What are essential homesteading skills? They are skills you can learn with practice, over time, to help you become more self-sufficient, less reliant on others, and better at long-lost techniques our grandparents used to use!
My husband and I certainly didn’t grow up learning these essential homesteading skills. I never had backyard chickens, planted a garden, or learned how to sew as a child. My husband learned basic handyman skills but nothing to the level of running a homestead.
After we got married and had the desire to go back to our roots, we started homesteading in small ways. It was a series of baby steps. And, honestly, it still is!
My husband practiced his fishing skills and I learned how to cook from scratch. Then we started raising meat rabbits and a flock of chickens. We started our first garden and attempted to compost. We even learned how to do things like preserve food and make our own household products.
It was a learning curve, and it still is. We are still on the homesteading journey. Now, we live on 80 acres and raise or hunt all our own meat! We preserve our own garden produce and mill our own wood for projects. But, there is still so much we are learning and practicing.
Don’t worry if you don’t have all these essential homesteading skills, or even if you don’t have any! Every single one of us is on our own journey, and it takes time and practice. They will be mastered after years of practice, so just do one at a time and don’t stress yourself out.
Let’s check them out…
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Gardening And Foraging
Gardening is one of the essential homesteading skills everyone needs to learn! You can start so simply. Maybe, just buy some tomato seeds this year and learn how to grow a couple of plants in a pot on your porch.
Then, you can expand. Each year you will learn more and more about gardening. The first time I started seeds indoors it was a complete failure. I planted too many close together, I didn’t harden them off, and I planted at all the wrong times.
Gardening takes time, patience, and an understanding of knowing that you will fail. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t let yourself go down the rabbit hole of doing too much research. You will become overwhelmed and experience paralysis analysis.
Instead, just start! Pick a few vegetables to grow that you know your family will enjoy. And don’t forget you can always start with just learning how to forage for food in your area too. Here are my favorite resources to begin with:
The 7 Best Market Gardening Books For The Intermediate Gardener
The 5 Best Beginner Gardening Books Written By Experts On YouTube
How To Quickly Create A No-Till Lasagna Garden Without Cardboard
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Preserve The Harvest
Once you bring in some produce from your garden then start to dive into different ways you could preserve these foods. Start simple by picking just one or two crops to focus on.
Don’t just find the best way to preserve the food, like say zucchini for example, but also consider how your family likes to eat it. If your family loves zucchini bread but isn’t a big fan of I when it is added to soup, then your best option is to shred it and freeze it in portions that make sense for your zucchini bread recipe.
We have recently invested in a freeze dryer and it has quickly become my favorite way to preserve most things from the garden!
These items and books helped me learn all about preserving food when I was first starting out:
10 Important Food Preservation Items To Own And Use Regularly
The 6 Best Books On Food Preservation For Every Lifestyle
How I Use My Freeze Dryer In The Winter Months So It Stays Running
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Sourcing Bulk Ingredients And Pantry Management
When I became a wife and a mother, I quickly realized that taking care of our home was not something that came naturally to me. For some reason, I had this unrealistic expectation that I would just know everything about homemaking once I got married and became a stay-at-home mom.
I was wrong! Homemaking is a skill that takes time and practice to learn and master! And, it is one of the essential homesteading skills you need to learn to run a household smoothly and efficiently.
Going off of that is pantry management. Keeping food stocked, organized, and tidy is not as easy as it sounds. It is a skill that takes time and practice. Show yourself grace as you learn how to source bulk ingredients, store them properly, and manage your pantry and food storage each day.
Here are some related posts that may help you:
How To Be A Peaceful And Calm Stay-At-Home Mom Today
My 10 Time Saving Kitchen Mom Hacks I Can’t Live Without
Need Meal Ideas? Here Are My Top Go-To Meals As A Homestead Mom
11 Things I No Longer Do As A Mom Since Taking My Job As A Homemaker Seriously
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Fixing Things Yourself
Just as my role as a wife is to manage the house, my husband’s role on the homestead is to manage all the repairs and outdoor machinery. Because his dad was a handyman, he was able to learn basic carpentry, welding, electrical, and plumbing skills.
But, on the homestead, he had to learn to take those skills to a new level. Using power tools and learning how to build and fix things are essential homesteading skills you can’t be without!
In our modern age, we sometimes jump to the convenience of just calling an expert to fix the problem. But, that isn’t always an option on the homestead. It is actually not that convenient at times and it does become quite pricey!
Learning how to do things yourself saves so much time, money, and energy, and is worth the learning curve! It will pay dividends for years and years to come.
11 Easy First Year Homesteading Goals To Make And Achieve As A Newbie
15 Basic Ways To Become More Self-Sufficient In One Year: How We Did It
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Homemade Household Products
I had absolutely no idea that I could make my own laundry soap, shampoo, or even medicine until a couple of years ago. When I found out I felt like I had been scammed my whole life! Not only was it much cheaper to make things myself, but it was also so much safer and healthier for our bodies.
The toxic chemicals and fragrances in store-bought products should not be in our homes. Learning to make my own household products took time, lots of experimenting, and tons of adapting! They are not the same in looks and texture as what I was used to, but they certainly do a great job.
Start here if you are wondering how to begin learning this as one of the essential homesteading skills:
11 Natural Household Items To Make Yourself And Save Money
7 Multiuse Reusable Items To Save Money In Your Homemaking
5 Incredible Mindset Shifts For Moms That Need To Be Made Today
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Cooking From Scratch
As I mentioned earlier, I had no idea how to cook from scratch when we first got married. I had never baked bread before, cooked freshly caught fish, or even learned how to appropriately spice dishes!
I started with just simple crockpot recipes and after mastering those, I moved on to cooking more dishes with only fresh ingredients. It was amazing to me how much I could do in the kitchen, and how much I could bless my family through it!
Just like gardening and hunting are essential homesteading skills, so is learning what to do with those ingredients once you have them!
These resources helped me on my journey to learn to cook from scratch:
The 7 Best Cookbooks On Cooking From Scratch With Real Farm Ingredients
The Top 10 Cookbooks Every Homesteader Needs In Their Kitchen
The Top 7 Pregnancy Cookbooks You Need To Stay Happy And Healthy
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Hunting And Fishing For Wild Game
Hunting and fishing are long-lost skills for many people. But what if there was no grocery store? How would we get our meat? Thankfully we are able to raise some of our meat on the homestead, but the meat we hunt and fish for is also a huge part of our diet!
While my husband did have lots of fishing skills under his belt when we got married, it was still hard for him to relearn the waters after we moved. He also had a big learning curve when going hunting for the first time.
Now our diet consists of lots of fish, venison, partridge, and more depending on the season. You can learn hunting and fishing skills if you put your mind to it!
The Top 10 Dog Breeds For The Homestead We Are Considering Next
The Top 10 Most Enlightening Books On How To Homestead
7 Ways Homesteading Saves You Tons Of Money When Done Correctly
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Raising And Butchering Animals
We raise our own meat rabbits and meat chickens as additional meat sources for our diet. But, I’m not going to lie and say that the first time we had butchering days for these animals it was easy. It was a big learning curve!
But, now we can butch our rabbits super fast and do all our chickens in a few hours! I am so glad we have learned these skills to do ourselves. It saves us time, and money, and is so fulfilling in the process!
Don’t let the learning curve slow you down on essential homesteading skills like these:
11 Mistakes We Made Raising Meat Chickens For The First Time
Are You Wondering What To Feed Your Meat Chickens? Great Options Here!
How To Produce Enough Delicious Rabbit Meat For Your Family Each Year
2 Easy Animals Every Homesteader Should Own For Self-Sufficiency
6 Reasons We Don’t Pasture Raise Our Meat Rabbits Anymore
7 Chicken Books You Need To Read To Start Your Own Backyard Flock
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Natural Medicine
I was first introduced to the world of natural medicine through the essential oil craze that took over the scene for a while. Then, I learned about medicinal herbs and how plants can heal our bodies naturally. I also learned about preventative medicine, and I was hooked.
This is still a learning curve for me and is a long process, but I love it! That is part of the fun about it. As I am able to learn more, my knowledge grows, and then my skills grow.
Start with doing some research here as you learn this skill too:
The 7 Best Books On Home Herbal Remedies That Will Change Your Health
How To Easily Incorporate Essential Oils Into Your Life
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Dairy Products
We don’t consume dairy much in our household, so this doesn’t apply to our family as much. But, I know that many families do. For me, it was learning how to make my own plant-based milk at home for the first time!
Finding ways to source raw dairy or produce it yourself is a skill that takes time. It can feel overwhelming at first, but once you make connections or dive in, you have skills that you can never lose. Once you have raw dairy on hand, then you can dive into learning many more skills like making butter, yogurt, and cheese.
How To Make Homemade Split Pea Milk In The Instant Pot
3 Caffeine Free Chai Teas You Need To Try Plus A Hot Chocolate Recipe
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Hauling Things
Homesteading requires lots of learning around hauling things. Whether it’s bringing equipment, animals, or large amounts of fencing to the homestead, you will likely need to learn how to haul these things.
People outside of the homesteading world will probably never have to learn this skill, and you may feel like it is easier to just somehow avoid it. But, it is another one of the essential homesteading skills that will pay dividends in the future!
The 33 Best Amazon Products We Own And Use On Our Homestead
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Prepared For Anything
Be prepared, not scared. A big part of homesteading is learning how to be prepared for all situations. And boy is there a lot to learn about this topic.
This includes everything from food storage to bunkers and bug-out bags. Everyone likes to feel prepped at a different level. What is the level that you feel most comfortable at for your family?
Check out these blog posts to help you answer that question:
The 7 Best Books For Preppers On Every Preparation Topic
6 More Of The Best Books For Survival And Preppers To Read Today
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Learn To Work Together
Community is a big part of homesteading that people often forget to mention. While we do aim to be more self-sufficient, it is impossible to be completely self-sufficient. It is a joy to do life with others and help each other out on the journey!
Homesteading today is learning to get off technology and interact with our neighbors. It is seeking out like-minded people and forming a community of trust. Today, it really is an essential skill that the next generation has no idea how to do.
7 More Books On Homemaking You Can’t Miss Out On
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Off Grid
Not everyone wants to be off-grid, and those who do all do a different level. Some people only want their own water source, others also want to be off the power grid and even WiFi. For others, that means solar panels, and for some it only means a deep food storage system.
Whatever your version of off-grid is, it will take time to learn how to do that best for your family and your situation!
Remember to enjoy the process when you consider these essential homesteading skills! With time, patience, and repetition you will have all of these mastered. Where are you on your homesteading journey? Let me know in the comments below!
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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