/r/homestead

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Ponds, barns, livestock, gardens, food preservation, fishing, hunting, tractors, pigs, chickens, cattle, worms, 4H, permaculture, organic, grazing, canning, aquaculture, trees, woodland, farmers, agriculture, agronomy, horticulture, wwoofers, bees, honey, wildcrafting, dairy, goats, nuts, berries, vegetables, sustainability, off grid, wood stoves, chainsaws, wood heat, tools, welding, green woodworking, farmers markets, composting toilets, straw bale homes, cob building...

Message the mods please include links to any posts you are referencing.


Homesteading - From Wikipedia

Broadly defined, homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs, and it may or may not also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale. . .


Homesteading is... ponds, barns, livestock, gardens, food preservation, outdoor kitchens, fishing, hunting, shop projects, tractors, bush hogs, pigs, raising chickens, cattle, worms, 4H, permaculture, organic practices, cast iron skillet, neighbor relations, frugality, 5 gallon buckets, crops, grazing, fences, lumber, canning, aquaculture, trees, woodland, diatomaceous earth, farmers, root cellars, smoke houses, mason jars, agriculture, agronomy, horticulture, critter shelter, farm interns, wwoofers, bees, honey, wildcrafting, dairy, goats, raised garden beds, paddock shift systems, nuts, berries, vegetables, growing sweet potatoes, self sufficiency, permaculture design course, off grid, alternative building, alternative energy, wood stoves, chainsaws , wood heat, tools, welding, woodworking, green woodworking, joel salatin, red worms, sepp holzer, masanobu fukuoka, ianto evans, art ludwig, farmers markets, animal husbandry, cottage industry, outhouses, composting toilets, septic tanks, ferro cement, straw bale construction, cob building...


General Guidelines and Rules:

  • Try and keep post on topic, self post and blog links are okay as long as they're related to homesteading.
  • Be respectful and we will ban people for being icky.
  • Please try and use reddit tags like; [Question], [Discussion], [News], [Update] [Meta], or homestead specific like; [Growing], [Chickens], [Livestock], etc.. This will help keep things organized among other things.
  • Oh yes, trolls will be banned. Self posters are welcome.
  • No shaming to vegans or for animal processing. NSFW tags are OPs choice part 1 part 2

Related Subreddits:


Other links:


Zone Maps of the World:


Thanks for stoping by and happy homesteading!

/r/homestead

2,506,288 Subscribers

2

butchering / anyone have a graph on what the cuts should cost?

I put this in another subreddit, but no one answered it. Can someone help me?

My question is this: for someone butchering a steer for the first time and dividing it among five friends (ie. we all contributed "equally" (not at all true, but no one is interested in profiting)), if someone wants only choice cuts/ how much more should he pay the group.

I'm not sure if I adequately can explain this question, but assuming every lb is roughly 4.50, but someone only wants steaks (we are 4 families and one single guy). He wants less meat overall but more steak. How do we come up with an equitable amount that he should pay the group which lowers our cost? Is there a graph for this?

3 Comments
2023/03/26
23:30 UTC

0

Found her covered in mud and crying, I can’t believe someone would leave her on my ranch. People are so cruel.

12 Comments
2023/03/26
22:23 UTC

3

How To Grow Potatoes – Easy Step By Step Guide (7 Steps)

JPG

www.justpuregardening.com/_gardening_/growing-guides/how-to-grow-potatoes/

How to grow potatoes? Potatoes grow easily in a various soil types. They’re a great crop to start with if you’ve never grown vegetables before.

2 Comments
2023/03/26
22:17 UTC

0

TINY HOUSE SIDING FINISHED tiny house, homesteading, off-grid, cabin bui...

0 Comments
2023/03/26
21:45 UTC

29

The "Winter Tractor"

1993? Polaris Widetrak GT doesn't care. The best $100 that I have ever spent! Skidding cone is next.

2 Comments
2023/03/26
20:42 UTC

5

Chicken door

4 Comments
2023/03/26
20:10 UTC

355

What seeds did I forget to label?

323 Comments
2023/03/26
17:45 UTC

1

New garden fence post question

Starting a new garden this year and want to use the abundance of conifers on the property as fence posts. Was looking to see if anyone has done this before and what the pros and cons are. Also curious if there's a big difference in strength or rot resistance between using spruce/hemlock/fir. Thanks in advance for any tips!

4 Comments
2023/03/26
17:21 UTC

6

I bought some oranges from US Citrus. How do I store the seeds?

Because I was looking for the closest thing to the oranges I grew up eating in Nigeria. I swear the oranges that are in the stores taste like they were grown in a lab I just want to know how to store the seeds to grow later. Yeah I know it takes years for an orange tree to grow but I would like to have them on hand

They have currently been sitting in my fridge in the leftover fibre of the orange. I ate a few before and stored them in a Ziploc bag but that grew black with mould. Probably because I didn't dry them. But how do I do that

6 Comments
2023/03/26
16:48 UTC

1

making use of abandoned irrigation well

There is an old irrigation well on my property that I'd like to make use of for basic gardening/tree watering. I can tell from records that it is a 6'' diameter well, 25' deep. The static water level during high water is 5 feet (flood plain), and probably goes down to 12-15 feet or something during low water. I'm assuming that when it was originally put in, the owners at the time had a generator or ran some above-ground conduit that has long since been removed. Based on what I know about the history, it has probably been out of use for at least 15 years. I'd like to put in a hand-pump to make it easier to water things nearby, and use as a backup if the power goes out (I do have the documented water rights to use this well). Most of the handpumps I see online are meant for driving directly into the ground. What is the type of product I should be looking for to lower into an existing well? Any fave brands/options? Thanks!

0 Comments
2023/03/26
16:21 UTC

0

My New Book

I'm just starting a writing career. Please take a look at my first book available on amazon kindle and paperback. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYTXPBFP/ref=sr_1_2?crid=YG7VVORYOP9V&keywords=Mary+miller+amish&qid=1679185381&sprefix=mary+miller+amish%2Caps%2C115&sr=8-2

1 Comment
2023/03/26
16:14 UTC

5

Rabbit Question

Hey there! We will be starting our mini farm, in the next few months, and we’ve been researching ideas for months.

I recently came across the amount of folks who utilize rabbit meat (or live rabbits) who live in more rural areas, or to feed their guard dogs, etc.

Any recommendations on how to even start searching that as if we wanted to be a vendor - providing bunnies?

I’ve looked into FB groups, etc - but I’m not having much luck.

Thanks!

5 Comments
2023/03/26
15:13 UTC

1

Egg Hatching - help?

OK, disclaimer: please do not come for me.

TLDR; my incubator was delayed and won’t be here until Wednesday, I have 7 varying chicken eggs and 4 duck eggs in a makeshift incubator, If the eggs fluctuate between 98-100 until then, will it be okay? 😂

I’m going to start this, with a story.

When I was 12, I used to go to a farm to hang out because the lady who owned it was super nice and let me pet her horses and run around like a crazy person all over her property. There were chickens at this property. The ladies dog liked to kill the chickens. She never stopped him, because she literally had hundreds of free range chickens, and he never killed enough to truly make a dent. Of course I hated this anyways, I saw him snatch a hen off of a nesting box and eat all but two of the eggs she was sitting on. Again, I was about 12 years old. I did not have common sense. I knew nothing about chickens or how to raise them let alone the ideal conditions in which to hatch them. I took these eggs home and stuffed a T-shirt in an empty cardboard oatmeal container, laid a heating pad on top of it, and stuck it under my moms bed. I stuck it under my moms bed because we were poor, and I did not have my own room, so I slept on the couch. once a day, or every other day, in the brief window where I was home from school before my mom got home from work, I would go upstairs and turn the eggs over and I would adjust how much the T-shirt was covering the opening based on an intuitive sense if it was too hot or too cold inside the oatmeal container. Fast forward a couple of weeks, my mom calls me upstairs because she thinks she is going crazy because she can hear birds chirping in her room. I had to come clean, because my dog was also super interested in getting underneath the bed. My mom could not believe that these chickens hatched. But she let me keep them. I kept them in a 20 gallon aquarium, while they were small, and once they had all their feathers, I converted an end table I found by a dumpster, into a little chicken coop by stapling garden fencing to the front of it, and using twist ties to secure a little makeshift door. Once they were big enough to fly, (as much as chickens can fly anyways), I started tossing them up onto the lowest branch of the tree in our front yard to teach them how to roost because I had noticed a fox poking around in the early mornings. They eventually started doing this themselves as soon as it started getting dark. I did not realize that roosters go through puberty, and I had one hen and one rooster and we lived in the suburbs. I had to take them back to the farm, where they miraculously lived full lives. The rooster was safe from the dog, because the dog would not mess with the roosters, the hen figured out how to stay safe by just staying with the horses, and she would fly up on the one of their backs to get away from the dog.

Because this worked so well for me, the first time, I used the above method to hatch chickens two or three more times throughout my life and into adulthood for friends. I don’t know how it worked each time, I don’t know how every single egg I’ve use this method on hatched, but it did.

Now I’m 30, I haven’t done this in probably 8 to 10 years, and I’m farm sitting for a friend. I have my own farm now, and I want chickens, but I don’t want to buy 6 (ideally we could just get 4, I’m trying to hatch 7 knowing that not all of them may hatch, but I’m willing to keep them all if they do).

So now, I have several chicken eggs and a few duck eggs (for my neighbor) that I am trying to hatch but they will not fit in an oatmeal container, and my heating pad has a timer that I cannot disable. While this was very last minute, I have all the eggs in a large mixing bowl on a T-shirt (bunched in the middle to divide the chickens from the ducks) with a heating pad laying over top. I have a temp/humidity reader on each side. Duck side is 99.5 and 44% humidity, chicken side is 100.1 and 44% humidity.

I had ordered an incubator last week with this plan to hatch these eggs, but it’s delayed, it’ll be here Wednesday. If the eggs fluctuate between 98-100 until then, will it be okay? 😂 (Got them yesterday, they’ll be 5 days without a proper incubator

4 Comments
2023/03/26
14:44 UTC

142

Wisps in maple sap

Was planning on boiling some sap today and saw these wisps. No smell or taste. What is it?

38 Comments
2023/03/26
13:53 UTC

0

Any homesteading YouTubers out there? How do you grow your channel??

15 Comments
2023/03/26
12:54 UTC

2

Fava beans in Zone 8 benefit from removing tips at this time of the year to discourage blackfly and encourage bean growth but don't just compost cuttings as they can be cooked as a spinach alternative.

0 Comments
2023/03/26
12:33 UTC

5

I grew some Honey Boat Squash and had great results

0 Comments
2023/03/26
11:31 UTC

82

Toby and his umbrella ☂️☺️

2 Comments
2023/03/26
09:30 UTC

7

Feeling overwhelmed with upfront costs

Sharing this because I know we aren't the only ones that have felt this, and I am at the point of giving up and don't want to.

We saved money for years and finally found our five acres last year. Our plan is to build a house, market garden, and orchard, but not for a few years. Until then, we wanted to put it in a good cover crop that can be baled/grazed. The problem is water access. We have water rights but not direct access. It's complicated and going to cost us minimum 15k to start either a well or a ditch irrigation.

I feel in over our heads and don't know what to do. We both have full time jobs and just don't make enough money to save up what we need to get started. I know starting something up always has upfront costs, I'm just worried we made a mistake and won't be able to make our dream come true.

24 Comments
2023/03/26
00:55 UTC

13

2 of 6 shelves done for my seed starting cabinet.

0 Comments
2023/03/26
00:23 UTC

1

How do you balance resale-ability when looking for or buying a homestead property?

This is a strange question, but I'm curious how you all balance the ability to resale a home against what you want and how much you can pay.

My wife and I are looking for a property, and there are some in the area that seem like good parcels for homesteading, but they would require quite a bit of cash to get up to our living standards. We aren't opposed to spending this money, but we keep going back to "what happens if we need to sell?"

How do you manage dumping tens of thousands into a lot and potentially needing to sell the property? Are you all just willing to eat the loss or wait for the right buyer?

I know it's a strange thing to think about because no-one is intending to sell, but my wife and I are conservative risk takers so naturally our mind goes to all the "what ifs."

22 Comments
2023/03/26
00:08 UTC

344

The face of someone who ate way too many mangos

15 Comments
2023/03/25
23:57 UTC

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