ATTN homesteaders!

I tried aand mostly failed at a garden this year. Will try to prep my soil over the winter & try again.

sepaditty1 said:

I tried aand mostly failed at a garden this year. Will try to prep my soil over the winter & try again.

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I know that feeling. We got nothing accomplished this year. Here's to hoping I can get a jump start on it in a few months.

RichnSteph

Right. This is the first year for growing in that area. I've been told that you sort of have to train your soil. Not sure, but I plan to bring in somme garden soil & build up a bit of a foundation. We'll see.

JSossong said:

Hey y'all! New to Backyard Chickens and new to the whole raising chickens thing!

I've become very interested in homesteading and becoming as self-sufficient as possible. Recently I moved back in with my parents so my boyfriend and I can save money to buy some land and start a homestead of our own. During my time here I've been experimenting as much as possible and taking advantage of all of my parents land and resources to get the ball rolling and gain experience. So far my plans include expanding the garden (with hopes of having a booth at the local farmers market this summer, also crossing my fingers that shortly I won't have to rely on store bought produce), raising a small flock of chickens along with coop building, experimenting with fermentation (I have kombucha up to my ears right now), and experimenting with harvesting and making my own herbal remedies. I have so much to look forward to this summer with everything i've been investing my time in.

I started this thread just to possibly gain some knowledge on any of the above subjects, have conversations, hear stories, make some friends with similar thoughts etc, etc. with other homesteaders or self-sufficient experts out there! So if any of you are interested in sharing anything with me I'd be more than happy to converse! Thanks for reading! Hope to hear from some of you soon!

Justine

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My partner and I are in the process of home-buying right now for our first homestead. We're probably going to start looking in February. It's definitely exciting! We are learning all we can while still being in an apartment. I know as soon as we move in, even if there is 3 feet of snow, I'm going to be outside, staking out the garden! Good luck in your endeavors!

@2boys1homestead how exciting! Where are you looking for a home?! Good luck in finding one! You must be super anxious to get started, I know I am. I wrote this original post awhile ago and time has been moving so quickly! We're still trying to save up for our move, which hopefully comes sooner than later. And you know how things go....plans change etc etc and things haven't gone exactly as planned. Still so anxious for the time to come!!

@sepaditty1 sending hope that your garden will be bountiful in the next years! This year was the first for our first large garden together...well mainly it was my boyfriends project, I have been pretty busy adding to and tending to my parents giant garden, i've definitely put in my fair share of work with his though. He started from scratch and really outdid himself-I couldn't be more proud of him or happier for him. Everything turned out beautifully. Well everything except the tomatoes, which got blight....as did the ones in my parents garden and many other people's that I know. I don't know too much at all about gardening, I'm still a beginner, but the soil is definitely key! Keeping my fingers crossed for you in the year to come!

It's definitely more time consuming than I imagined though! Now that i've somewhat figured out upkeep and timing in my garden I need to be more attentive to preserving my bounty. It all got very overwhelming very quickly. I definitely need a kick in the butt every once in awhile because I can attribute some of it to laziness, which I know will never do if I want a homestead of my own someday. Everything is a learning process though. Already looking forward to next years growing season!

JSossong said:

@2boys1homestead how exciting! Where are you looking for a home?! Good luck in finding one! You must be super anxious to get started, I know I am. I wrote this original post awhile ago and time has been moving so quickly! We're still trying to save up for our move, which hopefully comes sooner than later. And you know how things go....plans change etc etc and things haven't gone exactly as planned. Still so anxious for the time to come!!

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We are going to live in Washtenaw County in Michigan. It's near the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area. We are actually going to a down-payment assistance program tomorrow and then I'm going to contact the USDA Dept of Rural Development and see if I can get one of their fixed-rate, no down payment loans. That would be amazing and we would HAVE to buy a country house to qualify for that one. We may be able to get more house than originally planned if that goes through!

2boys1homestead said:

We are going to live in Washtenaw County in Michigan. It's near the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area. We are actually going to a down-payment assistance program tomorrow and then I'm going to contact the USDA Dept of Rural Development and see if I can get one of their fixed-rate, no down payment loans. That would be amazing and we would HAVE to buy a country house to qualify for that one. We may be able to get more house than originally planned if that goes through!

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Good luck!!! My fingers are crossed for you guys! All good things!

My bf and I bought our .5 acre property 8 years ago, but I got very ill and hospitalized for 3.5 years and started getting our property in shape this past May and got a lot done considering my resources and I'm extremely urban, like 6 blocks away from Denver city proper in Colorado, home of psychotic weather. Where it can be bright sunshine and snowing at 50f before hailstones start pummeling everything. Lately it's ben in the low 50's in the morning and up to high 80's by the afternoon.

I really want to move off the grid, I homestead and don't work outside the house, but I generate income and bater and have awesome friends pitch in on labor or I barter what I grow for labor, or gourmet meals too.

We have 54 chickens, 6 muscovy ducks, 2 meat rabbit does, 2 greyhounds and the 2 of us. I learned a lot this year and made mistakes, but I learned.

My friends came over throughout the summer to help me move big things and cut down the huge maple tree in my backyard that prevented me from having anything grow in my raised garden bed, my greyhounds digging didn't help. Now I have 24 dp meaties that are 10 weeks old and added 6 muscovy ducks last night to get that area ready for spring planting.

I have white bresse, ayam cemani and haffies which are ayam cemani x orpington chicks in my barn, a total of 19, which are the basis of my sustainable meat flock including black fm meat chickens. They range in age from 1 week- 7 weeks old.

I have my laying flock of 10 including a semi-quieted rooster, but I need to cull my wheaten ameracuna Jeanette as she hasn't laid an egg in almost 5 months, when we send 3 ducks and 25 dp meaties to freezer camp over the next 6 weeks.

My freezer holds half of a grass fed cow, we'll be picking up half a whole pasture raised hog in the next week or two. Our budget allows us to go buy 1 possibly 2 more deep freezers in 2 weeks, in time for the dp meaties to go into.

My ghost peppers and tomatoes did well this year. Next year will be better, I had critter issues, then unbelievable amounts of rain which brought slugs and leafcutters like I haven't seen in a while.

We're debt free except our mortgage, and we have 60% equity atm. We own our vehicles (3) + 1 motorcycle, have a metal smiting/welding shop, gold dredges we take up to the mountains to put in the creek on pontoons, sluice box 5" hose, wet suits etc. We refine our own precious metals, rockhound, and I grow legal medical plants here in Colorado which is a great commodity, I feed the leaves, stems, roots to my animals, and I have always grown and done things according to the lunar cycles. I grew up in Alaska and hunted, fished, really homesteading there growing up. I love getting back to this life. We're trying to pay off our house and get our closed loop hydrocarbon extraction systems company to be more profitable so my bf can quit fixing Mercedes Benz for a living and we can move off the grid as is my goal.

In the spring we're adding cortunix quail and 3-5 beehives. I gotta get bokashi started to get my defunct compost pit back to functional, but with the maple sown, I have lots of great slow hot burning wood that will heat my house all winter with my fireplace. I also want to add a moonshine still and pottery wheel, my bf has my kiln in his garage out back. I have indoor greenhouses and lights, there's more growing and critter area than ppl area lol that's fine by me.

I'm breeding my nzw x sf doe to a 16 lb nzw buck in 2-3 weeks. Hopefully she will be a good mommy and pump out and take great care of her babies. I'm going to learn how to process ducks, chickens, rabbits and to tan rabbit hides this starting in a month. I'm excited but scared, b/c I'm the caretaker of all our critters. I'm attached. I got the latest cooks illustrated with their best chicken recipes and I sit on my back porch looking into the dp meaties and duck pen while reading it to reinforce these are food.

Next year, way more critter control, somethings ate more strawberries than I did! Hmmph.