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Over the past few years, we have been able to create a farm business and make money homesteading.
First off, we aren’t living an extravagant lifestyle. We try to live as simply as we can and within our means.
One common theme that I hear a lot is that you need a lot of money to homestead. I actually disagree with this. The reason being is that anyone can fulfill their homestead dreams with the right steps. And what I mean by this is to begin slowly. It takes time to build a dream homestead.
Yes, it takes money. But you don’t have to accomplish everything right away. Start building, but stay within your means.
And you know what, we aren’t finished yet. It will take us many more years of hard work to make our dream homestead a reality.
But, this is not stopping us from taking the steps to build slowly. We have been growing and building up more and more over the past few years.
Do you dream of starting a homestead, but don’t know where to start?
Would you like to start living your homesteading dreams now?
Let me tell you, you can do all of these things. It doesn’t take a lot to get started. There are all sorts of blog posts out there about homesteading right where you live. So, I’m not going to write about that here. What I am going to share is how we make it work and on one income.
You see, I left my HR career when I married my husband and moved to the country. Shortly after our wedding, we became pregnant with our first child and within 4 years of marriage, we had 3 children.
Homesteading wasn’t goal of mine until I had children. But I wanted to live a more natural lifestyle for my children. I wanted them to be healthy and happy little children. I wanted to provided them with a great life. And to me living in the country, natural living, and homesteading all go hand in hand.
Start now and build slowly.
I am a firm believer in having multiple streams of income and to be prepared for when one no longer produces or fails in any way.
We have started small and built a little at a time. Whenever we had the opportunity to do so, we would invest in our business and the homestead. By doing this, we have been able to grow a little more each year.
It all started with a few baby chicks and we’ve been able to grow, slowly.
Here are a few ways that we can afford to grow our homestead on one income:
Livestock
My husband is a cattle rancher; we have a small herd of cattle, but he also takes on seasonal work for our neighboringcattle ranch.
We have several goats that we utilize as browsers to clear up brush here and for a neighboring ranch.
Also, we breed our goats for various different opportunities – meat goats, dairy goats, and goats to be sold as babies for local family farms and/or 4-H projects.
Our chickens produce eggs year round, naturally. We sell off several dozens of eggs a week and we sell baby chicks whenever we have broody hens.
Products
I make craft soap from our goat’s milk and sell at vendor/craft fairs throughout the year. I also make a variety of herbal salves, balms, scrubs, and more to sell at events.
We have an online store & Etsy shop.
Participate in local Farmer’s markets. And a small CSA is in the works.
Blogging
What started as a hobby, has grown into a nice little source of income through multiple sources, such as: affiliate links, ad networks, sponsored and contributor posts.
I also have a digital shop and use Etsy too.
Victoria with “A Modern Homestead” has an amazing eBook here. Just applying her methods has grown my blog tremendously. When I first joined her mastermind group, I was hardly gaining 1k page views a month.
Within two months, it grew to over 35k page views a month and continues to grow every day! I highly recommend!
Here are a few more things we do to save money:
- We live as simply and frugally as we can.
- Avoid debt.
- Only own one vehicle. My husband also owns a “mini truck” for getting around the farm.
- Grow as much of our own food as we can.
- Preserve our food.
- Cook from scratch.
- During the winter, we heat our home with a wood stove.
- We try to buy most things used and save up for things we truly need.
So, there you have it, how we make money homesteading. And a few ways that we afford to live our homestead dreams. What have you done to grow your homestead dreams?
