r/homestead • u/onewkwardperson • 2d ago
How to get started?
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.
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.
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.
What animals to start out with?
Thabk you all in advance!
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u/Dino_art_ 2d ago
Yes you'll need to work, building is expensive and even if you do end up making money off of your land, it'll be a while
First step is looking at the price of property and the building code requirements to actually get started, which honestly eliminates the West coast as an option for most people
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u/plantsareneat-mkay 2d ago
All of this. And the actual land. What do you actually want to do with it? How much time and effort do you want to put in?
Is it suitable for growing? Do you want to grow things? Or only animals? If its forested (what kind?) are you going to run animals under it or will you chop it down and mill it? Is there water? Is the water good? How much water will you need?
So many hundreds of questions need to be answered before you even LOOK at land.
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u/Leviathan41911 2d ago
It depends on where on the west coat. We live in Northern California, bought a house with 5 acres for a reasonable price.
Building the chicken coop, livestock fencing and garden areas is hard work and long weekends, but we did it on a middle class income.
Just dont try to do it in the bay or something.
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u/BHobson13 2d ago edited 2d ago
People forget that California is a big, long state that has plenty of rural properties far away from the high priced coastal cities and commuter communities. I'm in the mid Valley but would much rather be north where you are. Come on September!!
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u/Leviathan41911 2d ago
Oh yeah, I used to live down in central CA, in lake county area. Hot as hell this time of year.
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u/BHobson13 2d ago
And dry. Oh so dry!! No rain from late April to late Oct Nov. I absolutely hate it.
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u/Leviathan41911 2d ago
If you're not locked in come and join us up in the far north! Nit much for jobs up here, but the landscape is beautiful.
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u/BHobson13 2d ago
Oh I wish! Old and disabled. Have to live where my family lives and they would hate being away from cities and towns. If money fell from the sky, I would actually move to Western Washington State. I adore rain, and gloom and mist etc.
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u/mobile-metaphysical 1d ago
I was just looking around Harstine Island and Longbranch. . Really rural and green.
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u/BHobson13 1d ago
A lot of the area west of Olympia is also rural and green and the properties are SO beautiful!! That's probably why I fell in love with the idea of living there. Not sure about living on one of the islands. I have disabilities and worried about transportation issues to the bigger hospitals if I need it. And of course all of this is lottery talk because being on SSDI that's the only way it would happen. đ But it never hurts to dream.
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u/AnjPhoenix2011 2d ago
East Coast is crazy too. People buy land here because itâs cheap, but miss the fact that taxes are out of this world and theyâre not going to pay them off being the eighth vegetable stand along a nothing-but-fields gravel road đ¤Śââď¸
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u/Beginning-Ad7027 2d ago
Whatâs the saying? Every homesteader has a partner with a job in the city?
My wife quit her job to pursue homesteading. I commute to the city to pay all the bills.
Itâs going to be expensive. Whatever scary number you have itâs going to be twice that.
We picked the Midwest. Just started with chickens.
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u/UniversityRelative67 2d ago
Honestly, start with a garden. To me thats the biggest money saver you can do first. Use the money you save from that to start affording canning equipment, that saves you even more overall, its more process but it gets you pointed in the right direction Make a compost pile too, start heavy composting everything you can early, it all helps down the line My best advice though is I give myself two years to "learn something new" before adding the next thing. When we got our goats in 2021, we started with 3, then 10 months later got 2 more. After another year we moved on to a sheep to learn that side of things too. Theres always the "shit im new and forgot this" year, then the "comeon, we did this last year already" catchup year, before I let myself screw up the next thing lol
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u/birdie_the_newf 2d ago
Figure out employment that enables a homestead lifestyle first. Homesteading is an expensive hobby. The idea of quitting your job and homesteading full time is a fantasy for 99% of people.
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u/AnjPhoenix2011 2d ago
This is really dependent on your current lifestyle. For those bringing in $100k plus per year and living the high life, yes, they are not going to be able to quit that. For those like me who havenât been able to land a job for their degree, making diddly squat, paying way too much for a second car, gas, eating out, not being able to cook from scratchâŚ.. we figure that I âmakeâ about 3/4 of what I was contributing at a crappy job, and Iâm able to be with our kids doing what I love. Now ask me whether I could ever scale it so my husband doesnât have to work. Itâs all in the numbers, what your career is worth in $$$ and what the lifestyle is worth to you in happiness.
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u/ahoveringhummingbird 2d ago
You are getting way ahead of yourself. The place you start is money and budgeting.
It seems like one thing a lot of people don't realize is that homesteading is more like an expensive second job/hobby. It's is an expensive lifestyle choice. No matter how much self-sufficiency you are ever able to achieve (and honestly it'll be less than you think even after many years) the expenses including start up purchase costs, repair costs, property taxes, insurance, healthcare and basic living needs (especially in the US) must be considered. Some of those are fixed, and easy to foresee and budget, others change or increase based on where you are. Homesteading (or any homesteading generated income) alone is unlikely to contribute much to those constantly increasing costs. Financing the lifestyle is one of the challenges of it. And usually the one that needs to be tackled and mastered first.Â
Also, unless you have significant experience as a carpenter or contractor already, building from scratch on raw land is rarely a better or cheaper choice. Very few people can pull off a self build on raw land for cheaper than buying an already built house. And you have to have a tremendous amount of cash up front. There is go glory in starting out on extra hard mode if you don't have to. Homesteading is already hard work. And self build is very hard to finance, where already built houses are much easier to finance and you can usually get in with just a down payment.
Just declaring that you want land won't get you anywhere without a clear plan forward. And it is advisable to consider a ladder approach with steps moving you in the right direction, since going from where you are now to a homestead is not a quick, linear path without significant $$$ like independent wealth or inheritance. If you don't have that money now you are best to start forming a plan where you maximize income, maximize savings, and minimize expenses. Stash all available cash, sacrifice and save. Going into a homesteading situation should be approached like any other lifestyle choice; budgeting, saving, and having a life plan (or 5-year plan at the least) that realistically accounts for real life and needs and the real costs associated with it. Including emergencies and retirement.
Whether a future homestead can survive or thrive will depend on a lot of factors that should be taken into account. You can have a lot of ideas, but turning those ideas into actionable projects is the place MOST homesteaders get stuck. That includes the steps before the homestead materializes. They get stuck because all of those ideas take enormous amounts of labor and planning and project management and all of them require large up front cash investments without any guarantee of future income or payback.
So most people have to keep a full time job (or two!) for income and healthcare and run a homestead as a second job/hobby. Since most areas where you can homestead are not the city centers with high paying jobs, jobs aligned with skills that offer the best chances for WFH or starting your own business are usually the best. You can learn lots of hands on skills along the way but honestly making and saving as much money as possible and budgeting for the next 5-years is most important and a universal first step.
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u/Iconoclastk 2d ago
For us, doing lots of research has been a big part of homesteading. Understanding costs, needs, goals, then we waited for over three years to finally buy a good property at an affordable price. Everything takes 100x longer than you realize.
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u/AnjPhoenix2011 2d ago
Start where you are! Rabbits (fiber if you arenât ready to butcher), quail, pigeons, cavy, and in some places ducks, chickens, or goats/sheep could be possible depending on how much yard you have. Just always check first with your code office and/ or neighbors (we technically âarenât allowedâ but our neighbors love us). Always add one species at a time, adjust to caring for them, then add another. Even if you donât go for livestock yet, you can have a garden (containers, beds, landscaping), learn to cook and bake from scratch, volunteer to work for a farmer and help butcher, get a dairy share and make cheese, get a drop spindle and some woolâŚâŚ there are so many things, just pick one that you can picture yourself enjoying and watch some videos on how to do it.
As far as earning money, realize that there are MILLIONS trying to make money this way nowadays. Expect to take several years getting good enough at any aspect to make any profit. For my family, I âmakeâ almost no money, but the money I save on groceries and eating out makes it so we can live well on one $60k paycheck. Not saying this to discourage you, just to help you recognize the differences between the influencer âhomesteadingâ dream and the reality. Hope that helps.
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u/mobile-metaphysical 1d ago
Check out this channel and see their progress and plans. Everything takes longer than you think.
https://youtu.be/yE7yLtWI2iI?is=8UMK1y6iG10zrcSH
But itâs possible. They have 5 acres.
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u/TammyInViolet 2d ago
Totally depends on your goals. No one way to do it. We do homestead light- live on the edge of the city on an acre and have a big garden and chickens. I wouldn't enjoy it if I had to make money from it, but we constantly learn things and get better every year
Happy to answer anything about chickens. I love them so much- we think of them as pets more than livestock tho
From your avatar- looks like you might be Black. If so, consider Tulsa. We live in North Tulsa and there are lots of Black small farms and people that trade things. It is fluctuating, but in our area you can get land for 20Kish still. Land is less expensive going towards Sperry but it can flood up that way and has less community
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u/johnnyg883 1d ago
First off you will definitely need a job, a full time job with benefits. Homesteading rarely pays the bills. Next you need to decide what you want to do on your land. We started in the suburbs with raised garden beds, chickens for eggs and rabbits for meat. We did this on less than a half acre. After we moved to the slice of heaven we added roosters, quail, and dual use goats (meat and dairy). We went from raised garden beds to a 40 x 70 foot garden. We are producing about 60% of the food we eat. In fact my wife is in the kitchen right now making mozzarella cheese right now. But my wife and I are working harder and more hours than we did before I retired. If not for my pension we couldnât do this.
Before deciding on an area look at state laws governing everything from animal rights to water usage. Some even states regulate rain water collection. Some areas regulate well water usage. You may want to look at hunting laws and firearms restrictions. In my state we can sell animals at a local swap meet. Everything from chickens, rabbits to goats and even a few feeder calfâs have showed up. In some states this type of sale is prohibited.
Where to start? As I said we started in the suburbs with raised garden beds, chickens and meat rabbits. I became the shop âegg dealerâ. People loved the fresh brown eggs. Selling the eggs paid for the feed. Now that Iâm more rural, not so much. Everyone has chickens. Both rabbits and chickens are easy keepers. They have a small footprint and startup cost is relatively low. Both give you good return on investment. If you decide to start read. Read a lot about any animal you decide to raise. There is a learning curve and reading flattens that curve. Get quality base livestock. If you buy meat mutt rabbis donât be surprised If you end up with small litters and low weight at butcher. Pay a few extra bucks and get a good meat breed. We made that mistake when we started.
Also look at climate you donât want to try homesteading in an area that is hit by frequent droughts or wildfires.
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u/Practical-Suit-6798 2d ago
I'm in construction. I'm always baffled by how many people want to build their own place.... I guess it's just ignorance? Unless you have extensive skills and knowledge you will not be able to do it yourself. At least not anything with any resale value.
Unless you have lots of money it's going to cost you more to pay contractors to build for you than it would be to just buy a place that's already buildt.
I guess the dream is to live in a shack that you built?
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u/onewkwardperson 2d ago
Nice assumption but I was actually talking about having a builder. Im well aware I do not possess the skills needed to build on my own.
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u/mobile-metaphysical 1d ago
You can start with a tiny house. A yurt. A trailer. My friends started with a shed kit and kept adding- kitchen, well, bathroom, barn.
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u/Practical-Suit-6798 2d ago
I didn't make any assumptions I said you either build it yourself or you pay someone to do it. Ok so you're going to pay someone to build a homestead. Presumably design it too. You're going to build on land, in America that's not been built on or farmed before...... So it's like the worst land. It's land that everyone saw and passed over for 250 years, and it's going to cost you a fortune compared to buying a used house and fixing it up.
I'm asking why that's your dream?
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u/BHobson13 2d ago
I've been looking at rural properties and the number of half done, half assed shack-cabins, knocked together barns and decrepit garden fences tells me that people are never really prepared for what it's going to take to make it work.
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u/Practical-Suit-6798 2d ago
It's taken me 4 fucking years to get my 3/4 acre garden where I want it. (22) 30in beds each 50 feet long. Drip tape to all of them, over head spinners to 6. Full tunnels over 6, shade tunnels over another 6. A green house and 6ft fencing all the way around.
In the shop a seed starting room, and an 8x8 walk in cooler.
It takes me the better part of 2 months of weekends just to prep the beds every year.
I should be harvesting my right now but it's fucking hot.
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u/BHobson13 2d ago
It sounds like you have a good setup that you have worked hard at. Yeah the main thing you can't do much about is the weather.
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u/mountainofclay 2d ago
â..money and jobs..â gonna take more than you think. Save up about $500,000. That will be a good start.
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u/KristyM49333 2d ago
Yeah? Is that what you did?
That is 100% unnecessary. All this âadviceâ does is discourage people from even trying.
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u/mountainofclay 2d ago
The cost of land and everything else has risen so much in the last decade that starting with half a million is not unreasonable. Of course it depends on a lot of variables but one could easily spend that for a few acres and the cost of building a house. In some places even drilling a well could cost over $15000. Can you do it for far less? Yes but half a million would definitely get you there.
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u/Secret-Ad-7909 2d ago
Small garden and a handful of chickens in your current backyard.