The Terribly Maddening Secret of Homesteading
I’m here today to shed some light on something most homesteaders don’t talk about. Sure it’s more fun to share the eggs you pulled out of the coop this morning, the meal you made with the produce from your garden and the livestock frolicking in your paddock. What people don’t talk about is the horrible, maddening wait of getting to that point.
(Our ducklings when they were a few weeks on in their 'duck tractor')
For us our homestead is 3 years in the making and we still have nothing to show for it. Obviously I don’t mean nothing but the whole point of a homestead is to produce your own food and we still haven’t produced much of anything. For the first 2 1/2 years I watched other people homestead, gathered knowledge and made decisions about how we would do things. A year of that time we were waiting to move back to the states and the rest of the time we were trying to find our feet after a number of unfortunate incidents.
(some accidental compost potatoes)
Sure seasoned homesteaders talk about how it takes time, you don’t build a homestead overnight but they don’t seem to talk about what they did before their first egg. It seems like they manage to be successful from the very beginning. They always have a project to share. We are taking our time, trying to learn a task fully before heading on to the next thing.
(the delicious, seasoned potatoes we made from them!)
Since we finally started physically working on our homestead the wait has become even more agonizing. You plant a garden and tend it for months before you produce anything. That is if you’re lucky. Most likely if you’ve just started and you don’t have the best soil, it will be years before you have a productive garden. This will definitely be the case for us. You get some little ducklings and take care of them every day but it will be 6 months before you get eggs! That’s a long time to wait, especially if you are taking your time and don’t have any other new additions. All this time twiddling your thumbs and all you want is to hold that first egg in your hand or can your first crop of tomatoes. These things we’ve been waiting almost 3 years to do are entirely out of our grasp and there is nothing left to do but wait.
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Hi @minighomestead, yes homesteading can be frustrating like this. It never moves as fast as you want, and there are always things that pop up that can set you back.
So often two steps forward and one step back. But if you learn with each step - whether forward or backward - you will keep progressing.
I find it useful to set targets. Make them (moderately) easily achievable - so you feel you are making progress.
And start with little steps, rather than giant leaps.
So instead of thinking we want to produce all our own food, try instead we want to grow all our own vegetables for two months of the year. Then next year make it three months.
Last year we reached 4 months of 'vegetable independence' - this year maybe five.
Or try with an easier crop - salad greens is a good one. Go for micro-greens on a windowsill in the winter and lettuce through the summer. We have achieved year round 'salad leaf independence' now - in fact we have a massive surplus of lettuce at the moment!
Keep trying and good luck.
haha that's great! Our experience has been even slower it feels like. A grand total of a few potatoes and 8 blueberries (that were horribly sour) but we are trudging onward!
Hey mini G you are on point with this article. I would say my garden produces fairly successfully but at the end of the day it is merely a fraction of what we actually consume in our house. Homesteading is not just about feeding yourself entirely from your own land, there are very few who can accomplish that. Rather it is a desire two try to achieve that goal and it is the journey towards that goal that is homesteading. So do not get down on yourself you are a homesteader. We recently lost another chicken to a raccoon and now we have one lonely chicken giving us one egg every 2 or 3 days LOL. I lost more tomatoes to Insects this year than I put in my fridge, and I produced a ton of jalapenos that I will never use and so I gave almost all of them away. I have gotten good use from my squash and zucchini with a few bags in the freezer for later. You are right however it does take several years to develop really good garden bed soil if you are starting with bad soil. The best advice I can give is to continually mulch your garden beds whether it's grass clippings leaves or wood chips, just keep feeding the soil. If you can find it in your schedule to begin keeping rabbits they are an excellent source of manure that is super nutritious for your garden. Go to my YouTube channel and watch my video titled Black Gold. God bless you and have a great day.
It's a journey for sure! We're going to keep going and keep trying but it's frustrating to have it right there and be unable to attain it. You don't worry about termites with the wood chips? Rabbits are our next adventure hopefully in a couple months we'll be able to share that journey with all of you! I will look for that video thank you :)
Haha, I hear you. Getting established seems to be taking a while for us too. At the moment, even though we're trying so hard to be producers of our food, I feel like we, our land, and our animals are just consuming, consuming, consuming. But I know that this time of input will eventually turn around into output...eventually! We'll keep plugging away--and I know you will too.
We haven't bought eggs since we bought the chickens, and that's been encouraging!
If only we could all have amazingly fertile land haha
Are you telling me it gets worse? I thought we had it bad with not even having a square metre of dirt to our name. I do think you are right though. I can imagine that the second I get some sod to my name, I would want an instant crop too.
@Pennsif gave some awesome advice in his comment. We currently have black berry independence from foraging each fall. I guess that is something too.
Yes it gets worse!!! Planning at least had some excitement to it. There was something amazing to learn every single day. Now we are just waiting for our first egg. Obviously we still manage the homestead but daily maintenance is pretty minimal if you aren't taking on new projects!
We bought 3 acres in April. My husband didn't want to start a garden but we decided to do something small. Some zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers and jalapeno peppers. So far so good. Tomatoes look weird but they are growing. We are doing an all natural garden. Some days I feel like everything is going great and then other days I shake my head and think what have we got ourselves into. Lol Good luck.
Oh, wow... You're right! We don't talk about what we did BEFORE... Hmmmm... That would be a good contest to run... Your Life Before Homesteading. You should do it!!!