Homesteading

Homsteading, is the art of using your home, - farm, small-holding, house or flat - as a resource, to make and save you money.

It is a self sufficient, self reliant, organic, green and sustainable lifestyle that allows you to decide what your future will be.

The basic principles can be applied in any home, anywhere.

The goal is to achieve a measure of freedom from dependence on others, and can be as simple as growing a few organic vegetables and being more frugal, to complete freedom from bills, credit, and a regular 9-5 job.

After living completelly relient on resources of the city for the past few years, we decided when we moved home to become as self sufficient as possible for our family.  Currently for our family, this means Goats for milk and meat plus chickens for eggs and meat.  First thing I have learned, if you get a goat that is already in milk do not stop milking her.  Although my doe had a doeling that was still weaning, I am sure that her milk has dried completely up.  So now we have to wait til she has another baby to get milk from them again.  Although this is fine at this time, milk prices keep going up and at almost $5.00 a gallon that is a bit steep for my budget.  So we try to keep milk purchases to a minimum.  Our does ran with a buckling for a few weeks, but I am pretty sure that he did not mate with any of them.  So we may trade someone for a doe that is in milk or sell our doe to get one that is in milk once spring comes.  I currently have 2 alpine nubian cross does and one is only a year old. 



One of our does checking out the fresh bedding.

The second thing I learned, if you order chickens from the hatchery at a couple dollars a piece, it cost as much as finding full grown chickens in the long run.  So I thought it was a great idea to get 25 chicks in the fall and raise them up.  They cost $2 something a piece, then food to start out was $12 something every two weeks.  Well a couple months in food is $13 a week and still no eggs.  So now they are not paying for themselves still.  So if you take into consideration of $56 in chicken feed a month for 5 months, that averages the cost of each chicken to be about $15.  Well at the small animal swaps you can get a full grown chicken for $10.  I know there are pros and cons to this as well.  You may not know what conditions the chicken lived in before or there temporment.  For meat chickens the hatchery works fine cause you have them at the most 12 weeks, then they go to freezer camp.  But for layers which is the most sufficiant way to get your chickens?  Our chickens should start laying finally mid march by that time I will have put roughly $300 into my chickens.  I am also down to 22 chickens vice the original order of 25 due to predators and lack of knowing what I was doing.  So 22 chickens, if half those chickens lay one egg a day it would take some time to recoop my expenses plus further cost of feed.   I would have to get a minimum of 4 dozen eggs a month to justify having the chickens.  That is without selling the eggs and just using them for our family.  If I choose to sell the eggs at $2.00 a dozen, then 4 dozen eggs would cover feed cost.  I am hoping that the egg production of these 22 chickens is more than 4 dozen a month, which is what we would want just for us.  Any extra would be sold.  We also have to take into account loss of eggs due to dropping, stepping on and pecking from the chickens. 

So all in all, coming into this whole homesteading thing, I jumped right in both feet and might have made some minor mistakes but we hope to have it figured out come spring so we are just a bit self-sufficiant.

My goal for next fall is to have canned veggies from our garden, milk, cheese and eggs.  I currently am working on bread recipes also.  We will also have some meat in the freezer and the ability to only stock the pantry of dry goods such as flour, sugar, salt, and spices.  The rest of the items we will attempt on our own.