Grow & Raise What you Eat
As you begin homesteading you will quickly discover the huge and exciting opportunities to take charge of your food supply. You will begin to assess and organize your needs and wants in order to move forward. There will be opportunities to play with ideas, such as growing five different types of beans to pick your favorite. There will be other opportunities where you don’t play. You make firm decisions to move forward due to time, space, supply of labor, and finally, money.
Experimenting
Have fun dabbling in trials and errors in ways that don’t break the bank or your time and labor! I have done massive amounts of planting to finally hone in on our staple list of crops that we grow. Experimenting with seeds can be relatively cheap, and even free, if you have a community seed share system in place. I have a lot of seeds I have saved and have no plans to use, and I’m happy trade if a neighbor has a specific seed I need! You may have a large enough plot of land that you can plant the same crop in different locations to see where it thrives!
Discovering what style of gardening you want to pursue is also a crazy fun process – we love Square Foot Gardening. Have fun with all of this and enjoy your own creative path. Perhaps you are unsure of what kind of hens to purchase, but you are excited to begin collecting your own eggs. We chose eight different hen breeds to see which ones fit within our barnyard family. Some early projects are cheap and have little risk, while others require serious thought before moving forward.
Planning for Big Decisions
We wanted to have our own goat’s milk and make our own cheese. We researched, we talked to other goat owners and we bought goats. My husband spent a year milking one of our goats and freezing all of the milk. We then proceeded to make cheese and discovered that – shocker of shockers – this was not for us. It’s necessary to invest time and energy into creating cheese (aka milking a goat every morning). We loved the idea of it, but once we did it, we knew within six months that this was not going be a permanent part of our homestead world.
As a result, we have goats that are now pets, and that’s fine. However, the bottom line is that this is an expense that does not produce anything for us in terms of food. That’s okay with us, but it could be a hardship for another homesteader. Sometimes your goals will change and can be an expense, so choose wisely. And by the way we love our pet goats 🙂 Meet Rutabaga, Miss Swiss, Lola and Harry.
Raising Our Own Beef
We knew we wanted to raise our own beef. Darrin, my husband, researched. We planned our fencing and our space, and bought two heifers. We live on a little under two acres, so space is a luxury and we use it wisely. While our heifers did beautifully growing on our land, they definitely cost us in feed (as expected), fencing and the over all dynamics of our animals. While I loved our cows, ultimately, I am not sure I would raise cows again on our property. However, it has paid off monetarily in our freezer and our heifers have provided us with meat going on three years. We have had so much meat that we have been able to share with family and neighbors.
That said, our limited space—and the effect a cow would have on our animal dynamics—may lead me to partner with a neighbor who already raises cows and would be willing to raise ours for an agreed-upon price or barter. Also, understanding the cost of raising cows is crucial before diving into this endeavor – it is pricey to feed two cows. And if you struggle with the idea of eating your own animals, read my post I Finally Ate Our Cows and Chickens.
Growing what you eat and raising what you eat is a never-ending adventure. You will need to assess your space, time, energy, climate and finances to pick and choose what works for you. Examine your community and learn from others and see how you can benefit one another! For example, perhaps one community member grows cabbage, another grows beans, and you simply trade at the end of the growing season. The same could occur with pork and beef. We receive a lot of trades in the form of meat and canned goods – a well-cared for community can be a huge factor when examining your food supply needs and wants.
