Planning

Whether you’re on your own land now, or looking for Land. Planning is Important

Why should I spend time planning? I already know what I want….

Knowing what you want is the perfect start! Unforeseen Issues that can arise which will cost you Money, Time, Effort, and Emotions

Keep your costs low, and Not having wasteful spending. For Example: Chickens don’t care if you reuse lumber that you got on the side of the road, or spent 8 dollars a piece on brand new lumber. (Even if you can afford it, they really don’t care.)

You can buy anything in this world if you have enough money. The one thing money can’t buy is TIME. Keeping this in mind you will move along with your ideas and goals better than if you just spend money and waste time willy nilly.

We will go through on What you need to be a basic Homesteader

Things you need

1. Books and Information
   1. You tube, amazon books, Google or your local library and of course, pod casts, websites, blogs.
   1. It’s great to have google at your finger tips, but if the power goes out or the internet goes down, there is no more google. So go to your local thrift stores and browes to see what they’d have for Gardening books, cooking, canning, Foraging, preserving, Herbs, farming and just homesteading in general.
   1. You can put an ad out on market place or your local classified ads wanting specific types of books.
   1. Yard Sales is another good source of books and magazines.
   1. Just find hard copy materials on anything you want to learn about homesteading.
   1. Lastly, find your community homesteaders, most people who homestead want to share what they are doing and what mistakes they’ve made along the way!

• Get an idea of how much time do you have to invest in your homestead.
  • How much free time do you have? 5hrs a week, 10, 30hrs.
  • Knowing this will balance your work life with your homestead life, without getting burnt out providing for your family with your homestead and with your job.
  • Make a homestead work schedule for each day of the week, according to your work schedule. If you have animals, those are an everyday chore. They need to be feed and watered everyday and in the winter depending on what kind of winters you have, a 15 min task could take you 30mins or more. Of course This will depend on what kind of animals you have on how much time their chores take up in your day or week.
  • If your goal is to become a full-time homesteader, where you own your own punch clock will take a lot of hard work and a boat load of sacrifice. I’ll have another Post on, just that, in the future.
  • When you are in your planning stages, this is where watering your animals come into play. How are you going to provide them water when it’s -40 outside? OR Whatever type of winter you have.
• I’m all about maximum production with the least amount to work. Why?  This will give you more time and energy to go onto the next project you want to get done. Nobody says I want to do a job in 3 days when it could have taken 1. Work smarter, not harder.  

• Another part of your planning process to be a Homesteader is, Do you just want to grow your own food or to make money
  • Figure out what you want to grow. (What do you eat?) How much do you need to grow? Well think there are 52 weeks in a year. So, if you want to grow, let’s say squash, you will need 52 to have one once a week. If you can plan as much as possible on how much you will need, then it will give you a very close idea of how much to grow. This is where specific planning comes into play. Make a list of what you want to grow and how much you will need per week. (Then you can look up the information on each crop and how much it will yield. You don’t need to be overwhelmed with this process. Just get an idea of what you’d need to grow. (Remember, every year is a learning year.
• • Be mindful of what you planted (types of plants) and make a strategy at the end of the growing seasons of do’s and don’ts. (Journaling is a great benefit it will give you a hard copy to reference from for the upcoming growing season.
• • Making money. There are all different kinds of ways to make money off of your homestead. In my opinion, find something you really like to do and DO THAT! If you sell eggs, but can stand chickens, then that wouldn’t be your ideal money maker. I would perfect one money maker at a time. How much money can you make. Well, every place is different This will really depend on how much demand is in your area. Find local farms and see what they are selling and where. One thing I would caution on is if there is someone who is growing lets say beans, and they make a living off of growing beans. Try to find another crop to sell that isn’t offered at your local farmers market. I wouldn’t compete with other farmers who have years of experience and clientele, focus on what they DON’T’ offer.
  • Ideas of money makers on your homestead would be. Seed selling, selling seedlings, raising animals to sell, selling babies. Bee’s you can start an Apiary. Sell Honey, graft queens to sell, or create a complete nuc for customers. Remember find out what is in demand in your area, and try not to compete with people who are already established in a specific product.

The more successes you have on your homestead, the more rewarding it is, you will have more energy and drive to keep adding to your homestead

If you have an acer or 50 acers. This will depend on your need and or wants but it also depends on what kind of budget your working with.