Homesteading

brownhounds said:

"I don't have any livestock now, because I don't want to be a slave to them. I like to go places and do stuff, which is impossible if you have a bunch of critters that have to be fed, watered, and taken care of."(This was quoted from above)

The guys I hunt with don't see how I manage to breed and raise hogs,2 beefs, raise chickens (broilers and laying hens, goats, bloodhounds, garden, and still have time to hunt every weekend during deer season. I setup all my pens with automatic feeders and waters. When I am not hunting, I check on all my animals everyday and sometimes twice a day. They really don't require much maintenance. If I go on vacation for a week, I pay the neighbors kid to check on everything. Electric fence also helps keep the hogs in check now days. We kill one steer, 2 hogs, and 2-3 deer every year. It sure helps with the grocery bill.

Sometimes, I think just the opposite of hillbilly. I don't want to be a slave to fast food, Restaurants, and store bought meat. When somebody says they don't have enough time to grow a garden, I don't see how they go without it. But, to each their own.

Homesteading is turning into a dying breed because people say they don't have time, and they let their wives pick out some home in an HOA subdivision. We really need to make the time for our kids to see how its done, and to keep the traditions going on.

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NCHillbilly said:

Believe me, been there and done that, for many years. I've spent most of my life taking care of cattle, hogs, chickens, goats, packs of hunting dogs, etc., and I know all the pros and cons of it.

I don't have a neighbor's kid to pay to watch my stuff while I'm gone. Which is pretty often. And I leave home an hour before daylight every morning and get home usually after dark weekdays. That's another big reason I let it go. I miss having it in one way, and don't in the other. I'm far from a slave to fast food or grocery stores, probably don't eat out a dozen times a year total. I kill and put up a good percentage of my own meat. And grow a garden, and forage stuff out of the woods year round. Also have planted lots of fruit and nut trees and grapevines and berries and such. I even grow my own mushrooms. Just don't do animals these days. Totally agree with you about the subdivision. Couldn't live in one.

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brownhounds said:

I definitely understand how life gets busy and work is first before homesteading. When u had your animals, which ones cost you the most to feed?

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livinoutdoors said:

Bringin this old thread back cuz i was lookin to start one just like it. Im a begginin homesteader myself. As you can see from past posts i havent been hunting all that long , but have started having more success in the last couple years. Use that and fishing to put a good amount of food in the freezer. Bought a very cheap small plot of grown up woods that ive been slowly turning into a working steading. Got solar power and a small cabin. Its hard in this day and time to find a county that has friendly zoning for things like outhouses but it can be done! Hope more people get back to this( i know some good ol country people never stopped).

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oops1 said:

This is going to be a slow thread then

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Capt Quirk said:

No. We send postcards to a firm in India, and they post it for us, then send us letters with replies.

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NCHillbilly said:

When I was growing up, most of the older members of my family lived what we would call an off-the-grid homestead-type life. Most of them never worked on a job in their life, just raised and grew everything they needed. Most of them grew a small crop of tobacco for cash money, and did a lot of bartering with neighbors for stuff, also. If they had enough land, they would usually run some beef cattle, too. My great-grandpa used to sell enough coon hides every year to pay his property taxes. Many of them also sold stuff like tanbark, ginseng, and sometimes, liquid corn. Most of them had no electricity or running water. They would carry water from the spring, and many had a springhouse to act as a refrigerator.

I personally grew up twixt and tween. We grew a huge garden and tater patch every year, stored probably 60-70 bushels of taters, and canned hundreds of cans of vegetables, fruits, sausage, and such. Apples were often dried too, and the last picking of half-runners were allowed to mature and dried for "leather-britches" beans. We had a milk cow, churned our own butter. The yard was always full of chickens. One of my grandmas had geese that they plucked for feather beds and pillows.

We had a smokehouse, like everyone else around, and we killed and cured hogs. We also usually raised a beef steer to butcher every year. We grew tobacco as a cash crop, and worked it with a mule or draft horse. Grandpa raised sorghum and made cane syrup/molasses. Most folks had a few stands of bees, and a small orchard. We had running water, but it was gravity-fed from a spring up the holler.

My homeplace still has a couple of root cellars, but the smokehouse, outhouse, and chicken house are gone. I don't have any livestock now, because I don't want to be a slave to them. I like to go places and do stuff, which is impossible if you have a bunch of critters that have to be fed, watered, and taken care of. I still grow, can, and freeze a lot of stuff.

The two main obstacles to homesteading right now IMO:

1. Land and property taxes are ridiculously expensive in most places; and ordinances/zoning/government regulations are also ridiculously prohibitive. It would be really hard to purchase and pay taxes on enough land to be self-sufficient on if you weren't working a good-paying job. They have also phased out most cash crops that you can grow in small amounts with a minimum of equipment, like tobacco. You might be able to cultivate a market for herbs, berries, grass-fed meat, or some such if you're willing to jump through the hoops of regulation.

2. There is no longer a sense of community in most places like there was back when I was growing up. Back then, every neighbor for miles around was likely a relative or friend, and the whole community got together to help each other with bigger jobs that would have been almost impossible for one family to handle on their own. It would be hard to pull that off now.

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