How prepared would you be if you were magically handed land and a homestead tomorrow?

When I asked myself this question over a year ago on a day that I was feeling particularly antsy and down in the dumps because the homestead felt so far away… my answer was “not even close to ready.”

It’s kind of like after a hard break up or a bad period in your life when all you want to do is move away. A new city, new environment, fresh start.

In theory, yes, this might help. But in reality, all of your same problems will follow you there, and will it REALLY be that different?

Anyways.

I decided that although the land itself was still a ways away, there are a LOT of skills I could be learning and easing into right now. And none of them require acres of land or a family milk cow 😅

So here are 14 homestead skills I’m learning while we save for land, in order… sort of.

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Homestead Skill #1: Growing an intentional food garden

I’ve always had gardens growing up, but never in an intentional “let’s stock the kitchen” sort of way. My parents grew a big tomato garden every year and even canned the tomatoes a few times when I was younger.

My mom would also give me a cute little section of the yard that would be my designated flower garden that I got to pick the flowers for. So of course, when I was living in an apartment with a balcony in my 20s, I had a few pots I played around with:

• Tomatoes
• Bell peppers
• Cucumbers one year
• Strawberries one year
• And lots of flowers

So gardening isn’t brand new to me.

But growing things to stock my kitchen and reduce my reliance on a grocery store was brand new to me in 2022. To say I learned a lot is an understatement, but more on that in another post 😉

➡️ What’s one easy thing you can grow this year in a pot? Nothing elaborate, the whole set up could cost you $15 or less.

Homestead Skill #2: Seed starting

We moved into our first house in the spring of 2021, so that summer I stuck to my pot set up around the backyard and patio. No time to start seeds or do anything fancy, just buy the plants and get them planted.

But in the winter of 2021, I had a lot of time to plan our future garden beds and went down many, many IG/YouTube rabbit holes on gardening. Which led me to starting my own seeds.

I found a few online seed catalogs and went nuts 😂

Again, lots of lessons learned (for example, if you only have room for 6 tomato plants, you don’t need to start 30+ seedlings LOL). You can save yourself the headache and read more about my seed starting tips here.

Despite what you might be thinking… you can start seeds any time throughout the year. Sure if you want to grow tomatoes from seed you need to stick to a specific window (look up your growing zone to find out this window!).

➡️ So if you’ve missed that window, go buy some flower or indoor herbs and get started!

Homestead Skill #3: Seed saving

This one I’ve only dabbled in before this year. I’ve saved seeds from Rose of Sharon and moss rose flowers/plants, but never from a veggie. Honestly, my tomato harvest last year wasn’t great (got infested with worms) and my peppers were a variety that I didn’t want to grow again, so I didn’t bother.

But.

I am so freaking excited to start practicing this and getting it dialed in. Saving seeds from year to year will not only save money (so far in 2023 I’ve ordered $80+ worth of seeds and I still have a few left), but it’s just one more homestead skill that we can rely on if shit hits the fan.

We were watching Last of Us on HBO (ok my husband was watching and I was pretending not to), and in this apocalyptic scenario, there was an extreme “prepper” who was able to be totally self-sufficient when the world ended. He could grow his own food because he knew how to save his seeds and create his own supply. How cool is that?

➡️ If you’ve got flowers you love in your landscaping, make a mental note to harvest the seeds this fall!

Homestead Skill #4: Fall planting

Another new gardening skill I’m adding in is fall planting.

This past year I did a lot of research on companion planting, succession planting, crop rotation, etc. so I can squeeze the most out of my garden beds that I can. And one place that research led me is overwintering garlic.

I’m in growing zone 6a, so this is one of the handful of crops we can overwinter like that (to my knowledge!). The garlic is so easy, you plant it and forget it until spring/early summer for harvest. I am ALL about lazy gardening where possible. No one wants a high maintenance plant in the garden.

Next fall I want to get into planting things like spinach and arugula again (because they can’t grow in the heat of summer, only spring and fall), and see how I can extend my gardening season into October, November, and even December.

And the best part? According to the internet, garlic can be grown in pots! So no excuses.

Homestead Skill #5: Power tools

Remember when I said I built our garden beds? I meant I literally BUILT them. From pieces of wood. That I bought at the store.

And less than a year before that, I couldn’t even use a drill to hang the curtain rods in our house 🤪 I didn’t go through any kind of formal training or even have a handyman show me what to do.

I just started.

Decide you want to learn something.

And go learn it.

I watched YouTube videos, I downloaded plans from Etsy and Pinterest, I read lots and lots of blogs. And then I started practicing.

I volunteered to hang the shelves and hang the curtain rods and do anything involving a power tool… and let me tell you… this has probably been the most empowering of all of these skills in this blog.

The first time I cut a piece of wood myself and then attached it to another piece of wood with a drill I literally felt like I was unstoppable! I remember saying “omg, I could build a HOUSE if I wanted to!”

We were lucky enough to inherit a few key tools (such as different types of drills and a couple saws), but for anything bigger than a drill you should be able to rent those from your local hardware store!

➡️ Go find something relatively simple that you’ve been drooling over on your Pinterest board, find some plans, and get to building.

Homestead Skill #6: Canning and preserving

I had very lightly dabbled in this in the past with my mom. I remember being around the kitchen when they were canning tomatoes when I was younger, but not really involved.

And then a few years ago my mom and I went strawberry picking and canned a bunch of preserves, it was so fun!

But again, never with the intention to stock my kitchen shelves. There is soooo much to this skill to learn, like:

• Canning in a hot water bath (tomatoes, jams, etc.) — tried this!
• Pressure canning (beans, meat, etc.) — currently scared to try this! / you need all different equipment that I don’t have
• Freezing — obsessed with this!
• Dehydrating — can’t wait to try this for things like homemade spices and seasonings
• Freeze drying — this feels farther away because it also requires more expensive equipment and way more space than we have now

Here’s the key to remember with this one: you don’t have to grow what you can yourself.

This year I made and canned applesauce from the apples I got at the farmers market. I froze creamed corn from the ears of corn at the farmers market. I made peach blueberry preserves from peaches from the farmers market and blueberries from the grocery store bc that’s all I could get at the time.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, just start.

Homestead Skill #7: Bread making

Along with learning power tools, learning to make bread has been one of the most empowering skills I’ve learned so far.

Knowing that with just VERY few ingredients I can make:

• Sandwich bread
• Rolls
• Biscuits
• Crackers (more on this in a few)
• And so much more

has removed reliance on not only physically driving to a store (once we live farther from the city this will be important), but it has also removed the reliance on trying to find brands that have quality ingredients without costing $15 for a loaf of bread.

It’s also exciting just knowing that this is an almost limitless skill. There are so many types of breads, and different ways of making it, and on and on.

Next up on my list:

• Sourdough
• Cinnamon rolls
• And nailing down my pizza crust recipe

➡️ If this is a skill you’re ready to dive into, here’s the first book I used to learn after watching Jenna Fishers’s IG stories 😂 and here’s one my friend gifted me specifically on sourdough.

Homestead Skill #8: Homemade (and home grown) seasonings

We’ve barely dipped our toes in this one, but the potential here is almost more limitless than the bread! We started adding more herbs to our garden (rosemary, basil, parsley, oregano) last year, but didn’t do a great job of harvesting and using them on a regular basis.

My goal this year is to grow the seasonings I would want to put in my canned tomatoes so I can have a jar of tomatoes containing ONLY ingredients we grew in our garden. Fingers crossed.

It’s also on my wish list (once we have a bigger house) to get a dehydrator so we can make our own super simple, common seasonings like onion powder and garlic powder.

Homestead Skill #9: Homemade snacks and convenience food

Have I mentioned my new obsession with homemade crackers? I started making them with my sourdough discard (recipe) right before Christmas and they are such a fun, shareable thing to make! I actually made them for some of my family and put them in these cute little Christmas jars:

My favorite so far has been a rosemary parmesan that we have dubbed our “house cracker,” but I’ve also dabbled with some BBQ seasonings to see if I can find a happy replacement for BBQ chips. Still working through the right recipe for this one. And next on the list? Homemade cheez its! What!

A daunting thought I’ve run into with starting to cook more from scratch is “How on earth will I ever have time to keep up with cooking from scratch every day?!”

And my solution to that so far has been the freezer.

Did you know you can prepare a batch of homemade biscuits, and then pop them in the freezer at the step before you bake them? They can stay there for up to 3 months, just waiting until the day when you feel like making biscuits and gravy. So you can take advantage of those days or weekends where you have a ton of time, you have a ton of energy to bake, and just freeze it.

You can do the same with bread, except that you actually do bake it and slice it, and then wrap it in foil to put in the freezer. I’ve been doing this 4 slices at a time. So I can pull out a couple day’s worth of breakfast toast or sandwiches, let them thaw for a few, and it tastes like I just baked them.

Finding ways to have homemade food with ingredients we trust, but not lose the convenience of pulling a frozen pizza out on busy days is such a huge win.

➡️ Wanna start making your own snacks? Just start looking up recipes to your favorites! It’s that simple.

Homestead Skill #10: Buying locally, in season

This is so hard to do. We have been conditioned by our big grocery store chains that we can get strawberries and tomatoes whenever we want, regardless of the season. But the quality of food we eat when it is shipped from across the country and forced to look more “ripe” is clearly subpar. There’s a lot of info on this out there, so I’m not going to dive too deep on this post 😉

But we have been trying to be more aware of the seasons and what produce goes along with them. And not only paying attention to what’s in season, but also making an effort to buy it locally as well.

An easy way to start this habit is to find a local farmer’s market near you and just start going.

Depending on your area, you might have a couple you can try out to see which one you like best, or just to rotate every other time to get a wider variety.

Homestead Skill #11: Trying new foods

Once you start going to the farmer’s market more, you’ll start making connections with the vendors and farmers at your favorite stands. You might start forming relationships with them and get more comfortable to ask questions about their offerings you are less familiar with.

So in addition to the chicken eggs and veggies we had been buying from some of our favorite stands, we started to branch out and try things like:

• Duck eggs
• Duck wings
• Pawpaw fruit
• Spicy local honey
• Raw milk
• Salad turnips
• And more

I want to open my mind to all the possibilities a homestead can offer, and if my palate is that of an 8 year old’s… my options for livestock, etc. will be very limited.

➡️ How close is your nearest farmer’s market? Is it in season? GO!

Homestead Skill #12: Crocheting all the things

Switching gears a bit, one of my winter skills to play with when the gardens are sleeping is crochet.

I first learned to crochet years ago, and at the time was able to make some granny squares and a scarf. But then I went 5+ years without touching a hook before picking it up again this past winter. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard to pick back up (with the help of some awesome YouTube videos!).

This is another one that the options just feel endless. You can crochet just about anything… scarves/hats/gloves I knew, but I had never really thought much about socks or sweaters or slippers.

Before the holidays I got hyper-fixated on crochet for a few weeks, and then got super busy with travel with the holidays… so I’ve had a hat 3/4 of the way finished just sitting there for months 😅

But it’s the perfect thing for winter, a rainy day, or just a meditative way to spend your evening that doesn’t include a screen. I’m excited to pick it back up again!

Homestead Skill #13: Livestock education

The only animals I’ve ever owned are dogs, cats, and hamsters.

I took horseback riding lessons and worked at a horse barn for a couple years when I was 24, but other than that, my experience with “livestock” is basically 0.

One time in college I was at a farm that had chickens and, honestly, I was so creeped out by them 😅

But here I am, wanting chickens and ducks and goats and a milking cow and who knows what else. So I’ve started following certain accounts on IG (here are a few of my faves: Wild Oak Farms, Ballerina Farm, Turner Farm, Venison for Dinner, Azure Farm) and even ordered a few of books:

• Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills
• Raising Ducks
• The Weekend Homesteader: A Twelve-Month Guide to Self-Sufficiency

For animals especially, I know reading can only get you so far, and the hands-on experience is what really matters… BUT… I’m starting somewhere, doing what I can, and will start to add on more and more.

I could ask one of those farmers at the market if they need help with any projects, I could go hang out at my friend’s house who has chickens, I could start small and maybe try to sneak a couple chickens into the backyard 🤪

The point is, start where you are, with what you have, even if it feels small.

Homestead Skill #14: Patience

I am an incredibly impatient person. When I want something, I want it NOW. So the fact that I know wholeheartedly that we want land, a homestead, livestock, the works… but that we don’t have options to get that all in the next year… is killing me.

And honestly, almost every single one of the points above this has taught me patience.

Bread takes hours (sometimes days if you’re doing sourdough!).

Seedlings take weeks.

A garden takes months.

Crocheting a sweater… forget about it.

But all of these are teaching me to slow down and to be more patient, which is a huge reason I’m drawn to the homestead life. Yes it can be busy depending on the season and what all you have going on, but what I want is a slower paced life.

Less busy-ness.

And more time spent waiting on bread to rise while I take a walk outside.

➡️ Which of these skills is #1 on your list to try? Leave me a comment below!