Level Up: How to Add More Homestead Skills to Your Repertoire
You’ve mastered a few basic homestead skills that you feel like are putting you on your way to a more self-sufficient lifestyle. Maybe you’ve read my post about some simple ways to become more self-sufficient.
Now it’s time to level up your homestead skills.
I wanted to share the natural progression of how learning new things on the farm leads to learning more new things and skills. At least in my own life. Homestead skills grow as we do.
Let me tell you about how we go to where we are today, and how it is doable for anyone
Homestead Skills Reality: Farm Math is Real
It’s a running joke in the homestead world. Chicken math, goat math, and for us, garden math. It’s when you lose track of how many animals you have. When you say, “oh, just two more goats” it somehow magically and mysteriously turns into five.
This principle is just one of those things that come along with homesteading! If you say, “I want to plant three pots of little tomatoes”, chances are, you’ll probably end up with more than three pots.
The reason this happens is because it is downright FUN! It’s like eating chips and the slogan, “You can’t eat just one”!
So it is with learning back to basics homestead skills. Here are some of my favorite examples, and I hope you too will pick up some of these more difficult skills once you master the elementary ones.
Level Up: Baking Bread
In my post about small ways you can add more self-sufficiency in your daily life, the first tip I gave was to learn how to make your own bread.
Finding a simple bread recipe is easy enough. I even gave you my favorite easy recipe.
But once you’ve been making bread for awhile, you begin to see something new emerge on the horizon of your Pinterest search images…
It’s time to level up! Learning sourdough is a really fun and adventurous way to go from the basics to expert level in breadmaking!
You can learn all about rising times, proofing dough, scoring the dough into cute designs, then tasting delicious artisan creations.
Sourdough has become so popular in the past few years that there are endless resources, recipes, YouTube videos, and podcasts on the topic.
This is my post about sourdough for beginners.
Level Up: Gardening
If you’ve learned the basics of container gardening, or even if you’ve had a little pot of herbs on your windowsill and are looking to expand, you need a garden.
Gardening is more than digging up a chunk of dirt and throwing in seeds. You can dedicate a whole cold winter season in researching soil. Then you’ll want to start seeds in your basement. Then you’ll want to build some simple raised beds. Then fertilize.
Then when the spring comes and the threat of frost is over, you’ll want to plant the seeds or the little plants.
You see where I’m going with this? If you start one thing, it’s more than likely going to inevitably lead you to bigger and more awesome things.
Every year, I add another plot of herbs. I want more and more! Every year, my husband plows up an extra few feet of the garden so we can fit more in. ‘Cuz if you’re doing it anyways, why not add a teensy bit more?
Level Up: Preserving
Everyone’s first stint in canning is either jam or refrigerator pickles. My first thing was salsa.
When you catch the canning bug, you will want to can EVERYTHING! This was me a few years ago. You can read more about how to can with the water bath method in my post here for beginners.
With all the tomato plants we have coming in, I have many different ways to can tomatoes: salsa, whole tomatoes, pasta sauce, homemade rotel…you can find so many great ways to use tomatoes!
After you have mastered water-bath canning, you’ll want to invest in a pressure canner. That way you can preserve your low-acid veggies such as potatoes and green beans! Even meat! Pressure canning opens up a whole new world of canning and I love it!
Other than canning, you can learn to preserve food through dehydrating or fermenting. It is a fascinating area of study to learn about what people did before refrigeration. It would benefit you to learn at least a few of these skills, too!
Level Up: Farm Animals
This is a big step that not everyone can take, I know. But if you have a backyard with a little bit of space for a chicken house…go for it! (I also realize people have neighbors and home owner’s associations to contend with.)
Having four or five chickens can supply all of your egg needs. What a huge step in leveling up your game!
Even more of a step forward is getting a rooster and hatching your own chicks. This is an endless supply of chickens! 😀
When my husband and I were first married, we lived on less than an acre. It was still a rural area but we did have a few neighbors and lived right on the road. We utilized every foot of that property!
We had chickens, turkey, two little pigs, a garden, and a bottle calf that we kept in a little shed! Of course, this wouldn’t have been a long term good idea, because the pigs and calf would have outgrown their little pens, but at least we were using our space!
In a few months after we got all these animals, we ended up moving to our current home where we have plenty of room for many more animals.
All I’m saying is…if you can, and you have some spare room, you can do the homesteading things.
If you are ready to do some hard work and dedicate yourself to a few projects, you can most definitely level up in the homesteading skills game.
It’s like if you give a moose a muffin, really it is!
I’ve only scratched the surface of where homesteading can lead you. (I didn’t even mention herbs, soapmaking, milking, sewing, cooking, off-grid skills…all the other things you can learn!)
Let me know how you’ve improved or expanded your homesteading skills! Would you add anything to this list?
