4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start Homesteading

Start homesteading by asking yourself these 4 questions first! In this post, there are questions to ponder, as well as a strategy to figure out where and how to start homesteading.

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Hi, I’m Priscilla!

As a young, growing family facing job loss in 2013, with a toddler and a newborn baby, I wanted to learn how to grow food to supplement our rising grocery bill, but I had no experience. So, I called on my mom to help me start my first garden as cheap as possible. I remember her stewarding a small garden from time to time when I was growing up. We started one with blocks, soil, seeds, and a few starters that she helped me invest in. And that’s how I started!

Before I was a homesteading, homeschooling mom I was a professional musician and music teacher. I carried over my teaching experience into homeschooling my children, but I learned it was much different teaching your own children. And, when I started homesteading, I started with NO experience. It was something I never imagined doing. I had to do a lot of researching and learning each season. So, I know how hard it is to start homeschooling and homesteading with no experience! 

After 2020

After the events of 2020, we saw the vital need to learn to grow, raise, and store real God-given food in abundance, and continue homeschooling all of our children. We felt God had a new call and season for us. So in 2021, we left everything behind, and moved from northwest Indiana to southern Georgia. And we just got started!

How we can help you

Now, I’ve homeschooled for 11 years and have 6 children of homeschool age with 1 more in waiting. And, we established our homestead in 2021 with lots of research and no experience. We built up gardens and livestock and had a small farmstead business within 2 years. We stewarded a small farmstead by selling fresh eggs and healthy chickens to many happy customers! 

Also, we started taking and completing several homesteading courses by experts, and we continue our education every year. And, I’m always looking for ways to make things more time efficient by making them simpler to do and sustainable. When things are simpler, they are more sustainable in our already full lives.

But, an unexpected turn of events landed us in a rental home in an HOA neighborhood while we search for land. We proved to ourselves that we could still homestead even with all the restrictions. We knew if we could do it, others could do it too! So, we started this blog and our newsletter to equip modern families to live abundantly in their homesteads and homeschools no matter where they live and with no overwhelm or burn out. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY! We offer and affordable solutions, free printables, resources, and encouragement for your Christ-centered beginner homesteading, homeschooling journey.

4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start Homesteading:

Being homesteaders for 5 years now, we have such a passion to help homesteading beginners get started. We have posts on homesteading and homeschooling, and tend to have a focus on helping families start homesteading. So, this is just one of many posts that have been on our heart to create for you. Check out more under the Homesteading tab of our blog. There’s also a free printable in our free printable library to help you with the following steps (Homestead through Transitions sheet), and so much more. So, on to the questions to ask yourself before you start homesteading.

1. Why do you want to start homesteading?

What are your reasons for wanting to start homesteading? What are your values, and what do you value most? This will show you where you might want to start by telling you what you want to do most. If your “why” isn’t strong enough of a value or purpose to you, it will be hard to keep going when challenges arise. Your reason for homesteading should be so important to you that you push through when you want to quit. This is how it is with anything in life.

Do you value knowing where your food comes from or knowing that it is full of nutrients? If so, maybe you want to start growing food. Or, maybe you just want to get rid of processed foods in your home and start learning to cook and bake from scratch.

Did you start homesteading because you wanted to stop relying on the grocery store and become more self-sufficient? Or, maybe you wanted to learn skills that will hold up during an emergency or crisis? Is baking bread or learning sourdough most important to you? You can start learning all about sourdough here with Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone.

What about investing in a grain mill and your health by starting to mill your own grains? You can learn to mill your own grains with this super affordable simple course by Lisa Bass as well. Fermenting foods for probiotics and gut health? Are you more concerned with building up your pantry by buying bulk foods from a market and canning them?

Maybe you want a simpler, slower life to savor. A life that enjoys the simple things while still valuing the hard work of providing your family’s food and nurturing your family and little piece of earth. Whatever it is for you.. write it down!

2. What can you absolutely not do?

This question is going to help you eliminate options. Are you in a restrictive situation (i.e. an HOA)? Because then you know that you probably can’t raise chickens, but you can do many other things. Maybe you live in an HOA or an apartment, so you have some limitations like no room for raised beds or you can’t put them up. But, you may have a balcony that you can grow some food on. In an HOA or rental home that may not allow you to use raised beds, you can grow in vertical moving growers, containers, or indoors.

Are you in a season of transition or have a physical/health restriction (i.e. healing from an injury, having a baby, etc)? These things may help determine what you can and cannot do for a season, or at all. There are so many different types of transition seasons and challenges of transitions. (Read about How to Homestead through Transitions here). Knowing what you absolutely cannot do will help eliminate things altogether to help you know how to homestead through transitions. So, if you wrote down any of these things you cannot do in # 1, add it to the second box. It’s time to part with that idea for now.

3. What can you do? 

If that last step felt a little disheartening, this step will help! For this question, don’t just look at restrictions for where you live, but also look at what you have. You may not want to invest a lot of money to get started, so maybe it’s not the right time to start learning to raise animals. Livestock requires investing with time, energy, money, and more. It might be much easier to start growing some seedlings indoors, or cook from scratch. You may not be able to afford starting a bee colony, but maybe you can afford a few bucks to buy some beef bones and learn how to render your own vitamin and mineral rich bone broth!

Brainstorm all the many homesteading skills that you CAN do. Can you practice canning? What about growing herbs indoors? Do you want to keep baking bread or sourdough? Do you want to mill grains? Can you grow food in containers? Can you raise a dairy animal, chickens for eggs, or meat? This does not mean that you will do everything on this list. At least not right away. But, it will be a great reference and can be encouraging to see how much you can do and learn. Then, write it out!

4. What will fit in your current lifestyle? 

This is similar to the other steps, but will help eliminate tasks and skills even more. You may technically be able to can food, but will it be too time-consuming? Cooking everything from scratch might be possible, but will it be too stressful in this time? I encourage you to eliminate the biggest stresses, or delegate them if you can. Or, can you commit to bite-sized learning for the skills you value most? This is one reason we love the School of Traditional Skills. They teach excellently on several homesteading skills and it’s all in short, bite-sized lessons that allow you to learn at your own pace! To date, it is our favorite and MOST Recommended resource for homesteaders.

It’s usually best not to throw yourself into something that requires a lot of discipline right away, but that’s up to you. If it feels too stressful you may be tempted to quit or not keep up with it. However, if you choose something that fits well into your daily flow, habit stack, or learn it in bite-sized lessons (like the School of Traditional Skills), then it will be easier to learn and grow that new skill.

Really think through what will stress you and what will benefit you. But, also know which values are so important to you and your family that they are worth investing the time, energy, and maybe even the money to get started. So, what are the things that fit best in the lifestyle, or you are willing to make it work for? Circle those. You found your focuses! You found the skills you want to learn to start homesteading!

Conclusion

Great! Now, what? Well, it’s time to start homesteading! However, you may have a lengthy list of skills you desire to learn. Remember that the goal is not overwhelm and burn out like many beginning homesteaders find. The goal is life, health, abundance, and your personal answer to why you want to start homesteading (number one). So, create a flow, calendar, or goals that line up with helping you get started. You’ll have to decide the most basic skills that will help you get started. We wrote a post called 5 Homesteading Skills for Beginners to Master First that can help you with where to start.

Also, like we mentioned earlier, School of Traditional Skills is our most recommended resource for homesteaders of EVERY level. We hope you check them out and consider them when learning your list of homesteading skills. As always, we want to equip modern families to live abundantly in their homesteads and homeschools no matter where they live and with no overwhelm or burn out. So, we try to provide simple solutions and simple free resources, as well as links to other simple resources to help you on your adventure.

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Live abundantly, Friend,

Resources for you to start homesteading:

• Learn all kinds of Homesteading skills by the experts at the School of Traditional Skills
• Simple Sourdough Course by Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone
• Freshly Milled Grains Course by Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone
• Affordable Resources in Our Shop
• Free Printables
• Sign up for our newsletter for more resources, tips, and encouragement straight to your inbox!