Homesteading?

[brandi]

Does anyone here homstead? I have really become interested in it lately. I haven't told DH about it though, as he will think i'm crazy. I was just interested in what y'all thought?

[RiverRock]

You have me curious about what "homesteading" means. Is it being self-sufficient on a farm?

[Psyche]

You have me curious about what "homesteading" means. Is it being self-sufficient on a farm?


Yes, though there are degrees of it.

I want to do this SO bad. I want a milk cow, some sheep, chickens, and maybe a goat or two. I guess they're good for milk and meat. Oh and a pig. I've done some reading. Its my goal for us to get a large parcel of land that is partially wooded so that we can use wood for our heat.

I'd love to have a straw bale house on it too with wind energy if we moved to the west side of the state. Or a dug out house.

[Lady TS]

We sorta homestead, if you want to call it that. We're not too 'deep' into it, though in dh's/our dreams we want to be. They money's just not there to do the extra with.

We live in the farmhouse that has been in dh's family since it was built in 1866(oh, how cool, you say---but it needs a TON of work!). We have chickens(that aren't paying for themselves in eggs and I think we may have a bunch of them butchered before too long) and we have a very large organic garden. Oh and 2 cats of our own and one stray that insists that he owns us. ;)

We are starting blackberries, raspberries and nanking cherries this year, as well as a mini orchard(if our plants/trees would just get here already!)
There are already plum trees and a pear tree and some wild cherry trees and mulberry trees and elderberries on the property. Oh and apple trees that we severely pruned this year(I hope they make it and make good apples in a few years!)

We have planted way too big of a garden in the past in hopes of selling organic produce, but we just cannot keep up with the weeds. So this year we are going smaller and thinking subsistence instead of market gardening.


We would like to get a goat or maybe some sheep. Goats for milk and possibly meat. Sheep for meat and raising to sell for meat. Not sure about milk there. Also, we could pasture sheep and contain them easier than we could a goat....but we are having to be very selective of what we can do. We need a good fence(don't have one) and to do that and get animals takes money...and then we have to feed them....again, money. I don't think we will be getting a goat or sheep this year unless there is some miracle that happens.

Maybe someday...

[Psyche]

I think alot of people do it like you do, Tanya, gradually.

One lady I know from another message board, gradually has added to what they do. I try to remember to read her blog when I remember it!

[brandi]

I don't know if we could go totally self sufficient, but I would so LOVE to grow all of our own vegetables and utilize alternative sources of energy. I'd like to have a few chickens for eggs and a cow for milk. DH hunts, so that is where a lot of our meat comes from anyway.

I really have become concerned about where my food is from and what's in it. And also the cost of food is starting to concern me.

I know I don't ant anything too big, but just large enough for my family.

[2sunshines]

oh my goodness, this is SO my dream. :yes You've put a fire under me again to think about it. :think

[Punkie]

I'd love to do it too. I recently finished reading _Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_, and it reminded me of how much I'd love to live completely off of the grid. Its not practical for us right now, but I think it'd be awesome one day.

For now we have started a humble little garden in the backyard. :heart

[FaithfilledGranolaChick]

that is our goal one day as well :) we are taking baby steps as we are able and can afford it. we have the right location and right amount of land.... we have our first garden this year. trying to talk to dh about sources of power.

Oh, I CANNOT wait till the day!!!!

[tempus vernum]

I love the idea and it used to be our goal but honestly it probably is just a pipe dream for many factors in our life. I like to think about it though. We go to farms regularly (get ourmeat local) and we used to be members of a community run farm/garden :)

But I am renting a large garden plot this year in hopes of growing most of our groceries and also doing quite a bit of canning/drying/freezing. That's as close as I am going to get for awhile as we live in the city on a small city lot :giggle

I used to lurk at a homesteading message board very regularly.

I do think all the time of moving towards living off the grid -- getting our own solar power, using our rainwater, etc ;) I am picking up our first rain barrels today :rockon

Maybe a spinoff is required but I am wondering how people find decent land that is not outrageously expensive :think

[mama-hobbit]

We're in the very beginning stages of building up our "urban homestead" - we put in a pretty good sized garden this spring, a cherry tree, and we're planing to do mostly eatable planting as we add to the yard. We'd love to have goats & chickens, but we're still trying to figure out how to get around lame city ordinances. :shifty

[doubleblessings]

We bought 60 acres, all wooded, mostly hardwoods about 10 acres of pine trees. We are building a cabin. We are doing most of the building ourselves. DH is going to hire someone to do the roof and maybe the rafters. It will be wood heated (although we have to have an electric heater in it to pass inspection). We are on the grid. We are using recycled cotton insulation.

We will be clearing some of the pine trees and will put in a large vegetable garden and fruit and nut trees. At some point we would like to put in a pick your own blueberry farm. We don't currently have plans for animals, but maybe in the future.

Our land was not real cheep, but it was doable for us because it is about 60 miles from the metro area we currently live in. Land here is over $10,000/acre and usually at least $25,000/acre. We paid $3000/acre. DH works either from home or he travels for a week at a time so the commute is not really an issue for him. DH says there are places in the US that you can find land for under $500/acre. He likes to look at landandfarm . com

[Lady TS]

Oh--I almost forgot our latest investment--our outdoor wood furnace. We heated our home with ONLY wood this winter. And it heats our hot water too. I don't know how much we paid for wood/getting wood out of our own woods, but it was well below the near-$600 in propane we have been paying in the previous years!

The only 'bad' thing about the furnace is that it still needs electricity to run the thermostat and run the fan in the furnace in the house.

We're going to have to purchase a hot water heater soon, though. It's not cost-effective to use the furnace just for hot water. :shifty
And FTR, the on-demand water heater is a bad choice for us. It did not get as hot as I would like, and once the water reached the shower/washer across the house, it was lukewarmish. We had to run the water a long time before it would get warm, and that was just too much of our FILTERED water going down the drain. Bummer. It might work better if you had one for each sink/each area of the house, but that was too expensive for us. Standard hot water heater for our summer use, please.

So...I guess that was totally OT. Sorry! :O

[RiverRock]

I like the phrase "urban homesteading" and think this might be where we fall. We have chickens for eggs, and enough to share with family and neighours. We also trade chickens for local berries from an organic farm. We have our own raspberries, a couple of blueberriy bushes, a rhubarb plant, red currants and 2 plum trees. I would like to add more fruit trees, but we can get as many transparant apples as we need from a couple of friends so we are set for pies and sauce. I love to can and used to do more of that...last summer I only canned peaches and a bit of jam. We can walk 5 min. to a patch of wild blackberries. I used to have a 10ft.x 20ft. garden that was more than enough for our family...but my wrists couldn't take all the weeding and baby carrying so the babies stayed and the garden went. I have since grown tomatoes in containters and bought 3 half-barrels to try a few veggies in containers this summer. We have a wood burning stove to heat our home and use it half the time through the winter. We contemplated getting a milking cow, but this would be ideal if we could share the chores and milk with 2 other families...a cow would produce too much for us.

[icesmom3]

This is what dh and I are stiving for. This year has brought many changes in our lives.....this spring we bought 4 piglets....one for our freezer, one to sell fully grown for someone elses freezer and 2 to breed over the winter. We have had for 2 years our own chickens and just this year are letting them free range....and wow the difference in the eggs is amazing!
Just this month we bought 25 broilers to grow and butcher and 6 turkeys.
Add to that we had one garden last year and this year we have two......our son started his own strawberry bed and has 50 plants in that.....we do have rhubarb......
we own 2 acres and we are finally at peace with where we are headed with our land...it has been a long time coming....
we have plans to add fruit trees and bushes but that will have to wait a year or two.....we have a lot going on and are trying to keep up with it all!! :giggle

[WanderingJuniper]

I want to do this so much and Bart knows so does my parents so we are looking for our property and hopefully in 5 years we'll be on our own homestead. We thought we had one but the work to get an occupancy was more than our budget. I'm currently trying to convince him that our township is fine with us having hens even though we are in a townhome. They'd make less noise than all our neighbors dogs and we'd get yummy healthy eggs.

Ultimately, I want a huge veg. garden, an orchard, a berry briar, a vinyard, to have beese, a milking goat or 3, and chickens or maybe ducks if we could. I'd also like to have a residential windmill, roof solar panels and a wood furnace. Best part is my kids are so on board we've just got to be patient and wait on God for the timing. :yes

[Forsynthianicki]

This has always been a dream of ours as well. We have lived on a few acres at different times and had cows and goats. We found we had a hard time eating the cows that we raised, we're not really vegetarians but could easily make that switch. I guess it hit closer to home where food comes from after we fed and took care of them. I have in the past had a big garden that gave us veggies through the fall and into winter. Last year I only planted a few tomatoes and peppers and didn't even put in a garden as we will be moving mid summer. We will be living in urban centers for the next several years instead of the rural setting we are in now so I am looking more into urban homesteading. I have heard that in some places you can get away with chickens if you keep the numbers very small, keep them clean, and they are somewhat quiet. A few chickens for pets can't be any worse than a barking dog, IMO. I googled this topic several months ago and found some interesting articles on keeping chickens in urban settings. One person, I remember, even remarked that they didn't take any more time to care for than a cat.

[Iarwain]

I have been backing out of some of the homesteading type things I had been doing because it's just too much for me in this season of life. I'm getting ready to get rid of the goat and possibly the sheep. I won't miss the goat much but I will miss my fluffy sheepies. I'm giving them until the end of June to produce lambs or else I'll have to sell them. Blondie (my avi) looks like she might possibly be pregnant, but it's hard to say for sure as she tends toward the tubby side anyway. My garden isn't in yet either, though I do plan to do that and to replant the strawberry patch. The chickens are the one thing that are the easiest to keep up with. Five minutes a day to run out and collect the eggs and then a few more minutes to refill their feeder and waterer every 2-3 days. Soooo easy. And yes, I agree they're no more work than a cat.

[Lavender Lily]

We have been very much into this. We have a garden and dh is building a chicken coop and we are hoping to get a goat sometime soon. Like you all said we are concerned on where our food is coming from now. Its funny people get all worked up about how our cows are being fed to produce milk but then no one seems to mention on how corn starch is in practically everything we eat.
So yes we are going this route too. :cool