031. How to Start Homesteading Fast

We'll share with you seven things that can help you start homesteading now.

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Transcript

Welcome to The Two Acre Homestead Podcast. We're your hosts, Lisa and Kevin, and on today's episode, we're talking about how to start homesteading fast

Welcome to The Two Acre Homestead. Come along with us on our journey from a small Suburban Homestead lifestyle, to our new lifestyle homesteading in the rural countryside of southern Arizona. We'll share with you our tips, tricks, successes and failures from both our past suburban lifestyle to our new rural lifestyle all on The Two Acre Homestead.

Okay, so on today's episode, again, we're talking about how to start homesteading fast. So here is here's the raw deal.

When you're going to start homesteading and you want to try to start homesteading fast. The first thing you want to do is you want to think about what your why is. Now, we've discussed this on a previous episode on our podcast. That was in season one, it was one of our first episodes, where we talked about what was our why that is probably one of the most essential things for you to know and to revisit, as the years go by. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to do this? The second once you found out your why is the how. And that's what we're discussing today. Now, just to give you guys a little bit of a heads up, if you want more information than what we are giving to you on this podcast, go ahead and visit our website, the two acre homestead.com and look for the blog article that is the same as the title of this podcast, which is how to start homesteading fast. That has a lot more information in it. So you'll be able to learn a little bit more in that particular blog article. But time is important.

So let's get into it. So we want to figure out the how how do you start doing this quickly. The first thing you want to do is you want to observe and learn.

You need to know what your property is like now I am saying property. But if you are, you know in an apartment building, and you're on a balcony, obviously you don't have land, but you want to know and pay attention to what the Sun is doing, where you're intending on homesteading and all of the things that are included with homesteading, growing and producing your own food. So you want to observe you want to learn your land, know where you're where you're trying to homestead know what that area is like, for example, if you have a backyard, you're in suburbia, and you have a backyard. Where does the rain pool?

Where does it where does it sit on your property when it rains a lot? Does it stay? Does the water stayed in one particular area? When it snows in the snow melts? Does it pull into one particular area is one area of your yard? For whatever reason does it get more snow then maybe another area because of wind drifts. There's so many factors. And then also you want to pay attention to and kind of know what the sun looks like at different stages of the year. So for example, as of the recording of this, we are in autumn or fall and the sun is lower in the sky than it is during the spring and summer months where it's sitting higher in the sky. So you want to pay attention to that because now you're starting to get into shadows and how things play on your land. But knowing your land knowing your growing environment is very key to getting you to start homesteading fast in whoa visit. We'll revisit this in a few minutes as to why that is so important. Good and when it comes to learning, so that was about observing when it comes to learning that may entail laws, regulations that you have to deal with. What do we mean by that? So it could be your city, it could be your county, it could be some other municipality could be your Do you have a homeowner's association or an HOA.

So some cities have poultry ordinances, for example, they may or they may not allow you to have chickens, for example, that may limit you, it may limit the number of birds you can have, or where they can be placed in your yard example, when we lived. In a city before we moved, where we are currently, you had to have a chicken coop at least 20 feet away from a neighboring house. So that presented some limitations. Also, the number of chickens, that was something we had to deal with, and we learned about where we are here a bit different, there's a bigger, you know, amount of feet, you have to be from property line of your neighbor as far as keeping animals in general. But here we can have other animals, we have goats now. So it's really important because you know, you don't want to have to if you're going to invest in, you know, for example, putting in post putting in fencing and so on, you don't want to have to tear it down because you put it too close or whatnot. So you need to know, need to learn the laws in your area where you're at. So our second tip that we want to talk about is mentality. preparing yourself mentally to homestead is one of the most challenging things. So
when we set out to homestead we set out to do things like garden, raised chickens, and so on way to be determined that this was a change in our life and really understand the why. So when you do that, you start to share it with family and friends, because you get excited. You want to tell them about it. But you know, you've got to be realistic, because friends and family may start to think this, they've lost their mind what's going on? Why do you want to farm, you know, you could just go to the grocery store and get it for whatever a pound, right?

So be prepared, your friends and family might give you a hard time.

Yeah. And a hard time they will. Some some not all, but some. But and it's so funny because many people complain about that rat race of life.

Because they feel so we've been just as a society, we've been so trained, that we follow this rat race, and we don't even think about it, you know, you you put, you know, you go to work so that you can put gas in your tank, so that you can go to the store, buy food, so that she can keep living, just to go back home and started all over again. And that is what's considered air quotes. normal living is that just that continuous race of life, and it's really not. It's really not living. So any sort of variance from that normal type of living is frowned on and looked down upon. And you'll definitely get it from if not friends and family that is somebody's definitely going to throw an opinion their way. Or your way I should say, but you really have to kind of toughen up your mentality and just know, this is why I'm doing it and

you know, move on. Yep. And you know, when you think like a homesteader it's what we call the work method. So it's like this. So you know, somebody's going to tell you and that's a lot of work. But you know, you say well, yeah, it's work but it doesn't scare me. So, you know, that person is going to see it as work but as a homesteader you see value in what you put into it. So yeah, you wake up early every day and you know, you milk the animal you throw out the feed you make sure there's water for the animals,

putting amendments in the soil, whatever that is.

It takes work to store hay to milk that animal for the year. You know, the animals need care. Gotta trim hooves, the worm, maybe move paddocks install fencing? Yeah, it's work but as a homesteader you see the end product?

milk,

meat, eggs and so on. You know

So you think that the milk from the milk of this animal, I can drink it, I can make cheese, I can make butter, yogurt and things like that.

And something that we enjoy cream for our coffee. So we don't have to rely on those powdered things that are full of you and all that other stuff that is the most important.

But first coffee, right? But first coffee. Alright, so then our third item we wanted to touch on is get out and stay out of debt.

Amen to that one.

So if you have existing debt, you need to figure out how to get out of it immediately. Because there is nothing that will kill your homesteading dreams quicker and faster than debt.

And let's be honest, you know, that what's going on in the world right now. We're not fear mongering or anything like that. But this is reality on the ground floor. I mean, you know, some people are using credit cards to pay for basic necessities.

So things because things are expensive, and they're getting worse. And they're not getting any better anytime soon. And the world scene, as the Bible says is changing. And, you know, all of this was prophesied to happen. So it doesn't, you know, if you're a Bible reader, none of this is surprising. But when you as the Bible says, The person who is in debt is a slave to the debtor. So you want to get yourself out of debt. And once you've gotten yourself out of debt, do everything possible to stay out of it. I know that's been that's been hard for us. And I think it's hard for everybody right now because things are hard. Yeah, yeah, with you know, increase in prices of everything just quickly, so that can get out of hand quickly.

The fourth item that we wanted to touch on is make your kitchen work. So you need to be able to process the food coming in when it's harvest season.

You need to have the ability to preserve your food store, store it and prep it.

So one thing I know that we've learned this season, you can't put everything in the freezer. We learned that a long time ago. Well, okay, well, yeah. 40 You know, when you call 48 or so chickens that you can't put them on the freezers, right.

So you need to be able to function in your kitchen, sometimes for long periods of time.

It's not to scare you, but you know, realistically, you work hard to produce that food. You've got that glut of tomatoes, cucumbers. What else have we had okra different things. You need to preserve it so that means your kitchens gonna get dirty.

As a husband I know I stuffed in a lot when I can you know? Well right now I have a countertop full of peppers. Yes. Sorry. I haven't heard of peppers.

But we appreciate it.

Having a kitchen that is functional. You know, a lot of times especially I'm speaking to you ladies, but you know it could be men too. But

we look at Instagram. We look at YouTube videos. I don't know is Pinterest still a thing? I don't know. But anyway, we'll just say you know we look at Pinterest. We look at all these pictures and we see all of these beautiful kitchens with all their nice shiny copper pans and and everything is just picture perfect.

That is not reality on the ground floor. That is somebody who has taken a picture they have worked their butts off to clean their house or clean their kitchen and to make it picture worthy. But a real homesteading kitchen is going to have dirt, you're going to have dishes, you're going to have like I just said, I've got a countertop full of peppers.

You're going to have a mess. There's always going to be something that's a little bit messy. So you need a kitchen that can handle that. If you're looking to oh yeah I'm home setting and I'm looking for you know and you want to have the picture perfect kitchen you can have it just depends on what your energy level is and if

If that's what you feel like you want to maintain, but when you start throwing children in the mix harvesting, and everything else that goes on in between

the picture perfect kind of goes out the window. So I'm just saying, Yeah, and what's just on the other side of that camera, you know, right. That was put just at the right angle. Right. Okay. So our next item, our fifth item we want to talk about is, and I know you're passionate about this grow a garden. Yes, newsflash, people, you cannot grow everything that you eat. Well, that's not true. You can and it's a lot of work. But I've tried to do that when I first started homesteading.

when we very first started homesteading, I tried to grow every every vegetable that we ate.

And I tell you what, what it just about killed me. So if you're looking to start homesteading fast, and you want to just like hit the ground running,

do yourself a favor, write down the things, the big major items that you and your family consume, the most of the most, not all of the things that you and your family eat, but what you eat the most of. So for example, if you eat a lot of tomatoes, if your family eats a lot of tomato based meals, then write it down. If your family you know, doesn't like a lot of tomatoes, but your family likes honor, oh, green beans, you know, and you eat green beans, it seems like you know, four times out of the week, you may want to grow that write that down. Those are the big items that you're going to want to invest your time, money and energy into growing. And it's probably going to take a little bit of adjusting over time to figure out how much of that item, tomatoes or whatever you need to grow to be able to provide that for your family for the year. Right? Exactly. You have too much or not enough but right garlic, we can never have enough right.

We can never have enough garlic we had so much garlic here. But if you getting back to this, so if you try to do it all you're going to accomplish one thing, and that is burnout. And burnout is real in the homesteading community we all get burnt out. I think it's safe to say that those those of us who are homesteading right now, at this point in time, as we are starting to enter into later, the later part of fall, which is the later part of harvest season, we're all just a little bit fried at the edges when it comes to the gardening, because you know, we're tired, you know, you've been gardening for some time. But you know, just do your best to write down what you and your family grow, or what you and your family eat in, write that down.

And make sure you're writing down the big things and then grow those during your next gardening season.

Now,

the other thing I'm going to say too, is when it comes to gardening, and I can't stress this enough, because this will help you to

start homesteading faster. And that is learn, learn, learn from somebody in your local area.

Gardening is a very area that it's a very area specific skill so you can know how to garden in, in general, but each area has its own its own diversity, its own tips, tricks, its own strange quirks. There are no you know, there's no areas that are the same. So if you can find somebody that's local to your specific area, look at the whites of that person's eyes. talk to that person shoulder to shoulder learn

Learn how to garden in that air in your area, wherever you are in the world that will help you garden so get your garden going so much quicker than sitting around watching a bunch of YouTube channels, and reading a bunch of books, and a bunch of blogs, and everything on the internet about gardening. Because, you know, like, for example, I'll give our area for example,

we live in a very small rural community, and 10 miles away from our house is a completely different it's not completely but it's a different gardening zone.

It goes from Zone A to eight B, so we're a and then 10 miles down the road, it can be in gardening zone eight, eight, B, and it's it's slightly different. And that's just 10 miles away. So you know, it's very specific to your area. So do your best to learn from the people who live in your area who garden in your area, learn from them. The other thing too, that I want to mention is know your gardening zones.

And if you go to the blog, we will put a link to the Farmers Almanac.

Because I think that's probably the most effective way of knowing your your growing zone. And that's important because that will tell you when to plant, either by seed by transplant or direct sow into the ground. When your first and last frost dates are those are super important to know. Because you don't want to be trying to plant tomatoes in the middle of February when there's still snow on the ground. I'm sorry, your tomatoes aren't going to make it. So knowing what your first frost date is. And knowing what your last frost date is, is very, very important.

Sounds very good. And then our sixth tip is learn to cook from scratch.

Knowing how to cook from scratch is probably

some something, anybody where it no matter where you are in the stage of homesteading is, is the most I think it's one of the most important skills.

And that may be because the kitchen is the area that I seem to live in.

I'm the cook and gardener of our family. So

you know cooking from scratch will save you money cooking from scat from scratch is well, let me put it this way. I've heard it said every decision you make on your homestead is a culinary decision.

So, you know, if you decide to raise rabbits, for example, well,

you need to know how to process those rabbits. But cooking from scratch. You need to know what to do with that meat when it hits the kitchen. Otherwise, what's the point?

What's the point of you doing all of us. So knowing how to cook things from scratch, knowing how to cook with basic, real Whole Foods, I'm not talking about the grocery store. But real Whole Foods is not only good for your health, but it's the whole point of what you're doing when you're homesteading and it's more satisfying meat that we've

produced from our homestead and when you make bread or tortilla it's totally different. You can see it's, you know, dents in the stuff you would buy in the store

is just calorically I don't know how to say that. It's just the

way I was thinking, you know, what was it yesterday, we harvested some cantaloupes and but yeah, those were awesome. Yeah, I mean, they weren't as big as some you might see in the store. But that's not the point. You know, because it was it was dense. It was very full of water. It was just really good. Very tasty. It's strong, it's lighter. Oh man. I mean he knew with every bite you were eating a cantaloupe or you know if you have a store bought cantaloupe. You know you

there's no taste to it, but this had

strong flavor. I mean, the kids were just down in it. They were just stuffing their faces with cantaloupe. I think they made I think one of them made themselves sick.

Anyway, that's TMI for this episode.

Okay, so are 7/3 last item we want to touch on is learn to preserve.

Yeah, so learn how to. These are my three tips. Now. There's there's a lot of YouTubers and bloggers who will probably have a different opinion. So

these are my three, my three items when it comes to learning how to preserve. Now I know a lot of people, bloggers, YouTubers, other people are going to have different opinions and they're gonna say, No, you need to have the full gamut. But if you're just looking to start immediately

these are the three areas of food preservation that I would encourage you these.

These are probably the most simplistic and easiest of all food preservations to do. And not in any specific order. But I would say the first thing that try to learn how to freeze your food properly.

Yeah,

there is a proper way to freeze food and in in proper way to freeze food, believe it or not, some things like leafy greens, even your like your green beans, if you're going to freeze them, you're broccolis some of those foods need to be

they need to be boiled first. And

I can't think of the word blanched. I'm sorry, thank you, they need to be blanched. So some of those foods like your broccoli and so forth, they need to be blanched. Which that is doing a boil, boiling them for like one minute and then putting them in ice cold water. And then after you've dried them off, then you can freeze them. So some you know, some things need to be blanched. Some things don't something should be cut up. Something shouldn't. So there is a proper way to freeze things. The other is the second one is dehydrating. Now, I'm a huge fan of dehydrating things just in general. I really love dehydrating foods, but it's one of the simplest things that I think you can do is to dehydrate most of your foods, but there is a proper way to do it.

And there is an improper way to do it the proper way. I strongly recommend and this is based on my own personal experience. When I first started

preserving my food, I got myself a cheapy cheap old little try not to say the brand. But you know, just a cheap little food dehydrator that did not have a temperature dial.

No one told me. So I'm telling you don't do that. Get yourself a dehydrator that has a temperature dial. It doesn't have to be an expensive dehydrator. But you know, get yourself one that has a temperature dial. The reason why that's so important is because

herbs for example, if you want to dehydrate your herbs and use them in your cooking or what have you, those need to be dehydrated at a certain temperature. If you want to make jerky that needs to be dehydrated at a very specific temperature.

And different foods require different temperatures. You're not going to get that with just a little, little old. Plug it in and rip the cord back out when you're done. Right. Yeah, yeah, you know, a little cheapy dehydrator. So do yourself a favor, save up, spend a little bit more to get something that's that's a little bit better. So do you but dehydrating is a very good skill for you to pick up on immediately. The third and final one of the skills that I think that will help you

is to

Learn how to water bath can. Now I am an avid canner I can my pressure canner is out at least once a week,

especially this time of year, at least once a week, I'm canning something all the time. But water bath canning.

water bath canning is a little bit different. It's not I know a lot of people get really scared of pressure canning. And to be quite frank with you. There's nothing to be afraid of.

I've been pressure canning for years, and we're still here.

But waterbath canning is a really good skill. Because it's a little less scarier for people then pressure canning. But waterbath canning will help kind of ease you into the world of canning. And for most people. I know for myself, this happened to me too. When you start growing a lot of tomatoes, inevitably you're going to have to learn to water back cam because you've got to preserve those tomatoes somehow. And, and making jams and jellies is another way to start waterbath canning but it's very simple process. We will put links again on the blog that accompanies this episode in different resources for you to look up so that you can freeze dehydrate and waterbath can safely All right, all of that information sounds good and I'm glad that we were able to share it with you today. So as we said these are seven things, seven tips on how to start homesteading fast. And as we mentioned, be sure to visit the two acre homestead.com go to the blog, find the article of that same name. We'll have some more information there as

Well that is it for all of us here on our homestead. So from all of us here to all of you where ever you are. Please be safe out there. And happy homesteading. Thanks for listening.