Many city dwellers fantasize about moving out to the countryside. The thought of buying a few dozen acres of land, starting a small farm, and growing their own food is a tantalizing one. But without the experience that comes with years of farming or even backyard vegetable gardening, it can be all too easy to make mistakes.
It’s one thing to lose your crops to insects, birds, or deer when your garden is just intended to supplement what you buy from the grocery store. But when you intend to supply the majority of your food with what you grow or what you raise, losses to weather, insects, disease, or predators can mean the difference between eating and starving.
The COVID lockdowns and the rise of working from home have led many city dwellers to look for real estate in the suburbs or out in the country. Rural real estate prices have increased tremendously as urban residents flee New York, California, and other high-price, high-tax states to move to free states. Many of them think they’ll be able to live off the land in their new digs, but that might not be true.
If there’s one advantage to making mistakes when attempting to homestead, it’s learning from them so that you don’t make the same mistakes in the future. And it’s even better if you learn from other people’s mistakes without having to make your own.
Thankfully we have a long history of homesteading in this country, and a long list of mistakes that others have made. The Homesteading Hippy has a list of the top 10 mistakes would-be homesteaders make. They’re a cautionary lesson to those who would strike off to the countryside to try to make it on their own. But they also contain a lot of useful advice for those looking to start homesteading. Don’t allow yourself to make any of these mistakes if you can help it.