This is my honest review of homesteading. For reference, I have been homesteading for 6 years. I currently have 3 gardens, cows, both beef and dairy, pigs, geese, ducks, and chickens. I am by no means an expert on anything and would still be considered a newbie especially in the animal department.
Lets start with gardening.
I grew up with flower beds, and as a kid, I helped my mom with them. In my later teen years, we planted a small vegetable garden with Okra, Tomatoes, Peppers, and a couple other things. I started a sidewalk garden in my early 20s and moved it into our backyard the next year. Now, I have an herb garden, main garden that will be in production next year, a pumpkin and potato patch, and an orchard. All in all, I have around 10 years of vegetable garden experience and somewhere around 20 years of garden experience in general.
But what about preserving it all?? I may have some years under my belt with gardening, but I am relatively new to growing enough to preserve. I have only owned a canner for a few years and this is my first year with a dehydrator. After a few years of growing and preserving, here are my thoughts.
It is a lot of work!! Of course it’s a lot of work, but you don’t fully understand what that means until your looking at over 400 lbs of apples and realize you have to process all of this and your family could have it all gone within a few months. That’s just one produce coming in. There are hundreds of pounds of tomatoes, pears, and potatoes. Fresh green beans by the basket full each day, dozens of peppers and broccoli crowns, pounds of blueberries, grapes, and strawberries. Bunches of carrots, lettuce to be cut each week, melons coming ripe on the vine and pumpkins in the fall. That is only some of the things you can grow. You have to sow each seed, transplant each starter plant, care for them as they grow, and then you can harvest the produce. When the produce is ready, you gotta make a plan to get it processed quickly. Some things can wait a bit, for instance, apples can rest in a cool spot for weeks, and even months if necessary, but you have to watch for rotten ones so you don’t lose all the apples to rot. Lettuce on the other hand, cannot be picked and then left on the counter for a day or two. You need to process it right away.
You might have to change your diet a bit. I cannot afford the number of blackberry plants it would take to satisfy my kids want for them and blackberry jam. We can’t eat as much of that, but with our apple trees, we need to eat more than we normally would. I don’t have the time to care for the 70 plus blueberry plants it would take to feed my family as much as we normally eat, but I have a surplus of strawberries that I wouldn’t have normally bought. Meals and snacks had to change for my family to conform to what was possible for us to grow where we are.
You have to be willing to learn. Not only is there a lot to learn about starting and growing plants, but what to do about diseases that may come through, pests trying to eat your produce, how to preserve it all and do it correctly and safely, and a necessary time management plan. There will be different methods and opinions out there as to the correct way of doing things and you have to find what will work best for you which might take a couple growing seasons.
It can be a large mental load. Keeping the kids on track for school, I homeschool so I have to make sure the kids get a good education as well as get the produce processed, and manage a household. I have animals so I need to make sure their needs are met as well. Homesteading has its moments of wanting to sit down in the corner under blankets and forget I had things to do. It can be very overwhelming.
It can be disappointing. There is room for lots of disappointments. The bushels of potatoes you were hoping for might have turned into half a bushel of bite sized roaster potatoes. The lettuce might have bolted before you had a chance to harvest any. The peach trees might have been ravaged by worms and died. The herbs you were hoping for never sprouted. the melon vines only produced a couple melons, etc. I have had it all happen. But let’s say it all goes right. The first meal I made from scratch off my homestead was lasagna. I’m talking local beef, mozzarella and cottage cheese I made, tomato sauce from my own grown tomatoes, herbs, and homemade noodles. It was delicious. BUT, I had also read about the satisfaction one would get from making a meal out of your own hard work. It seemed very romanticized to me. To be honest, I was disappointed. As good as it tasted, it didn’t feel worth the work to me. I knew it was the best thing for us so I kept doing it and the more I did it, the more I felt satisfied and even excited for the meals I made from the seed up. But it certainly didn’t start that way.
Is the work worth it to me?? In short, yes.
It is something everyone should try. I can understand how some people would not want to continue this. I have resolved to continue to homestead. When it comes down to it, I do enjoy it. Working in the dirt and getting outside is always good for the soul. Having a return on all the work is nice too, there is nothing quite as good as a freshly picked cherry tomato in my opinion. It may be a lot of work, but I know this food is better for us. There is also, the practical side of things. It’s cheaper to grow your food than buy it at a store, and I like practical ways of saving money.
