What Sixteen Years of Homesteading Taught Us

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Hello all,
Today’s newsletter is going to be a little different. Instead of doing a “Currently Happening on the Farm” section, we are diving straight into some of the most important lessons my family has learned over the last sixteen years of homesteading. These are real stories, real mistakes, and real things I would do differently if I could start over.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

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Lesson One

Good fences make good neighbors.
When we first moved onto our land, hunters and fishermen kept showing up asking if they could hunt and fish because the last owner had let them. We learned fast that good fences solve that problem. Three no trespassing signs is the minimum to get your point across.

Lesson Two

Water and power matter way more than you think.
We had a well when we moved out here. It was great, but we learned something important. Once you live on land, you rely fully on the power lines coming in. We used to lose power all the time. Tree limbs, storms, squirrels, you name it.

The best investment you can make for your property is a generator you can trust. Do not cheap out on this. The money you spend will pay for itself the first time you are not hauling buckets across the farm in freezing rain. If you do not have ponds, losing water means calling the fire department for a water truck.

Lesson Three

Too many animals in too little time will burn you out.
When we bought our farm, we did what everyone does. We bought chickens. Then goats. Then cows. Then more chickens. Faster than we could handle.

When my older brother got married, that was one less person to help. I was around twelve at the time. We burned out fast. We sold a lot of goats because we couldn’t keep up. All our chickens got taken out by predators because we let them roam. More on that in a bit.

My advice now:
Start with ten to twenty chickens. Nothing crazy.
Get used to that first.
Then two goats. They will expand their herd quickly. Keep it small and manageable.
If you have more land and want cattle, start slow there too.

On a few acres, goats were by far the best and easiest option.

Lesson Four

Free ranging chickens will come back to bite you.
We let ours roam because we thought it would save time. It did not.

Predators showed up every day. If you keep feeding predators, more come. Trust me.

And then there was the poop. My mom was done the day she stepped outside and her porch was covered in chicken poop. They were also eating her lizards. They destroyed our barn too.

Free range seems fun until the cleanup begins.

Lesson Five

Electric fencing was a game changer.
After the free range disaster, we switched to electric netting. Best thing we ever did. It lets you stretch out moves and gives more space. We usually run two fences and move every few weeks.

Lesson Six

Horses will destroy your fences.
We had horses for a short while. One day we came home and one had managed to get stuck over a gate. Still not sure how. They destroyed so much fencing that we sold them soon after.

Lesson Seven

Culling is necessary, even if it hurts.
I have talked about this in past newsletters. We never culled goats. Because of that, we kept genetics that were weak and parasite prone. We wormed with herbal wormers and ivermectin, and still had constant issues.

That is what finally led us to sell our goats in 2019 when the travel bug hit us. If we had been more selective early on, things would have gone very differently.

Final Thoughts

That is not everything we learned, but it is a good chunk of it. We have many more stories from cows, chickens, ducks, sheep, and goats. If you want more newsletters like this, let me know.

Homesteading brings sweat, work, exhaustion, joy, peace, and a whole lot of learning. It is not a weekend hobby. It is a life. And it changes you.

All those experiences set me up to understand animals, land, work, and responsibility. I still live on my family’s farm. I take care of everything here. I sold our Dexters and hope to switch to Red Angus next spring or when prices drop a little.

Right now we have chickens, and hatching eggs has become one of my favorite things. You get such unique colors and personalities. We also have two donkeys who are doing great with the chickens. As long as they get their alfalfa pellets and carrots, they are happy.

I want to thank every single one of you for reading these newsletters. I am 20 years old and finishing my degree in digital marketing. I want to help encourage more people my age, and people older than me, to get into homesteading.

There are a lot of unknowns in the world right now, but feeding chickens and donkeys makes everything feel a little more grounded. Homesteading connects you to your roots and slows the world down.

Thank you to all 1,000 of you for subscribing and supporting what I do. This has been one of the best learning experiences of my life. I have relearned so much while writing these newsletters.

Please forward this to a friend or family member who might enjoy it. I have big plans to grow this community into something meaningful.

See you next week.
-Tim Parker
Start My Homestead-