Save Money by Homesteading

Homesteading can definitely be an investment, but it can also save you money. Saving money by homesteading is a lot more simple than you think!

When we first started to change our lifestyle to a more homestead-like life, we felt in over our heads by the cost of it all. Gardening, chickens, food sourcing, etc. It became a lot to process at first, BUT it is definitely worth the investment because it has saved us money.

Today I’m sharing a couple of tips on how investing in our homestead has actually saved us money.

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Investing in your homestead

Whenever you start your homestead, it ends up costing money. If you’re gardening, you have to invest in all the equipment, seeds and labor to name a few. The same concept with chickens or any other animal you want. Everything becomes an investment.

It can be so overwhelming at first, so what we did to help us out was to sit down and create a list of things we want.

We wanted to grow as much food as our 1/4 acre lot would grow for our size family, have the only “farm” animal that was allowed in city limits (chickens)and to be as frugal as we possibly could.

We saw doing all of these things not only as investing in our family, but also investing in our health. Investing saved money in the long run!

Gardening

Investing in a garden was probably the easiest one for us. We knew growing our own food would be so much cheaper, especially because of our family size.

I knew I wanted raised beds for gardening because it would keep the kiddos from running through a planted garden in the backyard. (If you’re wondering if it did help, yes it totally worked!)

Starting out we paid for:

• lumber
• soil
• seeds
• trees/bushes
• hoses
• gardening tools

That’s basically it, but it is definitely an investment if you’re planning on a rather large garden like we did. If you invest in good quality items, they’ll eventually “pay themselves off.”

You also don’t have to buy seeds every year! You can actually save seeds from the things you grow in your garden. It will not only be free seeds, but the next years crop will be a better product because it’s been acclimated to the area it’s been growing in.

We also invested in fruit trees and bushes. The trees will also provide a weather barrier for our house because we have a corner lot.

During the summertime, we hardly have to buy produce from the store. I don’t know if you’ve seen prices of fresh organic produce at the store recently but they’re astronomical! I always miss having fresh “free” foods at home when I have to start buying from the store again.

Our garden also helps feed our chickens too! Win, Win!

Composting

Nothing screams frugality like composting everything you can. I’m serious. If it can be composted, it’s composted. I’ve even started replacing household items with compostable things as a further investment in our homestead. Because we compost absolutely everything we can, we also have a lot less things going to the landfill. This has become very important to me, so much so that my 1 year old knows certain items go in the trash and others go to compost.

We compost plants, coffee grounds, tea leaves, fruits, veggies, paper, cardboard boxes, chicken bedding and poop (yes, their poop), etc. By saving all of those items for compost that we normally would’ve thrown in the landfill, we are creating healthier soil for our garden.

This is a great article on composting here.

You don’t necessarily have to invest in items to keep your compost in, but we got a couple things to make it easier:

• indoor compost bin
• outdoor compost bin

Our indoor compost bin is tiny enough to keep inside and once it’s full, we take it out to the bigger one outside. The little one fills up rather quickly for us, so we had to invest in a bigger one.

The outdoor compost bin holds a lot more and rotates to stir everything together so it breaks down easier and turns to compost. This is also where we take the used chicken bedding to when we clean out the coop.

Chickens

If I had to choose the one thing I’m glad we invested in to save us money while homesteading, it would be chickens. 100%. We love our chickens so much!

They are the easiest beginning homesteader animal and they’re pretty cheap!

They have multiple benefits too:

• their eggs
• meat (if needed)
• their poop
• bug control
• eat food waste

That alone is the worth the investment for me.

Something I didn’t know about having chickens before I had them was they can eat food scraps. Now I’m not talking about eating left over fast food, I’m talking things like the green ends off of strawberries, egg shells from making breakfast, soured milk, etc.

They literally turn your food waste into more food! How awesome is that?! Plus, eggs are becoming more and more expensive and I love getting eggs that are healthy for you basically for free.

They’re also really good for helping with the bugs you may have in your backyard. If you “free range” them they’ll take care of your grass too. Grass fed chickens have the most delicious eggs.

If you want to know more about chicken beginner basics, read here.

Read here for a list of what chickens can eat.

Investing in your health and homestead will save you money, you just have to be smart about it.

What’s the first thing you would invest in? Comment down below!

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