Homesteading, the good, the bad and the ugly

Or, what could possibly go wrong?

I found this posted on a homesteading FaceBook page, this is probably one of the most honest assessments of the reality of a young family jumping in with both feet on a homesteading venture that I have seen. When you first start out, you have all these grand ideas about what you are going to do and how to do it, then as time goes by, reality sets in and quite frankly it’s hard, and that’s if nothing goes wrong, and believe me, things go wrong.

It’s nearly impossible to judge how others do what they do, especially without actually being in their shoes, one big red flag that jumped out at me, about 19 minutes into the video, the wife makes the comment that she doesn’t really help out with anything unless things are going wrong… OUCH! I’d say that is one of their problems, sure she seems to be on board for living there, which is a good and important thing, but if that is all she is contributing to LIVING there, then it seems like they are not on the same page. But again as I said, it’s hard to properly judge without being in their shoes. Perhaps she has some sort of health issues that aren’t apparent that would stop her from helping more.

One thing I will give them is they actually DID it, they didn’t sit on the fence and contemplate it, they actually went out and made their dream happen. Experience is a great teacher, it’s also a harsh one, looks like they received lots of experience from this, it appears that they are making future plans to become more self sufficient, buying their OWN land would be a great start, Owning your own land free and clear goes a long way toward being more self sufficient. One thing he said, in this day and time, it’s near impossible to ever be fully, 100% self sufficient, there are always things that require money, things you can’t barter for.

Give this a watch, it’s long, but it’s an honest look at what homesteading can look like after you have been doing it for a while.