Homesteading is all about growing our own food, having our own farm and spending some quality time with our family. Having everything that you need is not the way to start your homesteading, so it’s important to learn some skills that make you a successful homesteader. Learning skills will not only allow you to be a good homesteader, it also helps you to make good use of your space in a unique way.
Below are some basic homesteading skills, where you can head start without thinking where you are.
20 Homesteading Skills To Practice Right Now:
- Gardening:
This one is at the beginning of the list for a reason, growing your food for the first time feels like a magic. Whether you grow kale, spinach or other greenery vegetable in raised beds or tomatoes, peppers and potatoes in containers, watching your own food growing in your own space is such a joy and one of the most important skill to learn in homesteading.
- Cooking From Scratch:
Even if you don’t grow your own food or raise animals for meat, don’t worry. You can start cooking from scratch, just replace processed foods with homemade goodies and start making recipes like biscuits and bread.
Keep your pantry stocked up with staples which will allow you to make any food from scratch without going for a trip to store anytime.
- Preserving Food:
It’s difficult to preserve fruits and vegetables especially in cold seasons. So, it’s important to preserve food in the right way. Canning is one of the best way to keep your food safe and fresh, but make sure to learn the right technique as bacteria is not the canners friend. You can even dehydrate almost anything either in a stove or dehydrator and of course there’s always a freezer.
- Learn To Use Herbs:
You can grow herbs easily in your garden, they have different uses such as in food, drinks, salads, essential oils and infused oils. Herbs can also play an important role in human livestock health and wellness.
- Raise Livestock:
There are many animals you can have in your space like rabbits, chickens, goats that are best when you have a very little space. The livestock management will help you to keep up with all of the important pedigree, breeding and medical information.
- Making Of Cheese And Butter:
If you have your own livestock like cow, goat you can make small amount of butter from the milk you have left after selling. Otherwise purchase it locally sourced milk and cream to make chesses and butter for your family.
- Waste Less Food:
This is one of the easiest skills to learn is to simply waste less food. Make use pieces of food that typically get thrown in the trash and make vinegar with apple cores, bone broth with leftover bones and feed scrap to your animals, or compost everything that you can, simply going the things are truly endless.
- Grind Your Own Grains:
Grinding your own grain has many benefits to do. You can simply have stand one mill.
- Needle Work:
Learn some sewing skills so you can mend clothing and make items that need around your home.
- Caring For Fruit Trees:
When compared with vegetables, fruit trees need extra care and it’s important to know how and when to prune them as well as grafting techniques. Just research about proper care to maximize their yield come harvest season.
- Learn To Cook Without Electricity:
If you are living in a home without a gas stove, then cherish it. Even without a gas cooking option, you can make hot food without using electricity with a solar oven or you can even purchase high quality oven that will last long.
- Cook With Cast Iron:
Cast iron will last forever and this is one of the skillet that was made before 1890 and the best thing about this is it cooks beautifully.
- Line Dry Clothes:
Line drying save lots of money and reduce the electricity used on laundry and make your clothes feel and smell fresh. If you can’t hang them outside, just purchase drying racking to maintain your laundry room.
- Fill Your Freezer By Hunting:
Hunting is an excellent way to fill your freezer with meat without breaking anything.
- Clean And Cook Fish:
Fishing is also great way in addition to hunting and raising livestock to stock up the meat. Learn how to catch, clean and cook fish in your own pond.
- Water Purification:
Learn how to purify water and no matter where you live. You can easily make your own filtration systems or use tried and tested filtrations systems like Berkley filters.
- Make Your Own Essential Oils:
Making your own essential oils is not hard as you think, you can easily make infused oils and floral waters using herbs in your garden.
- Vehicle Maintenance:
If you desire to become a homesteader, it must to know how to change your oil, change a tire, check tire pressure, and other lot of stuff in vehicle maintaining can save you lot of money, time and hustle.
- Home Brewing:
If you love to have beer or a glass of wine occasionally, simply brew them at your home.
- Carpentry And General Handy Work:
Knowing how to fix or build things is one of the homesteading skills you must learn. Learn how to fix pipes for water supply in your garden or building your own furniture will help you to save lot of money and time as well. You can even learn all those things from online courses if you aren’t sure where to start.
- Make Proper Use Of Firearm:
Homesteaders need to know how to use firearm especially if you raise animals in your place. You must protect them from all the causes and able to defend your family because if you are living in the outskirts of city, police response time isn’t as fast as you need.