Maine’s homestead influencers put modern twist on old idea

Before she milks her goats in the morning, Julia Colcord sets up a video camera she purchased with money she made on Facebook. She’s filming a day in her life for YouTube and TikTok. Later, she’ll post photos and answer questions from her several thousand followers.

Full Moon Creamery ’s social media channels pay the property taxes at the multigenerational Belfast property she shares with her fiance and two young daughters, Lavender and Lilac, helping her be a stay-at-home mother.

About 150 miles away, Jason Remillard films himself building a greenhouse while his wife Jennifer replies to YouTube comments on their off-grid homestead outside of Houlton. He watched thousands of videos from homesteading influencers over the decade the couple spent planning their move from a Midwest city.

Now, he and his wife have become social media personalities themselves, and at least five of their subscribers moved to the area to homestead because of the couple’s Hanbleceya Ranch videos.

Further north in Aroostook County, Julie Tweedie films her life as a grandmother, homemaker and gardener for more than 23,000 subscribers. A lifelong homesteader and Catholic, she started her channel Keeper of My Home in 2017 to teach women skills for self-reliance and share the message that God has provided ways for people to feed themselves.

They are four of many Maine homesteaders from different ages and backgrounds who record and share their lives for growing online audiences. These influencers follow a natural progression from the 20th century books and magazines that attracted and connected Maine’s early back-to-the-landers.

“Homesteaders have always, in this area, been really great communicators,” said Kourtney Collum, an anthropologist and a professor at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. “There is this culture of sharing knowledge with each other.”

Several years ago, she co-taught a class on the theory and practice of Maine homesteading.

Older homesteaders who spoke with students for that class were influenced to come to Maine in the 1960s and 1970s by Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of “Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World.”

The Nearings moved to Harborside to homestead in the 1950s and became leading figures of the back-to-the-land movement. Homesteaders here were also drawn by publications like Mother Earth News, which showed them simple self-sufficient lives in Maine and taught them how to try it themselves.

Collum sees the growth of social media on the homestead as the next logical step from books and magazines.

To Jason Remillard, the internet has created a new cultural environment for homesteaders. When he and Jennifer were growing up, they watched famous people speak on a handful of television channels. Today, anyone can be on the screen, and the audience can now interact with them.

Tweedie, who has spent her life in Northern Maine and lives in a village of 40 mostly populated by her relatives, keeps a notebook recording the lives and prayer requests of online friends across the globe. She calls her viewers her “family of keepers” and has met some of them in person.

Homesteaders have long sought out connections like that, especially in Maine, Collum said. They choose similar lifestyles for a wide range of reasons both political and personal, a breadth reflected in the types of influencer channels springing up around homesteading.

“For some people, it’s virtue signaling. For some people, it’s a desire to share what they’re doing and help people,” she said. “For some people, there is a need for that additional revenue stream.”

At Full Moon Farm, social media revenue is one source of income alongside goat sales and agritourism events. Colcord also sells raw milk for animal feed and is working toward a dairy license for human consumption.

When she moved into a house once owned by her grandfather across the road from the property she grew up on, Colcord knew social media was an option to support homesteading there. Less than three years ago, she had watched homestead influencer videos while she struggled with addiction, unsure if her goat dairy dreams would be possible.

Today she’s completely sober, and farm responsibilities help her stay that way. Over the last two years, she’s accumulated a modest following of 4,600 on Facebook, 3,300 on TikTok and 1,100 on YouTube.

She focuses on teaching her viewers about the realities of dairy farming, which is hard work and a full-time job. Sometimes subscribers ask her for education hard to find elsewhere.

Alongside day-in-the-life videos, her channel documents goat pregnancy tests, complicated births and easy ones, making hay, safe milk handling, goat nutrition, hoof trimming and tattooing goat kids.

“It’s not focused on me,” Colcord said. “It’s focused on the goats.”

Some national media outlets have criticized homestead influencers for marketing their rural lifestyles. Writers have called influencers overly curated, romanticizing the tough realities of homestead life or promoting strict gender roles .

Both Remillards said they have seen too many channels lose the ethos of homesteading. As some influencers reach bigger audiences and make more money, content becomes geared toward getting likes and shows expensive projects unrealistic for thrifty everyday homesteaders.

“The idea of bringing our YouTube pizzazz to a small town is not something we want,” Jason Remillard said. “We don’t want people to see us and say ‘Oh, there’s those YouTubers.’ We came here for a reason. Social media is a thing that we do, separate from who we are.”

They started filming updates for friends and family back home who were skeptical of their off-grid dreams.

“They thought we were insane,” Jennifer Remillard said.

Then others started watching.

The couple sees their channel as a document for their grandchildren of the life they built here. Recent videos chronicle building a greenhouse, constructing a shed for a water tank, making raised garden beds, creating a chicken run, dehydrating food on a wood stove and other projects that have turned their 55 acres into a homestead over the past few years.

Tweedie also calls her channel a legacy for future generations of her family. She grew up among self-made people whose practical skills helped them find a way in the world, knowledge she feels has been lost. Children today won’t learn them in school, and they may not learn them from family like she did, she said.

Before the pandemic, she taught classes at home about making bread, creating rag rugs, canning, becoming self-reliant and making a home. She is in the process of developing workshops again in addition to her channel.

“God puts you where he wants you to be and He equips you for the job,” Tweedie said. “He is guiding me through this and bringing these people to me because maybe, somewhere along the line, they’ll learn something from me that they didn’t know.”

Growing an audience is slow going and can be frustrating. Sometimes online commenters are harsh. But all four said their experiences are largely positive.

Colcord has followers from as far away as India, but most of her audience is in Waldo County — the community she wants to reach.

“It is a bit taxing on our end, but the videos and content we put out, we know from the engagement that people are interested,” Jason Remillard said. “If it helps them either vicariously experience it or helps them in their own journeys, it’s worth it.”