Getting Started on the Homestead
A few years ago my now husband and I decided to move out of our childhood homes and purchase a small piece of land together. We now own a small 1 acre property with a house just big enough for us and our 3 dogs, Oliver, Chief, & Nala.
Turning our home into a homestead has taken a lot of work…and I mean A LOT! We are definitely DIY people and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But being a DIYer takes a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money also. Especially when things don’t go exactly the way you planned.
So my biggest piece of advise: Hope for the best but plan for the worst.
3 STEPS TO GETTING STARTED ON YOUR HOMESTEAD
Turning our home into a homestead wasn’t easy, so I don’t want to portray it as something that is just going to fall right into your hands. We both work 1-2 full time jobs, on top of taking care of our 3 pups and our now 16 chickens and 4 goats.
STEP 1: PLANNING
The reason I have this as the first step, or a step before budgeting is because I need a plan before I even start thinking about money. Sometimes people will do it the other way, but this is how I personally do things. I come up with a plan on how I want my project to go, for instance our chicken coop, this started out as a small concrete slab that was already here when we bought the house. This makes cleaning super easy! The building was supposed to be half chicken coop / half greenhouse -which is was for a little while. So I had this plan on how I was going to go about building this and what we were going to use – we had no money – we just bought a house. So I am scrounging up anything and everything I can think of -PALLET WOOD! It’s cheap and somewhat easy to handle. So we did it, we bought about 20 pallets and torn them all apart to build out chicken coop / greenhouse. It turned out great from what my plan was, but the budget got in the way. So before you proceed with any project always check your budget before you execute your plan!
STEP 2: BUDGETING
Just because you are a DIYer doesn’t mean you don’t have to budget, sometimes your DIY project can take just as much money as you would’ve paid someone to do it, especially if you don’t have to background knowledge or experience on that specific project. I use excel or google sheets to build my budget. Separate out all of your items, labor, time, & number of people to figure out exactly what it will cost you. Most of the time I’m just looking at item cost, but if you’re comparing whether or not to do the project yourself or hire someone to do it, you’re going to need to put all of these factors into place.
STEP 3: EXECUTING YOUR PLAN
Now you can proceed with your plan…you’ve planned & budgeted, now gather your materials, and get started! One note I will add is that I love working with my husband on certain projects, we might argue like no other when one thought it was supposed to be one way and the other another way, but anyway -communication is key! We communicate through every step of our projects, check on each other, etc. I think this helps tremendously in creating a successful project, relationship, and healthy work/home environment! Creating a homestead doesn’t have to take a lot of money, but it defiantly takes some time. Putting your heart and soul into your land, and working hard at it to keep it growing and profitable for your family is key.
GO GET’EM!
Now this is just the basic for any project around the homestead, any project will take a lot more detail, and a lot more time than just a 5 minute blog read. This is just a (hopefully) helpful article on getting your own homestead started!
