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5 Tips for the Beginning Homesteader
By Joel Salatin
Start Something Now
Many wanna-be homesteaders become fixated on location and plans, often depleting their nest egg in a property and then realizing they don't have enough experience to actually pull it off. You can't Google experience, so the most valuable equity you can bring to a project is some sort of mastery, which takes time: 10,000 hours and 10 years. Homesteading is more of a mindset than anything. It's about eliminating consumerism, feeding yourself, and becoming successful at building and repair jobs so you don't have hire someone to change a lightbulb.
Even in an urban high-rise apartment, you can sprout mung beans, grind your own flour, have a couple of chickens (yes, I tell you how in my book POLYFACE MICRO), and cook from scratch. If you still think life satisfaction comes from children's sports programs and watching screens, you'll be disappointed in a rural setting listening to frogs croak in the mud puddles at night.
Cooking, sewing, woodworking, small engine repair, and a host of other skills will be your ticket to success, and none of those things require a rural property. You have to first live in the city, like you think you'll live in the country.
Limit Your Projects
During the romance and courtship phase of homesteading, folks read countless books and magazine articles, dreaming and fantasizing to duplicate the gurus they see on YouTube and podcasts. As a result, newbies can easily overrun their headlights and get bogged down in a dozen projects, none of which flourish. Far better is to pick a couple of projects and do them well rather than overwhelm your money and ability with half-way accomplishment. The turtle won the race, not the rabbit. Don't worry about speed; just think about trajectory. Slog along in the right direction and you'll get there more dependably.
Grow What You Like to Eat
If you aren't eating lamb right now, don't grow sheep. Other people's cuteness often tempts homesteaders into projects that don't jive with their deepest interests and passions. Grow common stuff; grow what you normally buy.
This not only makes financial sense; it helps fuel your commitment when things go awry. They will, you know. The cucumbers will get fusarium wilt, and the neighbor's dogs will ambush your chickens and kill 30 in a night. It'll be gory. Nobody believes it will happen until it does. Liking what you grow will help you through the disappointment.
Be Efficient
Most homesteaders become lackadaisical about efficiency because it's more of a lifestyle than a business. That may be true, but every minute you spend being wasteful is a minute you can't spend making progress.
You can never afford to haul water in a trailer. Buy some polyethylene water pipe. It's cheap and efficient; get water where you need it. Lay out your infrastructure to minimize transport time. Always go loaded and come loaded.
Clump your projects according to location, tools, and urgency. Always keep a "filler" list of under-30-minute projects to leverage those shorter times when you finish a project, but dinner isn't ready yet. A few of those a week can make a big difference in the thistles around your outbuildings or the sharpness of your multi-tool knife. Part of efficiency is all-weather access around your property. Knowing where you can drive and being able to do it regardless of rainstorms enables you to get after projects when you need to.
Child Business
Incorporate the children as autonomous business people. Instead of asking for their help, turn the chickens over to one of them as an enterprise and pay the child for the eggs. Ditto much of the garden. Many homestead projects can be spun into self-standing entrepreneurial opportunities to create buy-in and keep the next generation excited.
Money isn't everything, but it's a great motivator, and owning a homestead enterprise gives the youngsters a feeling of self-worth, being needed, and real ownership. In that way, the homestead becomes a launch pad for tomorrow's leaders. If you squander the homestead trying to raise your kids like they're raised in the city, you'll miss one of homesteading's most significant benefits.
Perhaps the most important umbrella idea is to not quit. That takes commitment. Know why you're doing this and stay committed. You'll have disasters. Make a decision now to stick it out, to stay with it. Then you can roll through the dark days, develop mastery, and help another generation disentangle from the dysfunctional system.
About Joel Salatin
Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson. He co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.
