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How Homesteading Can be a Job

Have you ever wondered if it was possible to quit your day job and live completely self-sufficiently, entirely off the land without having to listen to anyone else? Doing exactly what you want every day, fulfilling work that brings you joy and fulfillment? With homesteading this is not only possible, but almost guaranteed.

Full-Time Work

As a homesteader, you will very likely have many activities and chores to tend to throughout your day. Everything from tending to your garden, taking care of pets and livestock, to canning foods or building structures by hand.

While homesteading is truly a simpler lifestyle, harking back to the “good old days” where technology didn’t rule the day today or control everything like gardening, cooking or animal husbandry. But while it is a simpler lifestyle, it is genuinely hard work. And it takes up a lot of time. Tending to chickens or livestock, building coops or irrigation systems for your garden that you also have to tend to every day, plucking weeds and watering. It certainly isn’t an easy lifestyle.

Reducing Your Costs

Through a homesteading lifestyle, you will be able to reduce your cost of living substantially. Maybe even save money! You no longer have to drive to work every day, you’re not spending money on morning coffees or lunch at the office. It really adds up.

You can buy your clothes from thrift stores, instead of brand new from expensive department stores. It’s possible to build almost anything you need out of pallets, which you can get for free. Breeding animals for sustainability is also an option, keeping chickens for eggs and further breeding them to ensure you don’t have to keep buying chicks. When you get down to it, saving money as a homesteader is much easier than the lifestyle suggests.

Learning New Skills

One of the most exciting and rewarding things about being a homesteader is learning plenty of new skills, ones you would be lacking were you still living your “typical” 9 to 5 lifestyle. It is truly empowering to learn how to do something new, working directly with your own hands, mastering a skill that many would view as utterly foreign.

The life of homesteading teaches you many news skills, all of which will benefit you in many ways, from helping you grow as a person to saving you lots of money by doing the work yourself instead of hiring a “professional” with outrageous prices. You can milk your own cows or goats, learn to cut down a tree safely, you can even learn about plumbing and fix your own pipes when problems arise. This lifestyle may not be for everyone, but it is certainly rewarding in many ways.

Making Money

It’s possible to make money as a homesteader, you just have to get a little creative. If you have a large garden, you can collect and sell your produce at your local farmers market. Have some extra space? Grow trees to sell! All you need to get started is some fruit seeds. Grow them until they’re about 3 months old, then sell them off for profit. If you eat a lot of fruits, it’s practically free to start. Or if patience isn’t your strong suit, simply collect and sell the seeds themselves instead.

In fact, there are many things you could sell for profit. Livestock such as goats, pigs or cattle, produce, chickens and quail and their eggs. Earning a profit as a homesteader isn’t as difficult as it may seem at first. Just look around, you’ll be certain to find something you can earn some extra cash with.

9 Comments

  1. Your flippant lip service about how much money you will save and how easy it is to earn money if you are creative is an insult to every small farmer who is struggling to stay afloat, working an off-farm job to keep the books just barely in the black, and a disservice to those thinking about making the leap into full-time homesteading.

    1. Hi Jean – I completely agree with you. There’s a lot of misinformation, just in this one issue. Chickens are good for gardens?! I allowed mine (only ten) to scratch around, and they ate all my tender green plants, my grapes, apples, uprooted my fruit trees (hunting grubs), and, when the rains came, turned it all into a compacted mud patch.
      I hope it gets easier for you.

    2. Farming is an industrial process it is detrimental to the environment. Monoculture is a threat to global food security and causing climate change. I think homesteading is the way to produce our own food so we don’t have to depend on inputs and create micro circular economies. Everyone should be given a small forest and a grassland. This will reverse global warming immediately.

  2. Wonderful article, pretty much sums up my lifestyle now. I fix the plumbing, build what need building, have chickens, ducks and sheep, have irrigation set up everywhere, grow my own fruit trees, have started to generate excess produce for sale and have forest gardens. My income is low and diverse but I keep my costs as low as possible too. It’s hard work and definitely not easy but it’s very, very rewarding.

  3. Nice article..
    I quit my job and walking towards self sustainable living, started growing vegetables, millets and raising poults and eggs. As of now no income but I am very Happy..

  4. Jean is 100 % Right!
    To get started you have to BUY Animals, seeds, Equipment etc.. then you have to FEED the Animals & maintain the Equipment..ONE person CANNOT work a 5 acre farm! So, You either try & find “Interns” that will pay a small fee to “LEARN” OR Advertise on Craigs list or somewhere else ( that will cost you also)! Then you USUALLY end up with Free Loaders..ppl who think that this “Idyllic” Life means staying in bed til Noon.. It is WORK and Homesteading COSTS you MONEY!

    1. Helpful summary. This article obviously wasn’t meant to be encyclopaedic. There are clearly many different ways to do things. Perhaps another article covering motivational tips or help regarding stress management or referrals to health professionals would benefit those doing it tough. Keep on going, I hope those doing it tough have some breakthroughs soon. All the best.

  5. One can make it on a small homestead if they are creative, sensible, and articulate. Here are some ideas that work.

    *Reduce all unnecessary expenses
    *Do not waste time, money, space, or opportunities
    *Co-0p with other homesteaders, share equipment, labor, and expenses
    *Buy, sale, trade animals, produce, equipment etc.
    *Be industrious, work your farm
    *Become an investor, use your money to make money

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