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.

---

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.

I think there's a lot of emotional work that goes side-by-side with the physical when you're transitioning from one way of living to another.  Like, for me, I've spent more years unlearning what I thought to be true than I did living it in the first place, and I've barely changed my lifestyle in all that time.  So, coming at this from a different angle:

Just by being here, you've already started questioning the status quo.  So I think the next step is pinpointing the areas that are making you the most unhappy, or areas that, by changing, will make you happier/ feel like you have the most agency in your decisions.  Start with the smallest changes that will make the biggest impact TO YOU.  The changes can be tiny and silly, like going barefoot more often or re-growing onion tops on your windowsill.

You might never be able to get your partner fully on board with your end goal, so it might be in your best interest to reevaluate what's ideal vs. what you're willing to concede.  Ideally, any spouse is going to want to meet halfway and try something new and facilitate their partner's personal growth; best case they discover something new about themselves and you take that journey together.  Worst case, they try to stop you from doing something that makes them unhappy, without regard to your feelings.  For almost everyone, it's going to fall somewhere between those extremes.  I think it's good if you (as the partner seeking change) have a clear idea of what you ultimately want and what you're willing to give up or trade-off to get it (or close enough to make you happy).  Maybe your husband doesn't want to move to a sheep farm out in the middle of nowhere, but he'd be cool with a few hens and a kitchen garden somewhere on the edge of town, especially if there's ample space for him to explore one of his own hobbies or passions.

Also this: don't get caught up in what you think you "should" be doing.  I have friends who are way more off-grid than I have any desire or ability to be.  A lot of times I find myself in a shame spiral after I interact with them because I'm not as hardcore about XYZ thing as they are.  Like, they buy tri-axles of whole logs for firewood and process it all themselves without a hydraulic splitter (all through 7 pregnancies!); I personally struggled maintaining the firewood for a 3-person household when it was delivered already cut, split, and seasoned.  DO NOT hold yourself to anyone's standard but your own.  Part of being more resilient and self-reliant is learning your strengths and your limits and living within them, even if they don't look like what you thought they should.  I've watched videos of hardcore off-gridders pulling their own teeth because they don't want to (or can't) pay a dentist; don't feel like you need to be that person to achieve some arbitrary standard of "homesteader."  The "keeping up with Joneses" mentality is alive and well within the broader community (not only Instagram tradwives trying to sell something); reject all of that now, it will not serve you.  

On the practical side of things, my biggest piece of advice: learn more about cooking.  Even if you're the sole cook in your household and do it for every meal, snack, and special occasion, there's still more to know about food and how to get it from the outside world and into your body in ways that both nourish and please you.  Something as seemingly arbitrary as learning to make your own mayonnaise can be life-changing.  This is non-gendered advice; everyone should know the basics of feeding themselves by early adulthood, with few exceptions, and that they don't in today's world is nothing short of a tragedy.  

I think by starting in the kitchen, anyone can achieve a lot towards future homesteading.

Cooking from scratch, local, and with the seasons. Imagine that you are growing it all yourself, and that you don’t want to bring anything in from outside at all (except maybe some salt and spices), and you can achieve this way of cooking by buying from local farmers and cooking recipes that don’t use packaged ingredients.

Learning to preserve food when it’s abundant to eat when these foods are not available. Buying a bulk lot of sauce tomatoes when they’re in season and preserving them, or making jams and canned fruit from different short-season fruits. Dehydrating, pickling, fermenting, canning and more.

By starting in the kitchen, it also means that you’re eating healthier, and will have more energy for other things.

In the years before we got our homestead, I read a lot of permaculture and homesteading books from the library as well, and that helped.

There might be a community garden where you can get a plot to grow your own, or you can grow food in containers. Foraging is also an important skill to learn and you don’t need any land for that.

Wwoofing is something to consider if you want to get experience with animals or other aspects of homesteading.

Reitterating the idea of starting where you are.  You may, or may not, ever end up in the country with sizable land, so do what you can where you're at now.  If your husband sees positives to that then he may  be more open to listening about bigger changes or ideas.