What are the things that make a homestead? Read on to see if you are a homesteader or if you just have an expensive hobby.
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What makes you a homesteader?
What does homesteading make you think of? Is it producing food to feed you and your family? How about raising livestock? Is it making do, fixing, and recycling around the home and garden? Maybe it’s acreage!
You might see a homestead, smallholding, and a hobby farm as the same thing. Typically, these only produce food for themselves and do not make a profit. You might also call it subsistence farming. A typical homestead is designed to create self-sufficiency and self-reliance for a family.
What does a homestead have?
Let’s talk about some common pieces that are often part of a homestead.
Garden
Every homestead whether it is in the middle of the city or in 20 rolling acres has a garden that produces food for the family in some capacity. It might be a little herb garden, a tower garden of veggies, or a mass of raised or in ground beds that are being used for fruit, vegetable, herbs, and grain production.
Composting
Things are not wasted on a homestead. All which was once living becomes soil to fuel the garden. Worm composters are popular in apartments and pallet sized composters are great for bigger gardens. Either way, kitchen scraps, fruit peels, coffee grinds, tea bags, junk mail, newspaper and anything else you find on the homestead ends up in the compost pile.
See this related post to learn more about composting.
Livestock
Even in the city, I’ve seen livestock. Small beehives, quail, chickens, rabbits, even doves or pigeons! The homesteaders I met and saw worked within the boundaries of the city to have something on the property that produced a source of food from an animal or insect like the bees. Some homesteads don’t have livestock though, especially if the homesteaders are vegan.
Saving & Reusing
I know I mentioned already that things are not wasted on a homestead. Homesteaders are repurposing items and saving things all the time. It might be using the manure from your livestock to compost, getting something secondhand in a yard sale or at the thrift store and turning it into something new or fixing it up to be able to use it. A lawnmower or woodworking tools perhaps or a garden cart.
Other examples are making raised garden beds from recycled materials, scraps of old jeans for patches, repurposing clothing material into a quilt is another example. Other times homesteaders save things like mason jars for canning, and of course saving seeds to grow the following year. If you’re not following the old saying use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without you’re probably a hobbyist.
Pets vs Livestock
Every homesteader we’ve met knows the difference between a pet and a livestock animal. It’s easy to get attached to a cute baby goat, fuzzy bunny or fluffy chicks but they have a greater purpose on the homestead. Maybe it’s milk, eggs, or meat. Either way it’s food. And if you are raising livestock for food, then you have a responsibility to give that animal the best life you can for it will make the ultimate sacrifice. Whether you are culling and butchering yourself or the abattoir does it for you, the animals you raise as livestock are making the ultimate sacrifice with their life so that you and your family can continue yours and have a source of food.
Dealing with homestead overwhelm.
Just a hobby?
You might just have an expensive hobby if….
- You are buying new all the time.
- Throwing things in the trash rather than turning them into something new or compost is the norm.
- You named your livestock.
- Buying transplants rather than growing from seed is how you garden.
- You’re buying seeds every year.
- You want the farm life without the hard work.
- You’re more concerned about the appearance of the homestead rather than the productivity.
- You buy soil or compost from the big box store rather than making your own.
Having an expensive hobby isn’t a bad thing if you’re honest with yourself but know that it is different from homesteading. Homesteading has a lot of ups but also has downs.
One from our homestead is that I realized that I couldn’t cull the chicken I named. My husband could, but I couldn’t. Eating the chicken I named was equally difficult and one of the reasons I gave up meat. I feel that if I cannot see the cycle of life through with the livestock I raised, then I have no business eating it. I know not all of you agree with that statement but that is my personal feelings on the matter.
How to start homesteading where you live.
Cost of homesteading
Also, if I’m not eating the livestock that is some expensive pets to care for and that’s money that could go towards something else like a bill or funding a vacation or buying the bigger canner that I need for example. There’s ongoing costs involved with homesteading like feed and bedding if you don’t have it readily available and sometimes that can run into a few thousand dollars a year if you are not careful.
That’s why farmers do a lot of math, they need to know their return on investment for the food they raise. Have you ever been in a farm or feed store and heard someone complaining about the cost of alfalfa or hay? It soon adds up and that’s part of the reason why homesteaders do it outside the box and get creative with what they already have.
What moves will you make towards being a homesteader? Let me know in the Facebook group what makes you a homesteader.
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