How to Start Homesteading Where You Are

Homesteading doesn’t mean quite what it used to back in the pioneer days. Thankfully, there are now all types of homesteaders out there in both urban and rural settings. When you start homesteading, you don’t have to have 50+ acres of land, livestock, a huge garden, and all the other traditional things that used to define the word. In fact, you don’t need any of that to start homesteading!

The very first thing to do is sit yourself down for a good heart-to-heart. Get something to write with and on: this is an important step (pretty much vital) to the process! You need to define, to yourself, what homesteading is to you. What do you want to get out of your homestead? What do you want it to provide? Let yourself dream, even if you have no idea how you will accomplish it!

Don’t listen to other people who say you aren’t a ‘real homesteader’ because you still have a washing machine and live in the suburbs. Don’t listen to those who say that since you use electricity, you aren’t a ‘real homesteader.’ Those people are stuck in the past and that isn’t your problem. Your problem is how to start this journey that calls you like a siren song. 🙂 Once you have defined what you want from the homestead lifestyle, it makes it easier to move forward!

We started with declaring, “I want to grow my own food! I want to learn how to produce things I need myself instead of buying the junk at the stores.” Of course, we had no idea what all that would entail. There will be a learning curve for just about anyone. How sharp a curve will depend on what you were exposed to in your life (cutting firewood for example) and your dedication to researching and practicing. Yes, I did start with a garden and only grew things I knew we would eat. We built a green house and cold frames to extend the growing season. Before we started building though, I defined what I wanted my homestead to produce and what I wanted out of it.

Let yourself dream, even if you have no idea how you will accomplish it!

I wanted to be able to grow, harvest, and preserve food. I wanted to know where it was coming from! I wanted to get rid of the clutter of so much stuff and I wanted to get away from store bought chemical food. Of course, it went beyond that. I still dream of having chickens and it has been 3 years now. It’s OK because I know I will eventually. You have to build things up over time. If you expect to just wake up and change your lifestyle over to homesteading, you are in for a disappointment.

We started by researching. I knew I wanted to grow food, so I went searching for which USDA Zone I was in (7b). That information helped me choose which varieties of the foods I wanted to grow. For example, our cooler climate is wonderful for things like onions and garlic. Not so much for peppers and tomatoes unless in a hot house. I learned about cold frames and how much they extend the growing season. We also live in a temperate rainforest. Our average rainfall is roughly 13 feet per year and I had to learn about gardening in really wet climates. The cold frames helped greatly, as did the green house we built but I digress.

Now, I know not everyone can do a garden like that but that does not mean you can’t grow anything! Homesteading is about providing as much for yourself as you can. Reasonably, logically. Homesteads aren’t built overnight or even in a month! It takes years to get where you really want to be but you’ll never get there until you start. Since we couldn’t have chickens and the land was not ours, we were limited. There’s a lot more to homesteading than growing food so I turned my focus on things I could do, instead of those I couldn’t.

I  learned about preserving food, and the different methods used. What good is growing food, hunting, and fishing if you can’t preserve it to get you through the winter? Starting with water bath canning and dehydrating (I already knew about vacuum sealing), I moved up to pressure canning and smoking/canning meats. It wasn’t a checklist, it was a seemingly natural progression.

Our habits started to change. We stopped buying a lot of stuff from the store. We got away from the boxed and canned foods. We began looking at those veggie ‘scraps’ as a resource. It wasn’t garbage anymore; it was compost material, chicken food, the start of a vegetable stock! The mentality shifts. You start to look at food in a new way and will shake your head (more than once) at how wasteful our society is.

---

Is Micro-Farming something that interests you? Want to turn your lawn into something productive? Click here to learn more! 

---

We have come a very long way since those first steps into the world of homesteading. We still don’t have a ton of land. Right now we don’t even have a garden but we are clearing a section of our tiny 1/3rd acre to start growing food again. We will clear a bit more for chickens, too. It takes time!

Remember, homesteading is more about providing as much of what you need and use yourself. Here are some steps most people can take to get the ball rolling:

• Grow Herbs and Spices in Containers
• Grow Greens in Containers
• Learn to Make Jam and Jelly
• Learn to Pickle Food
• Join a Co-Op in your area to learn from locals
• Join a network (online or not) of like minded people. Trust me, it helps!
• Learn about the Cooperative Extension office (loads of free resources tailored to your area!)
• Take a Master Gardening Class from your local Cooperative Extension

The list you made at the beginning will be your road map. Homesteading is one huge cycle-based on the seasons. It doesn’t matter where you start, just so long as you START!

---

**If you didn’t already know, I welcome any and all questions! I love helping people sort things out. If I don’t know the answer, we will learn it together! You can leave a comment below, send a message on my Facebook page, or email me at akhomestead.dreamer@gmail.com.