What Is Homesteading?

 Homesteading is the lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It consists of agriculture, the preserving and canning of food, making and mending clothes and even building houses. A lot of homesteaders lived a nomadic life, only staying in one place for a few months at a time. Some people even moved 4-5 times a year in search of better soil, bigger land and even  better jobs. In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act that allowed the settlement and development of housing. When I think of homesteading I think of Western America, covered wagons and women wearing long beautiful dresses with many layers and sunbonnets. But what a lot of people don't know is that homesteading has been going on in many different parts of the world at many different time periods. One f my favorite series is called Little House.  It is about Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family and how they lived. Laura and her family went through many hard times, from swarms of locust eating precious crops to enduring long, hard winters living in a 1 room cabin. But in the end all was well. And Laura grew up, got married, started a family and became an amazing writer. She wrote the whole Little House Series and she even wrote books all the way up to her great- grandmother.