Welcome Friend!

I love love love to talk about all things natural, homemade, and living a simplified life, so today, I wanted to talk about what exactly homesteading is because there seems to be so many different ideas.

Homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency, so homesteading life for each of us can be so very different, so now you know why people have so many different thoughts about it!!  You can live in an apartment, city, or in the middle of nowhere and you can still homestead no matter what your situation is.  You can live a simple life with little money, so if this homesteading lifestyle is something you dream of, why not get started now?

If you live in an apartment or the thought of homesteading overwhelms you, begin your homesteading journey by learning simple ways to prepare and preserve food. If you don’t know where to start, I suggest you start by replacing foods you buy at the store that you can make.  Honestly, if you are worried about homesteading and working full time, the things that I suggest you learn first are super simple and not time consuming at all!  Dry mixes, cream soups, and breads are a fabulous place to start, but honestly the possibilities are endless as to what you can do to become more self-sufficient!! 

 Homesteading can actually save you alot of money when you start switching out homemade food for convenient foods, and it is alot healthier. Something else you can do is try to grow some garden plants indoors - start small and this will give you encouragement to possible someday have a bigger scale garden.  I enjoy gardening, but many years the weeds have taken over, and it wasn’t good, but we do have a simple solution now with a method that automatically waters and I have very little weeds to pull, but I had much trial and error over the years.  Some plants I can grow really well, and some plants I can’t and sometimes it will depend on the year, so please please please do not get discouraged, use it as a learning lesson.  One lesson I learned a few years ago is that we will never use horse poop as fertilizer-we had weeds and thistles take over and it was out of control.

If you live in the city and want to start with animals, find out if you are allowed to have backyard chickens!  They are a really easy way to start with animals and produce your own food.  We have about 25 free range chickens and I almost feel like I need to hide my eggs with the price of them right now!  We just raised our price at the beginning of the year and we are still cheaper than the store- fresh homegrown is the only way to go!  Chickens are such an easy animal to begin with and my favorite thing about them is that we can feed and water them and still go away for the weekend and they are fine.  You don’t have to make a fancy coop either.  Depending on where you live and how harsh your winters are, you do have to take that into consideration though to make sure they are warm enough.   We buy a dozen chicks every Spring or every other spring so that we always have fresh eggs when some of them stop laying.  This year, we are going to get a rooster and try to hatch our own chickens, so I will have to let you know how that goes.  We have had chickens for several years, but this will be our first year trying to hatch our own.  That is the best thing about Homesteading-many learning experiences, but you have the flexibility to do it when it works for you-take it slow and enjoy the journey!  It really is an amazing life!

This is truely an amazing lifestyle and it is so good for our children and grandchildren to learn these skills.  So many people think that it costs alot of money to get started, but it can actually save you money if you start small.  It will also reduce overwhelm if you take it slow.  Learn one skill and then move to the next - and remember that you can keep it very simple like I have!

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Monica

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