What is the most important thing to get if you are preparing to homestead?
Anyone seriously considering homesteading, or already there, knows you have to have SKILLS or get some! It's sink or float, depending on your skill sets.
For instance; Hubs & I acquired several useful skills for homesteading, either by our upbringings or various experiences & training as adults.
BUT....
With all that, we still found things we would need/want to learn, to help on our future homestead.
Here's a few examples of things we've been picking up, to add to our skill sets, that might give you ideas of things you may need too (depending on the type of homestead you want):
I, personally wanted & needed to learn to can, so I sought out someplace local to learn. As it turned out it would be at an 1800's living history farm and I got to learn on a wood stove which will come in handy if we go off-grid.
I now can each year!
We both wanted to learn to hunt, as neither of us had been hunting before , so we asked a very experienced friend (50+yrs experience) to instruct us in hunting and processing of the meat. It was a week well spent for both of us.
We will hopefully be going hunting again within the next two months!
Neither of us had actually killed & butchered a chicken before, until we went to recently, where they were kind enough to share their knowledge with us all. (Thank you
for your knowledge and kindness). This was something that I knew took place on my own grandparent's homestead, growing up, but had never learned myself.
(pic courtesy of )
My SIL has land and was kind enough to offer us space to raise some meat chickens if we want. Guess what...we are now getting chickens!
We'd been trained in equine care but we'd never learned sheep care or how to trim their hooves. Something we'd need to know if we ever wanted to have sheep on our future homestead. This was also a skill we picked up, at , thanks to
and
. (Thank you for taking the time to share with us!
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@mericanhomestead/taking-care-of-homestead-animals-hoof-care-for-sheep)
Getting sheep will most likely have to wait till we have our own land, and some more knowledge in their overall care/maintenance, but we've got at least one skill down for when we do! I'm looking forward to learning more from you!
I wanted to learn another way to store food long-term w/out canning, so I learned to dehydrate and store my own food! I learned this by watching youtube vids! Seriously! This is one you can learn right at home. Dehydrate2Store is a great channel to watch imho.
(pic courtesy of preparednessadvice.com)
One of the best homestead channels that we've been watching and learning from though, for the last few years, is . We HIGHLY recommend their channel as well as getting in touch with other homesteading Steemians, to share ideas and experience.
If at all possible, go visit each other, help each other by learning from one another- it benefits you both...or at least it should! That's truly the best way to pass skills on and to gain the experience & skill sets you'll need to make it.
Do as much as you can before you get there. That's what we are doing! Hopefully, it will make for a smoother transition when we do. It won't be just our success either. It will be the success of everyone who helped us (and YOU) along the way.
Now...