5 Helpful Tips for Beginning Homesteaders

We had a small turnout at our local Weston Price chapter meeting last week, so I decided to record our guest and share it with all of you.

I love learning about new farmers near me who are doing things RIGHT.  Regenerative farmers who are raising healthy food for their family and for their communities are rockstars!

Below in the video you'll hear from Kevin Irwin from Irwin Family Farms.  

Don't mioss the list of topics he covered below…

Here are his 5 Helpful Tips for Beginning Homesteaders:

1. Research everything.  Choose breeds that are best for homesteading.
2. Plan things out ahead of time and what works for your property.
3. Make friends with neighbors and help each other.
4. Start slow, keep your other job.
5. Be patient & don’t give into the debt temptation.

Homesteading topics he covered:

• The health & weight issues that moved him to start farming.
• His research and the Joel Salatin rabbit hole.
• Local meat butchers who just buy from meat brokers.
• Raising chickens w/o vaccines or antibiotics & the taste difference.
• Pasture-raised pork vs. grocery store pork.
• Tips and learning curves.
• Pig breeds and which is best for homesteaders.
• The sad parts of homesteading.
• How he used pigs to cleared underbrush in his woods.
• How he and his friends & neighbors help each other.
• More about pastured chickens vs. conventional.
• Which type of chicken tractor he recommends.
• What his wife thinks of homesteading.
• The money you can save raising your own animals.
• Where he gets his baby chicks.
• How NOT transparent the hatchery is.
• Marketing your farm business.
• Getting into the Rockford farmers market.
• How people are put off by prices, not knowing the difference in quality.
• Farmers using newsletters to market themselves.
• What if you can’t find affordable land?
• How to get started on only 4-5 acres.
• Finding land that is NOT all woods.
• Clearing his woods to make pasture.
• Why plan things out FIRST.
• Be slow in starting, get infrastructure in place.
• Keep your other job, keep bills low.
• Should you take out a loan to do things quicker?
• The year he went too fast & spent too much.
• If you only had one acre, where/how should you start?
• The different chicken breeds.
• How many pigs you could do on an acre of land.
• What time of year to start raising your layers.
• The negatives of heat lamps for chickens.
• How to cycle lighting for constant eggs.
• Butchering chickens yourself?
• Raising kids on the farm.

Here's how to reach Kevin:

• Shop page for local readers
• Youtube page
• Instagram

More you might like:

• How moms may be hurting local farmers more than Monsanto

• Q & A on freeze drying food to presserve for later!

• Factor farm to sustainable farming:  one man's story

• 3 Natural ways to keep deer out of your garden