The Lazy Farmer...doesn't work, in more ways than one!
A question came around on a Facebook Page that was asking for advice on how to start Homesteading on their new property. I, of course, thought my answer was brilliant as I have been doing this for a few years now.
Year One...Season One...#1 Watch a ton of YouTube videos on homesteaders who have been doing this for years and years...also Pinterest...beautiful Farms and Gardens...Get Inspired by little actual information but inspiring end results. #2 Get 8 chicks even though you have never been around chickens and don't know what the heck you are doing...put them in a plastic crate in your house unaware at how fast they grow...what they smell like and Do Not...I repeat...Do NOT have a coop ready for them when you buy them. When you realize that they must get out of the house...Scramble like mad and build a coop. Talk about hustling and NOW building when we had never built anything before and had no plans...I mean I figure it was a square box with a triangle roof...right? #3 Turn over 4000 Square feet for a garden...get tons of Wood Chips delivered from a tree company...Envision a glorious garden filled with Vegetables, melons, Weedless...flowers interspersed etc. Oh yeah...and while you are at it buy more blueberry bushes, fig trees and raspberries to add to the menagerie you have been putting in, (but not taking care of) since you moved in. Now...Let most of that hard work lie fallow because you couldn't get to it...don't cover it though to prevent weeds...let all the weeds and wire grass grow through it all. Don't spread most of the wood chips so that the red ants can invade the piles so much that even the chickens won't go near them. #4 Over Plant EVERYTHING,,,but mostly tomatoes...90 plants...and then never take the time to stake them so they are laying in the dirt and get Early Blight...Lose 90 plants!! Free Range Chickens Find Corn and eat every last cob...which obviously you didn't know because you hadn't been in that planted field for a month. They also found your cantaloupe and watermelon and pecked through the rind and ate the insides. #5 And then...in the Early spring while planting is going on and you are rejoicing because of your first egg...Buy 2 Bee hives...and the first winter let one hive die because you didn't treat it for Mites...or maybe it was because it got too cold to go out and make sure that they have sugar water to eat...and the other hive somehow miraculously survived. #6 OVERBUY seeds in the winter when all those pretty Seed Catalogs you signed up for come in and THEN miss the time frame you were supposed to start them to be ready for transplanting and have to buy transplants anyway. Oh...and make sure that you put the seeds that you did start in front of a window that has that whole UVA/UVB protection so that they sprout but die from lack of sunlight. #7 Decide that although you have failed at so much you should try to grow citrus in NW Georgia...so you buy 4 trees...then the frost warning comes and you are scrambling to put up some sort of Hoop House which again...lots of $$$ spent without really having a solid plan. So 3 trees are severely damaged by the cold and one dies....You put a house heater that burns out a plug outside running all winter and almost starts a fire and spend $$ on Electricity trying to heat something that is basically like heating a room with all the windows open and a fan in the windows blowing cold air in.
I wish I could say that this is exaggeration. I wish I could say that I was smarter than this, not as lazy as I was. But...Farming takes constant work. There is always something to fix...something to build...someone to feed...cleaning up and out...planting, harvesting, canning and preserving. I could easily work an 8 hour day outside and sometimes actually do just that. But then there is the housework, and cooking dinners, and laundry etc. to do. So, My advice...do one thing at a time. or very small at a time. Build a coop and run, or buy...but have a plan...have a small garden of easy vegetables. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers. Be committed to water what you plant and to weed!! Get 2 chickens...If you want to raise them from chicks, fine...read something about how to go about doing that. The Library is full of books so that is one thing you don't have to spend money on. You will eventually get where you want to be...or decide that you don't want to be that vested in it. At least you will not have spent all your money and need to keep going just to get a Return on Your Investment (ROI)
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