I installed high tensile electric on the perimeter two years ago when we moved in. I have been slowly updating our fencing to include more woven wire. A pitbull mauled our family diary cow a couple weeks ago. It was traumatic and so we immediately pivoted to completing our property line in woven wire.

The high tensile will be repositioned about 20 ft inside to allow for a privacy buffer.

We plan to do a lot of fruit trees and farm products. So our tall fence posts will double as a deer fence too.

I bought 16 acres at the beginning of 2024, put a house on it and started the journey of clearing everything myself ( it was raw land). From taking down trees, cutting the driveway, grading the driveway and house pad, it has all been done by myself and my wife. I have friends that keep asking me why I don't just pay someone to do all of this but they are missing the point of how rewarding it is to do this with your own two hands. I was a little ambitious with my original timeline on when I wanted to get started on the chicken coop as our started homestead animals, at first I was shooting for the spring but it clearly won't be until at least late summer. I would not trade this for anything and the life lessons this is teaching my 4 kids is priceless. Anyone else as crazy as me and bought raw land to mold it yourself into your dreams?

So me and my partner are moving to Montenegro in the spring, brought a 2 hectare plot on the top of the Tara canyon after working there last summer. Small Balkan mountain home, 2 barns, some other small outbuildings, mains electricity, rain water recycling system already there.

We are going to build some traditional Alaskan style cabins to accommodate tourists for rafting etc during summer, as well as some small cabins to house volunteers to help us build the project. I’ve got 2 decent Stihl saws, chainsaw mill, power tools, hand tools etc etc.

What books would you recommend? I am pretty handy and an experienced engineer/construction worker so don’t need the basics like now to use a tape or dig a veg patch. Just some details that I am not familiar with for when the internet is out and I’m stuck on something- e.g, building a composting toilet, constructing pig/chicken pens from material found in the woods (nearest supplier 2.5 hour drive away)

I am wanting to remove this section of fence and the partially fallen cottonwood tree and remove the chicken coops built on either side of this animal pen. It looks like the pen itself is still pretty good and there's a bunch of metal roofing here that is in decent condition and will be great for building a new chicken coop. It looks like further back there was an old dumping area that needs to be cleaned up. Bonus picture of the wild asparagus in the field!

Lambing, calving, fencing, splitting. Hope the team enjoyed the holidays because it’s on now!

They call this area “the range”. It’s actually a BLM buffer between our land and the Holloman Airforce Range. Yes they do maneuvers here pretty regularly that includes live fire, bombs. We walk here frequently. This is Levon, like the Elton John song.

We’re in northern Georgia and haven’t gotten any snow since we’ve had the goats. (3 winters now) they were very confused and our “alpha” buck refused to come out of the barn 😂 warm molasses tea as a treat

Had a log that was a bit too long + tried to close the door and it cracked. Crack didn’t shatter the glass and nothing seems to have broken off.

Am I reasonably safe to keep using for the rest of the season or should I not use it until I fix it? It’ll be months until the company can most likely come to fix it in the spring/summer.

So in building broiler shelter /chicken tractor following poly face design and on the lumber list it calls for pressure treated 2x4s 12 feet long (cut in half lengthwise) . It shows it then 2x2 under that, to my knowledge pressure treated is not dimensional lumber therefore would actually be 1-1/2 x1-1/2? Am I confused ?

My GP LGD “Mondo”. We finally got a little snow yesterday, beast of a wind for 2 days. Although I’m surrounded my national forests we’ve never ever had a predation problem. Chickens, Nubian goats, pigs and grandchildren. Mad respect for this dog.

Okay so I have two does i take care of and the owners send me stall rent each month, both does had never been bred but i let them know when they came here that i do have a buck and accidents can happen and they could get bred. Well, they both got bred and I had to take care of them throughout the whole pregnancy and now taking care of the kids and having to milk the mommas. The owners pay a set amount each month and did not pay more through the pregnancy despite them eating way more than before. I told them on the first of next month they have to start paying for each kid as well (3 total). Thing is they are planning on selling these kids and I think it would be fair for them to give me half of the money since I have had to take care of them entirely on my own. I don’t plan on simply pocketing this money either, at the end of the day its all going back to the goats because I plan on buying things for the barn/goats. Do you all think that this would be fair?

My dad is mentally unwell and has developed this delusion that the crowd and coyotes in the forest near our house are our pets and depend on him to feed them. We're a 9 person household living at the edge of a massive forest by the countryside on a cul de sac, and we produce copious amounts of compost which my dad has been dumping in heaps all around our yard and in the forest next to our neighborhood. The neighborhood coyote has identified my father as the source of the food and has been scouting the area and frequenting it at all hours of the day. This coyote has since lost all fear of ppl, and has recently brought in the coyote pack that use to live several forests away. They are now peeing all over our yard and standing awaiting my dad's buffet of compost. I'm his 21 year old daughter and have had repeated arguments with my stubborn father, I'm not even sure what to do at this point. I'm not even sure if convincing him to stop throwing out all our waste in the yard is a good idea. My younger siblings need to wait by a secluded forest to board their bus, and my neighbors have several small dogs. My father has endangered us all, and refuses to see reason. I have a severe phobia of all canines, and I'm currently having extreme panic surrounding the recent pack of Coyotes that have decided to den in our backyard. What options do I have and what can I do to protect myself and my family an the neighborhood?

I had some questions on my last post about how we store everything in a small house.

Some pics to give other in small spaces inspiration.

We use every free space we can. Under the beds is a great one as it tends to be on the cooler side. Under end tables is another great one. I have a massive jar stash in our livingroom but you'd never know because it's in a corner by the couch, under an end table.

We have shelves (not pictured) in our hallway full of jars and pur room as well. Basically jars are everywhere, except the bathrooms.

I use these areas to store the main bulk of jars then have smaller storage ares in my kitchen where I can store a little bit of everything. These get restocked from the main storage areas. It's also a great way to make sure you're cycling through your oldest canned goods too. Those just go in the front until used up, then restocked with the new batch.

I have a little area in a warm part of the livingroom set aside for fermenting. I call it my fermentation station. It's pretty small now but will be much bigger in the fall after we harvest everything. That's when I like to do most of my fermenting. I just do sodas and honey ferments during the winter for the most part. Sometimes some veggies too.

I dry my herbs, popcorn and beans in the top of my pantry and hung up in my closet. I usually have an onion braid handing there too but need to grab more from the root cellar. A lot of our squash is stored inside in the closet too. It stays good till summer this way.

We have a small root cellar (not pictured). It is just a metal trash can one we dug. We have 4 cans buried and use 5 gallon buckets to store beets and carrots in sand. Potatoes are in sacks with shredded paper to keep them from touching too much. There is more squash in there as well. Apples and onions are wrapped in paper and put in sacks on top of the buckets (you can do this with green tomatoes too and they'll ripen). Garlic can just be stored in a sack. I have an old rug over the cans and a wooden lid to keep it insulated. It works really well. Most of the stuff stays fresh until May/June. Some even all summer.

We have a big freezer for meat, fruit, veggies and butter that we don't can. I can 1,000+ jars a year and we use it all. The biggest thing is to stay organized. I make a little map of where canned goods are stashed and what's in each stash. Makes it a lot easier. Keeping the pantry organized helps a lot as well. I like to keep most of our stuff in jars as it's easier to see what it is and they don't get pushed to the back. Our shelves are really deep so this seems to work best for easy access and keeping organized.

We also have a dozen quail (10 hens and 2 roosters) these are in hutches meant for rabbits. They don't take up much space and are producing 280+ eggs a month for us. We buy organic feed for them and all 12 of them cost $15 a month to feed. They are such funny little birds too! We sell and give away our extra eggs as they lay more than we need.

Oh and I store all the jars we empty throughout the year in my greenhouse and shed outside. That helps free up space inside.

I think I've covered it all but if you have any more questions just let me know!

I will do a square foot/vertical/small space growing post when I get there as there was a lot of interest in that too. It's currently the middle of winter here though!

I know this seems like an extremely broad question, and that’s because it is. I stumbled upon this subreddit and the idea of what everyone here is doing is so cool to me! I am interested in learning more what something like homesteading takes. Are you guys working full time jobs, or is homesteading your full time job? How do you make money doing this? What was your main reason for doing this? What are some of the hardships and troubles getting started? How much land is ideal to start with, and are there any states that are better than others to look into? These are real questions for someone genuinely curious. It would be great to take life by the horns and do something fulfilling, but I need to know where to set my expectations. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Hi y`all i live in zone 6b , and would like to grow some unconventional fruit plants .
Dont mind to give me a ton of recomendations and also some plants I would have to bring inside for winter since I have a bit of space to overwinter them. You can add something exotic.

Due to a vehicle issue I'm more unprepared for winter than usual. Kentucky is in the midst of a week of snow and bullshit and my tractor threw a tire in the woods, down in the valley, the day before the snow hit and there's no getting it out right now. My sheep have been on the "new" pasture before the weather but it is under a foot of snow and ice atm. With the tractor out I can't move a round bale into the sheep zone so, against my better judgement and knowing that the sheep would eat my shrubs etc, I cut the bale and opened the gate into the main yard, hoping that the 40 sheep and a dozen new lambs would logically go and eat the hay bale.

No such luck. They will only eat what is left of the shrubs and dig in the snow for grass. They're also ignoring their lambs. What can I do to get the sheep to eat the hay that was put there for them instead of spending day after fruitless day digging in the snow for "green" grass? I've never had this problem in 13 years.

If you purchased a 7 acre horse farm that needs no remodeling whatsoever, has a stable, barn, office, tack room, and a covered riding arena but you’re not interested in horses…what would you do with the property and why?

ETA: my friends are the prospective buyers, not me. I appreciate everyone’s input and will pass your wisdom along to them. Thanks so much!

I need some ideas for an area to make where I can herd animals into for various things such as welfare checks or to keep penned up to prep for butcher day.

I have a barn that opens up to 6 acres for them to roam. I have a small stall that I built to keep mothers when they birth young or when I want to keep them contained for butchering. I just did my first butchering and it was a pain trying to get them inside that small area and keeping them inside. I also had one sheep that hurt her foot and it took hours for myself and my family to try to herd her to a corner and provide care. We had to walk with hog panels to try and contain her which didn’t work well. All it took was for the sheep to run into the panel and knock us over.

I was thinking some sort of a coral on the property that I can herd them into and lock them in when needed. I currently have sheep but want to eventually upgrade to cows and other livestock

I’m looking for ideas what I could build and what material to use. I included a picture of my barn setup. Any ideas or pictures of setups would be helpful.

I am about to purchase a small farm (3.2 acres) that used to have a small pond (6'x6') on it. The pond looks dried up, but photos on Google earth of the property definitely show a full pond in that area. I would very much like to reestablish the pond using natural methods, which is part of the reason I am considering purchasing pigs. For context, I am 32f, and have only had chickens and only had to kill 1 of my chickens ever.

I have a few questions about the process of meat pigs though. Any and all help is appreciated!

What age should I look for in a feeder pig?

Can I find the males pre-castrated?

What makes the best temporary pig fencing? I will not want a permanent fence in that area

Will pigs destroy their entire pen area over time? (I don't plan on doing rotational grazing with the pigs, and I plan on giving as big of a pen as possible. Hopefully at least 50'x50')

What was your calculated cost per pound for the pork? Especially if you outsourced the processing

How many pigs do I need? Is 2 sufficient? (For keeping each other company and for sealing the pond over the course of their grow out)

What learning materials would you recommend for a first time pig owner? (I already have a farm animal veterinary care book that has a chapter on pigs)

Thanks in advance!

Edited to add details

Grew up off grid. House is a converted two story three bed barn that is quite nice, but my parents claim much or the work was done after permits were issued in the late 80s. They added additional windows as well, the house had a lot of windows, some or which were not permitted.

So we want to extend the tiny utility room to make more room for solar equipment and take it out of the main living area (currently in the 'pantry' and make it a bit safer (much more spacing, more conduit, concrete board etc).

Parents are adamant we can't get the county involved to get a permit as they have these fears in order of importance:

1. They'll ding us for unrelated items like windows, a shed we built, decks and existing electrical. This could, they say, and I have also heard, end with the loss of our family home.

2. It will increase property taxes.

3. Maybe this should be first, the general complete distrust of 'the county'.

Now I pretty much agree，they are my parents and I share they're concerns. But I'd also like to look into this a bit and see how much we could do it by the books or what it would take to get things ok. But I certainly don't want to be responsible for 'repairs' to the house we can't afford.

Does anyone have experience with this? For reference we are in a rural area down a long dirt road and off grid. County is Mendocino, California and the house or property is K class.

Hoping to plant my back 3 acres with English lavender. Soil is rocky with a lot clay content.

Best advice for someone just getting started?

Planning our deer fenced garden area right now, 8’ tall, 6.5’ woven wire with two strands of wire above - I know I need H braces both directions on each corner, and I think on either side of both man gates? Okay to stretch 10’ between each post, using heavy gauge T-stakes in between 6” round posts at the corners? I’ve built many cedar fences, but this will by my first ag/ranch fence, and I want to get it right!

Our plan is to ultimately have cows, sheep, and chickens rotationally graze. This means we need to have fencing that would accommodate all three since they will each be going through those paddocks.

Any advice on what fencing to use?

On one hand, there is a chance we will be moving this fencing because we are just starting out and may have to make adjustments. On the other hand, we want to make sure it is as sturdy and secure as possible.

Both short-term and long term solutions are welcome. So far we are thinking 4 ft high-tensile woven wire and two hot wires, one at the top and one near the bottom.