by Heidi Peaster

Created on: February 02, 2010

The word "homestead" does not necessarily bring to mind the need to be versatile, but to succeed in the endeavour, versatility is exactly what is needed. 

We think of homesteading as leaving behind the stress and headaches of the commute, the crime, and the cattiness that we encounter, to move to fresh air, peace and nothing more demanding than filling the wood box.  Some of what we expect is true.  The country life, if we are homesteading in the traditional sense, is a delightful shock to the senses.  The absence of urban, or even suburban noise makes our ears ring with the silence; the absence of houses five yards away in exchange for woods and fields outside the front window expands our vision; the people we meet on the streets of a small town actually look you right in the face and smile as often as not.  It is like that.  But there is more.

We are accustomed to a certain lifestyle, no matter how much we want to change it.  We must learn to pattern our expectations of our everyday life to meet the limits of the new life we have chosen.  No matter how much we have bemoaned the constant intrusion of satellite TV and cell phones, when we reach for the remote and the satellite is no longer there, we are stunned. 

We want to make a living homesteading, but that is not as easy as it sounds.  Farming is not a money making venture if a lot of money is what you are after.  It is a skilled balancing act that requires knowledge on a huge variety of subjects from soil conditions for planting to diseases of livestock to how to keep the coyotes away from the goats.  And the money that does come in is not steady income.  It requires us to plan, but not count on, cash flow at certain times.  It also requires that we have a plan B if the cash crop does not actually materialize.

We cannot walk into homesteading and not expect to sacrifice several things.  First, we will probably have to cut back on things that we thought were necessities in the modern world.  We may have to give up the satellite dish, the Internet, the land line.  We may have to leave out the low-slung, fashionable car for the more practical pick-up that can take the gravel roads and haul rocks out of the fields.  We may have to give up the variety of restaurants we used to zip off to, and the theatre, or even the movies.  We can't afford that now, anyway.   Our clothes change.  Shoes turn into work

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>