Homesteading doesn’t really work if you don’t go full retard.
You know why so many homesteads fail? It’s a really obvious issue, but no one talks about it.
The problem is chickens. More precisely, the “start with some chickens” approach to homesteading.
DON’T start with chickens. Chickens will teach you the wrong lessons. Start with rabbits.
Why rabbits and not chickens? Because when you get chickens, you’ll likely start buying chicken feed too. This will become your idea of what animal husbandry - and, by extension, homesteading - looks like. Put money in, get food out. Then, you’ll start thinking, crunch some numbers, and say “Wait a second - this homesteading thing is as expensive as buying food at the supermarket, only you have to work too!”. And then you’ll likely conclude that it’s all a fad, and walk away.
(rabbits are probably the ultimate meat production animal.)
But if you, instead, start with rabbits, you just might have the good sense to think “Wait a second - rabbits eat grass, so why should I buy rabbit feed with grass growing everywhere?”. Next thing you know, you’ll have raised a litter of meat rabbits at zero cost. And then it might just click.
You’ll realize that PASTURE is the foundation of homesteading, and that you can raise cattle, sheep and/or goats at zero cost, just like you raised rabbits, if only you have enough pasture. This will prevent you from making the mistake of trying to homestead on a tiny plot - you’ll go for the biggest plot you can afford, and it will likely be somewhere in the sticks, where land is cheap.+++(5)+++ You won’t even think about getting anything under a few hectares, as you’ll need about a hectare per cow, and that’s assuming a temperate climate with plenty of rainfall, fertile soil and you working on turning whatever mess you end up buying into quality pasture.
Then you’ll start applying this approach to every other aspect of your homestead, and you’ll find ways to solve problems without throwing money at them.
NOW you’ll get chickens, and feed them the cooked entrails of the herbivores you slaughter, mixed with the whey left over from your cheesemaking. That’s the chicken’s place on a homestead - it’s an animal you feed with the by-products of your farm. Before you have these by-products, there’s little point to getting chickens, especially more than a few of them.
Now you are homesteading, and you have a shot at making it work.
All the while, people on the internet will keep saying how homesteading doesn’t work, and is “too expensive”, because they, or some YouTuber, tried raising a herd of goats on bought feed in their back yard, and - lo and behold - that didn’t make sense financially.
If you think homesteading is expensive, that is 100% because you aren’t, in fact, homesteading.
Source: TW
Many people warned us that turning a profit by raising livestock is “extremely difficult” and that it requires “huge initial investments”.
Turns out they were wrong.
All livestock needs is good pasture and some modest infrastructure that you can easily bushcraft at zero cost.
A loving farmer that takes care of them and keeps them safe goes without saying, of course
Despite what almost everyone else says - food self-sufficiency is actually easy to achieve. Even by total agricultural beginners. So don’t believe the horror stories and just go for it. It’s a good life.