Josh
Birnbaum

This Land

In 2015, I moved to rural America on what I thought was a whim. I bought an 1870 salt-box farmhouse (in desperate need of repair), 19 acres of land, and some chickens. For the first month, while I worked out some issues with the home, I slept in a tiny one-person backpacking tent on the back of the property. I vividly remember being awoken in the middle of one night by a pack of coyotes — probably 20 of them — encircling my tent and yelping and howling. Were they welcoming me? Excited that they had a new neighbor?

Spending that first month in a tent enabled me to build a relationship with nature before I built one with the house. Since then, I have spent most of my free time enjoying a slower pace of life, observing the world around me, getting to know the neighbors, learning about the history of the area, reforesting the property with over 500 trees, taking care of my chicken and goat friends, and of course fixing up that damn house. And in 2021, I welcomed my fiancé and two step-kids to join me out here.

Living in rural southeastern Ohio has forced me to be more attuned to the life cycles of everything, and I hope to stay here to see how this land and my understanding of it continue to evolve.

It turns out that I did not come out here on a whim; I later realized it was a distinct choice. In a time of immense ecological change as well as social, political and geographic polarization in the United States, I hope to live a life that resists disconnective forces and forms unique human bonds while remaining grounded in the reality of human sustenance from — and connection to — the Earth.