Hi y all, I'm seeking some honest advice for someone planning to homestead in the (hopefully) near future. I've got a couple questions and will provide some background information about myself for more context.

About me: Currently I'm 26 and living in the lower mainland of BC🇨🇦. I have a couple health conditions that make working in the peak heat of the day very risky as temps over 18/20C pose a high fainting risk for me, so l might consider adopting a dawn/dusk lifestyle. I work full time in a field with some skills transferable to remote/online work such as client management and appointment scheduling, but I have no training/schooling in any trades.

What do you all consider a way to fund the homesteading lifestyle prior to complete shift over (aka before you can grow/raise most of your needs or barter for things/sell product)? Did/do you work remote from home? How much did it cost you to make the change?

How remote is your location? Are you 30+ mins from a town/city? I'm seeking to be far enough that a city won't expand into my area nor can I hear a highway haha.

I might ask more questions if anyone is open to answering them, I don't want to spam here :) Any advice is welcomed!

In the us, do states or the federal gov charge taxes on anything you grow or raise?

If you raise a cattle for personal consumption, do you have to claim that as an income?

Is it only if you sell stuff, so you have income?

Okay, so... I debated using an alt account for this, but it's not like I hide my condition or anything. I have severe pain hyperacusis. It comes with a real bad sensitivity to not only loud sounds but also certain frequencies.

Due to my condition, I currently can't live a normal life. I can't hang out for long periods in developed areas or even be inside my own house without the power off. I had to quit my job and everything.

Headphones don't work—the only way I've been able to find relief is by spending all my time outdoors. That's been more difficult since the cicadas became active, but I digress.

I've been looking into buying land out in the middle of nowhere and building a place I can live with my issues in mind. I'm even hoping with the right infrastructure in place, I can still keep things like air conditioning and internet.

The catch, and the reason why I'm asking on here specifically, is that I have a few conflicting requirements that I just don't know enough about to reconcile:

1. I need enough land to minimize sounds from neighbors. Ideally, enough to not be able to hear them at all, given the frequency range that affects me most involves sounds that are barely audible and can travel quite far.

2. This also means no heavy machinery. I can't personally operate or be near a tractor/ATV, inverter, ultrasonic pesticides, etc. Many things that would make it easier to manage a large amount of land are beyond me.

3. I'm poor as fuck, so whatever I do, I need to take out a loan to do it. As a result, I need to be able to take advantage of the space available to turn a reasonable profit, without relying on machinery.

Any advice or suggestions on how much land I'd need, where best to buy it, and just generally how to make this work would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

back story -- I've got a corner of the family property in south central kentucky. we have about 45 acres. It would be closer to 80 acres if it were flat. My remote back corner is a bit of a ridge top bisected by two property lines. On the other side is a very steep, downhill slide into a ravine. We had a tractor roll down it a few years ago. We were not able to drive the tractor out. It had to be pulled out. Just too steep.

This past weekend, I was using the augre on the tractor to make holes for mini-root-cellars using 55 gallon barrels. To my surprise, I only have roughly 18 inches of top soil, before I hit rock. So much for using barrels and an old freezer for cool storage.

Here are my questions:

The rock I am hitting is shale. I can chip away at it and dig it out, but it would be Very labor intensive. Will the rock provide the same level of thermal stability? and for record, the freeze line is roughly at ... 18 inches for this area.

If I were to go down the hill a short distance, then dig back into it, how can I stablize that to be a cool dry place so it won't slide further down hill or have the rest of the hill bury it with the next heavy rain?

Thanks for any constructive input you can share.

Given this is the homesteading subreddit and not the farming subreddit I will assume a lot of folks here have tried to subsist without buying their animals and animal food every year.

Right?

Growing your own food is great and all but if you still need costly animal food delivered to you every month you might as well just goto the grocery store and skip like 100 steps and thousands of dollars?

Rabbits, chickens, goats, pigs and cows all have pellets or food you can have delivered, is anyone just getting away with feeding everything grass and hay?

I might have gotten carried away with a little side project and overdeveloped like crazy.

The site is free to users.

It connects you directly to local farms, ranches, and artisans.

Finding and buying from local meats & produce & personal care goods is WAY TOO HARD.

It shouldn't require a treasure map and a PhD in farmer's market navigation.

On this site you can find everything from grass-fed beef to artisanal soaps.

Here's a taste:

• Meats: Beef, chicken, turkey, goat, lamb, bison, elk, and more
• Produce: Fruits, veggies, herbs, and spices
• Dairy & Eggs: Milk, cheese, pasture-raised eggs
• Pantry items: Raw honey, preserves, jams, baked goods
• Specialty: Wild-caught seafood, jerky, flowers, plants, seeds
• Self-care: Soaps, lotions, creams, balms, essential oils

Cool features:

• 100% free for users
• No registration required
• Zero ads (because who needs more of those?)
• Get notified about local farmer deals (if you want)

Is it perfect? Nope, still ironing out some kinks.

But it's already pretty useful and will become more useful as more farmers/ranchers/artisans join.

www.farmersmarkethaul.com

Thoughts? Suggestions? Anyone actually interested in this sort of thing?

Also yes the eggplant is 4 lb

Getting these boys (Gork and Mork) at around 300 lbs. Is that a good weight? How much meat comes off of them? They are Idaho pasture pig and duroc cross

Im looking to go into our homesteading journey. We moved this summer to have an open back yard that’s a little over an acre. I want to do some late summer building of garden boxes and sowing some seeds. I really want to build an inexpensive coop but I’m a little nervous since PA winters can be so tough. We are in zone 6B.

My question is if you had to start over and wanted to make a “homestead to do list” to get started for late summer & fall…what would be on your list ?

I bought two small haskaps (bare root plugs) in a late spring sale and planted them around June 1. After six weeks, they are still less than a foot tall. Should I be worried? Or is this just a lost year and they will explode with growth next spring?

This year at our new house I have spent months starting and maintaining gardens. We used about 46 tons of earth and 8 tons mulch amongst other things. So I'm letting Japanese beetles chew down all my crops.

I went out on a limb and tried something and it works 100. Has to be applied after rain or 1 wk of sunshine.

I mix a gallon of water, baking soda, dawn and about 2 table spoons of Ortho home defense.

So far really good. I realize it's not an organic solution but for all those struggling. There it is.

Currently trying to determine the actual plausibility of a project and although I started doing a lot of research myself, I wanted to see if I could find some useful information here!

Building

640 sqft A Frame with loft

Location

Rural NYS

Assets

-20k cash -15k IRA Funds -40 Trusses -White Oak Floor boards -4 acres with accessible driveway for construction purposes, would need stone finish for residential use. -Cleared area for building, would need flattening and such but no extra raising of ground

• approved building lot

Important information I’m waiting on

• town building inspector determining proper septic system due to state wetland determination which may effect then estimate (originally was encouraged by contractor that he could get foundation, septic, and utilities ran for 20-25k.

My dad being a capable builder for this project although mostly teaching and leading since he’s older as well as restrictions financially has us wanting no GC.

We also have a lot of connections we would like to use, certified and licensed tradesman.

Is it possible to get construction or construction to permanent loan without GC? Or should I be looking for a specific sort of GC that allows us to do the things we would like because I do have the credit score and ability to get a construction loan.

I just moved into our house in Michigan and am wanting to make changes on our property to make room for a veggie garden. The area of the property that gets the most sun and where I would like to put the garden has a lot of landscape plants, bulbs in particular. There are lots of bulbs throughout the property and I would like to save them and plant them somewhere else but am not sure where. I will need to save the bulbs. How do I do this? Do all bulbs and tubers need the same care when digging them up or do I need to figure out what I have and treat each one differently?
Does anyone have favorite books, people they follow on social media to help me with this?

Looking to a new plot of land. How much does it typically cost for hardware and labor to get a contractor to install a septic system? I'm located out of Colorado.

My boyfriend and I are getting married, and wanting to move onto his parent’s land. We were thinking of buying a mobile home for now, does anyone have any advice?

I was tired of posting R4R subs devoted to kinks and perversions or just full of horny dudes and onlyfans bots. And r/R4R seems to be mostly about finding online pals to chat with.

....so I just created r/ruralR4R a couple days ago, and we already have 80 members! I suspect there are a lot more of you out there looking for the same thing. Lonely homesteaders, farmers, and countryfolk looking for their +1.

(mods: please dont ban me for this post) r/ruralR4R is about finding people and love, not advice about chickens or silvopastures like this sub is. It's complementary.

Also, I'm just a regular redditor, and hope to push off mod duties to the first willing victim volunteer if anyone is interested, let me know!

Does anyone have a way of making these 2 Korean gems at an American homestead?

Out of complete curiosity, Is it truly possible for a homesteader to make Chinese, Korean and Japanese soy sauce without using starters nor anything expensive?

Would this be a good purchase for mowing 10-15 acres of grass hay a year? Ad claims it's in good shape. I don't have a good impression of sickle bars or N tractors, but the price is right. My wife doesn't want to hear me complain about junk equipment, but I can't afford the new equipment I've been looking at. (Drum mower or Enorossi sickle bar). Main beef I have with these tractors is only 3 gears you can't go slow enough in the field, and the pto stops with the wheels. My experience​ with sickle bars so far is they plug up every 50'. Are my concerns overblown? Would I learn to like this set up?

Anyone do the shipping container barn, shop, garage, etc?

Ok so we recently bought a smal farm with 10 acres of fields with the house and the garden on that, 2,5 acres of forest. The previous owner didn’t have animals except chickens/cat/dog they had other jobs and just had someone make hay. We are completely new to farm stuff. Our goal is to become as self sufficient as possible or make some money from the land. If we get animals what should we get I guess it’s between. Pigs, goats, sheep or turkey, maybe horses if it’s not to small. It’s very green where I live and we get allot of snow every winter. Chickens are already planned. Or is it better financially to rent out or just let it be hay?