3 Secrets Legit Homesteaders Might Not Tell You

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

Sure, it seems wonderful. But today I’m gonna let you in on a few homesteader secrets that other legit homesteaders might not have told you about homesteading…

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Hold everything… if you’re more of a visual person, or just wanna see my sweet Bixby running in the snow and Selah mooing for her food… just click the image above or this link and hop over to my youtube video I just filmed, and you can watch this whole post in video form. (Bixby, by the way, is a rescued labradoodle. Selah is a Holstein/Hereford mix, six months old in this video. And they both have completely stolen my heart.)

Homesteading is like sitting down to an amazing Thanksgiving meal, hearing your student aced an important midterm, and being told you just inherited all of Great Aunt Flo’s retirement funds… but only if you personally plucked every feather of that turkey; stayed up countless, sleepless nights helping your student study; and worked twenty years in Aunt Flo’s place to earn that inheritance.

While the rewards of homesteading are huge in hindsight, on a minute-by-minute, living-in-it basis, it’s not so great. If you read about chicken care, dream about the land you want to buy, and have already named your family milk cow even though you still live in the city, well, this post is for you. Cause I know in the books and blogs you read it looks wonderful. I figured I should let you in on 3 secrets that will help you stay well-grounded with your dreams.

 

By all means, read till the very end and take a peak here at a 3-minute Snippets of Life on our homestead this week. (And while you’re there, take a second to subscribe to my youtube channel so you’ll get a monthly little snippet of life here on our New England homestead–the good the bad and the poopy.) While I wholeheartedly encourage you to make your dreams a reality, you should know a few things first…

#1. It’s hard.

We might not share this as often as we should. Not because we actually want to keep homesteader secrets. But because, as homesteaders, we have to stay focused on the positive. Truth is, we often have what I call a 4:8 Attitude–I explain here, on my very first blog post, many years ago, and I chat about it here, in this facebook live, if you want to peek in on the conversation. We are surrounded by our own feelings of inferiority (see #2) and so… much… mess! (See #3.) So we have to continually focus on the beautiful parts of homesteading today, or we might walk away from it all tomorrow.

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Of course, I’m sure I am doing plenty of things wrong on my homesteading journey. But just like the Colossal Hoax of Parenting that I wrote about here, there’s a Colossal Hoax of Homesteading too… we don’t want everyone to know it, but all of us fail. Pretty often.

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#2. None of us truly feel “legit.”

This is one fact we truly intend to keep a secret. It’s hard to be proud of failure. But most of the time, homesteaders feel like we could have done better. We mess up. Continually.

I’m pretty sure I’m worse than the average homesteader. I mean there have been the mistakes with my young hens, my incubated eggs, my pregnant heifer, and my cow with her calf, just to name a few. We didn’t even know our cow wasn’t pregnant until weeks before she should have given birth. Yep. Most of the time I feel like a fraud when I declare myself a “homesteader.”

#3. We stink.

This one, well, there’s no keeping it a secret if you meet us in person.

Yesirree Bob, I have shown up at the dentist office and the grocery store with animal poo on my boots. Not purposefully, of course. Sadly, it just seems to be a fact of farm life that poo lingers no matter how much I clean it off.

Living a sustainable life; living off the land; raising, growing, and milking our own sustenance–none of it’s easy. And it almost never smells anything like roses.

But this hard life–that’s filled with mistakes and messes–is a beautiful life. It’s beauty in one of its rawest forms. It’s worth all the effort, embarrassment, and stinkiness, because we get to be an intricate part of scenes like this. Every. Single. Day.

I took this picture this morning. We were down at the stables at 6:35 a.m., my teen daughters and I.

Early-morning transplanting in the garden was calling me. I often do gardening with bedhead, a sweatshirt (to fend off the New England morning chill), and dirty gardener’s knees. See those gardener’s knees, in all their loveliness, below.

My daughters had just finished milking Scout and took the jars of foaming white joy into our farmhouse. Now it was Selah’s turn to get her fill of her momma’s sweet cream, while Scout finished eating her morning hay. I had just finished picking some garden produce and gathering eggs when I let the chickens out to scratch around the barnyard. They ran down their coop ramp and straight for the fresh cow paddies. And that’s when I snapped the above picture. It’s a photo that shows how everyone was nourished here on our farm this morning. Nothing was wasted. Bellies were filled. Daily hope renewed. 

So, yeah, homesteading is hard, and most homesteaders feel inadequate for the task. (My friend, Janelle, was telling me this week how she feels the same way, homesteading in the Missouri Ozarks. So it’s not regional, that’s for sure.) But it is a BEAUTIFUL, hard, smelly ride that we’re glad we’re on. Most days.

But even if you’re not a wannabe homesteader, if you like playing the warm garden dirt, you’ll wanna snag a copy of my ebook, Beautiful Gardening. In fact, unlike most of the good things in life, this is one thing you don’t have to wait for… Just subscribe here and download it right away.

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“We can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation.

This is the way our Savior God wants us to live.”

I Timothy 2:1-3 [The Message]

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Stop over to my farm for a minute!

Take a second to follow my channel while you’re there. (Honestly, it’s not easy making these videos but it’s so rewarding when you all tell me how much you enjoy them. If I know a few people like them, I’ll keep making and sharing them.)

I’d love to connect!

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Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

 

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And please follow along!

Please take a second to follow along here on SoulyRested to catch up on a few of my memorable mishaps, discover fascinating things about my centuries-old farmhouse, glean a little parenting/homeschooling insight from this momma who’s been failing at the effort for almost 2 decades, or enjoy the inside scoop on the secrets other legit homesteaders might not tell you. I hope my focus always encourages you, because simple joys require hard work. Let’s face it, we all need all the encouragement we can get!

As soon as you subscribe, you’ll have immediate access to my subscriber library of resources, which I’m continually adding to. It includes lots of printables, including my popular e-book and lots of homesteading-related resources. You’ll have access to my directions for making lilac syrup and training your dog on your homestead, just to name a few. And, of course, you can snag my free eBooks too.