How To Start Homesteading

Homesteading doesn’t mean you need acres and acres of space.  There are lots you can do on a small scale without all the worry and hassle of managing acres of land! Read on to see how to start homesteading no matter where you live, with the budget you have.

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Living The Homesteading Dream

What does it mean to you to be a homesteader?  Do you imagine acres of lush rolling hills, cattle gently mooing, and the hum of bees?  Many people who identify as homesteaders do so on postage-stamp-sized urban lots and are able to live a homesteader’s life. 

What’s stopping you from starting your homesteading journey today? I’d love to know what’s holding you back in the comments or over on Facebook. and help you get started homesteading even if you live in a city.

 

How To Start Homesteading

Many homesteaders would agree that starting to live more simply without all the bells and whistles is a great way to begin homesteading.  Living more simply means homemade gifts, made from scratch meals, repairing items that break from clothes to furniture, upcycling or re-purposing thrifted finds or antiques to give them a new lease of life.

Many of these activities help you build new skills, surprise your friends and family with homemade gifts and save money meaning you can get out of debt and save to buy a little bit of the countryside. 

Here are some ideas to help get you started on how to homestead:

Start A Windowsill Garden

Photo by Al Kawasa on Unsplash

A small windowsill garden growing kitchen herbs to use in your cooking is a great way to start homesteading.  You can even grow herbs in recycled cans or tins, just be sure to dull any sharp edges so you don’t get hurt.  Using fresh herbs in your cooking will make your meals taste great and you can pick up packets of herbs quite inexpensively or you can try a kitchen herb garden kit.

 

Cook From Scratch Meals

Photo by Vita Marija Murenaite on Unsplash

A little bit of planning can help you to make regular meals from scratch.  Using fresh herbs and ingredients will help you eat better and healthier as well as saving some money.  If you are looking for some recipe inspiration The Elliott Homestead: From Scratch: Traditional, whole-foods dishes for easy, everyday meals is a great resource.

Try Home Butchering

Photo by Zoltan Kovacs on Unsplash

We have started to get meat locally and are able to get great prices on meat that is from well cared for animals and within 30 mins of where we live.  We had a go at home butchering and making sausages a few times now and something that the family all get stuck in on.  Scott Rae is a YouTuber with a channel all about butchering and cooking back in my English homeland.  His videos are really inspiring and informative on how to butcher and cut the joints, chops and make the sausages and lots of other stuff too!

Start A Garden

You can start growing your own fresh, organic produce in your own backyard by starting a garden.  Growing your own fruit and vegetables is very rewarding, great exercise, delicious and nutritious!  Try growing your own kitchen herbs and your favorite vegetables in planters, pots, or garden beds in your backyard.

The garden above was back in 2015 at one house I was living at we had peas, horseradish, tomatoes, broccoli, squash, and cucumbers growing in the ground, and even corn and beans growing in the hay bales!  There was a lot of fruit, vegetables, and herbs that came out of a 12 ft x 8 ft garden area.

6 Steps To Starting A Garden

Learn To Preserve Your Surplus

Learn how to can, pickle, ferment and bottle your surplus harvest at home.  If you can’t grow your own why not learn how to preserve produce from fruit stands or produce which is on special at the grocery store so you can get the biggest bang for your buck?  You can use a FoodSaver to help reduce freezer burn, invest in a canner to make jams, jellies or pickles or try your hand at dehydrating foods to preserve them.

Make Your Own Cleaning Products

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

DIY cleaning products can be much cheaper than commercial alternatives.  There are plenty of homemade cleaning product recipes you can try including liquid laundry soap the great thing is you can customize the scent to suit your moods and they are free from all the additives that commercial cleaning products contain.

Make Your Own Soaps or Lotions

Photo by Cecilia Medina on Unsplash

Homemade beauty products are a great way to make gifts for people for the holidays.  You can make some wonderfully scented, colorful, all-natural soaps or lotions that you can package nicely into pretty jars or containers to share with your family and friends.

Raising Chickens

Backyard chickens were my first venture into backyard meat production and have been a lot of fun.  Raising dual-purpose breeds for eggs and meat has been a very rewarding process and there are literally hundreds of breeds of chickens you can raise.  

For more information take a look at these posts:

Best Backyard Chicken Breeds

Raising Meat Chickens

Raising Chickens In Your Backyard

5 Excellent Reasons To Keep Backyard Chickens

 

Keeping Bees

Beekeeping is a fascinating hobby or homesteading activity.  Supporting bees is a wonderful thing and you will find your garden is a lot more productive too.  Building a top bar hive is a lot more cost-effective than the pre-made Langstroth or box hives and they may help you have healthier colonies. The Langstroth hive is easier to harvest the honey from than the top bar hive when needed.  I have both types of hives in my yard and like them for different reasons.

A strong colony of bees will help pollinate your fruit trees and bushes and your vegetable crops in the garden as well as providing beeswax, propolis, and of course honey.

Raising Quail

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Quail offer a couple of advantages over chickens for urban homesteaders.  They are quieter than chickens and take up less space.  Quail are prized for their eggs and meat and start laying at around 8 weeks old which is a lot faster than chickens.  The small eggs are quite a delicacy and a real fancy dinner party appetizer.

Raising Rabbits

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Rabbits are a prolific meat supply if carefully managed.  My first introduction to raising rabbits for meat was through Marjory Wildcraft’s Grow Your Own Groceries Videos and I was very inspired by her set up and how easy (and quiet!) they are in comparison to mu chickens.  In case you wondered if chickens are noisy and how noisy you can see in my video below:

 

Rabbits provide meat, manure and pelts which you can tan and make into lots of items through leather-working.

Mending and Making Clothes

Making your clothes last longer by making repairs to rips, tears and breaks is something most homesteaders do!  You can step it up a notch by making your own clothes from scratch or you can try refashioning thrifted clothing of upcycling sheets, linens, curtains and more into home furnishing or clothes.

Quilting

Photo by Dinh Pham on Unsplash

A handmade quilt is a thing of beauty.  Start a family quilt or try making one as a gift for someone.  Start with a simple patchwork quilt if it is your first time and check out the leaflets in your local craft store on how to quilt or ask neighbors, friends and family.  You might be surprised by who quilts and who can help you make one!

Learn To Knit or Crochet

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Hats, scarves, jumpers, sweaters, socks, slippers, blankets, toys, cardigans….the list goes on!  Many people find knitting and crochet therapeutic and was certainly something my Granny enjoyed doing and now, crochet and knitting are something I’m picking up.  I plan on making slippers for gifts this year using my favorite book of beautiful designs: Arne & Carlos-30 Slippers to Knit & Felt: Fabulous Projects You Can Make, Wear, and Share but granny square blankets, scarves and hats are easy projects to start with.

Brew Your Own Beer, Cider or Wine

Homemade beer or wine is a joy!  There’s nothing quite like pulling your first glass of beer from the keg or popping the cork on your first bottle of wine or enjoying your first sip of cider!  Sure it takes some time but it is so much cheaper and better than the ones at the store and it’s a good reason to get your mates over to help brew!

Brewing circles and clubs are a good place to connect with other brewers and to learn more.  For more information take a look at these posts:

How To Make Beer At Home Step By Step

Home Brew Cherry Wine

Home Brew Mead

Woodworking

Being skilled with a saw, chisel and hammer can help you achieve no end of homestead projects like building beehives, chicken or quail coops, rabbit hutches, composters, garden beds, trellis and so much more.  There’s usually extension programs at local colleges in your area or even neighbors who enjoy woodworking who may be willing to teach you.  YouTube is a great resource for those of you who are people shy and Paul Sellers is a woodworker and furniture maker and a YouTube channel I watch with my husband.

Bake Bread

Photo by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash

Baking bread from scratch is definitely something you can start doing to homestead no matter where you live.  The super frugal should look at making sourdough from scratch and making their own starter.    Not a fan of sourdough?  Try this really easy bread recipe.

Don’t give up on bread making, even if it comes out like mine:

 

Bread baking fails do happen but if you persevere and keep baking, you will get better with practice!

Eat Local

Photo by Peter Wendt on Unsplash

food from local farmers at the farmer’s market or join a local Community Supported Agriculture scheme if you can’t grow your own.  Many local farmers and growers have eggs, meat, milk and honey available as well as fresh produce so they are worth checking out.  You can also visit local fruit stands or pick your own farms and learn to be creative in your cooking or preserving to get the most from your harvests.

Homesteading is really what you can make out of it, for some, it is being super frugal or eco-friendly, for others, it is about having fresh, organic, and nutritious food which didn’t come from a grocery store.  Whatever your thoughts are for a perfect homestead there are lots you can practice and try right now, even if you are in a sky-high apartment complex or if you have a home in the suburbs.

What’s your favorite way to start homesteading or what do you want to try first? Let me know in the comments or over at our brand new Facebook group.

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