! I really want to have a homestead lifestyle, any advise for newbies?

Hey Everyone!

I am a 36 year old, wife/mother/dog and cat mom. We live in TN and I am really looking to become a homesteader. I have all my reasons, but mainly it just seems the most natural way to live and I am tired of this life we have.

So that being said, I am NOT currently living this lifestyle.

I live in the typical US lifestyle of processed foods and commercialism and am desperate for any advise on how to transition. We are not in our forever home, so I cannot start an outside homesteading lifestyle yet, but want to get a jump start on how to start living more naturally without doing an overhaul that we will reject because it became overwhelming.

I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but would love to talk it out.

Any tips or just nice conversation about it?

Thanks

Judy

Hi Judith,

How does your partner feel?

Start with the book ten acres enough written in the mid 1800's

Learn as much as you can and maybe start some container plants.

He is not as excited as I am and I am in the position of trying to convince him.

It may not be working.

Learn wide ranging skills.  I am 60 years in on learning and still want more skills.

Judith Pack wrote:He is not as excited as I am and I am in the position of trying to convince him.

It may not be working.

If both of you are not convinced, which is to say, if your are not clever enough to make him think it was his idea, then forget it.
It is a difficult enough transition, without one partner feeling as though they were being pushed or dragged, and coming to fully resent the pusher/puller. It would also likewise be unfair to the 'victim'.

Do what you can. Sustainable changes are slow and incremental.

Do you have a little plot of dirt? Plant a garden. Some closet/garage space? Start a worm compost for your kitchen scraps.

Foraging is amazing! If you know how to forage you can eat well any time snow is not covering the ground and sometimes when it is, if you save up food or have watercress springs nearby. Since you are eating mostly processed food right now and don’t have a homestead, that is an excellent place to start. Since you are in Tennessee you probably don’t have snow on the ground right now, so you can start learning winter weeds to forage right away. And when you do get to gardening, food-foresting and the rest, you will have a much more in depth understanding of the ecology because of it. Ben Falk says something to his students about how it’s so valuable to be a forager who gardens rather than a gardener who forages, because you know all the abundance already around you.

If you want recommendations for beginning plants for foraging:
-Nettle greens (tasty and extremely nutritious—won’t sting you when they’re cooked)
-Acorns (takes a long phase of soaking but impossible to mistake, and important calorie source)
-Black walnuts—I’m guessing there are a lot of those in your area; right season
-Persimmons—same
-Oyster mushrooms, hard to misidentify, tasty, can grow in winter

Also, lots of bitter greens (dandelion, chicory, garlic mustard, wintercress, etc.) can be made palatable for eating in quantity through boiling and adding a little salt. They will have a soft texture that might be unlike other green vegetables you have had, but should be nutritious, taste good, and are full of protein.  Sometimes in smaller quantities the bitter can be good too…

If you want me to elaborate on any of the plants, or want to hear about more, you can ask. I don’t have experience with persimmons (don’t grow wild here, only have two little ones planted) and have (or had last I checked) a walnut allergy so not as much help with those.

Look to this thread on ideas for self reliance with no land: https://permies.com/t/no-land

Also look into the SKIP program for inspiration and skills, and possibly being able to inherit land from older homesteaders. https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb It’s quite fun and you learn a lot of important skills doing it!

Hi Judy,

There's a tiny ten page e-book for sale by Kate Downham on the digital market that has good, simple advice.  I think I got it for free as part of a Kickstarter a while ago:

10 things you can do now toward future homesteading, wherever you are.

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I took a PDC two years ago, and one of the teaching assistants in my design team had this neat advice:

"Your waiting room is your classroom."

In other words, there is a lot of learning that can be done, wherever you find yourself before reaching that next step.  It's easy to get in that rut of "if only I had...[x]" mindset, but the further you go along the more you learn that permaculture can be picked up basically anywhere, at any scale.

Mollison would say that only limits are the designer's imagination and information.  There's plenty of both to spare around here!

P.s If you are looking for ideas on what kind of skills to develop, be sure to check out the SKIP/PEP program!

Welcome to the forum.

It never hurts to start trying out the lifestyle with what you have so that when the homestead come along you will already have some skills.

Start a garden, compost pile and maybe get a few chickens if allowed.

Also the forum PEP badge bit program will help you jump start:

https://permies.com/t/96687/skills-inherit-property/PEP-PEX

https://permies.com/f/388/pep-gardening

I found the book Gaia's Garden really helpful and inspirational when I just getting interested in homesteading.

Growing micro greens, fermenting and soap making are all pretty accessible homesteading projects.  Even if you're not in your forever home I think starting a garden either in container or in ground is a good idea.

Hi Judith,  If you are a Youtube watcher, "Homesteading Family" follows a family who started homestead life in an apartment in Los Angeles about 25 years ago, now on 40 acres in North Idaho with 11 kids and several generations living with them on their "farm".  Carolyn taught me a lot - especially to start where you are.  The priority, which your husband may love, is to learn to cook from scratch.  Then to buy healthier food items in bulk (Azure Standard) and how to preserve what you cook.  Then to start growing food, on the balcony of their apartment they had many fails, until it all started to work.  Then you learn how to preserve what you grow.  Next water - filters and why and how to preserve/save up water for times without.  Learn to not buy things on a whim, fix things that break or tear, replace the things that use a ton of power with less obnoxious forms - using a pot of water that is heated on the woodstove to make coffee through a filter instead of firing up the Mr. Coffee.  Hang dry your clothes.  There are many other things that my son and I do that really bug my friends and neighbors:  we live in very low light - candles, one table lamp instead of overheads, etc. We read from cheap Kindles which are gently backlit so no need to have a light on. Learn to move through your house without flipping switches.  Wear warm clothes in the house, like sweats and slippers and turn the thermostat to 62°F in winter, and watch how much that changes the utility bills.  Have backup plans for everything. These things may help your husband embrace the 'simpler' way of life.  I found that the previous men in my life liked me to call it "Prepping" instead of homesteading so they could stock up on ammo and survival skills and equipment (put him in charge of generators and fuel and the vehicles) and they are more on board.   There are hundreds of Youtubers under the banner of "homesteading".  I've followed several for at least 10 years and have picked up several skills I never had before. Best of luck!!!  

I apologize if my reply was overly blunt or negative, but my opinion stands.
I agree with what others have written above. Learning and growing in whatever space you have is worthwhile. If you or your partner are mechanically inclined, self taught and motivated, curious, and can avoid small failures becoming overwhelmingly negative, can find a bit of happiness in small successes, then you have a good start.
The more you understand before you start, the less you will have to learn on the fly. You will likely find that your growth and enthusiasm become the motivation your partner needs to help him along. I am of the impression that a lot of folks have unplugged to a small rural type lifestyle, especially since the pandemic. Stay calm, stay on message without being overbearing, grow with gratitude, be realistic about immediate goals and what you don't know, start shopping local and secondhand to acquire knowledge and tools, and you all may join them. Without a foundation of knowledge, EweTube and the forums are a rabbit hole for desperate, attention seeking, self-promoting drivel vendors looking to sell you on their version of the truth. Wading through endless narratives, conjecture, opinion for information is very hard.
This lifestyle used to be the only lifestyle for anyone outside of cities. That knowledge is still available in books if you look.

Srry if this has been said, I read thru some of the replies, thoughtful...I like the foraging one.

Can you guys buy a "camp" within an hour or so drive of your place? Haha future homestead ;) in the meantime while the relationship sorts out you can just go there as often as need be and start walking around doing the things. Before you know it there will be a little garden surrounded by wildflowers and a t-post fence.