Since getting more serious about our homestead plan I have been researching (surprise!) what skills we would need to learn to be able to take care of a homestead. I know it’s quite a while until we’re at that phase but my thinking is that if we start with what we can now and practice skills on a small scale it won’t be so overwhelming when we actually get closer to buying our homestead. Then we have already started our learning curve in some areas and made mistakes early on that we will hopefully learn from so that we don’t need to make them on a bigger scale. Some things are connected to the actual tasks that will need to be done and some are more centered with living in a rural area not close to people or stores, so more of a survival nature. I got inspired from a list that I found on the Prarie Homestead blog with 121+ skills so I picked out 25 that I think are most important/relevant for us. Here comes our list:
- Grow vegetables – this area is taking off this year
- Compost – we have started our Bokashi compost (post coming)
- Save seeds – haven’t gotten to this yet since we need our first harvest
- Cut fruit trees – skill that will have to wait until we have fruit trees
- Cook from scratch – already do this a lot
- Preserve food and canning – we will start doing this once we’ve got the harvest from this year
- DIY cosmetics – see post here
- DIY cleaning products – next area now that I have come far with cosmetics
- Fell trees and chop wood – Mr LILs area of expertise all though I can also chop wood
- Hunt and fish – Mr LIL is going on a hunting course and he knows how to fish
- Forage for food -started with berries and mushrooms
- Learn native edible plants – going to branch out from the above mentioned
- Take care of animals and poultry – this is an area that we start slowly with when we have our homestead
- Cut up and prepare larger pieces of meat/chicken/fish – not sure how I will learn this one yet, Mr LIL will learn on his hunting course
- Make our own sausage – there are courses for this so might attend one at some point
- Keep bees and make honey – neighbours out in the acghipelago summer house have bees so I have started to learn a little though seeing what they are doing
- Make a fire – Mr LIL can do this well but I have to start practising
- Metal working and welding – something that Mr LIL wants to learn
- Sewing/mending clothes – both me and Mr LIL do this well
- Maintaining equipment – this will obviously vary deping on equipment but a good point to make sure that we do it
- Sharpen knives and axes – I am assuming that Mr LIL can do this
- Build and fix fences – I have done a lot of horseback riding so I have set up my fair share of electric fences and I am assuming that Mr LIL can do this too
- Build/repair houses – Mr LIL has built a couple of houses already and is a building engineer, need I say more 🙂
- Learn first aid – there are free courses that I will try to sign up for
- Be prepared – having things at home so that you can survive at least 72 hours on your own
As you see we already know/have started/plan to start most of the skills which is really fun! I’m sure that this list will get longer the more we learn and more advanced over time but it is a good starting point of collecting basic skills for homesteading.
