, isn’t the same traditional farming of the past. These younger and older adults are interested in a more sustainable way of gardening and growing food.
Supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic led to periodic shortages of groceries and household necessities, which caused frequent shoppers to look toward farmer’s markets.
“They realized what a difference there is in the quality, the nutritional value, and the flavor,” Reynolds said. “And then they’re like, ‘Okay, this is better.’ Then they started researching how the produce is shipped from California and Florida, and it’s not the same. It’s being picked that morning. It starts to lose its nutritional value as soon as it’s taken off the vine. And if it’s sitting on a truck for two weeks, by the time you get it, it’s pretty low.”
By prioritizing dirt over concrete and plants above processed goods, these modern homesteaders are interested in not following mainstream consumerism standards. Their efforts showcase more than simply a return to agricultural principles; they exemplify a transformational way of life that prioritizes steady development and sustainability above instant satisfaction. This change in the narrative illustrates the possibility for a larger social return to habits that formerly defined rural life.
As these families lay down roots, both literal and metaphorical, they cultivate more than just food. This new generation of farmers operates smaller-scale, diverse family farms that use environmentally friendly techniques like soil blocks (something Mechel Wall took the time to teach me how to do), which eliminates the need for plastic pots, reducing plastic waste. But more than anything, these farmers actively participate in their local communities, introducing new cultures to agriculture.
Joe Saumweber, 41, is an entrepreneur who specializes in local food systems, regenerative farming, and hospitality. He and his wife Mary started Tuckaway Farm last year with the goal of creating a “farm of the community.” The recently-started sustainable vegetable and flower farm in Bentonville is where anybody can come and experience agriculture on a small scale.
Joe previously co-founded RevUnit, a design/ tech company, and served as CEO for seven years—a job that was around a lot less dirt but one that took away the time Saumweber wanted to spend with his family.
“I love that chapter of my life, but I spent a lot of time away from my family and chasing things that mattered to some degree, but maybe not to the same degree that I thought they did,” Saumweber said.
Following Saumweber’s departure from his job, he and his family of seven went on a two-year sabbatical, sailing 15,000 miles across the Caribbean and across the Pacific Ocean, taking the time to reconnect as a family. During this time, the kids were homeschooled, and the Saumwebers were inspired by the people they met in places like Fiji and French Polynesia.
These local people the Saumwebers saw don’t visit the store to make dinner, Saumweber said. They walk out in their backyard and harvest a few things, and they walk up the hill and shoot a goat or go fishing—dinner is served. That really stuck with the family.
“We’re a long ways away from that back home,” Saumweber said. “I don’t know how to live without a box of Cheez-Its and a bag of Cheetos.”
In those inspiring moments, Saumweber thought of how they could get closer to this way of life they were seeing across the ocean. Saumweber said Tuckaway was built on the idea of what the family imagined for themselves in this next chapter of their lives and what would check the boxes they wanted. Joe didn’t want to go back to an office 50 hours a week, and the Saumwebers wanted to work together as a family. So they became farmers.
At Tuckaway Farm, they grow primarily by using hand and human power instead of machinery. In truth, as Saumweber is talking with me, he’s weeding his tomato bed by hand.
“We do that because we kind of believe in this ethos of growing; using some of these older methods by hand allows us to have a lot more intimacy with the land,” Saumweber said. “This allows us to protect our soil structure and the microbiology in the soil that creates healthier food and healthier plants.”
This method of farming also allows the Saumwebers to raise their produce in such a way that it’s more nutrient dense, so it’s better for people and without harmful add-ins, which we may have grown accustomed to with the in-store products we buy. The Saumwebers can grow intensively in a small space rather than what big farms can because they have to plant between the tractor tires, whereas at Tuckaway, they don’t have that limitation.
Tuckaway Farm, as Saumweber said, is meant to be a place for people to come and connect with where their food comes from and learn about different ethical ways to interact with the land while growing food, similar to the opportunity the Saumwebers were given.
“Most of the country, including myself and my wife, we’re all three generations removed from the farm,” Saumweber said. “We’ve lost a lot of that knowledge of how to feed ourselves, and so we’re outsourcing it.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. imports 60% of the fresh fruit and 40% of the fresh vegetables available to US residents.
Saumweber hopes to bring this knowledge of how to grow our own food back to the younger generation.
“There is this yearning in a lot of young people to reconnect with the land and this feeling that we’re missing something. We’ve lost something,” Saumweber said.
For thousands of years, Saumweber said, people have had to know how to feed themselves and how to nurture what comes from the ground to do that. We don’t know how to do that anymore. He thinks it’s compelling and important because we’re deciding it’s compelling and important as a culture.
Complimenting his younger colleagues, Saumweber said he thinks people younger than him, generationally, understand this necessary change even more.
“Our value system is changing,” he said. “There’s less attachment to things and stuff and ownership and more attachment to experiences and knowledge and real value, contribution, and beauty.”
Outside, Wall and I stand in the middle of her sectioned-off garden.
Before they broke ground for the house, Mechel and Barry cleaned up the area we now stand in, tore the floor of what was a pig and cow pasture, made the potting shed, built the chicken coop, and then built the greenhouse that sits before us.
Mechel prefers to work with native plants to have a natural landscape, she tells me. “Right here, these are all landscape-sized blueberries,” she says, pointing at a small shrub that sits in mulch, guarded by chicken wire.
Next to the square containing the blueberries, Mechel follows vines that pour out of a different square of mulch. She pulls strawberry start-ups from runners that touch the ground and hands them to me in a pot of mulch.
“Those are yours to grow strawberries,” she says.
Even though I don’t have the first clue where to start with the items she just handed me, she doesn’t seem annoyed to help. There’s almost a sense of hopefulness worn on her face when she asks me if I know how to grow them, like she’s wanting to pass on the answer.
I watch Wall work around her garden, pulling out dead stems and already-produced vines. Her silver hair is short and doesn’t get in her way. She used to own a flower farm where she would sell flowers, but that became time-consuming, made it hard to work on the rest of the farm, and wasn’t feasible. So this is all she does now, but she doesn’t seem to mind and says she finds it good for the soul. “This is what I do,” she says, raising her dirt-covered hands.
“I really love the educational component, and I love to teach,” Wall said. “So, if I can focus on that and help people live a more sustainable, holistic life, then that’s what I want to do.”
There are simple things that people, even people who live in apartments, can do to live healthier, she tells me.
That’s something Wall said she hopes to teach amongst the interested younger generation at her upcoming Oz-Ark Homesteading and Gardening Expo this April. In addition to the Porters and Saumwebers, other experienced farmers will be there to share what they’ve learned with the younger generation interested in homesteading and gardening.
The whole event is about empowering people with the knowledge they need to live healthier. There’s also a networking aspect to it. “It’s nice to know who knows something that you don’t,” Wall says.
“It takes a village,” she says. “And our village has become kind of different from what it used to be back in the days when our grandparents were alive. Because their village was their small town. And their family was usually around and could help with stuff. Our families are a little bit scattered,” she explains. “And so we need those connections to our neighbors. To create that sense of community.”
We finish up with the garden, and she looks up at me, eyes beaming from her glasses, and asks me if I want to see her other farm and feed some goats.
Excited as ever, I follow behind her down the road in my vehicle to hear the rest of her story.
Becky and Cameron Porter own The Seasonal Homestead and have been sharing their farming journey with the community since they got married in 2006, hoping to inspire others to be self-sufficient and grow their own food.
For Cameron, he said he’s always grown up with a garden, but it was never a huge priority for him to continue into adulthood.
“I was the typical kid that complained when I had to weed the garden but always snuck out to eat fresh strawberries,” Porter said.
The married couple started small with the keeping of some plants that Cameron’s mother had given them and then eventually a raised garden bed in the front porch area. However, it was Becky, who had never been around a garden growing up or a farming lifestyle, who ended up accelerating their homesteading practices after finding a health benefit in gardening for her medical concerns.
After the birth of their third child, Becky got sick and suffered from postpartum depression, anxiety, and then stomach pains, making it hard for her to eat regularly. Becky said she would wake up in the morning, eat, and soon after have so much stomach pain that she couldn’t even stand up. According to Porter, the same routine happened almost every day for months.
Porter consulted experts first and tested all possibilities with eight doctors before getting a firm diagnosis. Porter said the doctor diagnosed her with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and acid reflux. Still, she said the prescriptions didn’t seem to work for her and decided to heal through dieting.
Porter first tried being vegan for six months, and the stomach pain was manageable but still not free of discomfort. For another three months, she experimented with going gluten-free before finally trying the paleo diet. Porter said the diet worked the best for her in regard to pain management, but it didn’t feel healthy for her as thin as she was and still continuously losing weight.
“We tried every doctor it seemed under the sun and every natural path, every cleanse you can imagine, and nothing seemed to really stick,” Cameron said. “But she did notice an immediate change when she started to eat less in the way of processed foods and more in the way of foods that we grew.”
Cameron said that when they had a harvest of tomatoes and made salsa, Becky was able to digest it with no stomach pain. “So that’s when she really said, ‘There’s something to this, and we need to do more of this,’” Porter said.
The two expanded the garden, and Porter’s health issues began to improve.
Now, the Porters have five kids, and with the large amount of land they recently moved to, they are able to sustain 100% of their meat with the livestock they take care of, no longer needing to eat the processed meat from grocery stores. Cameron said they are on the road to having 95% of their own grown vegetables to be fully self-sufficient.
“As the food industry in America for the most part gets, quite frankly, worse and worse and more processed, there’s a greater need to get back to food that comes from nature, and get more natural, like really natural, like nothing from a box kind of thing,” Cameron said.
In addition to being able to eat healthy, Cameron also said that a benefit to him and his wife’s homesteading life is the confidence and reassurance they get from a preparedness perspective that they are relying on their own resources.
Cameron works in the supply chain as the only source of income besides the money they make from farmers markets and the business that Seasonal Homestead brings. Working in that field, he said he understands how fragile the supply chain is and how it wouldn’t take much to cause a massive disruption in our food supply.
“We’re seeing it kind of in small cases with a bird flu outbreak, this and that, and all of a sudden, egg prices skyrocket, right?” Porter said. “Things like that, and so it’s just a nice reassurance from that perspective that we’re not affected by that.”
The Porters, like many other farmers, have their own egg supply and food storage from vegetables that are canned and preserved. Their garden is a continuous food storage at their disposal. Cameron said that’s also a reason other young adults might be finding more of an interest in getting back into homesteading.
Cameron said he’s happy that he gets to teach his five kids at this stage in their lives how to maintain the farm and build a good work ethic from it.
“We did it for them so that they could enjoy country life, learn how to work, learn how to do chores, and wake up early,” Porter said. “And it’s important for them to see where their food comes from and to help with that too.”
Mechel Wall, whose farm spreads over lush green acres amid the soothing currents of Sugar Creek, refers to this as her “happy place.” It’s simple to understand why. When we arrive, an eight-year-old farm dog named Brownie approaches—a sweet soul whose initial sniff is a silent gatekeeping ritual—before granting his approval. After a moment, his tail wags, a gentle invitation to enter Mechel’s world, one of warmth and affection.
As we walk, the farm unfolds in a sun-bathed green. We near a sectioned-off field. Waiting patiently are Rosie and Daisy, two dairy goats, who both stand near wooden platforms adorned with recycled turf from football fields. It’s the two goats’ playground that Wall made, and she’s about to show me how they like to play.
Wall and I enter the field, and in Wall’s hand is a large pitcher of food. It doesn’t take much to get Rosie and Daisy’s attention; they come right up to us, ready to be loved. As young-ins, they were both bottle-fed by Mechel, so they have a trust for people that some goats don’t have. Without the food in Wall’s hand, I believe they would still come up to anyone. It’s the use of the food that gets their attention to jump on the large wooden platforms arranged in an ascending circle, each one separated by a good foot of length.
One after the other, the goats hop on the first platform, watching intently at Wall’s hand with the food as she leads them on each of the platforms. Wall encourages them to make the jumps in a sweet and delicate mom voice. I watch in awe at the spectacle.
“They’re just so much fun,” Wall says, almost giggling out the words. “Goats are a riot.”
The property that has been the Walls for 12 years is past a golf course on a private dirt road that runs alongside Sugar Creek.
There is a strip next to Sugar Creek Road where people take their dogs and play in the creek; that acts as a public access point, and everything else along Sugar Creek Road is owned by the Walls and inaccessible. However, Mechel tells me they are planning on putting a little coffee/ pastry shop there to make the people feel invited to that part of their property.
“People can park and actually enjoy the creek without having to, like, collect or trespass on it,” Wall says. “So we figured we’d just say, ‘Hey, it’s here.’ We’ll fix it up and let people use it. They can get down to the creek that way and enjoy the creek.”
All that to say because Wall makes it obvious how much she loves interacting with people, making them feel at home with this lifestyle of hers, and hopefully inspiring them to find the same enjoyment she gets out of it.
As Wall introduces me to her three dairy cows, Roy, Jenny, and Tug, she points out a small section of her land that she and Barry want to build cabins on for people to stay in. Specifically, young families or interns who would want to work on the farm and learn the process, then go home and implement it.
“The thing that I can’t stand to hear somebody say is ‘I can’t,’” Wall says. “What I want to hear someone say is, ‘I don’t have the tools or the skills, but I want to try.’”
Wall says she wants to be able to bring people who have a desire to farm and then help them get the skills, teach them how to do it, and then match them up with a place where they can live a sustainable life. The way that Wall describes how farming and gardening have shaped her life, I can see why she would want to push others in that direction to discover it for themselves. The way she interacts with her animals and describes these passion projects she hopes to conquer next.