My advice when it comes to homesteading...

We bought our property 15 years ago, and I got to work right away...I might have started a bit too quickly!

I'm making some videos to help others avoid making some of the the many mistakes I made when I started my homestead.

Larry,

Very nice.  These are good broad-scale, big thinking type of lessons-learned that you can/are passing on to others trying to do the same.  In your case, you deliberately can't be specific as your specific advice might work in one place but not another (grow peanuts here or tomatoes.  

I have a few, more specific thoughts of my own.  I will try to list some of them, and oddly, some will crash right into and contradict others.  But that's life--right?



So here are a few of my suggestions:

1)  When you make your move (either buying new or altering existing), don't spend all your money upfront.  In fact, I would say keep at least half of your savings.  This new endeavor is a wild, wonderful thing, but it won't be cheap up front as you will certainly need to buy additional items.

2)  Consider making a list of various things you will need, especially tools.  Life on a homestead is practically impossible without tools.  Tools can range from a screwdriver up to a tractor and it attachments.  Tools will enable you to do all sorts of things that you can not do without them, but they can have a really hefty price tag.  My short categorized list would be hand tools, power tools, outdoor hand tools (shovel, rake), outdoor power tools (lawn mower) and tractor (ultimate outdoor tool, also the most expensive).  

On the hand tools, I advise not going terribly cheap--I absolutely hate having my tools break when I am fixing something broken.  I used to like Craftsman--now I am not so certain.  Milwaukee looks like the absolute best but they are pricy, There are some house brands like Kobalt (Lowes) and Husky (Home Depot) that are probably very good.  Do a little research.  Also, get socket tools in kits--you can get a lot of sizes in a single kit for a reasonable price.  The same goes for other hand tools if you can find them.

For power tools, maybe consider one of the 5-tool combos to start--Drill, Saw, Impact driver, Recip Saw, Flashlight, 2 batteries.  Lots of options, but good (and not hugely expensive) options are: DeWalt, Ryobi, Ridgid to name a couple.  The list goes on, but again, do your research.

Outdoor tools:  I like good sturdy handles on shovels.  I don't like a wooden handle on my spade--they always break.  I like the fiberglass.  I have yet to break one.  

What do you think you will need for things like a lawn mower?  Do you even need one?  They can be useful even if not mowing (pulling a cart can really help).

Tractors!  Hugely useful, and Hugely expensive.  But think within a budget.  A subcompact tractor is a little larger than a riding mower and they are amazing.  Don't rule it out as being too small.


Some other thoughts:

Do this when you are young and have the body and strength to endure.

BUT

Wait till you have sufficient finances to pull this off! (like I said, the advice crashes into itself!)

Dream big, but plan for a small start--?
*if you have the property, really envision what is possible
BUT
*don't expect perfection.  Certainly not on your first try

Carefully consider how big a house you will need


I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea
For my day-to-day, I need a way to get myself and my tools to where I am going to work on the homestead today.  So for me that means I load up my tractor and drive.  But you could of courses use a garden tractor and a cart, a 4-wheeler and a cart, you could walk and pull a cart behind you.

Use your own best judgement

Don't let anything that I or anyone else tells you stop you from doing something that you really don't want to do or do something you really don't.

Its your dream--live it!



Eric

Thanks for sharing Larry, Eric. You've already made some good points - desire lines and observation....if you can find out that you have a hard pan or a flood prone area before you plant your orchard trees there it saves a lot of heart ache. I wish I'd planted a wind break both sides of my orchard, now I'm trying to squeeze one in to the North of my apples, but it will be a few years before it is doing as much good as the one to the South. Hey ho we live and learn. If we can learn from other's mistakes that is even better.

I think we have a couple of good threads on learning from mistakes:
https://permies.com/t/13737/permaculture/Mistakes-ve-mistakes-ve-learn
https://permies.com/t/157587/permaculture/Biggest-Mistake-Learn
https://permies.com/t/273269/biggest-forest-garden-lessons
advice:
https://permies.com/t/97104/Starting-homestead-strong-foundation
and regrets:
https://permies.com/t/110615/Regrets-starting-starting

A couple of remaining tool thoughts:

If you are just getting into homesteading, have no power tools yet and a limited budget, I would give very serious thought to Ryobi tools.  Ryobi used to be thought of as a sort of cheapo brand that would not stand up to heavy use.  No longer.  Ryobi tools stand up with the best but for a mere fraction of the cost.  Just try comparing the cost of the standard 5-tool starter kit with Milwaukee (!), DeWalt, Ridgid, or many, many others.  The savings are pretty great.

AND, Ryobi has a VAST array of tools in its 18v platform.  Personally, I am in Ridgid, and I really like my tools, but I get frustrated that there is a dearth of options in the lineup.  At one time (15-20 years ago?), Ridgid looked like the up-and-comer and was really pushing the technology limits and doing so at competitive prices.  But for a good 10 years, their lineup has remained stagnant, the tools have gotten more expensive, and the lineup is limited--especially in outdoor power tools (trimmer, lawn mower, etc.).



On garden hand tools:

About 10-15 years ago I discovered the grub hoe.  Wow, what a great way to dig a garden bed!  I will never use a shovel again for this purpose.  A grub hoe is so much better on the back.  A good grub hoe has a heavy, forged blade (not a thin stamped one that you get at a big-box) that is probably 6" wide and maybe a foot or so long,  Its weight alone really helps it chop through even dense clay.  I discovered the grub hoe through www.easydigging.com.  From there I found all sorts of other garden tools that are far higher quality and back saving than the ones found in big box stores.  In addition to the grub hoe, I get a lot of use from the grape hoe, fork hoe, hand hoe, and I wish I would have seen and purchased the pointed hoe.  From https://www.prohoe.com/ I frequently use the 7' no break rake (great for gathering and digging at the same time), the 6" scuffle hoe (but I could really use a larger one--maybe 8" to 11").  And there are all other sorts of garden tools here as well.

ALL of these tools are MUCH more durable that what you will find at any big-box store.  These are more expensive up front, but my thoughts are that the garden hand-tool budget is probably the smallest of all your tool categories.  These tools have proven to me that they are real time and back savers.  I really can't explain how much faster and more gentle-on-my-back the grub hoe is over a shovel.  And that pointed hoe looks great!  With my clay soil, that pointed tip would be amazing for sinking into stubbornly dense soil that does not want to yield to anything--certainly not my back.  I may put the pointed hoe on my Christmas list this year.  Again, my thoughts are that while these tools are more expensive up front, they will certainly save you time and save your body.  That's a bargain in my book.  Maybe you could think of the savings from buying Ryobi to buying the more sturdy garden tools.


Ultimately, you know your budget far better than me.  You know your goals and expectations, your money, investments and resources and you have judgement to bear on initial purchasing choices.  I could never choose for you because I am not you and I do not walk in your shoes.  All I can do is offer my thoughts and advice based on my experiences, successes and failures.


**Edited to Add**


I keep forgetting to add one additional, essential, relatively inexpensive component to owning tools--KEEP THEM ORGANIZED!!  

Owning tools is meaningless if you can't find them when you need them.  In my bachelor days, I always knew exactly where every single one of my tools was located at any one time.  

But then I got married

And had kids!

And my kids used my tools but did not put them away!


Right now I am trying to collect all of my old hand tools, especially my socket wrench collection.  While it may be normal to misplace/lose an occasional socket, at the moment I have two socket sets that are a bit of a disaster.  There should be six wrenches between the two (two 1/4", 3/8"/ 1/2") and I can only find one!  I am not the most organized person, so I can't put the blame solely on my kids, but whatever the case, I have a pretty large number of tools that are misplaced which means at some time I paid for them and at the moment they are simply gone (but hopefully to be found!).  A lot of the time, the reason that things get misplaced is that I grab tools from my tool box but they don't get put back right away.  So my current endeavor is to make a collection of small-to-medium sized tool kits for specific jobs.  For instance, I have a dedicated electrical tool kit with all the tools needed for electrical work.  I am putting together and sort of standardized kit for working on my tractor with tools specific to that job.  I have found that the best (for me) tool case is a plastic ammo can.  These are reasonable cheap, have good latching lids with a waterproof seal (in case you want to work under water?), a dedicated, easy-to-grab handle that folds away, and they are easily stackable.  My favorite sizes are the .50 caliber ammo can and the .556 magazine ammo can.  I especially like the latter.  It cost me $17, it is larger than the .50 caliber can, but is still easy to pick up and carry around.  The .50 caliber size has been perfectly sized for my electrical tools, and the .556 size is good for some larger tools I need for the tractor.

In either of these cases, the cases will be stocked with their own specific tools.  This might mean that I am duplicative--having the same tool purchased twice so I have one for each can, but if I can do this to ensure that I don't loose the one I am working with, again, I find this a bargain.

I attached a picture of some of my cases below.  In the background I have three .556 sized cans and in the front is a slightly larger one (not certain the caliber size)




Good luck to anyone considering any of these options or considering any of my advice.


Eric

You know, once I get started talking about tools, it really is hard for me to stop.  There is a psychological principle behind this.  I will spare you the complex actual name, but I refer to it as the work-home happiness paradox.  Basically, what you do at work, you leave at work, come home and do something quite the opposite.  As school I teach the very abstract--History and Psychology.  When I come home, I like to get my hands dirty on a project.

Anyhoo,


When I think back to when I built the current house I live in, if I were doing it all over again, I would find some way to get a tractor on site and leave it there.  It would have a loader and box blade for certain.  Maybe a rough cutter?  Maybe a rear grader blade?  But that's about it.  It is just so useful to have a tractor and a loader for doing so many countless tasks that I can hardly imagine not having one now.  And in the beginning, it seemed like we were constantly carrying around some heavy object or moving a pile of something.  The box blade and maybe grader blade would nave been very useful on the 500' gravel driveway.  And I could see using the rough cutter to mow and trim some things.

But it would cost money.  I would nave gotten a subcompact.  I could have made this work, but I realize that not everybody is in the same position.  But I just can't tell you how incredibly useful a subcompact tractor is.



And on hand tools:

I am a touch frustrated trying to find a good manufacturer/brand name of hand tools.  My old go-to was Craftsman.  They had the walk-in lifetime replacement warranty.  Sadly, Sears is almost a completely defunct company.  I was thinking about Milwaukee hand tools.  Their power tools are great and I thought that same quality would appear in the hand tools.  I always go to a socket wrench for this as there are a lot of forces at work on tiny moving parts.  I checked some reviews and some tests and found that Milwaukee is not all that reliable, but it is still terribly expensive!

So what next?

More research turned up something that I really did not expect.  Of all the brands, the one that has risen to the top from my bit of research was Quinn, a sort of house name from Harbor Freight.  Turns out Quinn sockets are pretty sturdy & reliable, have a walk-in warranty and are reasonably priced--far cheaper than Milwaukee.  I personally just bought a set of three socket wrenches through Amazon from the brand name Kauplus.  The reviews are pretty good and the price is hard to beat.  Even if it does break, it was worth the price just to find out how well they worked (1/4", 3/8", 1/2" sockets  for about $25!  I will see how they perform).  I am a little stunned to hear that Quinn from HF is the leader here, but HF has been upping their tool game recently.  While I miss my old Craftsman tools, I might have to see how well Quinn performs, especially given that I have a HF store nearby.


Anyhow, I had to add a few thoughts as I can't stop investigating this route now that I have gotten the itch.




Eric

Ok, more obsessiveness!

I have been Google AI'ing the relative value of several socket wrench brands.  In terms of overall quality and durability, the initial conclusions look like this:



Milwaukee (but maybe not by much and you pay through the nose)

Tekton

Craftsman=Kauplus=Quinn


In terms of relative value, the winner might be Kauplus.  It is made in Taiwan, has general quality/durability roughly equal to the mid-tier, and is bargain priced (I got a three wrench set for $25!)


Quinn might be the new Craftsman with similar quality and warranty.  Reasonably priced

Tekton is upper mid-level and not terribly expensive

I am not certain what you are paying for with Milwaukee.


I am focusing on the socket wrenches because of the complexity of the mechanism and the forces involved.  It is sort of a stress test.




I will keep adding to this.  Feel free to chime in if you know something

I am going keep researching.



Eric

I might have a posting disorder—I can’t stop.  

This afternoon I went looking for my old socket wrenches to see how many of the original six I could find.  And after a bit of scrounging, out of six, I found—six.  That’s right, I had all of them all along but couldn’t find them which meant that for all practical purposes they were gone.

In addition to those six I added another three this week—I found three reasonably decent socket wrenches for $25–which means the tally now adds up to 9 wrenches!

Which brings me back to storage and organization.  I am putting together some tool tool collections for specific tasks.  Electrical already has a dedicated case.  I am putting together at least two more, larger cases, one of which is dedicated to common tractor tasks.  I am using these cases because of a combination of reasons, including being reasonably sized, sturdy, good latching waterproof lids, and they are stackable.

I am still getting these put together, so we will see how it goes, but hopefully this will keep the tools better organized and still highly accessible on the work site at the same time.



I will keep this updated—because I can’t really stop!!



Eric

Some more tool thoughts…..

I have picked up a few of these cases on the grounds that they are sturdy, spacious, compact, have good, locking lids and indentations that make them easily stackable.  I can put in a good amount of tools for a general range of tasks (such as electrical), and carry them out to the field and work without having to dig through my main supply of tools.  These are extremely portable and I stock each one with tools specific to the task.



I see myself making more of these kits.



Eric

Hi Eric,

Keep up the posting.  The longer I homestead the more important having an organized storage system is.   Good organization of supplies can save hours of each work day and $ off the budget.

John,

One of my biggest time wasters is looking for tools that I already own but can’t find.  And you are dead-on right about how misplaced tools only worsens the time=money=productivity shortfall in your day.

The way I see myself organizing my tools now is to assemble 5-10 (more?) of these “task packs” which I will label and fill either with some tools I have on hand at the present, or better, to slowly go and acquire a new set of tools to fill the kit.  

The reason I think more about getting more to put into the pack is for a couple of reasons.  First, I certainly don’t mind having a backup of most of my tools.  In fact, most of my tools are items which might have to be used as a part of a set anyways.  I might use two ratchet wrenches turning opposite each other, or two pliers for one task.

Secondly, I still like the idea of having a central supply of tools.  Not every task will get an assigned pack. And I really don’t want to spread all of my tools around my house & garage—only the ones I will be using for task-specific purposes (tractor pack).  

Finally, it is good to know that if I need that 3/8” socket, I can always go to my toolbox, my central storage source.



Eric




****Edited to add******


The top picture on the last post of mine shows the contents of my tractor pack.  In that pack, I have three socket wrenches, an assortment of sockets that get common use (10mm, 11mm, 12mm), a couple of socket extensions and some drill/driver bit adapters.  I will also add a few regular wrenches, pliers, vise-grips, etc.  Further, I might have to make a tractor pack 1&2.  Lastly, I will have to label the packs.

I picked up my Kauplus set.  They certainly look nice and the price was right--three for $25.  I have not put them to the test yet, but apparently they are just a rebrand of Quinn.  If they are even halfway decent, this will have been a great bargain.  I will let you know as I use them later.


Eric