I’ve had this conversation a lot with people who want to get started in homesteading but feel stuck. They have starry eyes but don’t have the ability to buy expanses of land and quit their job. Or don’t have the know-how to even be successful at something like that. But something in them yearns for a simpler, slower paced life full of baskets of ripe blackberries on the counter, stew simmering on a woodstove and bucolic green hills dotted with grazing sheep.
We get it, boy do we ever get it. I met Luke when he was only 19 years old and his eyes would light up when he would talk about the future, which of course involved us owning our own ranch and lots and lots and lots of cows. It’s been a slow process for us to get where we are now, involving buying and improving 2 houses in a hot housing market and very slowly building our farm and skills with the small amounts of money we could spare. It also included a lifetime of knowledge from Luke and me learning alongside him, often just following him around with a baby in my arms while he worked.
But for those of you who want to work towards the goal of being more self sufficient, of getting the satisfaction of producing tangible things yourself, of eating a meal you grew and cooked, I want to help you get started. And once you get started you’ll find ways grow and expand. Or stay small if that is what you want. There’s no one size fits all with homesteading.
The very first thing you should do is obviously….buy a milk cow. (Ha! Kidding! Don’t do that!) No, the first thing you need to do is deceptively simple, Start Cooking From Scratch! And when I say learn to cook from scratch I mean like for real you guys, like how great-grandma did it. Some good places to start are cooking meat, making broth from bones, making lard instead of using unhealthy oils (I have pork fat for lard and beef fat for tallow I can add to your meat boxes, just let me know you want some), cooking eggs various ways, making yogurt, butter and soft cheeses, etc. The reason this is where you need to start is because of course if you are producing food you need to know how to cook it! If you start producing the food (and all the work that goes along with that) and are trying to learn to cook alongside that it’s going to become very overwhelming.
The next step is to Learn to Can and Start Buying In Bulk. Once you have the cooking down you can start to buy larger amount of food at a time from farmers. Buy several boxes of tomatoes at the farmer’s market and can them. Get staples like flour or honey or mineral salt in larger amounts to save money (and put towards your homesteading endeavors!). Go pick apples at an orchard and can applesauce and make pies. Buy a quarter beef and practice cooking all the different cuts. This is your test run of how to handle all of that bounty when it arrives.
The next step is to Adopt the Right Mindset. This, like all of the previous suggestions, is an ongoing process. Something to consider is homesteading takes a lot of self-sacrifice. Living within your means and eliminating debt are important to success. It can also look like worn boots and a dated bathroom. Resisting looking at “farmhouses” on Instagram can help you be content with humble (and financially stable) beginnings. Learning how to make do and make something out of nothing are essential skills for this kind of life. It also helps to work on a mindset of abundance rather than scarcity because there can be a lot of risk in trying to make a homestead support your family. One way I like to remind myself of this is to saunter around outside for a while because nature is overflowing with abundance. It’s impossible to count the stars or the blades of grass or the drops of water in the creek or the leaves on the trees or the snowflakes falling from the sky.
Ok, you can REALLY do it now. Get Started With Some Small Projects. SMALLER than perhaps you think you can and not creating financial strain over it is important. Keep in mind that it usually costs more money to produce something well yourself than to grab it at the grocery store, especially when you are just getting started with supplies and materials. Some good starting projects could be:
A pot of herbs on your windowsill or front step
A bush tomato plant in a pot
Make sourdough bread
Make candles or soap
A 4 ft x 4ft raised vegetable garden
Laying hens
Fruit trees
Berry bushes
Beehives
Tap trees for maple syrup
Meat chickens raised on your grass and butchered yourself or taken to a butcher
Learn to sew, knit, crochet
Learn home maintenance and repair
Install a woodstove and chop your own wood
In farm news we have our first farm babies of the year, twin girl lambs! Our wonderful neighbor Jessie made lambie jammies for them (and all the rest that are on the way) to help keep them warm. I know, way too cute! And here we are staying warm this winter with basketball and snuggling John and baby goats by the wood stove.
