Woodhouse - Homesteading and Self Sufficiency Guide for Beginners

Homesteading and Self Sufficiency Guide for Beginners

A Step By Step Guide to Growing Your Own Food for Self Sufficiency

By: Daisy Woodhouse

Disclaimer

This publication is intended to provide helpful and informative material. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health problem or condition, nor is intended to replace the advice of a physician. No action should be taken solely on the contents of this book. Always consult your physician or qualified health-care professional on any matters regarding your health and before adopting any suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from the use or application of any contents of this book.

Any and all product names referenced within this book are the trademarks of their respective owners. None of these owners have sponsored, authorized, endorsed, or approved this book.

Always read all information provided by the manufacturers product labels before using their products. The author and publisher are not responsible for claims made by manufacturers.

Digital Edition

Manufactured in the United States of America

How This Book Will Help You and Why

Homesteading can be interpreted in many ways. More often than not nowadays, it is seen as a way to be more self sufficient and to be less reliant on the power and water conglomerates. It is also a great way to have more healthy and organic meal options. This book introduces the reader to that and a whole lot more.

The real experience of a being a homesteader is highlighted in this text, how to build a chicken coop, how to set up and seed your garden. It is all there!

Homesteading is a wonderful lifestyle. It is not something that everyone would want to do but it is a process that helps to protect our environment and, in the long run makes us more self sufficient. This book is dedicated to those who have realized the benefits of being a homesteader.

Why dont I start by defining what a self-sufficient homesteader is not. He or she is not a pioneer alone on the frontier trying to survive long enough to prove up on and get the legal title to his farmstead. We are not in danger of starving if the rains do not come, or at the mercy of the weather for our life or livelihood. We are not necessarily the small family farmer; though some of those who have managed to survive the hostile governmental policies may be in our ranks.

Instead we are people who either have paychecks coming into the family coffers, or small business incomes or pension checks or social security checks or etc. We own a chunk of soil, however tiny (window box) or large (acreage) and choose to use it to produce food for the body and the soul. We are not slaves to a desperate hunger to survive against all odds. Rather we are people who choose to relish the simple pleasures of life instead of chasing mindlessly after the empty amusements pushed at us through the media and advertisers.

We may occasionally soak up the rays on the beach in a swimsuit, but for the most part we choose to sit in our garden, maybe in shorts and t-shirt or tank-top, with or without garden gloves or shoes. We sit there and savor the vitamin D producing rays. We also savor the pleasure of pulling the weeds that would choke the tender little plants that we know will, in due time, put food on our table. We choose to enjoy cultivating the soil around those plants and/or tucking mulch around them to add nutrient and conserve moisture.

We love to graze through our garden when it is in full production. Snapping off a broccoli side-shoot at its peak and savoring the tender mild flavor of seconds-fresh raw goodness that bears no resemblance to the strong flavored overcooked broccoli that made such a bad impression on so many young palates. Pulling, wiping the dirt off and enjoying the tasty crisp goodness of a fresh carrot or radish; plucking a Swiss chard or lettuce leaf, or a piece of celery, or a crisp sugar snap pea, or shelling and eating on the spot a shell pea.

We choose to focus on and enjoy the best parts of country living and the simple pleasures of life; our personal spiritual life, the needs and joys of our family members, being there for our neighbors if they need a hand and knowing that we control what we choose to buy. Not allowing the commercialism of the media to constantly nag at us to buy this or buy that item that we really dont need and then wonder why we wasted our money on it, once we have it.

We choose to turn a small chunk of land into vegetables. We take the money we didnt have to spend on store bought convenience food that isnt healthy, and use that money to buy simple tools to make our self-sufficient homestead less labor and time intensive. We buy things like garden tools, chipper/shredders to make bedding or composting and mulching easier, faster, or better. We might buy garden carts to haul the compost without wearing ourselves out, maybe even eventually small garden tractor and attachments so we can put up our own hay for part of our animals winter feed or bedding for the chickens. We are not lazy nor are we working ourselves into an early grave or having to abandon what we love because we are no longer young enough to do it all with our own energy.

It isnt that we do not buy nice things or that we only buy tools. It is that we control what we buy, not an advertiser who is good at putting us into a buying trance so we buy whatever they are selling. A self-sufficient homesteader is, to the degree they choose, an independent soul. We are proud of the title homemade or handcrafted instead of ashamed of it.

Because I love to be able to spend my time doing these things for myself and for my family I see the advantage of learning the skills of internet marketing and putting in a couple of hours of each day working at building a business online instead of 8 hours at a job and then trying to fit what I love to do into the rest of my day. In the next chapter I will discuss how fulfilling and financially beneficial it can be to have your own garden no matter where you live.

I am anxious to get into the garden. My stored vegetables from last summer are almost gone. It hurts to have to go to the store and know that the vegetables that I have to shell out money for are not giving my family the nutrition that my garden plants provide.

Some people look at the amount of time that it takes to grow a garden. Then they look at what they could earn if they had a wage earning job and decide that they could buy food and have a wider selection of foods as well with money from a job.

I know that my in-laws have held that opinion at least some of the time that I have been married. But my husband and I had decided when we first got married that we were going to have kids if the Lord blessed us with some. And if we were going to have kids we wanted to raise them ourselves, not babysitters or daycare workers.