George Paul

Heather Staas wrote:
Sheep did the grazing/mowing/pruning/orchard clean up,   plus lamb sales paid for hay etc..   Pigs did a lot of digging out.   Rabbits added to fertility and produced meat as well as a small sales product.   Ducks produced eggs and reproduced readily without incubators, etc.   Dogs helped control the stock,  provided protection and alarm system, as well as company.  Cat to control indoor mice (I don't do outdoor cats).  

Spot on mentioning the animals as the essential items.

Awesome thread and question.  Which homestead items are most essential items depends on landscape / location and goals.

As well mentioned above no matter where located #1 is water always (as a resource, faith in God is truly #1). Whether it's a well, spring, steam/river, rain catchment, public - hopefully not  Storage of the water, movement of the water, ease of access to the water.

We're in appalachia mixed woods high elevation w/ some pasture trying to loosely follow a silvopasture type system.   Most of my life is spent chopping, trimming, chipping, shredding, bucking, burning, milling, splitting - endlessly repeated.  Wood management.  

Even being an (often unnecessarily) hand tool nut the chainsaw is still indispensable.  I own a big saw i use for milling and cutting large timber and a few years ago bought a small makita electric lighter work.  When the makita arrived it looked like a toy/joke but honestly it's performed amazing + sharpens up quickly.

My chipper drives me crazy but it is an essential item here.

A good splitter.  I still swing an axe/splitter + maul/wedges.  Nearly all my more-sane neighbors use hydraulic.

A good fire pit to clear out endless piles of brush.

A burn barrel is not essential but it's useful for turning all the weird pieces that are too big to chip but too funky to split by hand (knots, knobs, etc) into charcoal.

A leaf shredder is absolutely not essential.  But it does speed up my leaf composting by at least 1/2.  

Various hand saws, pruners, froe + wedges to aid splitting, cant hook or peavey for moving logs, draw knife.

Much of that list is specific to our situation. It wouldn't make sense for homesteading in the desert or prarie.  The end result of all that work inexhaustible branch forage for the sheep, hardwood chips for .. everything, endless firewood, logs for mushrooms, rich compost from leaves (+ manure),  ash from brush, charcoal from weirdo-pieces, slabs + lumber, some fencing.

Besides that some good shovels - a spade type, a digging type, a hori knife, and a moving type. Some auguring type tools for dirt or wood. A wood wheelbarrow and/or cart.  Even w sheep i still do quite a bit of mowing.  What type of mower depends how much grass one has to mow and terrain.  

Outside of various hand tools for fixing up the home/homestead that's pretty much 99% of what i use day in and day out.

~George

I pondered growing goumu before.  Good to know it's growing well for you.   We end up getting a ton of rain every year so moisture related diseases and moisture loving pests are usually the biggest issue.     Learned the hard way how important varieties are on fruit trees.    We have quite a few hazelnut trees that all produce very well.   The "mars" variety of grape seems to grow well.  "neptune" tomatoe also resisting disease well.    For beans "jacob's cattle" always produces well.   "595" peas resist mildew the longest.    most japanese turnips grow great.   We push a lot of stuff to it's limit here - tea, apricots, yuzu,etc

Joe Hollis is amazing, got my wild chrysanthemum starts from him way back.   We grow a lot of "jie geng" (balloon flower) for herb here.  A few other herbs in less quantity seem to be growing well here. We've had a lot of success with oyster mushrooms, especially golden, on tulip poplar which is in abundance.  Nice to meet you.

Thanks for everyone's welcomes.  I didn't realize that people had responded to the post. Getting use to permies. It seems pretty active in here which is great.    

@greg  it's real nice around marshall,  i'm out on the other side by bat cave, NC if you know that.
@gray adding some pictures is a good idea.  Our property here is only 3 acres!  But it's a nice mix of 1/2 woodland 1/2 pasture(ish).  It's hilly but soil and water quality is amazing. Even working it for > 7 years there are still many spots under-utilized.  

Hello to all.  Proud dad of 3 here out in the mountains of W.NC.  We've been building our homestead little by little going on 8 yrs now.  Focused on a diverse amount of fruit trees, nut trees, veggies,  outdoor mushroom production, chinese herb gardens, not-chinese herb gardens , tea., eggs (chickens + ducks), bluegill ponds and dairy sheep.   We don't follow any system dogmatically but most influenced by silvopasturing concepts.  Year by year the system gets a little more resilient and regenerating with less $ inputs .. although there's definitely still some external inputs.      There's already so much great homesteading content out there but feel like everyone has at least a few unique variations worth sharing.  Hope to share what we can.   God bless all.  

"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it. " Proverbs 15:17

~ George