1. It’s fun and satisfying!
My husband grew up on a little ranch in Mexico where they live much simpler. Many of the homes to this day do not have running water.
When we visited several years ago, I was reminded of my childhood and how I was always drawn to all things old-fashioned.
We both wanted to start a little hobby homestead, but life just always seemed to get in the way!
…then COVID happened, and we jumped all in! (More on that later.)
It has definitely been a big commitment, but it has also been enormously fun!
And there is nothing more satisfying than eating food that you worked hard to produce.
2. We like to know where our food comes from and what’s in it.
I have always intuitively been suspicious of the food on the shelves of our grocery stores.
It never made sense to me that something like margarine that is concocted in a lab is healthier than butter that is made from cream that God created.
I can now say for certain that I don’t care how many scientific studies tell me that man-made products are healthier than those that come from nature.
My family has never felt healthier since the bulk of our diet is as close to nature and the way God intended as possible.
3. Food shortages. YIKES!
When COVID hit in March 2020, and they told us to stay home for “15 days to slow the spread” and that all businesses needed to shut down, I immediately knew that would wreak havoc on the food system.
I begged my husband to get me some chickens and a milk cow so that we could be sure to be able to feed our family no matter what.
And just like that our homesteading journey began.
It is so comforting to know that we have the means to eat (albeit simply) no matter what happens to our food supply chain.
It is especially comforting considering what’s currently taking place.
I am not sure whether it is purposeful sabotage or something more benign like a shortage of workers resulting in important safety checks being skipped. All I know is that there has been an awful lot of suspicious activity (fires, explosions, etc.) taking place at facilities important to our food supply chain.
We are all witnessing less full – sometimes even empty – shelves in our grocery stores.
Those of us who have the means to do so should be doing what we can to produce for our own families and – Lord willing – for our neighbors as well.
4. Recapturing lost knowledge
I have been dabbling in cheesemaking, and as I was making mozzarella one day, it really hit me that the process of making cheese is complicated. It must have taken a lot of trial and error and time for our ancestors to master the process.
Over several generations, we decided to trade all that hard-won knowledge for convenience.
I think many of us are starting to recognize that was a terrible trade.
Luckily, we live in an AMAZING time where we can learn WHATEVER we want.
We have access to so much knowledge. We are not confined to only what our mother learned from her mother who learned from her mother (and so on and so forth).
It is an exciting time to be a homesteader, and I’m looking forward to learning all I can in the years to come!
(Make sure you invest in hard copies of books. The internet is a wonderful tool, but the past couple years have been a good reminder that the future is not certain. Just a little friendly advice!)
5. Animal treatment
Years and years ago, I read that the requirements for chicken pens are about the size of a sheet of paper.
It makes me sick to my stomach to think of a chicken confined to such a small space.
I immediately started buying cage-free eggs.
Years later, I learned about the use of crates in the pig industry.
I will let you do your own research, but I quickly realized that factory farming is not for us.
I believe humans thrive when we eat animals, but I think we have a responsibility to do what we can to consume meat in an ethical way.
When you raise your own animals for food, they have only one bad day after a happy and healthy life.
Although we don’t raise all our own meat yet, we would love to in the future.
For now, if we don’t raise it, we purchase from companies that offer sustainably produced and humanely treated animal products.
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