RuthAnn Zimmerman didn’t realize her sequestered way of life was trending online until after searching the hashtag “homesteading” on Instagram. Soon afterward, hashtag homesteading found her.
Born a Mennonite Pennsylvanian—riding horse and buggies, the whole deal—she and her husband, Elvin, inherited a formidable survivalist skillset atypical of most Americans today, worthy of any apocalypse-bound, patriot prepper.
In 2000, six months after getting married, they bought their 20 acres in northeast Iowa, as an upstanding couple were expected to do. “It was just a cultural thing to do after you get married, to buy your property and start raising a family,” she told The Epoch Times. “At that time, we were just doing what was culturally expected from us.”…