The Strange Allure of Pioneer Living

Running late after several wrong turns, I made a final, desperate attempt to locate Shaye Elliott’s home by driving into what appeared to be an apple orchard. Down a dirt path, past a gaggle of squawking geese, in the shadow of the town’s 10-story cross, there it was: the two-acre property outside Wenatchee, Washington, on which Elliott cultivates nearly all the food she feeds herself, her husband, and their four children. The Elliotts’ squat three-bedroom house, which they renovated themselves, was nestled among a pigpen, a rabbit hutch, a chicken coop, two pastures, and three gardens, the sum total of which Elliott refers to as her “homestead”—a nod to the back-to-basics, pioneer-inflected movement that inspired her lifestyle.

Shortly after I arrived, Elliott started preparing breakfast. As she poached eggs taken from her coop and sizzled potatoes in fat rendered from ducks she’d slaughtered last fall, she recounted a recent trip to Los Angeles. She still seemed scarred by the experience. “I couldn’t bear it,” she told me. “Everything smelled like Lysol and Febreze, and I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, the sound of the traffic!’ ” That visit had admittedly been better