Why You Should Consider Homesteading

A lifestyle of self-sufficiency known as homesteading, is often characterized by home preservation of foodstuff, subsistence agriculture, and livestock production. In some cases, it can even include the small-scale production of craftwork, textile and clothing. Solar electricity and wind power are some of the renewable sources modern homesteaders use, thus protecting the environment while they grow healthy GMO-free foods and raise heritage livestock. If you find this type of lifestyle tempting and it seems as your cup of tea, keep on reading and learn what are some of the major reasons you should start homesteading.

Better skills

Homesteading will allow you to develop many new or improve some of the skills you already have. This is especially true if you’re planning to pass the knowledge on to other family members or maybe include your friends into the entire process as well. Work ethic, the use of wide variety of tools, problem solving and various other skills are all a part of homesteading, so you’ll learn everything from fixing the brakes to growing broccoli. These are just some of the invaluable skills that may come in handy even in the future, in who knows which important situation.

Educating the young generations

All the skills you develop through homesteading will be a great foundation for future education of your children. The sooner you start teaching them where the food comes from, and how they can contribute to saving the environment and their household one day, the more appreciative of nature they’ll be. You probably haven’t even talked to your little ones about whether they know that the burger they sometimes have for lunch, actually came from a previously live animal. They’ll learn that tomatoes or potatoes aren’t the groceries made at the supermarket, but that they’re grown in someone’s backyard. What’s more, they might even be enthused enough to spread their knowledge further to their peers and continue the trend even when they’re older.

You’ll always be able to provide food

We live in the most unpredictable of times, when losing your job can happen anytime, but you shouldn’t let that catch you off guard. Becoming unemployed and not being able to find a new job soon can be terrible for your home budget, so homesteading can be a great way to provide your family with a certain amount of security. You never know how long you’ll be without an employment, so you should at least know for sure that your family won’t have to starve. Growing your own crops and storing food is a much more affordable option than shopping for groceries at the supermarket. Homesteading will make you a responsible person, because you’ll be thinking about the future and making sure everyone is taken care of with a sufficient amount of food, no matter what might happen tomorrow or five months from now. Growing your own food, storing your own water, and hunting your own piece of land, will allow you to take care of your family regardless of the type of disaster that might happen.

Better physical activity

Modern life gives us little time to work on our shape, go to the gym or even jog for a little while. That’s another reason why you should consider becoming a homesteader. The whole process of growing crops, milking cows, feeding the chickens and other animals will be a great workout for you. Picking up the fruits and vegetables you grow will be another strenuous activity, and you can even include an entire family into it, making all of them break some sweat while also contributing to the household. Spending time outdoors while taking care of your own fruits and vegetables will be highly beneficial for your health in the long run, as it will make you live a healthy lifestyle without you even noticing it. Add that to eating healthier foods and stressing much less about everyday problems, your life will become much happier and worry-free.

It’s self-empowering

For some people homesteading means self-empowerment. The ability to connect with nature and live a creative life that was pretty much in synced with their own values, was all they needed to feel complete, and maybe that’s what it would be for you. Creating home-based business, homeschooling your children, knitting woolens and caring for livestock while preserving food with traditional methods and generating solar energy to grow your food organically is more than enough to overflow you with the feeling of empowerment. Watching your children learn how to make grow food and preserve it later with their own two hands, will offer you a peace of mind as well, because you’ll know they’ll be able to take care of themselves much better than children who haven’t been raised like yours were.

GMO free food

In order to make fruits and vegetables stay fresh longer, big companies tend to use a variety of pesticides and chemicals that eventually wreak havoc on our health. Therefore, to be sure you’re eating healthy and GMO-free food, you should grow it yourself. Plant a seed, use your water spray gun to water it and watch it grow without any harsh chemicals until it’s ready for you to enjoy it and feed your children the healthiest produce. Also, homesteading will allow you to preserve your GMO-free food very well, as you can consider freezing, storing, fermenting or even dehydrating it. Not all of these options are the most sustainable, but they will make a great modern homesteader out of you.

Homesteading is a wonderful way to become closer to nature, develop new skills while improving the existing ones, live a healthy lifestyle, grow food free of all the toxic chemicals and spread the knowledge of farming to younger generations. It’s also quite self-empowering, making you feel like you’re making a difference and helping the planet with your alternative way of life. You won’t have to worry about your family ever being out of food because you’ll have all the food you need growing in your backyard. If you like how all of that sounds, it’s high time you started homesteading and see for yourself how many benefits it will bring you and your family.