September 11, 2023 • 23 mins
Do you have what it takes to start a homestead or small farm? In today's episode, I provide a profile of who comes to us for homesteading skills.
The profile of those who start successful homesteads and small farms is clear. They are willing to invest in experience and immediate adjustments in lifestyle.
These changes bring them closer to a homestead that increases in value. There are certain things they do before buying land. That's not what you might see from homesteading creators.
Popularity isn't important for us because the world needs successful regenerative farms. Your homestead or small farm can affect food security and health.
Even if it only makes a difference to you and your family, the lifestyle of homesteading is important. Making homesteading dreams a reality requires a simple approach.
Today's episode includes examples of homesteading jobs. Plus, how to address financial concerns related to your homesteading journey. Buying land and starting a homestead is more expensive than ever before.
Let's end these fears that keep you from gaining essential homesteading skills.
If you're yearning for connection, join like-minded homesteaders at https://www.prosperityhomestead.org/newsletter/?utm_source=005-p0510a&utm_medium=spreaker&utm_campaign=i0824a&utm_content=makes-homesteading-dreams-reality
#HomesteadingSkills #HomesteadingIdeas #HomeseadingJobs #PermacultureDesign #RegenerativeFarming
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prosperity-homestead--3659183/support.
The profile of those who start successful homesteads and small farms is clear. They are willing to invest in experience and immediate adjustments in lifestyle.
These changes bring them closer to a homestead that increases in value. There are certain things they do before buying land. That's not what you might see from homesteading creators.
Popularity isn't important for us because the world needs successful regenerative farms. Your homestead or small farm can affect food security and health.
Even if it only makes a difference to you and your family, the lifestyle of homesteading is important. Making homesteading dreams a reality requires a simple approach.
Today's episode includes examples of homesteading jobs. Plus, how to address financial concerns related to your homesteading journey. Buying land and starting a homestead is more expensive than ever before.
Let's end these fears that keep you from gaining essential homesteading skills.
If you're yearning for connection, join like-minded homesteaders at https://www.prosperityhomestead.org/newsletter/?utm_source=005-p0510a&utm_medium=spreaker&utm_campaign=i0824a&utm_content=makes-homesteading-dreams-reality
#HomesteadingSkills #HomesteadingIdeas #HomeseadingJobs #PermacultureDesign #RegenerativeFarming
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prosperity-homestead--3659183/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Prosperity Homestead is for a specific setof individuals who are interested in homesteading.
They want to start a small farm. They have an interest and desire of
being outdoors and having more personal freedom. They're interested in self reliance, being
food secure, and physically secure.I'm just a hit with Prosperity Homestead.
I'm going to talk about some ofthe reasons why those who would most benefit
(00:25):
from this podcast don't take action.So first off, there's a financial concern
about purchasing land and equipment and infrastructureto start a farm or a homestead.
There are a lot of homesteads thatmake mistakes. They get started, it
ends up being extremely costly. Landtoday can be twelve thousand dollars an acre.
Gone are the days of the fifteenhundred dollars an acre. You really
(00:47):
have to dig down in for that. Now we're still finding that kind of
acreage for clients, but it meansyou have to buy larger acres. So
you have to buy a one hundredacres, two hundred acres, three hundred
acres. If you're buying five acresto start your mamall farmer homestead right outside
of a city, it can beextremely expensive, so I understand the fear
of purchasing land. Now, asfar as equipment is concerned, I'm trying
(01:08):
to teach methods that don't require anyequipment. In fact, I'm setting up
a demonstration that we're going to havethe minimal amount of equipment in place,
and then I'm going to visit otherpeople's farms and we can talk about some
of the equipment that they've purchased andwhy they've purchased it. So, for
example, putting in the gravel padat the site that we're working on right
now, it has it was doneby equipment that I didn't own. I
(01:33):
didn't own the dump truck. Ididn't own the bulldozer, I didn't own
the excavator. And it's important toknow where you can get these resources,
because yes, equipment is expensive.You guys saw I had a BCS tractor,
and the BCS tractors perfectly suited forsome conditions, where a ATV or
a side by side might be suitedfor other conditions. We'll talk about that
(01:56):
because because the financial concern is reallythere, there's a lot of people with
unpredictable incomes that get into home settingbecause they think they're going to save money.
The typical commercial farm today costs morethan one million dollars to set up
from scratch. Now again we'll talkabout techniques of buying out someone else's farm.
We're talking about techniques about how youcan get into a farm using someone
(02:19):
else's land. But again there's acommon fear of the financial concern. The
next is the lack of homesteading skillsrunning a homestead. And we've talked about
a state management. So wherever youlive today, whether it's an apartment,
whether it's a house, you canstart practicing the household management techniques of a
state management. So, for example, you can get your house cleaned by
(02:43):
someone else in order to free uptime for you to do more billable activity
so that you can generate the revenuenecessary to actually go and buy the land
that you need. Now you mightbe saying, well, justin why would
I hire someone to do something forme that I could easily do myself.
Well, that's the skill of projectmanagement and financial management. Because if you
(03:05):
can hire someone to clean your housewhile for the equivalent number of hours that
they're cleaning your house, you canadd additional income to your family, and
the additional income is greater than whatyou're expending, then you really ought to
be developing the career. You reallyought to be developing the professional side.
There's other aspects of the skills forhomesteading that are specific to homesteading if you
(03:29):
have not managed animals before. Andagain I'm sharing my journey. I grew
up we had goats and chickens andrabbits and things like that. But as
an adult, I'm thirty years removedfrom those skills, and so I'm learning
how to manage goats, how tomanage pigs, to design the paddocks,
how to provide for the food,how to calculate animal load per acre.
(03:52):
Those are skills that you can startlearning before you even have your land.
If you have an interest in raisinggoat, sheeps, pigs, cattle,
you know, there's all kinds ofanimals. Now as you know that prosperity
homestead is not about having an exoticpetting zoo. We have some friends here
in the community to have a nonprofitexotic petting zoo, and I can visit
(04:15):
there anytime I want, and Ican see the ostriches and the llamas and
all these other things. I don'tneed to have that on my own homestead.
So you want to scope your skillsby what's most practical, and then
many of the skills that are goingto be inside of the house the homestead
house, which could be, forexample, how to preserve foods, how
(04:36):
to ferment foods, different types ofcooking techniques, to be more efficient and
have more healthy and organic foods,ways of shopping. You're not going to
be able to grow everything on yourhomestead right away, so to be self
sufficient could mean partnering the local farms, shopping at the farmer's market, or
making different food choices. These arevery important things, and you're going to
(04:59):
start seeing the word clothed in timecommitment. That's necessary because a lot of
people fear that once you have afarm, and they already know they're busy
managing twelve hundred square foot house,what's going to happen when you have a
twelve hundred square foot house and aten thousand square foot barn and you know
twelve acres of pasture. Your timeconstraints are going to be there. So
(05:20):
what we do is, and Irecommend it is where you're at today.
I know there's beautiful YouTube videos andthe lifestyle looks amazing, But where you're
at today, I want you totake care of your personal needs. So
that's family and relationship time, itcould be involvement in the community, your
food security needs, it could bestarting a small garden or buying different in
(05:43):
the marketplace. And then ultimately yourday to day health needs, which could
be the physical labor and the exercisenecessary to have that endurance. You're going
to need to work on a farm. So if you've got a homestead,
there's certain chores that have to happenevery day, whether or not it's raining,
whether or not there's a storm,whether or not you feel like it.
(06:05):
These things have to be done.And so the workload and time commitment
we can practice in our careers rightnow. So you can practice the time
management, you start developing those softskills that none of these vloggers are talking
about. There's a lot of farmskills that are practical skills that you can
be practicing. That's what makes thempractical. You can practice them in a
(06:27):
broad scope of situations, and soyou can get started today. Now.
Another concern is isolation. What you'regoing to discover is that running your own
small farm, homestead or an estate. Now, the estate is the top
level. You're gonna have a lotof staff, You're gonna have people running
around doing stuff for you. You'regonna have a cash flow and production that
(06:49):
funds an elevated lifestyle that many peopledream of but most people don't achieve.
But your homestead is where you canstart. Right now, you can do
the majority of the world on yourhomestead, not by getting better skills,
but by focusing your activity and efforton a more narrow scope of things.
Now, here's what happens though.If you move out into a rural area
(07:13):
and you're used to having a lotmore social activity, you're going to feel
lonely. If you move out intoa rural area and you're used to a
lot of entertainment, you're gonna findyourself driving into town all the time,
which is going to take up moremoney and time, and you're going to
feel isolated. So if you don'twork on those relationship skills that we talk
about, which I recommend you tovolunteer on local farms and find out who
(07:34):
your local farmer is and get tomeet the farmer and get to know them,
and invest with your current dollars tobuild relationships so that when you're out
on the farm, you could bea part of a routing club, fraternity,
some kind of civic organization. Youcould be a part of your of
a co op and then get thatemotional connection need and kind of fight off
(07:59):
the isolation, but also enjoy theisolation better because a hike in the woods
with your kids, or a hikein the woods to go hunting, or
to enjoy the trail system that you'veput together, or to just watch the
animals doing what animals do because they'reliving their best life on your farm.
These are things that are important.You shouldn't fear them when it comes to
(08:20):
learning the essential homestanding skills and movingtowards a homestead, because again, there's
emotional challenges there. There's gonna bestress. There's gonna be relatives who thought
it was a great idea for youto start a homestead, but they never
come out and visit or anything.One of the things I've seen before happened
frequently is there's this dream of agrand farmhouse and it's thirty two hundred square
(08:46):
foot and you've got the barn andyou've got the tractor, and then you're
broke you don't have any money whereyou could have been better off, like
I've shown you in a number ofvideos, and we're doing on a large
project here of just starting by campingon the line, by just starting to
experience nature as close as nature aspossible, and then you might find out
that you only need a five hundredsquare foot tiny house because you spend all
(09:09):
your time outside anyway, and nowyou have maybe an outdoor kitchen area where
you can entertain people, and maybeyou have some riding trails or places where
you can go on the property toexperience nature. Maybe you have a larger
than average garden, and that's whereyou're entertaining and having tea or relaxing with
(09:30):
friends rather than having to build theinfrastructure. Because what you'll find very often,
and this goes back to the financialconcerns and also the market fluctuation concerns
that we can talk about that ina second, is that if you're having
to spend two hundred and fifty fivedollars a square foot to build a house,
your thousand square foot house is goingto be a quarter of a million
dollars. And so you've invested inland maybe one hundred thousand dollars in land,
(09:54):
and you've got five acres or evenlike eight hundred thousand dollars to get
three four hundred acres, you maynot have the money available to invest in
that house. And if you investin that house, again, these are
skills you can start practicing now.If you invest in that house, you
may not have the cash available toget proper stocking levels for livestock, fencing
in place, watering systems, electricitywhere it needs to be ran. And
(10:18):
you could end up with a nicefarm that you've got to sell at a
discount for pennies on the dollar becausenow you're bankrupt. So you have to
think about this. You may notbe able to leave your day job right
now, but you may be ableto have a phased, planned approach to
get into your homestead before retirement.I don't want you to have to wait
(10:39):
till retirement. But again, prosperityhomestead focuses on a specific set of individuals.
We're not here about your podcasting dreamsand about your recognition from your neighbors.
We're talking about a food secure,a physically secure, and a self
reliant environment that you can pass alongfor generations. So the ice relations not
(11:00):
a big deal when it's a placethat people want to come to and you
design family reunions around it. Theconcerns and frustrations that come with the relationship
strain because you get into the farmand it's not the way you expect it,
well, you can start planning withyour partner your spouse right now and
start thinking about what you want todo. Also, the phased approach helps
(11:22):
you go over the learning curve ina reasonable way. So think about it.
Are you going to feel overwhelmed becauseof the steep learning curve and the
surprises and the things you didn't expectin the homestead. Well, again,
if you come from a non agriculturalbackground, there are ways of gaining that
experience through volunteering, through residence,through internships, and then as you move
(11:45):
to your farm, you can scaleit appropriately so that you could do those
things that are best for you.Some people lose confidence because they come out
from a rural area. They comeout from an urban area where everything's pretty
accessible to a rural area where itmight take a month to get somebody to
come out with a tractor, andyou might say, well, I'll just
(12:05):
buy a tractor, and then youbuy a tractor and then it's broken down
and you've got to fix the track. There's a lot of things to consider.
Finally, we want to talk aboutregulatory and zony issues. Some people
will settle for an acre in acity, and I'm going to speak from
experience here. I have two acresin a city. I own the house
(12:28):
I'm in and the house next tome. I had dreams of getting the
forty acres behind me. I havenegotiated that. I had a plan for
a permaculture design center, but everythingwent wrong with the city. Now,
if I greased some palms and Ihad a little bit of extra cash,
maybe it would have gone away easily. And I'm not accusing anybody of anything,
(12:48):
but I'm just saying that regulatory andzoning issues, even if you do
everything by the book, you canhave legal complications. You can have neighbors
get upset. You can have somebodydecide that they don't like what you're doing,
who doesn't even live in your neighborhood, who decides to go ahead and
tattletale and cause trouble for you.You can have investors. I put a
(13:11):
bunch of money into these houses.I've seen other people put a bunch of
money into their houses, and theninvestors who want to get the house for
pennies on the dollar put pressure onthem. So there are quality of life
issues we need to know about.There are legacy issues you need to be
aware of. If you want toescape the urban life, you don't want
to bring those frustrations with you.You want to make sure the health and
(13:33):
safety of your animals is taking careof. Very early in having livestock,
you want to make sure your healthand safety is taken care of because a
tractor, the leading cause of deathon farms is accident. You know,
you don't want a tractor to fallon you. You don't want to farm
jack to rip your arm off.You don't want to container to roll over.
(13:54):
So self sufficiency and food security andenvironmental stewardship and connection with land and
community, these are things that cancome through the cultivation of the homesteading skills.
And you can go from a homesteadthat is self reliant, meaning it
takes care of yourself and your familyand it delivers to you a wonderful lifestyle,
and you can elevate that to asmall farm where you're actually selling in
(14:18):
the community and you're you're interacting withpeople, and you're you're cultivating that that
interaction and community, and then lateron even to an estate that's cash flowing
for generations. But but you haveto get good advice. Now, I'm
not going to call out specific podcastersor specific YouTube channels, but you may
(14:39):
notice if you look back in thehistory of some of these channels, is
that things don't always work out wellfor them. Now, I try to
be extremely transparent and tell you whatdoesn't work for us, because sometimes things
don't work out for us too.It's just the way it is. But
if someone's if you're running a homesteadand you are legitimately got animal, you
(15:00):
legitimately got things. Unless you're alsorunning an entertainment business, you're not going
to have a lot of time tobe up doing podcasts and stuff. And
I'll tell you there's so much thatcould be recorded on what we're doing at
the farms that I manage, orthat the farms that I work on,
but we don't have time for it. We're stretching fence, we're digging holes,
where leveling containers, and so allI usually get to do is when
(15:22):
I'm taking a break is just cuta little video, get it out there.
I would be concerned about the channelsthat have the high production value and
a lot of content because they're inthe content business as much as they're in
the farming business. Now that's anokay model, there's nothing wrong with that.
You might find some home based businessesto run while you're running your homestead,
(15:46):
so the financial concern could be alleviatedby value added products. I know
a lot of people who don't haveYouTube channels and they don't have you know,
a bunch of followers on their socialmedia who have value added product that
are a significant part of their income. There may be cases where you don't
want anyone to even know you havea homestead. There's a couple of folks
(16:08):
that we know that have rural estatesand has a small little cottage on it,
but it has prime hunting land andtheir agricultural livestock is the turkey,
the bear, the deer, thedifferent types of sporting animals that are around.
They go as far as to raisequail and have habitat for quail,
(16:29):
and their primary focus is natural habitat. And so they have enough space to
park a truck and to unload itinto the cabin and then other than that,
it's just walking trails or small hikingtrails for three four hundred acres of
land. So what's important for youwe can discuss in a consultation, we
can start developing that plan. Wecan help you start finding the land.
(16:52):
But these worries and concerns that theemotional uncertainty that comes with this is not
going to be resolved in an anotherpodcast video. It's not going to be
resolved in watching somebody's channel. Sureyou're going to pick up little tips and
tricks here and there, but ifyou're serious about running a homestead or starting
a homestead, it starts now withwherever you live today. The concept of
(17:15):
homesteading and becoming more self sufficient,reducing burnout and stress, becoming more self
reliant can start right now where you'reat, how you manage your household,
how you buy food, where youbuy your food from, where you spend
your social time. Then we startmoving towards the land that you want,
and that's going to be built onyour hobbies and interests because you're going to
(17:38):
hold this land for generations. Now, we have talked before about buying a
piece of land, getting onto theland very lightly. That means you know
you're going to get some infrastructure improvements, you're gonna get electricity and power on
it, but you're not going tobuild a big old house because you want
to maintain the resell value. Soyou might buy a piece of land that's
in disrepair, improve it for agriculture, and then when you find a better,
(18:03):
more ideal piece of land someplace else, you're going to sell the previous
farm, or maybe you're going tomanage it as a satellite farm. There's
a lot of options there, sowe want to write those down as well
and start building out your written plan. Many of our clients have written plans
that have taken them towards the lifestylefaster than watching hundreds of videos or attending
(18:23):
classes or downloading programs online. MyPermaculture Design certification was extremely valuable because I
came into the certification with two tothree thousand hours of practical education and implementation.
Now I've getting I got the VirginiaMaster Naturalist certification. But again,
certification alone has a little value ifyou don't have places to implement. So
(18:48):
I really want to make sure youunderstood where we're coming from. At Prosperity
homestead because we are a different approachto this, and the unique value to
what we do is about increasing landvalue, about that escape from the urban
life or not you might want tofarm in the middle of a city,
depending on how it's set up.It's about that legacy that you're going to
create for yourself and family, Aboutthe financial freedom, the connection with landing
(19:12):
community. These things are difficult tomeasure monetarily, but if you seek them
the wrong way, you'll spend allthe money you have. Again, basic
commercial farm a million dollars startup costs. A homestead could be a half million
dollars startup cost starting where you're attoday. Priceless, priceless. So again
(19:36):
I want to hear your questions,concerns, and frustrations. I make it
my duty to study the people thatwe're helping, the clients that we help.
Now again, I have my incomestream is through the consulting services which
I primarily delivered a fortune five hundredcompanies that are so the risk management and
(19:57):
the business development skill set is Isell to fortune five hundred companies and then
I work remotely. So that's howI'm able to be on my homestead and
have the flexibility to do the podcastsand to do the videos. But even
then, many of these things aredone in the evening and on weekends.
And as we add more animals andplay, as we add more land under
(20:19):
management, less and less time isavailable to consistently publish what really should be
entertainment. It would be much morepopular if it was entertainment. But again,
the unique individuals, the high incomeprofessionals, the business owners and entrepreneurs,
the executives, the individuals who arelooking for simplicity, the individuals who
(20:42):
are interested in having that legacy,that secession planning, that healthier lifestyle.
They don't mind that the podcast isa little rough and that the videos aren't
christinely edited, but they are activein asking questions. That's the key.
(21:02):
To ask questions relevant to your situation. Then sit down for a consultation or
discovery car call and start building outthat plan. Start implementing right now where
you're at today, Start increasing yourfood security where you're at today, and
then move towards that land, movedtowards that escape from the urban space,
(21:26):
even if it's just your weekends.And then finally start building up the kind
of not the perfect it won't beperfect, but that lifestyle, that wealth
building, that control, and thatsubsistence in many cases, that lets you
know that no matter what happens inthe economy, no matter what happens politically,
(21:49):
no matter what happens in your region, you will be secure. You
will be safe, and you willbe proud of what you've for your family.
It's a skill set that even ifyour land is taken away from you,
you're still going to benefit from it. But I don't want that to
(22:11):
be the expensive experience where like manyhomesteaders, you go broke in the first
two years because you did it thewrong way. You made a lot of
mistakes. So again, I'm hereto help you avoid the mistakes. I'm
here to help you focus on yourgoals and outcomes, not the ones that
they're telling you you should have onthe YouTube channels, and also to help
you with the gritty reality of whatit takes to get this thing accomplished.
(22:34):
I'm just a hit with prosperity homestead. I want to thank you for being
a part of what we do here. Many happy clients have gotten results.
I hope to share more of thosesuccess stories with you, but frankly,
nobody even needs to know that you'redoing this because there are folks on the
outside who have the wrong they havea misconception about what homesteading is. You're
(22:56):
not rebellious necessarily. You just wantfreedom. You just want liberty for yourself
and family. You want to beable to escape the hustle and bustle,
reduce stress, and ultimately live onyour own terms. And so you're in
the right place. If you haveany questions or when you have questions,
visit us at www dot prosperity homesteaddot org. And this has been about
(23:18):
really, who do we serve.We're not for everybody, and if we're
for you, I hope you'll tunein next time as I'm just in hit
with Prosperity Homestead, where we helpyou increase the utility value of your land
and live a prosperous homestead.
Prosperity Homestead is for a specific setof individuals who are interested in homesteading.
They want to start a small farm. They have an interest and desire of
being outdoors and having more personal freedom. They're interested in self reliance, being
food secure, and physically secure.I'm just a hit with Prosperity Homestead.
I'm going to talk about some ofthe reasons why those who would most benefit
(00:25):
from this podcast don't take action.So first off, there's a financial concern
about purchasing land and equipment and infrastructureto start a farm or a homestead.
There are a lot of homesteads thatmake mistakes. They get started, it
ends up being extremely costly. Landtoday can be twelve thousand dollars an acre.
Gone are the days of the fifteenhundred dollars an acre. You really
(00:47):
have to dig down in for that. Now we're still finding that kind of
acreage for clients, but it meansyou have to buy larger acres. So
you have to buy a one hundredacres, two hundred acres, three hundred
acres. If you're buying five acresto start your mamall farmer homestead right outside
of a city, it can beextremely expensive, so I understand the fear
of purchasing land. Now, asfar as equipment is concerned, I'm trying
(01:08):
to teach methods that don't require anyequipment. In fact, I'm setting up
a demonstration that we're going to havethe minimal amount of equipment in place,
and then I'm going to visit otherpeople's farms and we can talk about some
of the equipment that they've purchased andwhy they've purchased it. So, for
example, putting in the gravel padat the site that we're working on right
now, it has it was doneby equipment that I didn't own. I
(01:33):
didn't own the dump truck. Ididn't own the bulldozer, I didn't own
the excavator. And it's important toknow where you can get these resources,
because yes, equipment is expensive.You guys saw I had a BCS tractor,
and the BCS tractors perfectly suited forsome conditions, where a ATV or
a side by side might be suitedfor other conditions. We'll talk about that
(01:56):
because because the financial concern is reallythere, there's a lot of people with
unpredictable incomes that get into home settingbecause they think they're going to save money.
The typical commercial farm today costs morethan one million dollars to set up
from scratch. Now again we'll talkabout techniques of buying out someone else's farm.
We're talking about techniques about how youcan get into a farm using someone
(02:19):
else's land. But again there's acommon fear of the financial concern. The
next is the lack of homesteading skillsrunning a homestead. And we've talked about
a state management. So wherever youlive today, whether it's an apartment,
whether it's a house, you canstart practicing the household management techniques of a
state management. So, for example, you can get your house cleaned by
(02:43):
someone else in order to free uptime for you to do more billable activity
so that you can generate the revenuenecessary to actually go and buy the land
that you need. Now you mightbe saying, well, justin why would
I hire someone to do something forme that I could easily do myself.
Well, that's the skill of projectmanagement and financial management. Because if you
(03:05):
can hire someone to clean your housewhile for the equivalent number of hours that
they're cleaning your house, you canadd additional income to your family, and
the additional income is greater than whatyou're expending, then you really ought to
be developing the career. You reallyought to be developing the professional side.
There's other aspects of the skills forhomesteading that are specific to homesteading if you
(03:29):
have not managed animals before. Andagain I'm sharing my journey. I grew
up we had goats and chickens andrabbits and things like that. But as
an adult, I'm thirty years removedfrom those skills, and so I'm learning
how to manage goats, how tomanage pigs, to design the paddocks,
how to provide for the food,how to calculate animal load per acre.
(03:52):
Those are skills that you can startlearning before you even have your land.
If you have an interest in raisinggoat, sheeps, pigs, cattle,
you know, there's all kinds ofanimals. Now as you know that prosperity
homestead is not about having an exoticpetting zoo. We have some friends here
in the community to have a nonprofitexotic petting zoo, and I can visit
(04:15):
there anytime I want, and Ican see the ostriches and the llamas and
all these other things. I don'tneed to have that on my own homestead.
So you want to scope your skillsby what's most practical, and then
many of the skills that are goingto be inside of the house the homestead
house, which could be, forexample, how to preserve foods, how
(04:36):
to ferment foods, different types ofcooking techniques, to be more efficient and
have more healthy and organic foods,ways of shopping. You're not going to
be able to grow everything on yourhomestead right away, so to be self
sufficient could mean partnering the local farms, shopping at the farmer's market, or
making different food choices. These arevery important things, and you're going to
(04:59):
start seeing the word clothed in timecommitment. That's necessary because a lot of
people fear that once you have afarm, and they already know they're busy
managing twelve hundred square foot house,what's going to happen when you have a
twelve hundred square foot house and aten thousand square foot barn and you know
twelve acres of pasture. Your timeconstraints are going to be there. So
(05:20):
what we do is, and Irecommend it is where you're at today.
I know there's beautiful YouTube videos andthe lifestyle looks amazing, But where you're
at today, I want you totake care of your personal needs. So
that's family and relationship time, itcould be involvement in the community, your
food security needs, it could bestarting a small garden or buying different in
(05:43):
the marketplace. And then ultimately yourday to day health needs, which could
be the physical labor and the exercisenecessary to have that endurance. You're going
to need to work on a farm. So if you've got a homestead,
there's certain chores that have to happenevery day, whether or not it's raining,
whether or not there's a storm,whether or not you feel like it.
(06:05):
These things have to be done.And so the workload and time commitment
we can practice in our careers rightnow. So you can practice the time
management, you start developing those softskills that none of these vloggers are talking
about. There's a lot of farmskills that are practical skills that you can
be practicing. That's what makes thempractical. You can practice them in a
(06:27):
broad scope of situations, and soyou can get started today. Now.
Another concern is isolation. What you'regoing to discover is that running your own
small farm, homestead or an estate. Now, the estate is the top
level. You're gonna have a lotof staff, You're gonna have people running
around doing stuff for you. You'regonna have a cash flow and production that
(06:49):
funds an elevated lifestyle that many peopledream of but most people don't achieve.
But your homestead is where you canstart. Right now, you can do
the majority of the world on yourhomestead, not by getting better skills,
but by focusing your activity and efforton a more narrow scope of things.
Now, here's what happens though.If you move out into a rural area
(07:13):
and you're used to having a lotmore social activity, you're going to feel
lonely. If you move out intoa rural area and you're used to a
lot of entertainment, you're gonna findyourself driving into town all the time,
which is going to take up moremoney and time, and you're going to
feel isolated. So if you don'twork on those relationship skills that we talk
about, which I recommend you tovolunteer on local farms and find out who
(07:34):
your local farmer is and get tomeet the farmer and get to know them,
and invest with your current dollars tobuild relationships so that when you're out
on the farm, you could bea part of a routing club, fraternity,
some kind of civic organization. Youcould be a part of your of
a co op and then get thatemotional connection need and kind of fight off
(07:59):
the isolation, but also enjoy theisolation better because a hike in the woods
with your kids, or a hikein the woods to go hunting, or
to enjoy the trail system that you'veput together, or to just watch the
animals doing what animals do because they'reliving their best life on your farm.
These are things that are important.You shouldn't fear them when it comes to
(08:20):
learning the essential homestanding skills and movingtowards a homestead, because again, there's
emotional challenges there. There's gonna bestress. There's gonna be relatives who thought
it was a great idea for youto start a homestead, but they never
come out and visit or anything.One of the things I've seen before happened
frequently is there's this dream of agrand farmhouse and it's thirty two hundred square
(08:46):
foot and you've got the barn andyou've got the tractor, and then you're
broke you don't have any money whereyou could have been better off, like
I've shown you in a number ofvideos, and we're doing on a large
project here of just starting by campingon the line, by just starting to
experience nature as close as nature aspossible, and then you might find out
that you only need a five hundredsquare foot tiny house because you spend all
(09:09):
your time outside anyway, and nowyou have maybe an outdoor kitchen area where
you can entertain people, and maybeyou have some riding trails or places where
you can go on the property toexperience nature. Maybe you have a larger
than average garden, and that's whereyou're entertaining and having tea or relaxing with
(09:30):
friends rather than having to build theinfrastructure. Because what you'll find very often,
and this goes back to the financialconcerns and also the market fluctuation concerns
that we can talk about that ina second, is that if you're having
to spend two hundred and fifty fivedollars a square foot to build a house,
your thousand square foot house is goingto be a quarter of a million
dollars. And so you've invested inland maybe one hundred thousand dollars in land,
(09:54):
and you've got five acres or evenlike eight hundred thousand dollars to get
three four hundred acres, you maynot have the money available to invest in
that house. And if you investin that house, again, these are
skills you can start practicing now.If you invest in that house, you
may not have the cash available toget proper stocking levels for livestock, fencing
in place, watering systems, electricitywhere it needs to be ran. And
(10:18):
you could end up with a nicefarm that you've got to sell at a
discount for pennies on the dollar becausenow you're bankrupt. So you have to
think about this. You may notbe able to leave your day job right
now, but you may be ableto have a phased, planned approach to
get into your homestead before retirement.I don't want you to have to wait
(10:39):
till retirement. But again, prosperityhomestead focuses on a specific set of individuals.
We're not here about your podcasting dreamsand about your recognition from your neighbors.
We're talking about a food secure,a physically secure, and a self
reliant environment that you can pass alongfor generations. So the ice relations not
(11:00):
a big deal when it's a placethat people want to come to and you
design family reunions around it. Theconcerns and frustrations that come with the relationship
strain because you get into the farmand it's not the way you expect it,
well, you can start planning withyour partner your spouse right now and
start thinking about what you want todo. Also, the phased approach helps
(11:22):
you go over the learning curve ina reasonable way. So think about it.
Are you going to feel overwhelmed becauseof the steep learning curve and the
surprises and the things you didn't expectin the homestead. Well, again,
if you come from a non agriculturalbackground, there are ways of gaining that
experience through volunteering, through residence,through internships, and then as you move
(11:45):
to your farm, you can scaleit appropriately so that you could do those
things that are best for you.Some people lose confidence because they come out
from a rural area. They comeout from an urban area where everything's pretty
accessible to a rural area where itmight take a month to get somebody to
come out with a tractor, andyou might say, well, I'll just
(12:05):
buy a tractor, and then youbuy a tractor and then it's broken down
and you've got to fix the track. There's a lot of things to consider.
Finally, we want to talk aboutregulatory and zony issues. Some people
will settle for an acre in acity, and I'm going to speak from
experience here. I have two acresin a city. I own the house
(12:28):
I'm in and the house next tome. I had dreams of getting the
forty acres behind me. I havenegotiated that. I had a plan for
a permaculture design center, but everythingwent wrong with the city. Now,
if I greased some palms and Ihad a little bit of extra cash,
maybe it would have gone away easily. And I'm not accusing anybody of anything,
(12:48):
but I'm just saying that regulatory andzoning issues, even if you do
everything by the book, you canhave legal complications. You can have neighbors
get upset. You can have somebodydecide that they don't like what you're doing,
who doesn't even live in your neighborhood, who decides to go ahead and
tattletale and cause trouble for you.You can have investors. I put a
(13:11):
bunch of money into these houses.I've seen other people put a bunch of
money into their houses, and theninvestors who want to get the house for
pennies on the dollar put pressure onthem. So there are quality of life
issues we need to know about.There are legacy issues you need to be
aware of. If you want toescape the urban life, you don't want
to bring those frustrations with you.You want to make sure the health and
(13:33):
safety of your animals is taking careof. Very early in having livestock,
you want to make sure your healthand safety is taken care of because a
tractor, the leading cause of deathon farms is accident. You know,
you don't want a tractor to fallon you. You don't want to farm
jack to rip your arm off.You don't want to container to roll over.
(13:54):
So self sufficiency and food security andenvironmental stewardship and connection with land and
community, these are things that cancome through the cultivation of the homesteading skills.
And you can go from a homesteadthat is self reliant, meaning it
takes care of yourself and your familyand it delivers to you a wonderful lifestyle,
and you can elevate that to asmall farm where you're actually selling in
(14:18):
the community and you're you're interacting withpeople, and you're you're cultivating that that
interaction and community, and then lateron even to an estate that's cash flowing
for generations. But but you haveto get good advice. Now, I'm
not going to call out specific podcastersor specific YouTube channels, but you may
(14:39):
notice if you look back in thehistory of some of these channels, is
that things don't always work out wellfor them. Now, I try to
be extremely transparent and tell you whatdoesn't work for us, because sometimes things
don't work out for us too.It's just the way it is. But
if someone's if you're running a homesteadand you are legitimately got animal, you
(15:00):
legitimately got things. Unless you're alsorunning an entertainment business, you're not going
to have a lot of time tobe up doing podcasts and stuff. And
I'll tell you there's so much thatcould be recorded on what we're doing at
the farms that I manage, orthat the farms that I work on,
but we don't have time for it. We're stretching fence, we're digging holes,
where leveling containers, and so allI usually get to do is when
(15:22):
I'm taking a break is just cuta little video, get it out there.
I would be concerned about the channelsthat have the high production value and
a lot of content because they're inthe content business as much as they're in
the farming business. Now that's anokay model, there's nothing wrong with that.
You might find some home based businessesto run while you're running your homestead,
(15:46):
so the financial concern could be alleviatedby value added products. I know
a lot of people who don't haveYouTube channels and they don't have you know,
a bunch of followers on their socialmedia who have value added product that
are a significant part of their income. There may be cases where you don't
want anyone to even know you havea homestead. There's a couple of folks
(16:08):
that we know that have rural estatesand has a small little cottage on it,
but it has prime hunting land andtheir agricultural livestock is the turkey,
the bear, the deer, thedifferent types of sporting animals that are around.
They go as far as to raisequail and have habitat for quail,
(16:29):
and their primary focus is natural habitat. And so they have enough space to
park a truck and to unload itinto the cabin and then other than that,
it's just walking trails or small hikingtrails for three four hundred acres of
land. So what's important for youwe can discuss in a consultation, we
can start developing that plan. Wecan help you start finding the land.
(16:52):
But these worries and concerns that theemotional uncertainty that comes with this is not
going to be resolved in an anotherpodcast video. It's not going to be
resolved in watching somebody's channel. Sureyou're going to pick up little tips and
tricks here and there, but ifyou're serious about running a homestead or starting
a homestead, it starts now withwherever you live today. The concept of
(17:15):
homesteading and becoming more self sufficient,reducing burnout and stress, becoming more self
reliant can start right now where you'reat, how you manage your household,
how you buy food, where youbuy your food from, where you spend
your social time. Then we startmoving towards the land that you want,
and that's going to be built onyour hobbies and interests because you're going to
(17:38):
hold this land for generations. Now, we have talked before about buying a
piece of land, getting onto theland very lightly. That means you know
you're going to get some infrastructure improvements, you're gonna get electricity and power on
it, but you're not going tobuild a big old house because you want
to maintain the resell value. Soyou might buy a piece of land that's
in disrepair, improve it for agriculture, and then when you find a better,
(18:03):
more ideal piece of land someplace else, you're going to sell the previous
farm, or maybe you're going tomanage it as a satellite farm. There's
a lot of options there, sowe want to write those down as well
and start building out your written plan. Many of our clients have written plans
that have taken them towards the lifestylefaster than watching hundreds of videos or attending
(18:23):
classes or downloading programs online. MyPermaculture Design certification was extremely valuable because I
came into the certification with two tothree thousand hours of practical education and implementation.
Now I've getting I got the VirginiaMaster Naturalist certification. But again,
certification alone has a little value ifyou don't have places to implement. So
(18:48):
I really want to make sure youunderstood where we're coming from. At Prosperity
homestead because we are a different approachto this, and the unique value to
what we do is about increasing landvalue, about that escape from the urban
life or not you might want tofarm in the middle of a city,
depending on how it's set up.It's about that legacy that you're going to
create for yourself and family, Aboutthe financial freedom, the connection with landing
(19:12):
community. These things are difficult tomeasure monetarily, but if you seek them
the wrong way, you'll spend allthe money you have. Again, basic
commercial farm a million dollars startup costs. A homestead could be a half million
dollars startup cost starting where you're attoday. Priceless, priceless. So again
(19:36):
I want to hear your questions,concerns, and frustrations. I make it
my duty to study the people thatwe're helping, the clients that we help.
Now again, I have my incomestream is through the consulting services which
I primarily delivered a fortune five hundredcompanies that are so the risk management and
(19:57):
the business development skill set is Isell to fortune five hundred companies and then
I work remotely. So that's howI'm able to be on my homestead and
have the flexibility to do the podcastsand to do the videos. But even
then, many of these things aredone in the evening and on weekends.
And as we add more animals andplay, as we add more land under
(20:19):
management, less and less time isavailable to consistently publish what really should be
entertainment. It would be much morepopular if it was entertainment. But again,
the unique individuals, the high incomeprofessionals, the business owners and entrepreneurs,
the executives, the individuals who arelooking for simplicity, the individuals who
(20:42):
are interested in having that legacy,that secession planning, that healthier lifestyle.
They don't mind that the podcast isa little rough and that the videos aren't
christinely edited, but they are activein asking questions. That's the key.
(21:02):
To ask questions relevant to your situation. Then sit down for a consultation or
discovery car call and start building outthat plan. Start implementing right now where
you're at today, Start increasing yourfood security where you're at today, and
then move towards that land, movedtowards that escape from the urban space,
(21:26):
even if it's just your weekends.And then finally start building up the kind
of not the perfect it won't beperfect, but that lifestyle, that wealth
building, that control, and thatsubsistence in many cases, that lets you
know that no matter what happens inthe economy, no matter what happens politically,
(21:49):
no matter what happens in your region, you will be secure. You
will be safe, and you willbe proud of what you've for your family.
It's a skill set that even ifyour land is taken away from you,
you're still going to benefit from it. But I don't want that to
(22:11):
be the expensive experience where like manyhomesteaders, you go broke in the first
two years because you did it thewrong way. You made a lot of
mistakes. So again, I'm hereto help you avoid the mistakes. I'm
here to help you focus on yourgoals and outcomes, not the ones that
they're telling you you should have onthe YouTube channels, and also to help
you with the gritty reality of whatit takes to get this thing accomplished.
(22:34):
I'm just a hit with prosperity homestead. I want to thank you for being
a part of what we do here. Many happy clients have gotten results.
I hope to share more of thosesuccess stories with you, but frankly,
nobody even needs to know that you'redoing this because there are folks on the
outside who have the wrong they havea misconception about what homesteading is. You're
(22:56):
not rebellious necessarily. You just wantfreedom. You just want liberty for yourself
and family. You want to beable to escape the hustle and bustle,
reduce stress, and ultimately live onyour own terms. And so you're in
the right place. If you haveany questions or when you have questions,
visit us at www dot prosperity homesteaddot org. And this has been about
(23:18):
really, who do we serve.We're not for everybody, and if we're
for you, I hope you'll tunein next time as I'm just in hit
with Prosperity Homestead, where we helpyou increase the utility value of your land
and live a prosperous homestead.
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