These days, bartering with your neighbors is the new coupon clipping and homemade salsa using simple backyard ingredients is the new gourmet cooking. But if you're a busy person who juggles a full-time job, taking care of the kids and pets, and just about everything else around the house, the concept of homesteading can seem nearly impossible, until now. The good news is that in modern homesteading, you don't have to go it alone. Just find a few people in your neighborhood with different skill sets, and you can save time and money while becoming more self-sufficient as a neighborhood.
1.) Size It Right
If you decide to start living a more self-sufficient lifestyle, know that it's easy to fail if you try to do it all at once. Planting a small vegetable garden—no more than 4 feet by 8 feet—in a raised bed is a great way for beginners to start. Don't try to grow all your own food in the first year! Start small, add compost each season, and pay attention to the quality of your soil. As you gain experience, expand.
My first year I over did myself. I planted 6 rows of grapes each row having 4 plants. I spent over $500 in about 30 different fruit tress. Planted 15 blueberry bushes. Made made a 12'X20' garden for veggies. I planet two 30' rows one of raspberries and one of blackberries. I toped that all off with building a chicken coop and raising chickens with zero experience. Its not to say I didn't research and plan out everything I did my first year, but the time and and investment was a big one.
2.) Form Alliances
Even if you grow a considerable amount of what you need in your own vegetable garden, finding time to preserve the extras to last into the winter months can be a challenge at times. So if canning tomatoes doesn't qualify for a spot on your packed Outlook calendar, try this—find someone in your community who prepares food and offer half of your bounty in exchange for half of the prepped product. Excess fruit? Find someone in your neighborhood who makes wine or jelly, and supply her with your fruit in exchange for some of the finished product.
Raise A Micro-
3.) Turn waste into compost
I have a few sources of waste I use to create rich compost. The first is tree leaves. I mulch the leaves with my lawn mover, sweep them up, and dump them into a compost bin I made out of used wooden pallets.
The second source is from the wood shavings I use as a bedding for my chicken coop. I also dump the shavings into a different compost bin. The shavings are pine so I mostly use this compost for acid plants.
The third and most important of my sources is all the house hold scraps. I save most of my scraps that are not meat product or acid product and throw it into my big worm farm. If you are not familiar with worm composting here is good article. https://www.planetnatural.com/worm-composting/
4.)Flock
The perks of raising backyard chickens reach far beyond delicious, fresh eggs. Raising three to eight laying hens means you're also employing compact living machines that turn food scraps into a nitrogen-rich soil amendment for your garden. In addition to being local protein producers, they also act as biomass recyclers, compost pile turners, entertainers, fuel-free garden tillers, and pest eliminators, as well as backyard flea and tick annihilators.
If you set your coop up correctly it can very easy to raise chickens. I set an automatic water by collecting the rain off the coop roof in a rain barrel. And build a feeder that hold about 2 to three weeks worth of food. The only think I really have to do daily is collect the delicious .
Source: https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/modern-homesteading
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This exact post was copied from another website word for word. Without a link or attribution.
https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/modern-homesteading
I totally agree with alliances!
Its important to work in community, good neighbors are a valuable asset!
He copied this post from Rodale's, word for word.
Yea life without good neighbors or good friends on a homestead would be ruff.
Such good advice.
I think when most of us started we had these grandiose plans of gardening, solar power, raising livestock (small and big)... life would be wonderful.
(cue the sad violin music) but boy did we, or maybe I should say I, learn fast that it's not all it's cracked up to be.
I agree, adding slowly, mastering one skill then moving to the next.
Cost is a major factor. Forming alliances can really help. Bartering for services. Yes, agreed 100%
Hey you, I already told you about this, but I just found the original article from Rodale's which was copied word for word.
https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/modern-homesteading
Yea I had some big ideas of everything I wanted done with in a year or 2. I did learn the hard way with planting the 30 trees though. You really have to protect them. I had deer scrape up a good 20 trees. Which I ended up either losing that winter or lost a good amount of its grow and the trees had to regrow again. That mistake was costly. It can take a tree 4 to 5 years to grow before it will fruit. I Probably cost my self not only $$$$ but a lost of about 2 or three years until all the damaged trees reach maturity. I did go and buy some new trees to replace the dead ones. I had planned out each variety so I would have fruit through out the summer. So I picked 5 different apple varieties that all had different harvesting dates through out the summer and fall. The same went for my peach and pear collections. I did a post with details for this here https://steemit.com/gardening/@shadowblade/fruit-tree-harvesting-chart
It's always better if we can learn from others mistakes. It only took me six decades to figure this out, lol.
I'm so glad you mentioned the pine shavings. I learned the hard way that too much of them can goof your garden up. I now use the composted pine as a dressing for my blueberry and azalea plants.
Hi, thought you might like to know about this. He copied this article word for word from Rodale's.
https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/modern-homesteading
Holy shit!!! Just when you think humanity might not be doomed, you find another asswagon. Thanks @bobbleheadstead for the heads up.
lol :)
Yea I had read that somewhere and it stuck with me. I have several large pine trees so If I dont use it all on my blueberries or the occasional fruit tree I will dump the rest around the pine trees. It is also good to check the ph of our soils around your plants so you can adjust with the 2 different mulch piles.
I totally agree, having a soil test done was one of the smartest things I ever did. It was so easy and my county extension office handled the whole thing for me. They even loaned me the tool to take the samples with and deciphered the results and made recommendations of what to add and how much.
Great advice for every homesteader. Thanks for the post.
This post was copied from Rodale's.
https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/modern-homesteading