Homesteading Skills You Want To Learn

Fall 2011

I am working on a new eBook that will consist of needed homesteading skills. So I wanted to ask my homesteading readers a few questions. One is, if you are new to it, what would you like to learn? Or if you are not new, what was the first skill you learned, or wished you had learned in the beginning? When you think of homesteading and being self-sufficient, what comes to mind? Often someone moves to their future homestead, and then finds all the jobs that need to be done, but all at the same time!  That is not good. You need to learn them before you get there.

Preparing raised beds with the wheel hoe

If you had to learn one skill first, what would it be? My own thought is, that it would be gardening. Nothing can beat growing food. Since the garden takes time to get started. Usually your garden gets better after you have acquired the experience. There is a lot to it. Starting seeds, the soil, planting, pest control, weed control, harvesting, etc. Lots to learn, but it is so worth it!

  Canning with two pressure canners

For me, I learned how to can first. When we were living in an apartment, a country apartment, but still not exactly a homestead, I started out canning. My husband was baking bread and washing laundry by hand. We were fortunate in that apartment, that we were on the second floor, and was able to string a clothesline from the landing at the top of the stairs. It was an old farm that had been made into apartments and there was lots of land, a creek and old apple and pear trees. I canned crab apple jelly for the first time there.

Our home in 1996-97!

After that we went out on the road while my husband had a job driving an over-the-road truck. We traveled all over the country and I was busy reading our homesteading magazines aloud to him while he drove. I made lists of all the things I wanted to learn how to do. Eventually, all that came to be.

Copyright © 2012 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2012  Kathleen G. Lupole
Updated July 2016