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'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

bbc.com

31–40 of 274 posts

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#31
Having escaped the necessity of living in certain ways, we find outselves voluntarily adopting older forms of human behavior.

That's what exercising is. It's what gardening is. It's what having pets is. These are behaviors that mimic the surface characteristics of old ways of life (hunting, farming, animal husbandry).

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#32

Dealing with septic tanks - rotting uneven floors , shitty no pun intended plumbing and electrics - broadband from the copper era. No thanks - much prefer my modern sterile IKEA isocube.

Same, if I were to move I'd go for something modern. That said, it's an idealized lifestyle, everyone's guilty of some of that - "I'd love to live in a van" but where do you shit? "I'd love to become a digital nomad and live in a cheap 5-star resort" but where do you keep your stuff? What about family and friends? "I'd love to retire to a cabin in the woods" but what about all the amenities you're used to, like elect…

I live in a van 2 month/year, sometime with a friend, sometime alone. Pretty usefull to really visit/hike across France, Spain, Italy (Balkans are next i guess).

Public toilet, camping toilet, or behind a tree, to answer your question.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#33
post #7

What does the -core suffix mean in this context? I get that it is a mix of words, like hardcore, nerdcore, etc.. but why? I figured that was reserved for fringe extreme genres. Does anybody have any info on this?

I assumed it was moving away from the core of a city to making the cottage the 'new' core.

Also like other comment about hardcore maybe being part of the etymology

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#34

Dealing with septic tanks - rotting uneven floors , shitty no pun intended plumbing and electrics - broadband from the copper era. No thanks - much prefer my modern sterile IKEA isocube.

Having just bought a cottage, here are some things that have changed recently.

1. P2P wireless means you can cheaply get a 50/10 internet connection in remote areas. This is plenty for most users. Also starlink is apparently pretty good.

2. Just pay someone to pump your septic. You don’t have to pay city taxes covering sewers so you probably come out ahead.

3. Plumbing and electrical is usually exposed, making it very easy to work on. For plumbing, shark bites and pex are way easier than soldering copper.

One thing that does suck about owning a cottage is needing to worry about mice…

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#35

Living a more sustainable life is the key to human survival. If you can grown your own food and produce local cleaner energy, humanity MAY survive. The existing American-model life guarantees human civilisation will not live past 2040.

Why? Wouldn’t centralized larger farms be more efficient?

You can't actually compare them very well because commercial food production uses fossil fuel derived fertilizer to feed its yields. Small subsidence farms often don't use any fossil fuel derived fertilizer, and is thus infinity sustainable, but also low yield. Big commercial farms rely almost entirely on fossil fuel derived fertilizer, which is unsustainable unless we pull ass tons of clean renewable energy out of our butts to replace it, but have extreme yields.

We can make artificial fertilizer without fossil fuels, but the energy cost is atleast 10x what our current usage is for fertilizer and is already over 1% of global power. And we are still a ways off of producing an extra 10% of global energy output via completely clean power.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#36

I grew up in a farming area, and my family had a 30'x30' garden. Farming is a lot of work. It's a job, not a hobby. Even the garden was a fair amount of work, but more importantly, it's a lot of veggies to eat after harvest. I had tomato sandwiches daily for months. Plus insects to control. Doable, but not glamorous like the "cottagecore" photos. If I did a serious garden again, I'd focus on becoming a skilled grower…

Eh, you can do it the hard way, or the fantastically lazy way. We just grow tangles - basic trellis of offcut branches, and then seed with a variety of complementary species, a few sacrificial pest magnets, and a few pest repellers. Irrigation is all automated drip, no feed - river (lovely and clean - there’s very little upstream of us, no industry) floods our garden each winter, does the job nicely. What grows, grow…

We just had a Porcupine break into the protective cages to dig up and eat our entire Potato crop last night.

It can be challenging.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#37
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, you can do it the hard way, or the fantastically lazy way. We just grow tangles - basic trellis of offcut branches, and then seed with a variety of complementary species, a few sacrificial pest magnets, and a few pest repellers. Irrigation is all automated drip, no feed - river (lovely and clean - there’s very little upstream of us, no industry) floods our garden each winter, does the job nicely. What grows, grow…

I like your description of "pest magnets", I have been referring to them as plant tanks. My overgrown raspberries tank the japanese beetles for the blueberries. Plus the yield of the raspberries isn't significantly dented by the japanese beetles. My favorite piece of equipment is my wood chipper: I can turn all of the delivery boxes into mulch. And yard waste. And... basically any other biomass that will turn to dirt…

Agreed on the wood chipper - we’ve fed vast volumes of organic waste through ours as we’ve 8ha of badly overdense and bramble/suspended dead wood choked woodland to manage, and the mulch is dead handy for paths and garden beds - our soil is very low in carbon, so everything helps.

Re: weaving, vines are impossible, rett them first - soak ‘em, maybe in lye, and then pound them with a rock to get fibres. Baskets, willow works great - we’ve goat willow all over, here, and use it for smaller stuff. Bigger stuff we use olive, as green it’s supple and dry it’s like a rock, and very rot resistant - we’ve made half baskets on a steep hill slope to catch runoff and encourage tree growth - the oldest ones (two years) are hosting self-seeded oak saplings now, which is kinda cool.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#39

Marie Antoinette and her friends would dress up as young shepherdess or milkmaids and wander around the hamlet pretending to be peasants, while still surrounded by the comforts of a royal lifestyle. A team of real farmers appointed by the Queen looked after the farm and the animals, and produced fruits and vegetables consumed at the royal table. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/11/hameau-de-la-reine-mar...

I think this is not a lot different than Bezos types visiting Burning Man on a VIP package.

As if Burning Man itself isn't a LARP.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#40
post #7

What does the -core suffix mean in this context? I get that it is a mix of words, like hardcore, nerdcore, etc.. but why? I figured that was reserved for fringe extreme genres. Does anybody have any info on this?

I've always taken it as meaning/being related to the primary literal meaning of core:

"a central and often foundational part usually distinct from the enveloping part by a difference in nature" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/core

I.e. a core person is one whose central foundational part is based on . Material related to core is from/for/focused on that type of identity.

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