Here’s a tough one: how the heck do I start a lil homestead if I’m working full time? Welp, as someone who has always worked full time and found time for homesteading even on the littlest scale, let me tell ya.
It’s all about starting small. I started with some indoor plant pots and moved to a small aquaponics set to eventually find myself with a full fledged hobby farm. I am currently working two jobs (60-80 hours per week) and I’ve got my garden and my compost going still. Starting out is always the hardest part so you have to make sure you have a plan before you dive in. Do you care more about animals on your homestead or more about plants? If plants, your start is easy! Get a few small pots and plant some herbs in your window sill. Done. Now you have a step toward a homestead. From there you can find your pace, plan your time, and add more when you feel comfortable!
If you are looking more for animals, it takes a bit more thought and planning. I find that chickens are most people’s go to when starting with animals. But this isn’t the only option! You can start out super easy with worms. A little bin that takes very little time and effort. Not the most glamorous animals by any means, but it’s a start! If worms are not your thing, maybe look into getting some quail. Quail are essentially tiny chickens that make tiny eggs or meat. They require a fraction of the space that chickens need and because of this, a fraction of the effort. The most time consuming and physically demanding part of raising animals is cleaning up after them. With quail, you can put them in small hutches (on the ground or raised depending on your predator situation) rather than a full pen like you’d need for a small flock of chickens. Here’s an example of one of those with an Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4cjIqjr . They are also less expensive because of their space, water, and food requirements. An added note, their eggs, while small, are tasty and healthy!
If you’ve got more space and time you can always add more, or start with chickens or ducks instead. I recommend chickens first because ducks are so dirty and require so much more. Chickens just need a coup, a pen and food and water. And they are not nearly as gross because they don’t require constant access to swimming water.
Okay, Sydney, but this tells me nothing about budgeting my time…?? Right, sorry let me get to that next. I am lucky enough to have a husband who helps out once in a while but for the most part all of my homesteading has been on my own. Right now, I come home three days a week after my twelve hour days and water the garden and pull weeds. I set my garden up with a drip system so I just have to turn the hose on and set a timer. This has been a huge help for me. I’ll come home, turn on the hose, and then take care of the dogs or whatever else I need to do before I go back out and turn it off.
When I was working full time and running a farm with poultry, plants, bees, and large animals I had to manage my time so carefully. I would wake up early to feed the animals on the way to work. I needed to make sure I had an extra ten minutes to fill water or break ice if it was winter. I needed to make sure I had time to collect eggs. I needed to make sure that I had time to check my does if anyone was pregnant. So when I worked at eight am, I’d be at the farm by six thirty and leave by seven thirty. Most of the time I had extra time to play with the animals or get a coffee before work but with homesteading, you always need to be prepared for something to go wrong! Then when I got off of work I’d go straight to the farm to feed again. This time around I was able to take my time and make sure the hot wire was still good, fill the pond for the ducks if need be, water any plants, etc.. Then I’d pick a weekend day to trim the plants around the hot wire, fill the pond all the way, give the animals an extra treat, harvest honey if needed, feed the bees, anything else that I needed to get to for that week so that I didn’t have to stress (as much) about things going wrong during the week. There were still days where the universe was not on my side and I had a ten hour day on a Sunday or I was late to work because a goat got out or a chicken got into the pond and I had to take care of that, but I did my best to avoid these situations by planning my time each day. It was hard work. It took time and effort. But it was well worth it. I’d give anything to have that life back.
The other thing that is difficult with homesteading and trying to pay bills is that homesteading can be expensive. So if you’re job pays the bills and you don’t have a whole lot of additional income to put into your homestead, you have to plan for that as well! Again if you’re just doing some pots with herbs, easy! Collect some old cans, buy some coco coir and start a lil garden for ten bucks. Clearly this can be adapted to your budget and what you want, but it’s easy to make this cheap. My favorite that I’ve seen so far is a little window sill with beer cans full of plants(:
Again if you want animals, it gets much harder. I ALWAYS look for things that are second hand. There are always people selling old chicken coops and water buckets on Facebook. You can build pvc feeders. You can use a five gallon bucket for a hanging waterer using little drill in water cups (Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3RI2IuA). When I had my large animals I spent two hundred dollars on their huge shelter and built it myself. Again, it was hard work but it saved so much money. The annoying part about homesteading is that it is either going to be expensive or it is going to be time consuming hard work. You’ll have to make that decision based on your current abilities and wants!
Thank you for the read!!
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