So you want to start a farm, or homestead, or hobby farm, or whichever you prefer to call it. What first? Where should you start? We are halfway through our 4th year of farming, and while we do not claim to be experts, far from it, we have learned a lot on what we would have done differently, what worked and what didn’t work.

Growing a homestead or farm takes a lot of time, effort, patience and money. Once you get going and settled into farm life you can expect rewards you can’t even imagine! How does this sound: serving a nice dinner of grilled pork chops and roasted root vegetables, or maybe a rotisserie chicken and a fresh green salad...and everything {minus the salt and pepper} came straight from your farm. Or a cold glass of fresh goat milk or maybe witnessing the first baby goats being born on your farm, or a chick hatching underneath its mama. Downright amazing, right? Depending on your goals, that could be your reality.

As romantic as this sounds, this life is not for everyone. Do not chose this life lightly- animals will depend on you, it can be overwhelming at times and it’s very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of homestead life. But if you’re not afraid to get dirty and put in the work, you wont regret it. Here’s some of what we have learned and I hope it helps you too.

This life will demand a lot of time. Are you a single person, or do you have a partner who is home most of the time? Your employment situation will dictate a lot of what you can do. If everyone works full time, do you really want to spend your evenings and weekends shoveling poop? Maybe you do, I don’t know. But that’s a good place to start asking yourself what you want. In our situation, my husband works full time {typically about a 72 hour work week as a firefighter} while I am a stay-at-home-mom. This allows me to be home the majority of the time to feed, milk and look after animals. Would this work for us if I was back at my full time corporate job? Probably not.

-Advertisement-

Falling down the rabbit hole of farming is real. In our house we put time limits on things. Such as “I’m going to work in the garden for 2 hours, then I have to move onto something else” or “I’ll do what I can in the barn until 11am, then I have to go finish the laundry.” There will always be something to do, find balance and don’t get burned out.