The Unglamorous Side of Homesteading & Prepping

Homesteading and Prepping is hard work! It is dirty, sweat filled, bruise-causing work. It is also hours of reading material that you have to pick through and decide whether it is relevant, logical, and reasonable. It can be very hard to sift through the fluff and get to the ‘good stuff.’

Of course, the ‘good stuff’ is defined differently for everyone. Recently I posted an article about some of the Prepper/Homesteader Resources I use. I have spent literally hundreds of hours reading and researching these sites to learn things about different projects and systems we want to implement into our homestead (when we get the land). I am using the time I have now to learn the skills I need so when the time comes, we can hit the ground running. Other than research and reading, there are many other ‘back office’ things that have to come together to make prepping or homesteading succeed. Some of the more significant ones for me have budgeted, storage issues, and lessons on limitations.

Budgeting is of paramount importance because homesteading and prepping is not ‘cheap.’  You need to consider how much it will cost to build a simple raised bed. Some of you may scoff at that statement but consider this: if you do not have quality soil, you will need to amend it and that costs money.

What about a shovel, seeds, and a good way to water your crops? At some point you will end up spending money for the tools and supplies you need. Add in the sweat, scraped fingers (unless you bought gloves!), bruises and dirt under your fingernails and the picture is not as charming as seeing a clean, well dressed person standing next to the end result. Just like a house needs to be done in layers (foundation, walls, etc), so does the garden or any other project. Not many of us have the funds to just run out and buy it all, we have to get things here and there and build it up. Budgeting is the key.

Homesteading has been romanticized by television but there is a darker, unglamorous side to homesteading, too!

Storage. When you decide to homestead or ‘prep,’ storage quickly becomes an issue. For us, I noticed we were going to have a storage problem when we started getting stuff for canning and gardening. We needed more shelves to put things on and get it off the floor so we could actually move around in the small storage spaces we have. It is a constant game of musical boxes around here, depending on the season.

For example; There isn’t room in the cupboards for the water bath canning pot and the pressure canner, so they are ‘stored’ under the table. There isn’t room for the dehydrator to just sit on the counter all the time. We are constantly moving things around from storage to storage and it is rather cumbersome. Once we are able to get some sturdy shop shelves (taking us back to the budgeting aspect) it will be considerably better. We may still move stuff around but it will be much easier. I have seen some articles around the internet about people getting very…creative with their storage spots. Personally I am not up for taking my door apart and filling it with mac-n-cheese boxes or tucking cans of food into air ducts but then again, I do not live in a large city where space is that much of a premium.

Learn how to pickle food in a single afternoon! “A Primer on Pickling”  is now available on Kindle for less than a latte!

Life has a way of putting you in your place sometimes. It is also good at giving a reality check. Accepting the limitations that assuredly will be placed on you is a hard lesson to learn. Well, it was for me anyway. I couldn’t understand why something would take so much longer than I thought it should. An example is the day we were putting some final touches on the greenhouse. I expected all these little things could be done in a day with ease and I was wrong.

As we were cleaning up I turned to my husband and mentioned I was disappointed that we didn’t get more done. He looked at me in disbelief and replied, “What do you mean? Today we built a cold frame, designed, crafted, and installed a window in the greenhouse, tilled up soil, cleaned the whole area up, and started building a strawberry patch!” Well, when you put it that way, it does seem like a lot. In my mind though, we should have done all that including filling the new cold frame with rock and dirt, build the lid for it and attached the hinges to ALL cold frames.

It’s a learning curve that I’m still struggling with. I like to manage my time to get the most out of it and seem to have a hard time correctly judging just how long it will take 2 people to accomplish a task that involves construction.

In this lifestyle, you will sweat A-LOT, bleed, and maybe cry while you work to build the infrastructure of being more self-sufficient. To so many people (myself once included) the mere mention of all this is enough to make them say, “No thanks!” and return to their life of instant gratification and convenience. They want the shiny cars and fancy restaurants, not the sweaty, dirt filled, manure smelling unglamorous side of homesteading and prepping.

And that is OK. I don’t judge them for it whatsoever. There are times though, that I wish I could show Mr. or Mrs. City Dweller the joys of it all. It makes you slow down and pay more attention. It makes you learn more about yourself and your place in the grand scheme of things. To pull a bright carrot out of the ground that you grew from a tiny seed gives you more satisfaction than that luxury car ever will.

But then again, perhaps that is just me. 🙂