Hobo Homesteading

  You don't need 40 acres, a barn full of animals, or a fortune in fancy equipment to start living more like a homesteader. There's something wonderfully ironic about the modern simple living movement. Apparently, before you can begin living simply, you're supposed to go shopping. You'll need special equipment for making bread, another collection of gadgets for preserving food, some expensive storage solutions, and probably a few things you never knew existed until somebody on the internet convinced you that you couldn't possibly live without them. And then you'll need a bigger house to store it all. I'm not opposed to having good tools. Quite the opposite. I love things that make everyday life easier, especially when they can do more than one job. But I've learned that some of the most useful things around my homestead are also the most ordinary. I recently put together a collection of 18 Simple Living Essentials That Actually Earn Their Keep over on B...

  My husband asks me to make tortillas every week. He eats them instead of sandwiches, which is especially funny because he is a white boy, although he was raised in California, so apparently tortillas became part of the operating system somewhere along the way. And I understand why he asks. Homemade tortillas are ridiculously good. They are also ridiculously easy once you’ve made them a few times. This is not a recipe site, and I have no intention of turning Hobo Homesteading into one. But part of this whole experiment is learning how many things we can make ourselves without turning our lives into an episode of Little House on the Prairie . Tortillas happen to be one of those things. Why make them when you can buy them? You absolutely can buy tortillas. I am not interested in making every single thing from scratch just so I can say I did it. But there is something satisfying about looking at a handful of ordinary ingredients and realizing: Oh. I can make that. Flour. Lard. Water....

  Why I’m Not Trying to Be Self-Sufficient I know how to do a lot of things now that I had absolutely no clue how to do when I was 45. That is one of the things I love most about getting older. We tend to talk about aging as though it is mostly about losing things, but there is another side to it. If you stay curious, you accumulate skills, stories, confidence, and a kind of practical wisdom that you simply cannot rush. I did not wake up one day knowing how to raise goats, bake bread, make soap, bottle-feed a calf, preserve food, build things, or figure out what to do when something went sideways. I learned those things over almost 30 years. Usually one skill at a time, and quite often because I had already gotten myself into something and now had to figure out how to handle it. Most of the time, I learned because I had to There were definitely moments in my life when I bit off more than I knew how to chew. Getting goats and chickens without really knowing much about either would b...

 When I brought home my first goats, Marsha and Fadra, I knew next to nothing about goats. Quite frankly, they scared me a little. I thought they might bite me. Later I learned that goats do not have upper front incisors. They have a firm dental pad there, although they certainly have teeth farther back and can still pinch you if they are determined. That small misunderstanding was a good preview of what came next. Goats are funny, affectionate, useful, maddening, intelligent animals, and there was far more to keeping them than I understood when I started. I eventually kept several breeds, milked does, delivered kids, trimmed hooves, managed bucks, repaired fences, and learned that a goat can locate a weak spot in an enclosure faster than most humans can locate their car keys. If you are considering goats, I am not going to talk you out of them. They remain some of my favorite animals. I do want to help you begin with fewer surprises than I did. Decide why you want goats Before loo...

 There was a time when I thought homesteading began with land. You needed acreage, a barn, a garden large enough to get lost in, and at least one animal capable of escaping whatever enclosure you had confidently built for it. What I know now is that homesteading does not begin with property. It begins the first time you decide to become a little more capable with the life you already have. You learn to make bread instead of automatically buying it. You grow herbs in a window. You repair something that would have been thrown away. You preserve a little food, cook from scratch, learn what grows where you live, or discover how much you can do without waiting for perfect circumstances. That is the heart of Hobo Homesteading: use what you have, grow what you can, and make a life you love. I did not begin as an expert My father-in-law once gave me a copy of Carla Emery's The Encyclopedia of Country Living . In the back was a sort of self-sufficiency test filled with skills a capable coun...

  I’m Jill, the hobo homesteader, and I’m so glad you found your way here. Hobo Homesteading began with a simple belief: you do not need a perfect farmhouse, forty acres, expensive equipment, or a pantry worthy of a magazine spread to create a more grounded and satisfying life. You can begin with what you already have. You can bake a loaf of bread in an ordinary kitchen. You can grow herbs on a windowsill, make soap without owning a goat, mend something instead of replacing it, or preserve the handful of fruit that survived an unexpected frost. You can notice the seasons, learn practical skills, laugh at the animals, and discover a little everyday magic along the way. Martha Stewart I am not. Around here, things sometimes flop, animals refuse to cooperate, and the garden has its own ideas. But something does not have to be perfect to be useful, beautiful, or worth doing. That is really the heart of Hobo Homesteading. This is homesteading for real life Hobo Homesteading is for peopl...