I ask this question as an Australian, where the term "homestead" isn't widely used. Though there are some people living it, it is perhaps considered old-fashioned.
Australia has a lot of farmland, so there are a lot of farmers but not all farmers grow a lot of food for their own consumption. Ie there are broad-acre farms, vineyards, fruit orchards, beef properties etc. A lot of it is mono farming due to the ability to streamline and improve profit as they scale up. It's a tough business and I get it.
Old-fashioned mix farms are not so common, but I think as we see increasing food insecurity, and a desire to know where and how food is produced they are perhaps becoming more common than they have been for a while. There has been a mass exodus of people moving to rural areas after COVID and land prices in a lot of rural areas have skyrocketed.
For me homesteading is a journey, though I grew up rurally on a property that produced wine grapes, we didn't homestead. There were no chickens, or veggie gardens though there was ample space. We had some herbs and a couple of fruit trees. I came to homesteading through wanting to live more simply and feed my family foods that were real without numbers and preservatives. The kinds of foods our grandparents would recognise. Over the years that led me to where we are now on our own 'Australian homestead'. Where we raise boer goats, cattle, chooks for meat and eggs and some veggies. I'm really interested in regenerative and sustainable farming. I hope to add a milking goat as soon as we have added a lean-to that can be a milking shed on the woodshed and progress to a house cow. We are increasing our veggie garden as we can afford the fencing. It's been incredibly slow due to job instability over covid, but we are thankfully slowly getting back on our feet. We are starting our property entirely from scratch, there was no home nor infrastructure here of any sort when we moved three years ago.
Pressure canning is not such a thing here, I think because we can produce food year-round in most of Australia? Though I would love a pressure canner for shelf -stable broth etc as we live totally off-grid and don't have much freezer space. I'm curious what pressure-canned meats are like? We do a lot of water bathing here, but that's only suitable for acidic plants like tomatoes or jams etc that have high sugar content. You can't water bath beans etc. Pressure canners are super expensive here, so a huge outlay. It's on my wish list. One day!
Hunting is also something not a lot of people do here. Though you can eat kangaroo and it is a delicious, lean meat, you don't want to be caught hunting them without a permit. All of our native animals are protected. Some areas have deer, but we don't on our property. Wild pigs are shot but not usually consumed, also not a problem where we are. Most people don't eat wild rabbits due to biological diseases that have been brought in to control them. Also, we have tight gun laws, which I understand is far from the reality in most of America. So that aspect is quite different. We do own guns and have the appropriate licences and storage for them.
Anyway, I was curious what homesteading meant to you?
Australia has a lot of farmland, so there are a lot of farmers but not all farmers grow a lot of food for their own consumption. Ie there are broad-acre farms, vineyards, fruit orchards, beef properties etc. A lot of it is mono farming due to the ability to streamline and improve profit as they scale up. It's a tough business and I get it.
Old-fashioned mix farms are not so common, but I think as we see increasing food insecurity, and a desire to know where and how food is produced they are perhaps becoming more common than they have been for a while. There has been a mass exodus of people moving to rural areas after COVID and land prices in a lot of rural areas have skyrocketed.
For me homesteading is a journey, though I grew up rurally on a property that produced wine grapes, we didn't homestead. There were no chickens, or veggie gardens though there was ample space. We had some herbs and a couple of fruit trees. I came to homesteading through wanting to live more simply and feed my family foods that were real without numbers and preservatives. The kinds of foods our grandparents would recognise. Over the years that led me to where we are now on our own 'Australian homestead'. Where we raise boer goats, cattle, chooks for meat and eggs and some veggies. I'm really interested in regenerative and sustainable farming. I hope to add a milking goat as soon as we have added a lean-to that can be a milking shed on the woodshed and progress to a house cow. We are increasing our veggie garden as we can afford the fencing. It's been incredibly slow due to job instability over covid, but we are thankfully slowly getting back on our feet. We are starting our property entirely from scratch, there was no home nor infrastructure here of any sort when we moved three years ago.
Pressure canning is not such a thing here, I think because we can produce food year-round in most of Australia? Though I would love a pressure canner for shelf -stable broth etc as we live totally off-grid and don't have much freezer space. I'm curious what pressure-canned meats are like? We do a lot of water bathing here, but that's only suitable for acidic plants like tomatoes or jams etc that have high sugar content. You can't water bath beans etc. Pressure canners are super expensive here, so a huge outlay. It's on my wish list. One day!
Hunting is also something not a lot of people do here. Though you can eat kangaroo and it is a delicious, lean meat, you don't want to be caught hunting them without a permit. All of our native animals are protected. Some areas have deer, but we don't on our property. Wild pigs are shot but not usually consumed, also not a problem where we are. Most people don't eat wild rabbits due to biological diseases that have been brought in to control them. Also, we have tight gun laws, which I understand is far from the reality in most of America. So that aspect is quite different. We do own guns and have the appropriate licences and storage for them.
Anyway, I was curious what homesteading meant to you?