I’ve long had the dream of moving to a bunch of acreage and having a self-sufficient homestead. I love learning and have been collecting skills just waiting for the day we would finally make the move. Years and years have gone by and I finally have realized that, hey, I’m getting most of the stuff done on my half acre in an HOA that people with all the acreage are. So I wanted to share how we are checking lots of homestead boxes without a barn, a greenhouse, or even an acre of land.
- Start a garden. When I decided to really kick our food production we didn’t have anywhere to even put a garden. Our soil here is tragic and would take years to amend to be workable so I built 1 4×4 raised bed box. I filled the box with bags of soil from Home Depot and started growing. Over the next few years, I added more boxes to increase what we can grow while still maintaining my sanity. Don’t jump in with too much to start, you’ll just overwhelm and burn yourself out! You can add to your garden every year until you have enough space to produce what you need.
- Learn to cook. I started out with the goal of making our bread from scratch. I didn’t need any acreage to get really great in the kitchen so I started making what I could and got better and better at what I couldn’t. I now have no problems whipping up a loaf of artisan sourdough but in the beginning, my family sure choked down some tough stuff. 🤣 The same goes for learning to cook the cuts of meat we had available from our cow (more on that later). Anyone can whip up a great steak but what do you do with the odds and ends cuts? Getting proficient in the kitchen is the most important skill in my opinion because it doesn’t matter how much you can grow or harvest if no one in your family wants to eat it.
- Learn to preserve food. There is no sense in having a huge garden and tons of stuff rolling into your kitchen if you have no idea what to do with it or how to keep it from going bad. I would buy (and still do buy the things I can’t produce) and put them up for the winter. I love to can but I also learned to ferment, how to properly freeze, dehydrate, and now I am starting to learn about freeze-drying. I was able to test out what my family will eat and how they eat it best. This is how I decided what type of apples to actually plant and start planning how much of a crop we need to get through the winter. (I found bulk produce from a local source on Facebook and I have also gone to “you pick” farms in our area). I also started getting raw milk and learning to make cheese, butter, and other dairy products at a small scale waiting for the day I get that family milk cow.
- Find a source for meat. Of course, I mean a source that isn’t the grocery store. Each year we get a cow and a pig put into our freezer and that is what we eat off for the whole year. We don’t have the space on our half acre for these animals so we found someone, a real person, to raise them up for us and then we pay that person for the animal and we pay a butcher to process them. If you can’t find someone and get on their list watch for the 4H livestock auctions and animals for sale after the county fair. This is someone else raising your livestock on their land but you have the benefit of purchasing the whole animal vs. just cuts at the store.
- Learn everything you can and practice it. One of my favorite homestead YouTubers always says “Turn your waiting room into a classroom” and that has really stuck with me. I constantly am watching and reading more information on how to make the most of what I am able to do here on my little piece of land. I have learned so much and found that I can do anything I really have put my mind to. I do often bite off more than I can handle (definitely just my personality) but I am getting to learn how to create processes and flows on a smaller scale so that when I am on a large farm one day I don’t succumb to the overwhelm.
So if you are waiting until you move to a farm to get started on homesteading DON’T. Find the things that you can do right now where you are to learn and grow. If you move to a farm purchase a bunch of livestock and plant a huge productive garden when you’ve never done any of this stuff you will just find yourself overwhelmed. Take a few of the steps listed above and start your homestead exactly where you are right now.
