You Might Be Ready for Homesteading if…
You may be 20 years into the homesteading journey, or you may be in a neighborhood dreaming of fields filled with livestock and gardens overflowing with produce.
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
You are probably ready for Homesteading if:
You are probably ready for Homesteading if you want to search for gloves.
For whatever reason, I can never find a pair of gloves that match. Not garden gloves, not work gloves, not snow gloves. You’ll be able to find 2 right gloves. You’ll be able to find 2 left gloves. You will never be able to find a right glove and a left glove…… that match. Not matching. Ever.
I think it has to do with the 4 small people living here with me. I have resolved that I am destined to wear one brown glove and one pink one.
If you want to add some scratches, dents, and character to your current car you are ready for homesteading.
I hope you don’t have a new car. Or even a fairly recent car. Between the gravel roads and the amateur drivers on the ATV’s……… It will take approximately 1 week to add a dent to your car.
It is just a matter of time before someone runs into it with the 4-wheeler, or the lawn-mower, or the tractor or all the above.
You are ready for homesteading if you don’t care too much about the outside of your house.
My children’s ability to run 4-wheelers into stationary objects isn’t limited to cars. They also hit houses. Pulling in and out of garages in farm vehicles takes practice, and learning to swing wide enough so you don’t take the siding off the corner of the house could take years.
Be Ready to Catch Cows.
If you are ready to get phone calls from your neighbors letting you know that the cows are out, again, you are probably ready for homesteading. Once you get off the phone, finish panicking, catch your cows, return them to their pasture, you will find the gate wide open. When you question the 4 small people living with you to find out who left the gate open you will find that none of them did it. The cows let themselves out.
If you have a lot of money to spend on water you may be ready for homesteading.
Be prepared to find frost-free pumps left on and running at random places around the farm. There will be water running at the barn for no apparent reason. There will be water running at the cow-field filling a stock tank that was full 5 hours ago. You will get phone calls from your local water department asking you if you put in a pool. Again, when you question the 4 small children, who was using the pump at the barn or who was filling the cow’s stock tank- they will all reply that none of them did it.
If you like tripping over boots, cleaning boots, and not being able to find boots you are ready for homesteading.
You will begin to have a love-hate relationship with your boots. They will be your best friend when you can find both of them and they aren’t housing frogs. Since your children will all decide that your boots are better than their boots your boots will always be gone.
You will find them at the swing, at the forts, by the creek, and in the barn. If your boots happen to miraculously be returned to the garage – they will be unrecognizable. Mud, dirt, straw, hay, chicken poop, cow manure, not to mention frogs will all find their way into your boots.
If you like laundry you are probably ready for homesteading.
Coats, hats, gloves, jeans, everything has to be washed constantly. We were a normal family of 6 (I use normal loosely) with a normal laundry load until we started homesteading. Before homesteading I would wear my jeans 5 times before washing them. My kids would wear the same clothes a couple days before a wash, we NEVER had to wash our winter coats. And, who washes gloves? Homesteaders do!
You’re gonna need a lot of buckets.
This is another commodity that you will always need and never be able to find. You can buy 10 plastic buckets from Tractor Supply in every color, but the instant you need one you will not be able to locate one to save your life.
When poop inevitably comes flowing out of the back of the cow in the milk barn there will be no buckets. Anywhere.
If you find Carrharts, cover-alls, over-alls, and Wrangler jeans fashionable you are probably ready for homesteading.
Forget the designer jeans, the white anything, and fitted clothing. Homesteaders dress for work, comfort, and warmth, not fashion. As long as you aren’t too wrapped up in the latest fashion and your husband (or wife) likes seeing you in Carhart you are good-to-go.
If you don’t mind driving around in a rolling, trash-dump you are ready for homesteading.
What you think is your car will eventually become a livestock trailer, an animal feed transport, and even a hay delivery service. Between the farm animals, feed, mud, hay, 4 kids, food, papers, toys, etc, my car stays in a constant state of trashed.
My dad claims that he needs a tetanus shot whenever he gets in my car. A couple of years ago I had to have my car serviced. They gave me a loaner. My husband took my loaner and gave me his pick-up truck. He said that the kids and I would destroy the nice, clean loaner car that I had been entrusted with.
At the end of the week, my husband returned the loaner to the service center and picked up my mini-van for me. As he walked away from the loaner and back to my mini-van he said to our son, “Out of the nice, clean car and back into Mom’s toxic, waste dump.”
The last item on the homesteading readiness list is: you must like cats.
No one knows for sure exactly where they come from, how they get there, or how they find you. But they will. They will come from the woods, from the bushes, from the creek. They will arrive and make their homes in your barn, in your garage, under your porch or even in your chicken coop. Cats will arrive. Then they will go get all their friends. Before you know what happened, you’ll have your own cat farm. It will begin with a tiny, little “meow” and will end with children begging to keep them and call them George. Must like cats.
If you can read this and not be afraid or daunted, Congratulations! You are probably ready for homesteading.
There will be challenges, and probably some days that you’ll wish you had stayed in bed, but most of the time homesteading is very rewarding and enjoyable. It is ever-changing, never dull and always an adventure.
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Happy Homesteading!
Candi
