“Okay, it’s time to get started,” a Purdue Extension educator says and draws attention to a raw wool fleece on the table. In the next two hours, participants will sort the fleece, spin it into yarn and dye it using natural colorants, like red onion peel. Most of the participants have no experience with wool, but by the end of the workshop, they will have the skills to turn the raw material into a usable product.
This scene took place in November at the Rooted and Resilient Homesteading Conference, which hosted 45 educational sessions for attendees in northeast Indiana. This conference, along with the Southwest Indiana Homesteading Conference in March, equipped potential homesteaders with instruction and resources for success.
Meeting a rising need
Interest in homesteading has grown over the past five years. Google Trends records that in Indiana search terms related to homesteading, like “chickens,” “sourdough” and “land for sale,” have steadily increased in popularity since March 2020. Extension specialists and educators have also noticed these trends in their work.
Purdue Extension Area 3, which includes 11 counties in southwest Indiana also created a homesteading conference in response to the interest they’ve seen.
“At a fall educator meeting, we all noted that there was a need for resources about homesteading and backyard farming in our communities,” said Abby Heidenreich, Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) educator in Gibson County. “We decided that homesteading needed to be an area program because so many of us had it on our needs assessment.”
Less than a year later, the first Southwest Indiana Homesteading Conference took place in March 2024. The tri-state, two-day conference offered workshops on topics including food preservation, managing homestead finances, poultry health, collecting rainwater and composting. Over 75 people from Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky attended.
Tami Mosier, a 4-H Extension educator in Steuben County in northeast Indiana, attended the conference and brought insights back to the team planning the Rooted and Resilient Homesteading Conference.
Tami and I both have similar home styles, living as sustainably as we can off the land and raising our own animals and produce. We knew there'd been homesteading conferences that had taken place in southern Indiana, but Extension hadn’t hosted a conference north of Indianapolis.
- Elysia Rodgers, DeKalb County Extension director and ANR educator
The two-day Rooted and Resilient Conference brought together 21 Extension specialists and educators, 22 community partners and 76 additional attendees. Sessions included topics ranging from vertical gardening to chainsaw safety to upcycling denim. A “kidsteader” track taught children about homesteading through a variety of activities.
Building community connections and trust
Both the Southwest Indiana Homesteading Conference and the Rooted and Resilient Conference attracted a diverse crowd of people.
“We had a lot of women aged 25 to 40, and a lot of people who were retirement age,” Heidenreich said. “A lot of couples came together to learn. We also had some Amish and Mennonite families attend from Daviess County.”
Heidenreich was surprised at the diversity of attendees at the southwest Indiana conference. “It was neat to be able to appeal to an age group and demographic that we don't usually see outside of youth programming: the parents of the youth who we are doing programming with."
The Rooted and Resilient Conference had similar attendee ages, with most people being between 30 and 40 years old. Organizers put special emphasis on building relationships with those who might be wary of using Purdue Extension as a resource.
“We recognize that the homesteading audience can sometimes be a little bit leery of government intervention and government research,” Rodgers said. “Tami did a great job bringing that to the forefront the first day. She said, ‘Many of the instructors are wearing university badges and are doing this [homesteading] as their side gig. We are not only bringing you best practices from university research but also from our lived experiences.’”
The Rooted and Resilient Conference also connected with veterans in the community.
“I'm married to a combat veteran, and homesteading has saved his life,” said Mosier. “We did a veteran panel for one of the sessions. We didn't have a lot of people attend, but there was a woman who came up to me afterwards who shared that she lost her daughter to suicide. There wasn't a healthy outlet for her to cope. It's just close to my heart because I saw my husband saved because of this kind of stuff. I am so grateful that I can then share these tools with other people.”
Looking ahead to the future
The next Southwest Indiana Homesteading Conference will take place in March 2025, and the next Rooted and Resilient Conference will take place Fall 2025.
Heidenreich already has ideas on some improvements.
We found that people really wanted to listen to every session that they possibly could. They were like sponges. They couldn't get enough of the information, and so it was hard to have concurrent sessions when we knew that not everyone could be in all the rooms at the same time. We've talked about potentially repeating some of the more popular topics at different times throughout the day so that everyone can attend at some point. We learned a lot the first year, and we're excited to make the next one even better.
- Abby Heidenreich, Agriculture and Natural Resources educator in Gibson County
Rodgers is similarly optimistic for the future. “The conference was a very positive experience, and everyone gave very positive feedback,” Rodgers said. “We're excited to do it again. It's not a chore at this point. It’s something we all enjoy, and we want to continue sharing this knowledge and expertise.”
If you want to learn more about homesteading before the next conference, Extension offers workshops year-round on topics like food canning and preservation. Learn more about upcoming Extension workshops on the events calendar.
