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Overview
Do you wish for a more resilient, sustainable, and empowered way of providing for your family in uncertain times? Are you worried about unreliable power grids, uncertain water supplies, or overly complex food chains? Veteran homesteader and star of Discovery's Homestead Rescue Marty Raney shares a big-picture vision of how ordinary families can become radically resilient homesteaders: powering, feeding, and caring for themselves through their own efforts, and on their own land.
This book will guide you to:
• buy land with the natural resources to build and feed a homestead
• go off grid with your own power and water systems
• design a greenhouse that will keep growing even when it’s snowing
• confidently defend your home against all threats—grizzlies, forest fires, flash floods, and financial challenges
Resources are only going to get more scarce. Raney will teach you to find food where others see dirt, and to build a home where others see empty land. He will inspire you to forge your own homestead dream and strengthen your family for all challenges to come.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780593420683 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2022 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 147,280 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
- One -
The Homesteader Mentality
The desire to live freely, deliberately, and simply under the banner of homesteading is alive and well
As I travel from homestead to homestead, the plane's window becomes a wide lens into the past, focusing on the vast North American landscape below. And, at thirty-five thousand feet, I watch a historical documentary unfold in geographic increments: cities surrounded by suburbs, suburbs blended away to occasional rural villages, and then, there they are. The indelible survey section gridlines-now visible as roads or fence lines-carving out the homesteads and farmlands that can be traced to the Civil Warera Homestead Act of 1862, an act that allowed any American, whether rich or poor, to receive a 160-acre plot of land for a filing fee of eighteen dollars.
Abraham Lincoln believed that the role of government should be "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." And for a period of time lasting well over a century, Americans were able to claim their lot in life. It wasn't a perfect system, and looking back we have to acknowledge the bad as well as the good: Although newly freed Black Americans were technically able to claim land this way, few successfully did. Indigenous tribes were forcibly removed from their homelands, causing generational despair and great loss of life. People abused the system too, with wealthy homesteaders figuring out ways to claim multiple homesteads in good locations. Lincoln's actions reshaped this country, and by the close of the act, over four million homestead claims were filed in more than thirty states, with the last being claimed by a man named Ken Deardorff, along the Stony River in Alaska in 1976.
Those dreamers carved a legacy of self-sufficient homesteads, farms, ranches, and orchards, all the way to the Pacific Ocean and then north to Alaska. From my window seat, I can easily see the fenced, bordered sections of land, each section representing 640 acres, or one square mile. The patchwork of squared farmland is a timeless reminder of where we came from, and where our food still comes from.
Two hundred years later, however, the migration has reversed, with young people going from the farm, to the factory, to the office. Many of the original "square mile" farms have been broken down to smaller tracts of 320, 160, 80, or 40 acres, and so on. The first subdivision was most likely built on an old homestead, since a two-acre homesite is worth five times more than a two-acre potato field.
The transition of family farms to factories was exacerbated as World War II came and went. Interestingly, the subdivisions we see everywhere were actually "invented" during that era-an amazing, novel idea at the time. The original two-, four-, six-, and eightplexes evolved into apartment and condominium housing en masse. Homesteads were surveyed, and developers greedily carved them into one-acre lots, and boom: We planted houses in the fields, resulting in the first fruits of shiny, sprawling suburbia. And, just like the rows of corn planted by the farmer as close together as possible to yield maximum profit, the concrete and wood bumper crop planted by developers has left us all living as close as we possibly can to each other-for the same reason: profit.
The overcrowding serves as a petri dish for pandemics, unrest, anxiety, and a culture lacking the fundamental core to keep it all together under a stressful, straining, burdensome load. As the original farms dissolved, so did the original homesteader's legacy of knowledge and experience: Many of their descendants have forgotten the skill sets needed to thrive self-sufficiently. Today 330 million Americans are completely dependent on the grid, the grocery store, and the gas station to survive, day by day. Take one of those away from the city or the suburb, for just one day? Chaos. Panic. Twenty-four hours of disruption could put those crowded, grid-dependent masses in real danger.
Salt and Cabbage
That ancestral memory of homesteading is closer to the surface than you might realize. Think of sauerkraut: It's salt, cabbage, and a little physical labor. Take any root vegetable, immerse it in a brine, and leave it in your cellar or pantry; you are now a little more prepared for a food shortage than you were ten minutes ago. That combination of vegetable, mineral, and fermentation is so simple you don't need a recipe, so commonplace that every culture in the world practices some variation of it, and so essential to early homesteading that most early root cellars would have been lined with jars or crocks of it. The skills a successful homesteader needs are never more than a generation or two lost in the past. What is harder to recover is that spirit of homesteading, that willingness to take a chance and work collectively toward a difficult and labor-intensive goal. My family has succeeded at homesteading because we are willing to work hard and because we share a common vision of what a well-lived life looks like. So when you begin to consider a homesteading life, ask yourself, "What is our family vision? Do we have what it takes to stand together, united, come what may?"
Putting the Home into Homestead
Homesteading is a group activity. Successful homesteads have a cohesive, functioning family at their core.
Homesteading is a group activity.
A few years ago, I was buying three hundred feet of steel cable to build the tram to our homestead. I was going to trust my wife and kids to this cable on a daily basis, and a dunk from twenty feet into our freezing, rushing river might not be survivable in August, let alone December.
I ended up buying good, quality cable. Now, 99 percent of all cable you'll ever see is comprised of six strands of wire rope wrapped around a single, straight strand called the core. Without its core, all of those strands become less productive. As pressure and stress are added to the cable's load, each strand relies on the core more to keep everything together, united, and strong. I looked at this six-strand cable as if it represented the six members of my family. And then I started thinking about all those families who homesteaded in North America.
As those farmers made the move from farm to factory and ultimately to the office over the last century, they left significant core values behind. In retrospect, each transitional step toward "progress" has found us working harder and harder for wages that are worth less and less. As commuters move farther away in search of affordable homes, commuting even longer distances becomes the norm. Suddenly that nine-to-five has essentially become a seven-to-eight. Now Mom and Dad are stressed to the max, the kids resent and exploit their absence, and that family unit, powered by love, respect, and faith, begins to crumble.
Once upon a time, the American dream seemed as strong as any cable: unbreakable. Every family member worked in harmony and carried their own load.
As my family worked together to install the tram and string the cable, I thought about how my six family members worked together like those six strands of wire. The "core" of our family success is and always has been an honest day's work and, at the end of an honest day's work, gathering to share our plans and talk about it over a plate of good food. Unfortunately, the simple rituals of the kitchen table, where a strong, working family unit gathered together willingly and regularly at least once a day for an entire lifetime, are all but gone.
I firmly believe that our cultural core is disintegrating. We are unraveling and becoming weaker as families, as communities, and as a country. At every juncture, be it the farm, the factory, or the office, we have left behind our values, our ethics, our skill sets, and our belief systems in the wake of chasing the elusive American dream.
If families aren't gathering at the traditional dining room table, where are they gathering? No matter how small or remote their hometown, it will have at least two of the two hundred thousand fast-food restaurants peppered across America. Fifty million Americans per day sit down at these restaurants. The food they eat is loaded with salt, preservatives, and bad fats. And once inside? Nine out of ten people will immediately find themselves engaged not with each other, but with an inanimate, lifeless electronic replacement for human interaction. We're all guilty, myself included.
I can't offer the American family the solution to the financial woes that might plague them. But I can offer another way of life, one that I feel is available to nearly all of us, if we are willing to take a chance on difficulty and discomfort: to be too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry for the years it takes to get a homestead established.
The family unit and its core values that were brought to and taught at the kitchen table consistently, day after day, produced a formidable generation that built America's airplanes, cars, trucks, interstates, bridges, dams, and rails. And, at sixty-six thousand miles per hour (our current speedometer reading as we orbit the sun), we're getting further and further away from the farm, the garden, and the greenhouse. The skill sets needed to be self-sufficient feel lost. The independent spirit to be self-reliant seems to be forgotten. In these advanced modern times, when we rely on everyone and everything (except ourselves) to supply us with our every need (water, food, housing, power, sewers, heat, and air-conditioning), it's wise to ruminate on the increasing necessity of self-preservation. What would happen if the grid went down in a populated area such as Los Angeles, population four million, or New York City, population eight million? The impact could be catastrophic. Especially in winter . . .
We don't know what forces will shape our future: human error, cyberattack, earthquake, or something no one saw coming, like COVID-19. It's a changed and changing world. At this point in time, nothing would surprise me. But we have the option to prepare for it, to survive it, or, better yet, to avoid it completely.
- Two -
How to Fund your Homestead
Buying Your Land
Just about anywhere I've gone in America you can buy land for 10 percent down, and people seem to be inclined to carry the note. If a house mortgage is out of your reach-and it is for many-buying vacant land, perhaps with a conventional mortgage, or more likely with owner financing, is achievable. If you have limited money and are willing to be miles from a town or even a paved road, you can get in for a few thousand down-if the owner is willing to strike a deal with you. This may require credit and employer references. However, one advantage of owner financing is that you can talk directly to the owner and negotiate with them outside of the structure of a traditional bank. Be direct, be honest, and don't play games or overpromise. Owner-financed generally means you will be paying off the loan much faster than you would with a traditional mortgage. Are you going to be able to make the payments? Be realistic, and don't commit yourself to a purchase you can't pull off.
Finally, make sure that the person claiming to be the owner is actually the owner, and that the title is free and clear and can be sold. IRS liens, for instance, can complicate a sale. Make sure that the deed reflects what you think you are buying. Never buy a piece of land until you've hired a title company to research the history of that property. We've worked with homesteaders who didn't own land they thought was theirs-not disastrous in their cases, but it could be hugely problematic and heartbreaking in others. Make sure you do your due diligence, and if you have any doubt about the legitimacy of the owner or the land, keep asking questions 'til you are sure of the answer. Research the different ways that an owner financing agreement can be structured, understand what happens if you default, and get a local real estate lawyer involved to go over the agreement before you sign. Some will not heed that advice, but all need to heed this advice: Never, ever buy a piece of land without a completed title search.
When you find a property that catches your eye, get the full and proper address, and go to the county or borough assessor's site to clarify that the property is zoned in a way that will allow both residential and agricultural use. The key thing is agricultural. If the property is strictly residential, you may not be able to live your homestead dream. Everything from chickens to goats might be problematic, and you may be in a constant battle with the county and possibly your neighbors to keep them.
Before you buy, understand what you're taking on, and make sure each and every member of your homesteading family is in agreement on the plan. Not that anything will go exactly according to that plan, but it's important to look at the bare ground and have the same-or very similar-vision for what is going to be built there. It may be you're running from a life that has crumbled due to forces outside of your control. If so, know that every sentence you will read here was written to help you get back in control of your new life, your new future, and your new beginning.
That few thousand dollars has given you the first page of a story that your family is going to be writing for the rest of your lives. All you need is the ability to see a vision, or the fulfillment of your dream, that first day you are standing on your own land. Things will happen slowly. It will take time. That's OK.
Improving Your Property
Let's say you've bought your property. What next? Well, if it doesn't already have a living structure, you'll need to get to work. First: Take whatever money you're earning, and design and build your cabin. Small to begin with, and simple, just one room, maybe with basic electric and most likely no indoor plumbing. Jump ahead to the home section and build yourself a basic outhouse. Introduce animals when you can afford to shelter and feed them. You don't need power. You can haul your own water. You can live very basically. It depends on how desperate you are to get started on a new life.
Look around for farming grants: We have a nine-thousand-dollar grant pending right now, for building a barn to be used for farming, and if we spend ten thousand they'll reimburse us nine thousand for our barn. The Beginning Farmer and Ranchers grant page at USDA.gov (usda.gov/topics/farming/grants-and-loans) has information about federal help. Your state may have its own programs (some states have grants for raising specific animals or growing specific crops). USDA grants are targeted and specific, but their standards are not-as of this writing-too onerous to meet. Your farm doesn't need to show a profit, and homesteading circles are full of tales of roadside vegetable or egg stands that allowed the homesteaders to meet the requirements for a loan. There are other specific loans for women or minority farmers, or farmers looking to set up some kind of supplemental business on their property. So your first stop on the internet should be the grant page at USDA.gov. Tap into the homestead community in your area to see what other homesteaders are having success with.
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Chapter 1 The Homesteader Mentality 1
Chapter 2 How to Fund Your Homestead 7
Chapter 3 First, Find Your Land 11
Chapter 4 Drinking Water 27
Chapter 5 Flash Floods 53
Chapter 6 Forest Fires and Air Quality 63
Chapter 7 Building Your Home 77
Chapter 8 Homestead Tools 109
Chapter 9 Powering Your Homestead 115
Chapter 10 Gardens and Compost 131
Chapter 11 Livestock 149
Chapter 12 Hunting 159
Chapter 13 Predators 165
Chapter 14 The Ingenious Homesteader 173
Chapter 15 When It All Goes Wrong 179
Final Note 188
Acknowledgments 189
About the Author 191
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