How we build a homestead FAST without debt.
How do you build a homestead quickly - without debt or expertise?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is - you can’t.
The old saying, “you can do it fast, cheap, or well - but you can’t do all three” rings true for homesteads too.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. And building a farm also takes time. No amount of money or experience can skip passed the maturity time required for perennial veggies or fruit trees.
As anxious as we are to see all our homestead-dreams come to life, we are committed to building our little property up as we have the cash. And having a husband who works full time (and then some) off farm means sometimes things don’t get done for a loooong time. And other times, they get done quick. But maybe not up to the standards we would prefer to do them.
(On instagram we call that #goodenoughhomesteading - you can go there to check out that hashtag… or click here to see more and gain some inspiration if you are also limited on money but want to make progress on your homesteading dreams!)
Even though it can be a test to my patience sometimes, we’ve ultimately found value in our “slow and steady” approach to building our homestead.
It’s saved us money not having to do things we rushed into only to realize we want them differently.
It’s challenged us to be resourceful and prioritize.
And it’s helped us to appreciate when we finally do get that “next upgrade” even more.
It’s our favorite week of the year!
Last spring, Tommy took a rare week off work so we could knock out some bigger farm projects. It was such a blessing to have a large span of time to work that we decided to do it again this year!
He’s been off for the past 7 days and been wildly productive. On top of getting a list of lingering “maintenance jobs” done (like fixing broken spigots… moving compost piles… repairing wheel barrows and fencing… you know, all those little things that add up!)…
He and the big kids have also finished some major necessary tasks (like weaning and castrating the first batch of piglets, cleaning out 3 truck bed loads of winter bedding from the chicken coop, finishing building our wood storage lean-to, and playing “musical chickens” (moving our laying flock into their summer coop and moving our meat chicks into the coop from their temporary smaller brooder space)… and we still have two days left!
I (Beth) have mainly been working in the garden… painting the interior of the fence, finishing my final few areas of clean up and woodchips, and preparing to plant my cold weather crops.
It feels so good to fall into bed at night physically exhausted and fulfilled after a long winter of “rest”.
There’s someone new we want you to meet!
If you followed along in 2022, it was a really rough year for us dog-wise.
In June, our 7 year old LGD Bernice was hit by a car.
It was heartbreaking. And our 1 year old pup, Karl, really missed her.
We’ve always found that LGDs work best in pairs. Ideally with a year or more gap between them so the older one has matured enough to train the younger one.
We figured with the loss of Bernie, we’d look for another pup maybe later on in the fall. But then in November, Karl unexpectedly got sick. In a matter of days, he was gone too.
To be honest, we felt like failures as dog owners. How could we lose BOTH our dogs in the matter of 6 months!?
We needed to take time to grieve both losses - but especially Karl’s considering we were left with no answers and a lot of “what ifs”. But the reality is, our farm needs guard dogs to protect our livestock. And Unfortunately - being down to no dogs and wanting two that are not the same age - we were looking at 2-3 years before we were fully protected again. So we needed to start finding replacements soon.
We didn’t want to adopt an older dog due to past experiences having struggled to train them to property lines. But in January, one of our friends called. They had a dog. She was a year old. And they needed her to be rehomed and wanted to gift her to us.
Honestly, at the time I was about 38 weeks pregnant and NOT exactly looking to bring a new dog to our property that needed to be trained on fencing/perimeters in the middle of winter… but after thinking about it we knew it would be a huge blessing to have a dog young enough to potentially still train easily, but old enough we could find another pup later in the year without them both being too close in age.
So that’s how we ended up with our Chloe girl! She fits in perfectly here and has been a great protector.
Shortly after Chloe came home, another friend’s LGD had puppies and she asked if we’d want one. We declined knowing we wanted Chloe to settle in and also - new baby and a puppy didn’t sound fun. Well after selling the majority of the litter, they still had two pups left and she reached out to be multiple times — the last one, we finally felt we were ready!
And yesterday we brought sweet Sampson home! He’s a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian mix just like Chloe and we feel so grateful to have two wonderful dogs on farm again.
I hope everyone is enjoying beautiful weather this week wherever you are!
Blessings from our little homestead,
Beth
Ps. Our first on farm class for the year is NEXT SATURDAY April 22nd. This is an intro to vegetable gardening naturally crash course - will you join us?
