If you’ve been to the grocery store recently, you probably know that the costs of goods, such as meat and produce, have risen significantly in the last couple of years. And while supply and demand have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, this has also affected the prices of goods. 

Today, it’s becoming much more of a smart (and healthy) choice to grow your own food and raise your own livestock at home. 

Americans all over the country are turning their yards into small home farms, and even though some might not have animals, large produce bearing gardens are becoming much more of a trend. 

Believe it or not, creating a homestead for you and your family can be done relatively inexpensively. In this post we’ll discuss a few tips that can help bring your homestead idea to life.

Keeping Livestock

If you’re up for an adventure, keeping livestock will not fall short in this department. While you might think that keeping animals, such as chickens or goats might be easy, it’s actually a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of fun.

The first thing you have to learn is how to properly care for farm animals. Just like domesticated house pets, farm animals require a certain degree of care that isn’t as common with dogs or cats.

You’ll also want to plan out and develop the areas where you’ll be keeping your animals, and ensure that they have not only adequate space to move around, but that they’ll be kept secure and safe from other animals. 

Chickens

Chickens might be the go-to animal for anyone starting a homestead. Not only can you get fresh eggs daily when you raise chickens, you can also use them for the meat to also provide for your family. 

If you’re keeping chickens, you’ll need to install the best chicken coops for this purpose. Chickens are a target for predatory birds such as eagles and hawks, and you don’t want either of these flying in circles over your open chicken yard. 

Goats

Goats are a little more complicated to raise than chickens, but you can also have fun watching these animals grow as well. As a kid, goats can be rather entertaining, to say the least, as they’re very exploratory and curious for most of their youth. 

Goats also need a good bit of space to roam, but not as much as larger animals like cows or horses. A decent-sized pen of an eighth to a quarter-acre with a high fence should suffice for keeping a few goats. Just keep in mind that these animals are also targets for predatory animals such as coyotes, mountain lions, and wolves. 

Gardens

One of the easiest ways to get started homesteading is to build a garden. This not only gives you fresh produce to rely on, depending on the size of your garden, you might also choose to sell some of your goods at a farmer’s market.

Planning a garden can be simplified in a few steps. First, you need to decide how big your garden will be and locate a few areas of your yard that will be optimal for the growth of fruits and vegetables.

While planning your garden, you’ll want to track the path of the sun over your yard in early spring. This will enable you to see where sunlight is maximized each day, and where the shady spots are.

Remember, most plants thrive with between 3 and 6 hours of direct sunlight per day, but they also need protection from the midday sun, so choosing an area that gets sunlight and a bit of shade will be your best option. 

Homesteading can be a great way to get back in touch with nature all while reducing the cost of buying groceries. It might be hard work, but this is the work that people have done for millennia, and as long as people want to eat and save money, homesteading will only become more attractive.