Let’s be honest: To homestead with little kids requires a new level of resilience! It can be hard to find the time to get things done and even harder to bring the kids along for those tasks, forcing you to slow down.
My husband and I began homesteading right after we got married, but we also welcomed a new child into our family each of the first three years after our marriage! Having three toddlers underfoot has slowed us down on some of our homesteading goals.
But that doesn’t discourage us. It’s been beneficial for us! Sometimes, we need to be forced to slow down to prevent overwhelming ourselves and getting in over our heads. Plus, it allows us to grow our skills in line with the growth of our children. As our children grow, so do the things we can accomplish and our ability to meet our needs!
For example, we can expand our garden as our family starts eating more. We can raise more meat with larger livestock as our needs demand it. And, we can become more knowledgeable on various topics before investing large amounts of money and potentially failing.
As first-generation homesteaders ourselves, learning old-fashioned skills has not come easy. And yes, having three children under three years old has forced us to slow down. But with each year, we have become wiser and can now start teaching our children the skills we have learned! To homestead with little kids, you have to keep the end goal in mind.
Here is how we homestead with little kids…
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Key Things To Remember
Remember that to homestead with little kids will mean that a lot of your time is spent with them. They have so many needs and curiosities. But they also take lots of naps and go to bed early!
Use nap time to rest if you need it, but also use it for getting those tasks done where it is hard to bring a child along. For example, if it’s too muddy for the kids to stay near you while you clean the chicken coop, then do it while they sleep.
My other tip is to just embrace the season of life you are in and know that it will get easier! They won’t need you as much in the years ahead, and they will be able to help you more too. It wasn’t until after my second child that I stopped stressing as much because I realized I knew the simple truth of “this does get easier.”
My husband and I are a team when it comes ot homesteading. As you’ll read about below, the way we do it with so many little kids is by doing it together! If he’s in the middle of a task, I can take the kids inside and feed them lunch. Or if I need to get something done in the garden, he can watch the kids for me. If you have family nearby, utilize them and ask them to watch the kids for you on busy homesteading days!
Last, keep things affordable by building it yourself. Build your chicken coop, build your meat rabbit cages, make your garden, etc. Our weekends are usually spent doing tasks like these, when the kids are playing alongside us or taking naps.
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Easy Homesteading Tasks You Can Do With Littles Underfoot
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Garden
The first homestead task we started with little kids was getting a garden started. You can till the ground or use a no-till method like this. You can even grow many plants in containers on your deck or porch. Then just plant some seeds according to your growing zone and see what harvest you can get! Read some of these beginner garden books if you need some help along the way.
The key is to not jump into a garden that will be too much for you to manage. Your time is limited, so focus on growing some food that your family will enjoy and have a garden that won’t overwhelm you. You can go to the farmer’s market or sign up for a CSA to fill in the gaps.
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Egg-Laying Chickens
The next super simple way to begin homesteading is to get a few chickens for a daily supply of eggs. You don’t need to start with a lot, and they pretty much take care of themselves! Give them the food, water, and coop they need in your backyard, and they’ll bless you back by eating the bugs, providing eggs, and, of course, giving you some great entertainment. Protect them from predators, and make sure you follow city guidelines, depending on where you live.
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Meat Rabbits
The next homesteading animal we decided to raise were meat rabbits. We’ve been raising them for six years now and love how easy they are to take care of. We kept them in our garage at our old house and now in our barn on our homestead property.
We feed them twice daily, breed them on a schedule, and butcher the babies after 4 months. It’s a great way to keep a nutritious and fresh meat source in the freezer for our family. There is a small learning curve, but the day-to-day maintenance has been easy to manage while parenting so many little kids! Plus, the rabbit manure is great for our garden!
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Meat Chickens
When our family needed more meat than just eggs and meat rabbits, we jumped into raising meat chickens each summer. We built chicken tractors and moved them each day along our grass. After eight or nine weeks, they are ready to harvest, and we have a year’s supply of meat in the freezer! It was much simpler than we had anticipated. The hard part of the learning curve was perfecting the butchering.
We did have to invest in a deep frying pan to scald the birds, a feather plucker, and killing cones to make the job easy. When you know you are going to be using these items for years, it makes it easy to invest in them.
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Fruit Trees and Berries
One blessing we had when we moved to our homestead property was the numerous apple trees it had. Every fall, we have an abundant apple harvest that we preserve. However, we have also planted several other fruit trees. In a few years, we will have pears and cherries to harvest as well.
A great way to start creating a homestead property is to plant fruit trees, especially if you plan to stay at that property for a long time. Another great way to get ahead of the game is to plant or forage for berries.
For us, that looks like planting blueberry bushes, strawberry plants, and elderberry tree starts. We also forage for blackberries and raspberries on our land. We go to our neighbors and pick their berries to fill in the gaps until our bushes are mature. Don’t let your young children prevent you from getting ahead on these simple tasks!
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Food Preservation and Herbalism
During the long winters, we need food stored up. To preserve our eggs, meat, apples, and other garden produce, we started learning various preservation tasks. With each one, we discovered what worked best for our family and what we liked to eat most.
From freezing and water-bath canning to fermenting and freeze-drying, we tried just about all of it! Because we were able to learn things slowly over the first few years, it was easy to do while we had babies and toddlers. Start researching the best ways to preserve everything you grow and raise so that you can save money and eat your hard work all winter long on the homestead!
On that same note, start learning herbalism and how you can heal your body and your family’s bodies through natural medicine. Use wild plants, create tinctures, make healing balms, and more. These are some books I recommend on food preservation and herbalism.
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Cooking From Scratch
Along those same lines came cooking our meals from scratch. As soon as I became a wife and mother, I quickly felt overwhelmed with making meals for my family. I didn’t have a lot of kitchen knowledge from how I was raised, so I took it slowly.
First, I began with basic crockpot meals and easy American dishes. But over time, I tried more ingredients and new recipes and started buying less processed food from the grocery store. Before you know it, I had learned so much! Cookbooks like these and these were especially helpful.
Now, I make nearly everything from scratch! That includes bread, condiments, desserts, and everything in between. It certainly helped me learn by just practicing with our homestead ingredients each day! If you homestead with little kids, start cooking from scratch each day.
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Hunting/Fishing
Once we moved to our homestead land, my husband was able to start hunting it. But, even if you can’t hunt your land, there are usually other options, like state land, available to you. One way we save so much money is by eating venison and fish as a main meat source. My husband can go hunting and fishing while I stay back with the kids.
Apart from the eggs, chicken meat, and rabbit meat that we raise ourselves, we rely on venison and fish to keep us stocked up all year long! Having fresh and nutritious meat available to us year-round makes homesteading so worth it.
As our family grows, we will need to transition to raising more meat like beef steer, pigs, or sheep. We will see what makes sense for us next!
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Building Projects and Equipment
A huge part of homesteading that isn’t often talked about is the various projects. So many things need to be built, fixed, or modified on homesteads. For us, we had raw land with a barn. We had to take time to first build a tiny house and then our new house on the land.
That was hard enough to do with little children, and also with raising animals and gardening on the side! Plus, some tasks just couldn’t get done until we invested in the proper equipment, mainly a tractor. It helps to take things slow on the homestead so that you can invest in these things and make future tasks and goals easier as your family grows!
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Use Your Local Community To Fill In The Gaps
When you have a homestead with little kids, you simply can’t do it all! That’s where you can rely on others in your area to fill in the gaps.
We purchase maple syrup from our neighbors because it just isn’t something we’ve been able to accomplish yet with little kids. We do the same thing with honey, u-pick berries, and farmer’s market produce.
But we also sell our extra eggs on our farm stand on the corner of our property. Plus, we sell our rabbit manure and baby rabbits. We have lovely neighbors whom we have gotten to know who also trade fresh herbs or strawberry runners with us. Homesteading can create such wonderful relationships.
Use these slower years with younger children to grow your local community. Then, as your homestead grows, you can help others in the future! Remember, don’t be overwhelmed by this list. Simply start with one thing and build from there!
How do you homestead with little kids? Let me know in the comments below!
