I Chased Chickens Out of Trees Until I Learned THIS Homesteading Approach
The Complete Beginner's Roadmap to Homesteading - Part 2: Skills VS Projects
I had just enough knowledge to be dangerous when I first began homesteading. As a child, I’d been my mother’s best berry-picker, watching her transform our haul into jams we’d eat all winter. At sixteen, I worked alongside my grandfather in the garden, picking beans and pulling weeds. By nineteen, I was helping my new mother-in-law can beets and preserve their family harvest.
As a result, I was rather haphazard in my approach—learning to bake and cook from scratch while simultaneously coercing my then-husband into building me a coop so I could bring home my first laying hens.
We brought home half a dozen bantam hens and sequestered them for the recommended three days. Then we let them out and watched them sail right over the fence. Who knew bantams can fly?
HI. I’m Sam from Maine Homestead Life, a newsletter that teaches the skills our grandparents knew: how to grow, raise, and make REAL food and live independently from corporate food systems.
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In This Post:
Who Knew Bantams Can Fly?
The Skills-First Approach
Observation Skills
Research & Record Keeping
Food
Tool-Skills!
Basic Gardening
Community Building
Stop Chasing Chickens, Start Building Skills
Who Knew Bantams Can Fly?
For the rest of the summer those birds would roost in the trees. Every evening at sunset was spent trying to catch and contain them again.
I still feel foolish when I recount that story….🙄
If I’d done more research into chicken breeds instead of jumping at the first listing on Craigslist I could’ve saved myself a lot of time and money.
That’s the thing, though—building and doing feels like progress. It’s fun and exciting and provides immediate results and gratification. While research feels too much like school and work, leaving you with little to show for your efforts.
Here’s what nobody tells you, though: skills compound, projects depreciate.