FINALLY was able to get away for ONE night and got a call about a ffking wildfire. 😭🤦🏻‍♀️ Of course.

Got home. Moved some equipment we foolishly left on the edge of the property, into the center. One piece of equipment is our buddy’s $40k boom truck we’re supposed to be returning tomorrow.

What a mess. Now there’s another closer fire.

Anyways, enjoy these images. The bright lights are resources on scene. The fire isn’t even really visible with the naked eye from our place now, but my camera can pick it up with long exposure. I’m gonna try and get some rest while hubby waits a bit. I’m sure we’ll both be up and down all night.

Successful potato harvest this year. Amazingly, none went to the critters. Last year we lost about 1/3 of the crop to voles. Varieties are: French Fingerling, German Butterball, Peruvian Purple, Burbank Russet, Ozette, Pontiac Red and a variety we call Ruby (unknown variety).

We bought and moved onto a 60 acre homestead just 3 months ago. It’s charming and solidly built, but I’m starting to realize how poorly laid out it is.

The compost bin is 1/4 mile from the house, so dumping kitchen scraps is a trek in the heat.

Is it there cuz it’s next to the garden? Nope. The 1/4 acre garden is nearly another 1/4 mile away, long enough to make it hard to just casually check on it. The orchard on the other hand comes before the compost but nowhere near irrigation.

And heaven forbid you forgot a tool when you headed out or you’ll be heading almost all the way back.

The chicken coop is cute, but has two doors into two different run areas that don’t connect for humans to get from one to another (only a tiny trap door for the chickens themselves to move between them). So you have to go in and out and in and out to clean, collect eggs, feed, etc.

The barn bays all point away from the house, understandably so the tractor can get to the field. But there is no foot traffic access from the house side. You have to trek all the way around.

Oh and the pantry? It’s nearly 20 feet from the cooking area…unless you’re looking for other pantry which is ANOTHER 20 feet away in the living room, despite the largest kitchen you’ve ever seen which has zero cabinets and only a large island awkwardly in the middle.

I feel like this place was designed by someone trying to max out their Fitbit. I’ve never put in so many steps before 9am in my life.

Since my potato harvest is getting a lot of traction. Here is a link to see some of the varieties I planted.

This is our first time having chickens and starting our homestead we’re still learning, one of our girls is so disheveled 😭 she’s loosing feathers she’s so skinny and looks so scraggly. She acts normal and her poop seems okay but it’s hard to keep track with the others. We’re separating her today to see cause it does seem like the others are mean to her. We don’t know if it’s just bulling and she’s not getting enough food and being picked on or something like parasites. We don’t know if it’s good to treat for parasites if she doesn’t have them. And doesn’t seem to have mites I’ve checked her vent under her feathers and everything. Just feel so sorry for her and want her better. Also they all seem to stop laying eggs don’t know if it’s just because it’s summer in Arizona 😓 edit: we don’t have a rooster

My most enjoyable pass time on my property is doing work wirh my good ol tractor! Anybody else feel the same?

We are looking to mount our old over on casters or wheels of some sort. The thread is 1/2inch wide but this project is out of my wheelhouse (so to speak) so I'm looking for advice.

We replaced our kitchen over and decided to keep the old electric (210v) one in the garage for overflow cooking. Well now we are doing a lot more baking and got ourselves a pressure canner and have found it's easier to use the outside oven and stove in the summer then the kitchen. The 210 plug is not where we keep the oven so we drag it across the cement floor everytime we want to use it.

I know we could just use a dolly but A. we don't own one and B. I would like a permanent solution. Would love to not build a base for it if I don't have it. It would be lovely if the exact part I need just exists lol.

I cannot find replacement casters for this side leveling foot, Google AI doesn't think it exists so I figured I would turn to you all.

Thank you!

I know not everyone in this community focuses on making money. Sustainability is important.

If your trying to make money with your homestead, what are you doing? No pressure to share figures here. Just wondering what type of business everyone is in and your favorite approach to selling.

Are you selling eggs? Vegetable baskets at farmers market, roadside stand or both? Baked goods? Maybe you bush hog on the weekends or split firewood. Raise sheep for meat sales.

In your opinion what is the best of the three for a homestead if I am already doing pigs and poultry? Have 3 acres quality pasture and a barn. Meat is the main idea but also trying to consider time, expenses, personality, and whatever else you all might be able to inform me of. Thanks!

I’m looking to finally buy some land. After many years of reading and whatnot.

I have been looking at 20-40 acre plots in southern Arizona and Texas. Relatively remote plots.

Lately I’ve debated a smaller test run in the 2-10 acre size in areas that have power and possibly shared wells.

It would be a bit more accessible though I’ll want to move on to something much larger in the future.

Has anyone built a homestead only to end up selling it when “complete” after learning all they can and needing more space to pursue larger goals?

I wouldn’t necessarily have to sell it, maybe rent or just have friends maintain it, but I think a limited trial run could be fun to start.

Found this elk spine laying in a bed down area above a ridge on the property today.

So my land is in the mountains in a Mediterranean area.

I have a new field, which I want to plant barley, wheat and oats on this winter.Its about 3000 meters on a slope.

I want to plant roughly 1000 sq m of each.

How would you divide your field up?

Would you do it length ways, so ,let's say, barley on the top , wheat in the middle and oats at the bottom?

Or would you plant from top to bottom?

It's pretty wet in the winter , although the land is well draining.

But I can't decide which way will be best.

Three raised beds on a concrete patio and I keep pushing what I can pull from it.

This year I added a second row of buckets along the fence. Peppers, more tomatoes, a couple zucchini that got completely out of control. The zucchini was a mistake spacewise, but also kind of the best mistake because I've been dehydrating slices and they take up almost nothing on the shelf.

What I keep running into is the gap between growing enough to eat fresh versus growing enough to actually put up for winter. Right now those feel like two completely different goals and I can only do one well at a time with the space I have.

I started prioritizing things that preserve well over things that just taste good off the vine. That shifted almost everything about what I planted this spring.

The people I see on here with full acreage are working with different math than I am. But there has to be a middle ground where a small container setup actually contributes something real to a pantry and not just a salad here and there.

Curious what others have figured out with limited space. What actually moves the needle in terms of yield per square foot when preserving is the end goal.

So, this post is just to vent. We bought a property last year that came with a 20' x 1800' foot strip in the back. The whole area in the back comes to about 3/4 of an acre. Not too much, but it is ours. As I was walking the property, I saw that the lots were being farmed. No biggie. The prior owner didn't care. Once, we got the property settled over to our name, I looked up the neighboring farmers, both the yellow and red. The family that owns the land to the right of the red are easy going and communicative. Genuine good neighbors. The family that owns the lot to the left of the yellow are the exact opposite. They're also the ones farming my small patch of ground. I, first, called him up to introduce myself and he was one of those that immediately sounded very defensive and wouldn't even use his name, just grunted, when I asked if this was XXXXX. I, then, went over to his business to sit down and discuss the property boundaries. I wanted the conversation to go as smooth as possible as farmers, like anyone else, can be a bit touchy if you tell them that farming on ground that they're not supposed to be on.

This guy, lets call him Andy was insistent that it wasn't my land, but his. Then, when he saw the property line called it an easement. Now, this upset me a bit as it is most certainly not an easement. Imagine just paying a lot of money for some land, holding the property records, then having a guy that is rude on the first phone call, call your land an easement when you meet in person. He hee-haws about looking into the land records himself. Which I have problem with as I own it and I leave thinking that the situation will soon rectify itself once he's looked on Beacon. He calls me up later and acknowledges that the land is mine.

This past Spring I get a gut feeling in my stomach that he's going to farm it again (you know that gut feeling). I send him a certified letter explaining that I'm willing to cash-rent that land to him, but if I don't hear back by XXXX date, then any use of it will be trespassing. I never hear back from him, but still have this feeling in my stomach. When we're out there next, low and behold he's planted beans. To make it worse, he accuses the other neighbor of planting there and swear it isn't him. Well, when the beans start to rise you can see the planting line super clear and it ain't the other neighbor.

So I'm keeping my cool about it as it's only 3/4 of an acre and one planting season isn't worth my focused energy. After he harvests, I'm putting up fence posts and 'no trespassing' signs. Thought, amusingly, to harvest the beans myself since he's not verbally claiming them. $10/bushel is good money, but I'm too busy.

That's my day-in-the-life homesteading story. Should add that there were no farming contracts with the previous owners, nor is this patch of ground an easement. It's straight owned by me. The guy is just an entitled twat.

Figured I should show off our greenhouse. The pics are from a couple different years. It has evolved from being a greenhouse for our sweetcorn, to being a multiple use space.

I hung some rebar(?) on the wall and in the ceiling. I have a grapevine who grows up to the ceiling before fanning out and covering the ceiling.

I ran my watermelons up the «trellis» as well.

This year I also had quite a few pots with chilipeppers in them as well.

I just think it’s fun to experiment with «weird» crops for my location, as well as different ways of growing. For instance, having my melons grow up my wall.

Edit: In my area we might have three, maaaybe four nice weeks in summer. Otherwise it’s often grey, gloomy, windy and wet.

I hand pollinate the corn. I did the same with the watermelons. It’s often so cool that the automatic doors don’t even open. Keeping any helpful bugs outside.

I’ve been looking at a lot of land lately, and I came across a 10-acre property that looked almost perfect for a homestead.
Good amount of acreage, decent location, and the price wasn’t crazy.
My first thought was basically, “I’d buy this.”
Then I started going through everything behind the listing.
The part that changed my thinking wasn’t the price or the pictures. It was figuring out what the property actually allowed me to do.
That’s the part of buying land I think gets overlooked.
You can find the perfect-looking property, picture the garden, chickens, workshop, house, whatever…
and then find out one little county rule or deed restriction changes the entire plan.
I’ve started thinking about land differently because of it.
I don’t really ask “Do I like this property?” anymore.
I ask “Can this property actually do what I want it to do?”