Where to Start?

[N.Maine Daddy]

Hello Everyone,
I have enjoyed being a part of this forum, reading your posts and learning as you all share and learn.
I am asking for your advice on where to start moving towards homesteading. I am married and have 4 wonderful young children (5 and under). We bought our house 5 years ago, long before we fell in love with the idea of homesteading. Our home is big enough for us (1300 sq ft) however our land is a measly .113 acre. We have the rough among the diamonds in the neighborhood that we bought cheap in hopes of selling for a profit. We seem to be a few years out from being ready to sell and I am wondering what should I be doing in the meantime?
Can any of you recommend some good books, videos, articles, or websites that might point me in the right direction? Obviously, the best information would come from all of you who have been where I currently am and have journeyed their way into homesteading.
Thank you so much for all you're standing for, it is vitally important and I hope many more learn to follow this way of life.

[ct01r]

One thing that comes to mind is to get the kids involved while they're young. Do you have a garden? Even a small one that they can learn the value of fresh food, compsting, etc. would be great. We started gardening when we lived in a row home in the outskirts of a city. Used to take the kids fishing, took them down to my aunts farm, etc. just to give them a taste of rural life. Curt

[Westexas]

Community garden? Vacant land or utility easement? Make friends with folks at your local Farmer's Market and see what develops. Take the kids to U- pick farms for some hands-on experience and cook/can with them. Good that you are starting young, and sure you will find your way with time. Now that we are near retirement age my ex finally "gets it!". Good luck on your journey, NMD.

[MichaelK!]

I could suggest you start by reading up on what other homesteaders have done in the past. The first book I could recommend is Karla Emery's "Encyclopedia of Country Living". A second is Reader's Digest's "Back to Basics" Then there's Storey's "Basic Country Skills".

Try getting a subscription to homesteading periodicals like "Backwoods Home Magazine". Besides their monthly articles, the back has several pages worth of homesteading oriented texts, ranging from how to butch your livestock, to proper woodstove cooking.

Along these lines you can start looking at ways of becoming more self-sufficient. These could be divided in several broad categories.

Food Production: Hunting, Gardening, food preservation, home canning, ect.

Energy: Woodstoves and harvesting firewood, alternative energy, generators, battery powered items, ect.

Equipment repair: Automotive repair and maintainance, small engine repair, welding,, ect.

Security: Fence building, privacy, self defense, ect.

If you don't yet own a gun, I'd suggest starting out with a .22 rifle. I started training my child at about the age of 5 in gun safety. I would let him shoot the .22 while sitting in my lap, with my hand supporting the weight of the rifle and keeping it under adult control at all times. I taught my son from day one that he may see the gun any time he wants, but ONLY under Dad's (or Mom's) supervision. I used a soda can to illustrate what even a .22 can do, and drummed in safety over and over. Always wear hearing and eye protection.

[emdeengee]

When people ask about our story I always start off by telling them that homesteading is not a romance or fairy tale. You have to disassociate yourself from any "Little House on the Prairie" ideas. It is very hard work and nearly no one can live by homesteading alone. Farming yes, homesteading no. You can live very well and even peacefully and it is very rewarding but the outside world and influences do not disappear.

Young children always love to do things with their parents so getting them involved at a young age is very important. But be prepared that as they age they may have a completely different idea about how they want to live. Some may follow you but others can't wait to get away.

Since you have time you can learn a lot in advance. If your wife is completely on board with this then so much the better. And please do not make the mistake of assigning gender roles and jobs. Both of you should learn to do everything from cutting trees to canning tomatoes.

You can start learning to preserve food right now. Buy canning equipment and learn to can and dry foods. Learn to bake and cook from scratch. We bought a lot of fruit and veggies from local farmers and markets and experimented.

Set up a small garden on your property and learn to garden. If you have allotments or community gardens then you can expand your garden and what you can grow. We started with balcony containers.

If you plan on raising animals then read everything you can get your hands on and try to find a farmer who will let you work (for experience) on his farm. We never had any trouble offering our clumsy services and learned a lot.

We did several trial runs. The first involved camping. A few weeks in a tent with only the basics taught us a lot. I NEVER got comfortable with an outhouse.

The second involved getting rid of a lot of modern conveniences at home. We experimented with cooking on our wood stove (not a cook stove but with a flat top), did without refrigeration and electricity and only used water from one outside tap to get used to fetching and carrying. It really showed us what we were willing to do without. Laundry - especially with kids - from hauled water and homemade soap was a real chore and everyone should learn that.

A very good TV series to watch is Pioneer Quest, A Year in the Old West - which is available on the internet.

[Maura]

With such young children it’s hard to get anything done. Start looking for u-pick farms and buy produce in quantity. Learn how to process it whether it’s blanching green beans for the freezer, or making strawberry jam. How much processing do you want to do? I do not can many things, prefer using the freezer. When tomatoes start coming in, you start buying. Which one have the best flavor? Make a plain tomato sauce and either can it or freeze it. Later when you use it, put the additions in (celery, parsley, meat), this is to save space. Tomato juice can be canned. What else?

In your own garden, plant only easy to grow things. String beans, a few tomatoes. Your kids will get the idea of having a garden without it being overwhelming. Plant a few flowers (marigolds keep rabbits away) to make it pretty. Jerusalem artichoke makes a beautiful tall sunflower, and the tubors are edible. Sunflowers are beautiful and you can eat the seeds or leave the seed heads for the birds. Be sure and actually eat everything you plant, including a few JA tubers. There are also bushes available that you can grow and just mow around until the fruit is ready. Hazelnut, blue berries.

In the upper right hand corner of your post is the date you joined, the number of posts you have written, and your location. If you will post your location, in the future people can be more helpful.

[Grandmotherbear]

I understand your concern about Internet safety, N Maine, I share it, but you can put your agricultural zone in your heading as I did. And be aware that a USDA zone is a generalization. Your micro-climate may be higher or lower than the local USDA zone. I'm zone 10 at the lake, on high ground, while the neighbor's daughter lives 3 lakes over on low ground and is zone 8B- can't even raise citrus. At the city, again on high ground and surrounded by asphalt and cement in a heat island, I'm zone 11.

I suggest you read Paradise Lots by Eric Toensmeier. It's about how he and his business partner bought a duplex on 1/10 of an acre and managed to plant it for intensive gardening using perennial vegetables. They were able to get a "handful" of fruit daily during the summer, and quite a lot of vegetables, even tho their main garden was in the local community garden. At the end of the book they were speaking of the need, after marrying their wives and becoming fathers, to move on to separate houses. Even in New England he was able to grow hardy bananas by cutting down the tops, caging them and filling the cages with leaves/straw/mulch every winter. He also stresses the need to know where your sun and shade is in each season of the year.

The next book I suggest you read is his book on Perennial Vegetables Unlike most books on perennials, his is not written for the tropics but for temperate zones. His philosophy is plant Once, Harvest for Many Years. He shows areas for each vegetable as a perennial, and as a "winter lift and spring replant" vegetable. Besides asparagus and rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes and skirret and scorzenona, he gets into vegetables widely grown in temperate Oriental countries. Did you know the Chinese Mountain Yam or Cinnamon Vine, (a true yam, not a sweet potato) is hardy to Zone 4? It forms aerial tubers the size of a large bean, which he recommends treating in cooking like a bean. There are also perennial beans such as Runner Beans for your climate.
Other things you can start doing in anticipation of homesteading is becoming a thrift shopper, learning to sew (yes, you! One of the best Boy Scout leaders I knew could sew and made all his family's sleeping bags, day packs and jungle hammocks on his own sewing machine) Also learning how to do mechanical repairs and plumbing and electrical stuff will set you well on the road to self reliance.
And, of course, keep hanging out here.

[haunted]

Read "Five Acres and Independence". It was written in the 1930's and some of the information is outdated, but it gives a good idea of what can and cannot be done on a small plot. I know yours is smaller than 5 acres, but it still gives an idea. I don't know that I'd buy the book, but maybe you could check it out from the library.

[sammyd]

My favorite is John Seymours The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live it.

With kids that small it is a bit more difficult to get something started. However growing a few things on the porch in containers would be do-able.
A community garden or perhaps renting a patch from someone near the edge of your town. The older kids can help transplant, I sure humped a lot of water and dumped cupfulls on transplants at 4 and 5 yrs old. played in the dirt a bit too....
Gardening and learning how to put food by would be where I would focus in your situation.
Canners, jars, dehydrator, good freezer, vacuum sealer. Buy stuff in bulk and practice using them all.
Hit the library and read what you can, all good resources mentioned here.