21st-Century Homesteading

On this hot summer morning in suburban Collegeville, the Fraser children bounce out of bed and race downstairs. They're not running for the TV - they don't have one.

Instead, 10-year-old twins Eliza and Carolina and their brother, Perry, 6, head for the barn, where the hens are cooing and a baby rooster practices his wake-up call. They're already old hands at egg-hunting.

"I found one!" Perry shrieks.

In no time at all, he and his sisters collect five of these sublimely fresh eggs, soon to be scrambled into a delicious pile for breakfast.

Megan and Scott Fraser and their children live in an 18th-century house with a barn on two acres, about halfway between the King of Prussia and Plymouth Meeting malls, in a keep-to-yourself neighborhood of longtime, working-class folks and newer residents.

The Frasers aren't pioneers or homesteaders, as those terms are commonly understood: They haven't abandoned city for country, or turned their backs on technology.

The couple are fully wired, with iPhone, GPS, Kindle, and iPad, and the children trade chores for computer time. But in their own way, as generations before had, the Frasers have gone back to the land.

People all across the country and region are keeping bees and raising chickens, gardening and canning. Though statistics are hard to come by in this diffuse movement, there are indicators of the trend:

Up to 200,000 hobbyists keep bees in the United States, compared with 75,000 in the mid-1990s, according to Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine. (There are an estimated 5,400 in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.)

"It's the greatest positive change I've seen since I started in this job 23 years ago," Flottum says.

About 100 new members a day sign up for www.backyardchickens.com, which has 55,000 total. The numbers started taking off two years ago.

"It's really a trend across all demographics," says founder Rob Ludlow.

And 43 million American households planted vegetable gardens in 2009, a jump of 19 percent over 2008, which was 10 percent higher than 2007, the National Gardening Association says.

The Frasers do it all.

They grow organic vegetables and fruit. They raise bees, chickens, ducks, and pigs, for honey, eggs, and meat. They spin yarn from rabbit fur and put up enough tomato soup, applesauce, and berries to last the winter.

They aren't purists, to be sure.