When we decided to add animals to our five-acre Tennessee homestead, I spent weeks researching the best low-maintenance homesteading animals for beginners with limited space and experience. I made spreadsheets comparing feed costs, housing requirements, and time commitments. Ben just wanted goats because they looked fun. Three years in, we’ve settled on chickens, goats, and…
When I first started reading about zero-waste homesteading tips to reduce your environmental impact on a small farm, I thought the answer was composting everything. Every scrap, every eggshell, every coffee ground went into our bin. We’d save money, feed the soil, and feel good about ourselves. Ben thought I was overthinking it, but I…
Ben found me googling “elderberry extract dosage for chickens” at midnight, and instead of asking why I was treating poultry with folk medicine, he just handed me coffee and said we should probably stick to simple natural remedies and herbal medicine for common homestead ailments that actually work on humans first. Three years into this…
I was standing in the feed store last month staring at a $89 feeder, doing math in my head about how much we’d spent on chicken supplies in three years, when Martha from the next farm over tapped my shoulder. “You know Ben’s building those now, right?” she said, pointing to a wooden version that…
Three months before we moved out here, I bought every homesteading book on Amazon and watched about forty YouTube videos on essential homesteading skills for urban dwellers. I made spreadsheets. I researched breeds and varieties and soil amendments until Ben started hiding my laptop. Then we got here and discovered that none of it prepared…
The chicken coop door hinges squeaked at 5:47 this morning when I went to let the girls out. That sound always reminds me of the three massive mistakes I made when we first started raising chickens for eggs and meat on our tiny homestead. Mistakes that nearly ended our whole chicken operation before it really…
When you’re looking at five acres and wondering how to make it actually pay for itself, most advice starts with “find your passion” or “follow market trends.” That’s not helpful when you’re three years in and your grocery budget is still the same size it was in the suburbs. What I needed were low-cost ways…
The homesteading blog I’d been reading all winter promised that easy homesteading projects for families to do together would “naturally bring everyone closer to the land and each other.” Three months in, Ben was hiding in the barn to avoid another “learning opportunity,” and I was googling “how to make kids stop complaining about chickens.”…
I thought homesteading projects for families would be like those Instagram posts – everyone smiling in matching flannel, kids gathering eggs while the sun sets golden over the pasture. What I got instead was my eight-year-old nephew crying in the chicken coop because Hank knocked over the water bucket he’d just filled, and my sister…
Three years ago, when I was researching the best crops to grow in a small homestead garden, I made a spreadsheet. Color-coded it by yield per square foot, harvest windows, storage life. I had charts about companion planting and soil nutrient depletion. What I should have done was ask Martha down the road what actually…