What does it mean to be a modern-day homesteader?
Have you asked yourself what are homesteaders? You’ve heard the term a lot but you don’t really understand what that means in the 2000s.
A modern-day homesteader is someone who strives to live a simple lifestyle in a self-sufficient manner, with minimal impact on the environment. Homesteading is a lifestyle that focuses on living close to nature and self-sufficiency. Modern homesteaders are growing their own food, caring for the land they have, raising their own livestock, and living a simpler and more sustainable life.
A big question that modern homesteaders ask themselves is how they can be more self-sufficient. This leads to finding alternatives to electricity from the grid, plumbing, promoting a local food economy and a barter economy, and learning to find substitutes for food items that can be either grown on the homestead or purchased locally.
Homesteaders often want to live outside of the bureaucracy and red tape, which plays a big part in where many homesteaders choose to settle down.
Most modern-day homesteaders will have large gardens, preserve much of their own food, raise their own dairy animals, and hunt or raise their own meat.
Modern Homesteading is a Journey, So Enjoy Every Moment
Modern homesteading is a journey, not a destination. The day-in and day-out of homesteading, especially when you’re first beginning, can feel monotonous or like a wave of never-ending farm chores. If you’re coming from a traditional city life, the change to being a full-time homesteader (with or without a job off-farm) can be kind of a shock.
But it’s important to remember that being a homesteader is a lot of work, especially at the beginning, but it’s worth every step in the end. It’s important to enjoy the little things in every day because the projects will never be done; there will always be things you can improve, grow, change, or start. If you wait until things are done to appreciate the homestead life, you’ll never be satisfied.
Homesteading also starts before you ever move to your homestead. You can start modern-day homesteading in an apartment in the middle of the city. It starts with a lot of research and making small steps to becoming more self-sufficient. That could be growing some herbs in an Aerogarden, buying local beef and pork, and making your own jam from farmer’s market fruit. You can start homesteading wherever you are.
Why I’m a Homesteader
Homesteading has been my dream life long before I knew it was possible to homestead in this day and age. When my now-husband and I met, I was excited to learn that he had a dairy farm with cows and lived a farm life. But farming wasn’t quite what I envisioned it to be.
Oftentimes, modern-day farmers are growing with a focus purely on providing products to the public and don’t make their products for themselves. I continued to work an off-farm job and didn’t have any direct involvement in making milk or using our milk to make food for our family.
But then I wanted to get goats to make goat milk soap and cheese. That endeavor entered us into a whole new world where I found that there ARE other people who want to live like me, I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t alone. So while my husband still dairy farms, I work to build our self-sufficient homestead (with his support, of course).
Homesteading allows us to be more self-sufficient. When there are concerns about supply chain issues, we don’t have to worry about our food or supplies because we can grow our own food and make many of our own products.
Homesteading keeps us healthier. The chores around the homestead keep us moving in a world where so many live a primarily sedentary lifestyle. Daily chores, building projects, gardening, and foraging keep us engaging in many different types of movement for full-body strength and cardio workouts.
We also end up eating healthier by using the abundance that comes from our gardens, drinking fresh raw milk from our goats and cows, making our own cheeses and dairy products, fermenting and canning everything we can. We have a small orchard that will soon leave us loaded with fruits in the summer and fall, which will allow us to take one more step towards a new kind of self-sufficiency.
We are happier because we feel a great sense of purpose and satisfaction in homesteading. Not only are we eating the freshest foods available, but we’re also acting as stewards to our land, and witnessing and experiencing birth and death on our farm helps us be more in tune with the cycle of nature as our gardens grow and die, and grow again, livestock is born and eventually dies. It’s humbling and moving as we live in a state of awe and gratitude for what is going on around us.
I started homesteading long before I ever became a “homesteader.” I spent time learning about gardening and fermenting, and I tried to purchase locally. You can start homesteading even if you live in a small city apartment! It starts with the mindset and then everything else will fall together.
Why Do People Homestead?
Homesteading is a way of life that revolves around self-reliance, sustainability, and self-sufficiency. Many people start homesteading because they want to live a healthier life, eat organic food they raised themselves, and get out of traditional 9-5 corporate jobs.
Pursued in different ways around the world and in different historical eras, homesteading is generally differentiated from rural village or commune living by isolation (either socially or physically) of the homestead.
People homestead for a variety of reasons, including independence and self-sufficiency. Many people leave their 9-5 jobs and find work-at-home or part-time freelance work that allows them to spend more time building their homestead while still having a source of income.
Not everyone wants to make an income off of their homestead, but for those who do, it can be very helpful to have a flexible job to work on the side so that you aren’t pressured to build everything from scratch immediately in order to survive. Building a sustainable income on the homestead takes time and effort.
Many people begin homesteading with the idea of bringing their children back into nature and providing a legacy for them to take over. Homesteading with children makes daily chores take longer, but the knowledge and experience they will gain can’t be beat. By being connected to their food and the land, they will be able to make wiser choices throughout the rest of their lives. Even if your kids don’t stay on the homestead forever, they will always have the knowledge and experiences they received as they grew up.
Homesteading and Self-Reliance
Homesteading is a way of living that involves self-sufficiently and sustainability. Learning to become self-reliant and not have to buy everything at the store becomes an amazing skill set that will serve for years to come.
Raising your own food, butchering your own meat, and knowing how to prepare and preserve it all will help you to save money on groceries, eat healthier, and achieve your goals of being self-reliant and living sustainably.
Making Ends Meet as A Homesteader
Homesteading is the practice of sustaining oneself through efforts at self-reliance, but in order to get started and build your homestead, you need to have a source of income that’s either off-homestead or from selling homestead products.
Frugality is a key skill to hone before you ever get to your homestead. The shiny object syndrome with homesteading can be easy to fall into as there are so many cool new tools and implements you can purchase for your projects, your garden, and your livestock. But if you chase them all, you will easily run out of money quickly.
If you want to make money on your homestead and not have an off-homestead income source, you should create a business plan and figure out what products you want to sell, how you plan to create and market them, and what income you need to make ends meet.
When you’re just starting out on the homestead, you shouldn’t plan to immediately make a living wage. Building a business, especially a homestead-based business, takes time!
How do you become a modern homesteader?
Modern homesteading is the process of living off the land, or trying to do so, in a sustainable manner. Modern homesteaders can create a sustainable lifestyle by learning how to plant, tend and harvest their own food, and sustain themselves through the seasons.
If you don’t currently own land, you can still start homesteading where you are. An easy way to start is to grow some potted plants, use an Aerogarden, start a garden in your yard, or rent a community garden plot for the season.
Use every opportunity to grow so that you can learn as much as you can. Every lesson you learn before moving to your homestead is one less thing you’ll have to learn later. Read all of the books you can (here are some of my favorites below) and take notes. Join groups, listen to other people’s questions, make note of their answers, and prepare as much as possible.
- Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett Markham
- Skills For Growing: Sowing, Spacing, Planting, Picking, Watering and More by Charles Dowding
- The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-to-Basics Guide by John Seymour
- Homegrown Pantry by Barbara Pleasant
Now you should understand what a homesteader is and why people may choose to be homesteaders. It’s truly a lifestyle choice that resonates in our cores. It feels right for us. It may not be right for you, or your version of homesteading could look very different from your neighbor’s, but it is right for someone. We all have things we can learn from each other, so I would encourage you to keep learning and experimenting with what being a modern-day homesteader means to you,
