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You don’t need to have 100’s of acres of land to have your very own homestead. Just the opposite really. You can start with your in your own backyard or patio with these 13 easy steps to start your own backyard homestead. (No matter where you live now)
You don’t need to have a lot of land to begin with, my grandparents only had two acres of land. They were able to have two large gardens but that wasn’t enough to supply grandma with all the green beans she needed so they also went out to “You Pick” farms for all the vegetables she needed for canning.
That shows what a small world it is because they went to my future husbands farm to pick our beans for several years before I met him. He talks about how grandma would tell grandpa and him to
“quit talking and start picking“.
She was always a little bossy, I guess that’s where I get that trait from. 😉
13 Easy Steps To Start Your Own Backyard Homestead
1.Backyard Chickens
Many places will let you have a few chickens in your backyard, some neighborhoods only allow you to have hens. Which is totally fine. You don’t need a rooster to get eggs, unless you want to hatch out baby chicks. The hens don’t crow, well sometimes they get confused and try to crow but they soon get over that. Gathering up fresh eggs to eat each morning is a great way to start homesteading.
2.Backyard Rabbits To Eat
Rabbits are really fun animals to have, they are cute and fun to be around and really easy to breed. But you might get them to produce meat. My friend lived in town and sold dressed rabbits (that just means they have them all ready to cook) for many years. It’s not my thing but it might be yours.
3. Backyard Rabbits For Fiber
I love rabbits too much to eat them. They are my little buddies that provide me with free fiber to spin into beautiful hats, scarfs and mittens. Angora rabbits produce really long hair that is 7 times warmer than wool. Plus it is a high end fiber that compares to cashmere. It’s so soft and warm.
I have one white angora male that I bought last year, he was prized in the show ring and won many awards. When I’m trimming his hair, (which you have to do 3 or 4 times a year) I call his hair angel clouds, it is truly amazing. I made my step mom a cowl with the yarn I spun from his hair, it was the softest thing I’ve ever touched. I’m making me one this winter.
You can also keep a rabbit inside the house. My mom had a couple that were potty trained and used a little box of sorts. Really it was a box with newspaper in it. I’ve trained all my inside rabbits to use one just like that. You can read more about my Angora Rabbits here.
Rabbits would work with anyone no matter where you live, perfect small animal for an apartment even.
4. Kitchen Herb Garden
You can make yourself a little kitchen herb garden for you window. Planting a couple herbs to use while your cooking. Trimming off little bits makes the plant grow better. This you can do no matter where you live.
5. Patio Container Garden
Most years all I grow in my garden is a few tomato plants. My dad lives in town and keeps a tiny garden in his backyard. With only tomato plants, maybe a pepper plant. Tomatoes grow just fine in potted containers. Which would be perfect for a patio or back deck. Start simple the first year and grow from there.
6. Duck pond
One of my readers keeps ducks in her backyard. She said she hasn’t had to mow her grass in years. lol! All the neighbor kids come over to see her let them out each morning. I’m going to get a couple this year.
The pond can be just a small plastic swimming pool you can pick up at Walmart.
7. Rabbit Poo for Garden Fertilizer
This should have gone under the rabbits but I just thought of it. Rabbit poo is great to put on your garden or first should be go in your compost pile. Before long you have to start charging for it, because all your neighbors will be coming over to get some for their gardens.
8. Backyard Bait Shop
Speaking of rabbit poo. If you add some worms to the compost pile then before long you can start selling worms for bait. We went camping every weekend growing up and I always made my dad stop and get me bait for fishing. This guy had a little shack in his front yard. He lived in town right by the road. He had a horse water trough filled with minnows, he would fill up my minnow bucket I got for Easter one year and hand me some night crawlers and off we would go. I never got crickets that would be ironic. But I sold crickets to him for a couple years before he retired.
Mealworms are super easy to grow, you can feed them to your chickens to get the best eggs on the planet. Plus sell off some of them for profit to grow your homestead income.
9. Redneck Garden
You really don’t need to have a big garden to have a homestead. Some people just don’t have the green thumb. But I promise you it is so worth it to learn how. Because you will NEVER eat anything as delicious as freshly grown veggies from your very own garden. I’ve grown a big crop of carrots AND the wild rabbits couldn’t eat them because they were in old bathtubs. My redneck garden, the bathtubs were at one time in the back of my big farm used for shooting practice. So they are full of bullet holes. Hence the name. “Redneck Garden”
10. Quail Birds
I don’t know much about these birds but I know a lot of people want to buy them on ebay and at the barn sale we go to each week. They are tiny birds that you can eat. They have the cutest eggs. We raised some one year and let them lose in the woods. They stayed on the farm for many years. They were the bigger ones that are from around our area. The small ones are bred just for eating, pretty sure about that, but like I said I’ve not done that yet.
But that’s something to think about if you want to make some extra money on your homestead is to buy exotic birds to breed and resell. Some of the pheasants go for really big money at the sale barn. The eggs you can sell online too. Just a thought if your into birds.
11. Herb Gardening
Herb gardens are great place to start, you can grow them inside or in pots or in a small plot of land in the backyard or even as part of your flower garden. They are really easy to grow, most of them and you can not only use them for cooking but for your health for healing as well. You can sell the plants at the local farmers market, make soaps with the herbs with essential oils to healing.
12. Can Fresh Produce
Remember me telling you about my grandparents going to a “You Pick Farm” that would be a great solution to buying fresh produce that you can take home to “Can” yourself (which means to store the vegetables in a process that safely stores the food in a glass jar with a lid, to eat later, sealing the lid airtight). Or maybe you can buy bulk from the farmers market. This can be a great savings at the grocery store. Something that I’m really going to look into this year as it seems like my bill each week just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Plus all the food recalls have become a everyday norm, which is scary.
13. Start A Saving Jar For Your Future Homestead
You should start a saving jar and a dream board of what you want your future homestead to look like.
Sound Crazy? Well it worked for me!
We lived in a tiny house with no drier, a toilet that didn’t work, a 50 year old refrigerator, with no kitchen. I wish I had a picture of me when we first bought the place. I was crying, with two little boys, we moved from the city back to the country and this was all we could afford.
We did fix up the place and that’s where we started our cricket biz from. I made a big poster board of the farm I wanted and hid it behind the couch. I didn’t let anyone see it. But I dreamed of that place for a year. Then one day we were driving around and found that farm. 100 acres! We were still broke but the old guy had this place as a hunting property and he sold it to us on a contract.
Put your dreams on paper and they will come true!
Also start some savings, that last year before we moved, we didn’t have any Christmas presents under the tree. Really hard on the boys I think but it was so worth it when we moved into the farm that next spring.
You can start a little side job to make the extra money and don’t spend that money on anything else. Do you know that Jay Leno you know the famous guy that had the late night show.
He always had two jobs! Yep! even after he was rich.
He would have one job to pay the bills and the other one for fun. It’s always a good idea to have a couple income revenues. I always have had.
I hope this has helped you think of ways you can have your dream homestead. Which one of these would you like to try?
With Love,
Michelle 🙂
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Hi! I'm Michelle. You can find me planning, cooking, and often wrangling chickens in my spare time (who am I kidding? I have no spare time). I am the CEO and creator for homesteadingforwomen.com. All posts are reviewed and updated personally by ME - if you have any questions, feel free to contact me here.
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