Why Homesteads Fail: 6 Mistakes to Avoid
Hello everyone!
In todays' video we're talking about 6 ways that can inevitably cause your homestead to fail. We want to avoid these! If you're struggling with any of these it's best to take a step back so that you can save the homestead dream.
I hope this helps.
Happy homesteading!
Books mentioned in this video:
Start With Why by Simon Sinek ► amzn.to/41huHoN
Polyface Micro by Joel Salatin ► amzn.to/48dmdRN
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Timestamps:
00:00: How Homesteads Ruin People
0:33: Other Monsters that Ruin People
1:21: Start With Why
3:51: Foundation
4:57: Chore Choking
5:57: Enterprise Overload
7:25: The SpinningWheel of Death
9:30: Self Care
10:40: Putting It All Together
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- Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep ► amzn.to/3EhO3gO
- The Backyard Sheep: An Introductory Guide to Keeping Productive Pet Sheep ► amzn.to/2Zr8fxi
- Premier1 42" Sheep/Goat Fence (double spike) ► amzn.to/3b9Z1Z4
- Premier1 35" Sheep/Goat Fence (single spike) ► amzn.to/3mbjPFT
- Premier1 Electric Netting Starter Kit ► amzn.to/2XMIqrb
- Sheep Minerals Premix (best for pregnant or overwintered sheep) ► amzn.to/3jDKM3z
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We practice REGENERATIVE agriculture on a small scale.
better soil | better plants | better animals
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• INSTAGRAM ► / highmountain_homestead
• SUBSCRIBE ► kzhead.info...
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ABOUT Homesteading with PJ!
Hi! I’m PJ, and my family loves the homesteading life! It’s something my wife and I have always wanted to do, but we grew up with ZERO HOMESTEADING EXPERIENCE!!!!! We grew up in beautiful southern California, 15 minutes away from the beach. As amazing as that was, we both dreamed of a life closer to land and animals. After getting married and moving to Utah, our family slowly grew. We had become a family of four living in a townhome with a small backyard filled with potted plants.
In 2019 we dipped our feet into homesteading on 1 ¼ acre lot in Utah. In 18 months we were ready to do this for real. So in 2021 we packed everything up and moved to North Carolina to 12 acres and we love every inch of our homestead!
We raise sheep and have big plans for:
• grass-fed lamb
• meat chickens
• laying chickens
• heritage breed pork
• honey
• vegetable garden
• perennial food forest
• and more
I hope you join us on our journey, subscribe and ring the bell if you haven’t yet.
• SUBSCRIBE ► / @homesteadingwithpj
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DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. But don't worry, it doesn't cost you anything extra!
#homesteading
Clips used under fair use (education and review). Copyright Warner Bros.
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Thank you for the music!
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Im divorced and I homestead on 15 acres with my two young children. No spouse and I refuse to believe i cant do this alone..
Wow I'm in the same boat!
Not in the same boat but same mindset; never liked the idea of marriage or starting a family, I've seen lots of people start a small homestead alone. All it takes is the right attitude, foresight and planning, and realistic goals for starting out.
Love your honesty. I read so many homesteading women’s social media post on how burnt out and miserable their lives are when homeschooling, canning, cooking everything from scratch doing all the chores then feeling like failures because house isn’t clean and doesn’t look like this dream in their heads. I have 11 acres and have to run everything alone. I have 4 chickens that are enough for me. I love lamb and doing the carnivore diet so I do want to raise my meat. I think I can do a few rams a year. Thanks again for giving the real picture.
This video is so well done, it looks like you guys have catapulted to the next level in content and production value, congrats!
I'm such a harry potter nerd this analogy makes so much sense!!
Fantastic video PJ. Great timing for the new year. Thanks man
postpartum depression gets talked about a bit more now, but not nearly enough! And back when my mum had us no one ever talked about it, but she went through it!
Yeah, it's terrible, and at such a vulnerable time too. Talking about it is just one easy first step to helping.
@@homesteadingwithPJ absolutely - women knowing it's normal to have struggles with those feelings, and there is help available, makes all the difference.
Wow! You and your family are a great bunch!
Great information for someone who wants to start a homestead.
This is a well-made video, and it came as a great encouragement. Thank you!
Great video! I do sheep as well, but I'm just starting and they're dairy sheep. I'm out doing morning chores right now which are pretty easy at the moment as they aren't in milk. I 100% agree with your "master one new thing per year." That was my mentality, but we ended up starting with 3 things. I've started out relatively slow (it's been 2.5 years) compared to my sister. She and her husband bought a combined 54 acres with my parents. In one year, she has added a herd of cattle, 17 adult goats, rabbits, pigs, more pigs, 3 livestock guardian dogs, chickens (multiple rounds of chickens), guineas, ducks, geese, and turkeys... oh, and now sheep. Because i have sheep so she needed to have sheep. (I mean, i have 3 dairy sheep. She has like 10 meat sheep lol). She started with 2 nigerian dwarf goats, a dog, and 2 breeding pairs of rabbits. Relationships are starting to strain and everyone keeps telling her to slow down so they can get infrastructure put in as they've been scrambling to squeeze animals in wherever they can. Then, lo and behold, 2 days after a slow-down conversation she comes home with another animal. There's a lot of space, but none of it is prepped other than the cow pasture (that cows occasionally get out of since there were apparently repairs that needed to be made). They're in constant scramble mode because someone's giving away free lambs they couldn't sell or she needed a boar RIGHT NOW. now they've got piglets in the wrong season and can't sell them! It stresses me out just hearing about it. I don't see how this can't all blow up. I really hope it doesn't, but i wouldn't put money on it. I wanted to start with just chickens and a garden in my new state and my new home on 3 acres. That would give us time to finish fencing, fix up the barn, and get a good handle on things. Especially because of my reasons: i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at 29. I have a (now) 3 year old son and a growing my own food and being more active is the best way to take care of us both. Well, my boyfriend said that he wants this farm to be profitable immediately.... that's not possible. So i had to get my dairy lambs ASAP. this way the sheep have grown up with a kid running around and i don't have to worry as much about him stressing them out or them hurting him. He's getting better. Haha. So i ended up getting the sheep a full year earlier than I'd initially planned. It went okay, but it's been a bit of an obstacle sometimes. Last year i burned out on the garden. It was a record awful year for weeds, i STILL didnt get it all mulched, and out of 9 species of melon, only ONE gave me fruit. Disaster. We didn't make a PENNY. Plus, people have stopped buying eggs because if they can get it cheaper at the walmart or dollar general, they aren't going to pay for quality. I have pasture-raised, free range FRESH eggs up for $2/doz and can't sell a single one. Why? They put in a dollar general across the street from our little farm last year. Sigh. Sometimes it's hard, but I'M doing this for health. It would be nice to be able to break even, though. I'm trying to approach the garden with fresh zeal this year. My sheep are hopefully bred. If they are, they're due March-April.
I can definitely understand these struggles. It seems like no one values free-range eggs and organic vegetables where I live, so I just decided to start by feeding my household. I definitely hope the best for you all, and I’m cheering you on towards successes big and small.
Wow this is a lot! It's stressful just hearing about this! Chore and enterprise overload are real stressors that can interfere with your life and health. I hope things get turned around for family 😮 We've definitely gotten ourselves into more obstacles than we were prepared to deal with. It was moving across the country that actually helped us scale back on a lot of unneeded enterprises (huge laying flock and rabbits). Those are fine enterprises but we didn't get into them with full headspace for how it would impact our lives throughout the year, year over year. Sometimes the best way to slow down is to sell off the animals, which can be hard if you've grown especially attached to them. But giving yourself a few months to breath and think and plan really pays off. We sold off all of our ewes and lambs (all of our sheep!) about a year and a half ago. It was such a tough choice but after we sold them and I had space to breath it enabled our family to make better decisions about how to do things going forward. It's been so great ever since, and homesteading isn't killing us anymore. 😂 Also our garden was completely taken over last year when we left on an extended vacation in the summer. There was no hope of saving it! So we let the sheep into the garden and they cleaned it all up for us (thank you sheep!). You can't win them all, but we press forward a little wiser for next time. Best of luck to you with your garden and ewes (and possibly lambs!) this year.
Excellent video and great advice!
Great job on giving the advice. This is very good advice to those who can slow down and listen!
Thanks, that was my goal. This is advice I wish I heard my first year homesteading.
Great vid! Yeah “if you don’t eat lamb don’t raise sheep”! Applicable to many many situations. John
Seriously. like half the people I talk to who raise sheep, don't enjoy eating lamb. I don't get it!
Nooice! 😎 STOC
Great video, as always. 😊 Love the asking yourself why 5 x. 👍🏼
Thanks! Crazy how often my learnings from business, leadership, and marketing come into play on the homestead.
@@homesteadingwithPJ yes, my teaching training comes up often as well. Teachers talk about the why at seemingly every rah rah workshop. 😊
The way I look at postpartum is that the mother has given the child all the life in her and there is just nothing left in her tank. It is a tough thing to go through on a homestead. My wife has suffered from it for almost two years after my second kid was born. It has really put a strain on the homestead to the point where I've scaled back to almost nothing. I have 4 sheep and one indoor garden (it's -40 with the windchill outside so outdoor gardening in our 6 month winter is not going to happen lol) and even they are not getting the attention they need.
Yup, you do what you gotta do to take care of the mother of your kids. Homestead is only an appendage of the home.
Smart approach. This is like with everything. Don't buy bicycle if you don't bike at least once per week. Ext.
When you said “I won’t go down that rabbit hole too far” when talking about raising sheep had me laughing!
You know a thing or two about the trouble with small ruminants too!
We don't exactly have a homestead since we are on 161 acres but we do have sheep, goats and hopefully soon bees. I am terrible at gardening and have the blackest of black thumbs lol I do my best for maintaining and improving my pastures but I have given up on having a garden. I absolutely love what I do and love spending time with my animals and planning for the future of this land but I must admit, the last 4 or 5 months have been super difficult. I love being out on our land still but being pregnant has made everything 1000 times harder. I'm really hoping once baby is born and we have more of a routine again, I can get back into it like I used to but it does worry me that it's so challenging right now.
Wow, I didn't realize you have that many acres! We didn't start homesteading until both of our kids were born. Our youngest was 6 months old when we moved to our first homestead. Lugging him around sure wasn't easy, but it's the only life he's known. Which is a win for us! Good luck with the welcoming of your baby, hoping for a smooth and easy time for you and your little one.
@homesteadingwithPJ I feel like waiting until all kids are born is the wise way to do it whenever possible haha my oldest was about 6 months when we moved to the farm but we didn't get livestock until last year in the summer. I did attempt a garden for a few years but it was a very futile endeavor lol the biggest problem is watering. We have to haul water to our house so watering the garden is hard to justify.
fantastic video as always PJ. haha last part got me as its midnight and im eating some fried rice after a nightmare kidding in the barn in the subzero temps. such good points across the board and items we dont always pay attention to in our tik tok and instant gram driven idealistic world. unless its a symbiotic relationship, the farm or homestead is going to fail. bingo buddy! still have lots of pork left in the freezer?
I got a shiver in my back hearing about your freezing cold midnight kidding. Sounds terrible. And cold. I actually didn't know you had goats too! You've got everything up there! Yes! Still lots of pork in the freezer. I sold about 20 pounds a while ago, most of it was ground pork (which is nice, because I have a lot to go through). I probably have about 30-50 pounds of pork meat left, and another 20-40 pounds of fat. So we'll fine on lard for years to come!
Haha! We just had lamb for dinner tonight! It was yummy!
Yes! I'm always happy to hear more people eating lamb!
8:45 did he die? 🤨
No, he just worked too hard for too little.
Promo>SM