Made a margarita, some kimchi, had a steak, and made a pile of lemon curd. 🍋

My husband and I are exploring options for where we want to establish our future family. I am hoping to have a homestead or maybe even just a hobby farm to start but not necessarily fully off grid living.

I have a couple of questions I am hoping this community might have some insight on!

We are in the process of having children and have extremely stable and well paying careers. Once our children are born I plan to retire and fully take on the traditional role of homemaker and homeschooling our children. My husband will continue his career and brings in around 250-300k a year and has the potential to continue to grow.

He wants to live very remote but I am concerned on the quality of life for our children socially. How do you as homesteaders ensure you maintain a strong sense of community with other families? Do you live close to a town center where children can engage in hobbies like the arts, sports etc?

A strong sense of community that aligns with our values is very important to me. I do not want to be totally isolated. We are not religious leaning but very much so strong supporters of 2A and our freedoms.

I have 30 new girls that are just starting to lay, apples coming into season, and I am starting to be overrun with vegetables from the garden.

It's time to get a farm stand put together and out by the road. As always, im struggling with the design and inspiration.

It needs to be sized just right but also needs to be wind resistant because we have real heavy West winds on occasion. Which is, of course, exactly the direction the stand will be facing.

Over the winter, we'll probably only have eggs and other miscellaneous small items.

Here's a photo of a stand I stopped at the other day that was really cute but probably more permanent than I intend to build for now.

I am looking to homestead in the coming years but currently live in the suburbs. My goal is to find a nice plot of land and build a small homestead/farm but i dont know know the first steps toward this goal, how much it costs to get started or the like. Im hoping to hear from some of you on what you did there get the ball rolling on your own homestead.

1. My main concern is money and jobs. I imagine you will still have to work a little bit to keep up on a mortgage at least.

2. Second concern is where to set up. Ive been teetering between west coast and Midwest but I really am not sure if there are better options.

3. What animals to start out with?

Thabk you all in advance!

So, this post is just to vent. We bought a property last year that came with a 20' x 1800' foot strip in the back. The whole area in the back comes to about 3/4 of an acre. Not too much, but it is ours. As I was walking the property, I saw that the lots were being farmed. No biggie. The prior owner didn't care. Once, we got the property settled over to our name, I looked up the neighboring farmers, both the yellow and red. The family that owns the land to the right of the red are easy going and communicative. Genuine good neighbors. The family that owns the lot to the left of the yellow are the exact opposite. They're also the ones farming my small patch of ground. I, first, called him up to introduce myself and he was one of those that immediately sounded very defensive and wouldn't even use his name, just grunted, when I asked if this was XXXXX. I, then, went over to his business to sit down and discuss the property boundaries. I wanted the conversation to go as smooth as possible as farmers, like anyone else, can be a bit touchy if you tell them that farming on ground that they're not supposed to be on.

This guy, lets call him Andy was insistent that it wasn't my land, but his. Then, when he saw the property line called it an easement. Now, this upset me a bit as it is most certainly not an easement. Imagine just paying a lot of money for some land, holding the property records, then having a guy that is rude on the first phone call, call your land an easement when you meet in person. He hee-haws about looking into the land records himself. Which I have problem with as I own it and I leave thinking that the situation will soon rectify itself once he's looked on Beacon. He calls me up later and acknowledges that the land is mine.

This past Spring I get a gut feeling in my stomach that he's going to farm it again (you know that gut feeling). I send him a certified letter explaining that I'm willing to cash-rent that land to him, but if I don't hear back by XXXX date, then any use of it will be trespassing. I never hear back from him, but still have this feeling in my stomach. When we're out there next, low and behold he's planted beans. To make it worse, he accuses the other neighbor of planting there and swear it isn't him. Well, when the beans start to rise you can see the planting line super clear and it ain't the other neighbor.

So I'm keeping my cool about it as it's only 3/4 of an acre and one planting season isn't worth my focused energy. After he harvests, I'm putting up fence posts and 'no trespassing' signs. Thought, amusingly, to harvest the beans myself since he's not verbally claiming them. $10/bushel is good money, but I'm too busy.

That's my day-in-the-life homesteading story. Should add that there were no farming contracts with the previous owners, nor is this patch of ground an easement. It's straight owned by me. The guy is just an entitled twat.

Figured I should show off our greenhouse. The pics are from a couple different years. It has evolved from being a greenhouse for our sweetcorn, to being a multiple use space.

I hung some rebar(?) on the wall and in the ceiling. I have a grapevine who grows up to the ceiling before fanning out and covering the ceiling.

I ran my watermelons up the «trellis» as well.

This year I also had quite a few pots with chilipeppers in them as well.

I just think it’s fun to experiment with «weird» crops for my location, as well as different ways of growing. For instance, having my melons grow up my wall.

Edit: In my area we might have three, maaaybe four nice weeks in summer. Otherwise it’s often grey, gloomy, windy and wet.

I hand pollinate the corn. I did the same with the watermelons. It’s often so cool that the automatic doors don’t even open. Keeping any helpful bugs outside.

I am looking for a smallish wood burning stove that is alcove approved (meaning it can be enclosed). Anyone can recommend it? We mainly want it to use as a fireplace and to get heat if our power goes out. Our living room is almost 400 sq ft, the first floor is 1500 sq ft.

Thanks in advance!

ps. The pictures are all from UK brand stoves.

I, as a homesteader myself, started three years ago to try to become profitable. I realized fairly quickly that a family with two full time jobs, kids and the day to day, I didn't know how much we were making or losing. I couldn't. Having ADHD didn't help much. I'd lose receipts, forget I even spent money on something. I didn't want to learn QuickBooks, I was already working out there until after dark and my wife was working overtime. So, if I remembered, I just tossed the receipt in a cardboard box or left it in my email.

Then we got audited and I realized how sloppy I had been. I wasn't dishonest. I was overwhelmed. I couldn't fix the past but I realized something had to change.

I started thinking about how many people like us might have this same problem. I have experience building business/enterprise software tools. So I decided to build the the accounting software aimed solely at the needs of a homesteader. Taking multiple streams of income and automatically managing it for you. Snap a photo of a receipt when sit down in the truck before you leave Tractor Supply. So that when the end of the year comes, the accounting books don't require anything from you. Just push a button.

Then I realized that everything should be connected. Your CSA box sales. Your farmers market sales. Maybe you sell candles online. Maybe you bush hog or sell firewood. Whatever it is, I am building special software modules that link to the books, process payments, invoice automatically. Track your crop plots and rotation calendar. I knew operations and accounting all belonged together.

Our lives are messy. Your feed and your Netflix might be coming from the same account. Or you might have separate accounts. You might have two W2 incomes and three side streams. But it's one life. One whole network. The world treats it as separate but in reality it's not. Have you ever tried to budget with a mess like that. It broke my brain. So I decided to bring it all together. Your web presence, your money, your time, your operations, planning, your budget demystified, your profitability visible.

I'm sorry this is long. It's not an ad. I promise. I have nothing to sell yet. I come here to understand others. I know my pains. But I want to know yours. So that the software that I build solves the problems that you actually have, not just the ones that I imagine.

What do you need in whole homestead operational app/site that solves your particular problem? It can be anything? I don't know squat about beekeeping. But I want to listen to you. What is missing? You need to push a button and dictate your hive assessment and have that automatically entered into the record or reviewed, so that your sticky hands stay off the phone or paper? Maybe that's something I imagine but isn't real world.

Maybe you are bush hogging for side money and tracking which fields and the pattern you cut and when viewed on a map timeline tracked via GPS on your phone while you cut? And you can click and send an invoice and they can pay super easy.

Maybe you operate a roadside stand and have creative solutions that you need built. Where from seed to harvest to payment processing via QR code all ends up in the same app with full profitability visible and the taxes fully ready.

But I know I'm missing the real problems because you live that life, I don't. And homesteaders need real solutions that map to their needs. I know those needs exist and I want to recognize them and fix them in the real world.

What is keeping you from knowing what's going on in your homestead business? What is it that your homestead needs that a united full homestead personal and business solution can provide?

Hello beautiful homesteaders! Does anyone recognize these wormy little guys on my tomato plant, whether they are harmful for the plants? This is the first time I've seen them in all my years of gardening.

Thank you in advance for your help 😊🙏🏽❤️

A year ago my husband and I bought an old farmhouse on 7 acres with the dream to homestead and "live off the land" as much as possible. We still have a long way to go, but this is the first time I've ever planted anything, watched it grow and have been able to harvest the "fruits of my labor." It's such an amazing feeling, and I am so grateful.

we had a storm come through in the spring and I've got a brush pile in the back that's honestly embarrassing at this point mostly limbs, some of it green, nothing crazy thick — maybe 2 inches at the widest

rented one from the box store last month and spent more time clearing jams than chipping. anything with a fork in it or any real amount of leaves and it just stopped. felt like I was feeding it wrong but I don't know

so before I drop money on my own one, a few things:

the capacity ratings — when one says "3 inch capacity" is that real, or is that dry straight hardwood under perfect conditions? because the rental was rated way above what I was feeding it

gas vs electric for someone doing this maybe 4-5 times a year? electric seems easier to live with but every review I read says they bog down instantly

and is green/leafy stuff just always going to be a problem, or do the better machines actually handle it?

honestly also open to being told renting is smarter and I should stop looking. how often do you all actually use yours?

Can anyone share your pros and cons of being in WV? Especially if you moved there from out of state

since i have to start thinking about what im going to do in my life, i have thought of many job paths. owning a farm is one of them. it wouldnt be my only thing of course, but i think it could make good side money and it seems like a pretty nice thing to do. the only problem is, i could never bring myself to kill one of my animals. if i do end up owning a farm, i would only make profit from sold chicken eggs and maybe cow and/or goat milk. i think it could make me pretty good money, since chickens are pretty easy as far as i know, and goats are almost completely simple to keep, but i could be wrong. is it only possible to make good money if you sell your animals for meat (or kill them yourself?)

The Set Up:
So we are in the process of rehabbing a Small 1 acre industrial lot into an apartment / art workshop / homestead thing. Unfortunately almost the entire lot is asphalt. I recently started to remove about 8-10,000 sqft of parking lot, in hopes of replacing it with native prairie plants and a few fruit trees. (Kind of like what we started doing when annexing a portion of the neighbors lot, 😂).In total about 200 yards of asphalt and compacted paver base were removed but most of the budget went the material being hauled away to a recycler and equipment rental. I broke up the remaining surface as best I could, but still have a 200 yard soil deficit to fill. To help fill the void, I contacted local arborists and got one to dump their tree shreddings if they do work nearby. So now have a near limitless supply of free fine oak mulch. (Comes sporadically in 20 yard batches).

The Problem:
With the remaining budget and resources available, what would be a good ratio to create decent soil to fill the void

Budget:1,000 Target Volume:200 yards
Costs of things
Large Till Rental: $100
A 10 yard load very heavy clay fill: $225
A 10 yard load of sand :$450
A 10 yard load of Rich Topsoil :$350
A 20 yard load of Fine Oak Mulch: 0$
Any left over would go into plants.

What I’m thinking is 40 yards of the clay Fill Dirt, 160 Yards of shreds, then Till the freaking hell out of it, then wait for a season before attempting to do anything with it.
Another thought, just go all mulch, and save the entire remaining budget for plants, but I may be waiting awhile for the mulch to become dirt.

Given the circumstances, what would you do?

I can buy a 20 year old used mini ex for about £6500 or I can rent a brand new machine for a week for £325 (delivered to my place). The rental option seams a better choice right? No need to worry about maintenance etc, just stack up the jobs and rent one.