“How do I get started homesteading?” This is a question I get asked very often and it’s actually a little difficult to answer. If I had to sum it up into one sentence I’d say, “start now and start with what you have”.
It feels a little Cat in the Hat-ish, “Start homesteading on only an acre of land?” Yes, start with just an acre! “Start while living in an apartment?” Yes, start in an apartment! You don’t even need to own land of your own to start homesteading. Just start wherever you are!
Be Faithful with just a Little
The most important part is that you start. It doesn’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to know exactly what you’re doing. There are so many skills you can acquire “in the meantime” while you’re waiting to move on to some land to cultivate.
Learn to be faithful with just a little, so one day you can be faithful with a lot. This means learning to take care of the things you have now.
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” (Luke 16:10)
You may feel a little discouraged at this point, “but how can I be faithful while we are living in this tiny apartment? We are all so cramped in this space, I just want to have a piece of land of my own and enjoy the fresh air.”
I know exactly how you feel, when we first got married we lived in an apartment for a year and half. Then we bought a little red, bricked cape cod on 3/4ths of an acre. A few years later, our life experienced more upheaval as we sold everything and moved from Pennsylvania to Colorado. While in Colorado we rented a house, the back yard had an irrigation system but unfortunately it was broken and the yard was literally all dirt and dust.
It wasn’t until 11 years later that we finally achieved the dream and “bought the farm”. In the meantime though, we learned and tried and gained so many skills along the way. Could you imagine what we would have missed out had we waited until the “perfect farm” came along?
To be honest, had we waited for the farm to learn these skills we would have been very overwhelmed. It was fun already knowing how to garden, being confident in planning the best spot to plant my garden. To fence in the pasture and to move our cows on to it. Yes, we had cows before we had land to put them on, ha!
I want to give you some practical suggestions of how you can get started right now in different living circumstances.
How to start Homesteading Now
The first thing you can start with is yourself. Learn to take care of your body. Learn how to feed it good, nourishing food. Take care of the people you love and build healthy relationships. There is so much to gain from building healthy communication and stopping toxic influences in your life.
Along with that, here are some practical ways you can get started now.
- Learn to cook foods from scratch. Start watching some cooking shows or videos on Youtube. Make a weekly meal plan and follow it.
- Buy different cuts of meat you normally wouldn’t, like heart or tongue.
- Learn to cook a whole chicken.
- Try cooking some rabbit or goat. These are things you might be raising one day. Try the meat now before you make a big investment later and find out you don’t like it.
- Check out my #makebread365 challenge and learn to make homemade bread today! https://littlefarmfolk.com/2022/12/make-bread-365-challenge/
- Read books on homesteading, gardening & farming. You can purchase them or you can take them out from the library (remember, it’s free!) Here are some of the categories of books I’ve read over the years:
- Container Garden, If you have a little balcony you can start your own little garden right now! Try growing some simple vegetables and herbs and enjoy fresh produce!
- Start a worm farm, it sounds a little crazy I know! If you have an extra closet or a laundry room you can start a worm farm! Vermiculture is an excellent way to cut down on food waste and build soil for your house plants or container garden. Remember that house in Colorado we rented? We started a worm farm there, I just couldn’t stand the amount of food our family was throwing away. Since we didn’t have chickens to eat the scraps we got worms!
- Learn home food preservation methods, dehydrating, canning, freezing, fermenting and mylar bagging are all different ways you could practice preserving food in small batches. Pick one that fits your skill set and space to get started today!
- Shop Farmers Markets, going to a farmers market on a Saturday morning always brought me so much joy when we didn’t have land of our own. I didn’t always have the money to buy all my groceries there but I’d pick up one or two items to try. Talk to the vendors, find out what varieties of seeds they are growing. Then go home and write them down! It’s so helpful to know what grows well in your area!
I hope these simple suggestions might set your passions on fire and help you realize you are more capable than you know! Be sure to check out some of the books I listed above and subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn more about homesteading!
Advice to New Homesteaders: From a long-time Homesteader – YouTube