Homestead planning will give you a good blueprint to work from and help you avoid costly mistakes.

Take a good look at the land that you have to work with and ask yourself a few questions.

Which Area Gets The Best Sunlight?

Make sure that you place your garden beds where they will receive maximum sunlight. If you are evaluating your land during winter, remember that trees with bare branches now will cast heavy shade come summer.

On a small plot of land that is shaded by trees, you will need to cut some down to ensure that your garden receives enough sunlight. You can hire a landscape contractor to do this for you, or if you are competent with a chainsaw you can do this yourself.

Be sure to save the felled lumber to use as firewood!

What about wind, the best place for a garden is in a sheltered spot, if you don’t have natural windbreaks, then plan to plant hedges or trees to provide one.

Will You Need To Irrigate?

Most gardens will require some irrigation during the dryer summer months. In most cases some gutters and a downspout, draining into a barrel from your shed roof will suffice as a water source. But in dry climates you will have to provide just about all of the water that your garden needs during the growing season.

If you will need to irrigate frequently, make sure your garden is located near to a water source or plan now to install the pipes it will need.

Or can you work with your land to incorporate swales and storage ponds?

How Cold Are Your Winters?

In milder climates you can easily grow some hardy winter greens, but in colder areas this will be impossible.

Know your growing zone, you can check it here homestead planning – planting zones.

If your area does experience cold winters, then plan now for a greenhouse or a poly/grow tunnel in a sheltered spot to ensure that you can grow throughout the winter and get an early start on next seasons crops too. Or investigate how you can preserve your summer harvest, to see you through until spring.

If you will be keeping some animals, plan their housing so that it vents into your greenhouse. The heat from their bodies will be appreciated by any plants that you grow in there.

Which Animals Do You Want To Keep?

If there is one aspect of homestead planning that you don’t want to overlook it’s this one. Don’t fall in love with the idea of raising animals without doing your homework first.

Space is an obvious consideration here. You can’t keep a cow successfully in your backyard and even on larger properties the economics of keeping a cow don’t work out too well.

But if space allows then a couple of small pygmy goats are an excellent choice for a homestead milk supply.

Any animals you keep will need secure housing and straw for bedding. They need access to fresh water and must be fed daily.

If you will be away for periods of time, you will need to arrange for someone to come in and take care of the animals you can’t drop them off like cats and dogs at a boarding kennel.

Feed for chickens can be purchased easily, they don’t need a lot, especially if you give them food scraps from the kitchen and weeds from your garden.

Larger animals such as goats and pigs however, will soon rack up a fairly large feed bill unless you have space available for them to forage on.

Weigh up the cost of keeping larger animals on a small lot against the value of the produce they provide for you. Make sure the economics add up.

How Much Work Can You Do?

Be realistic here. Maintaining a garden and tending to animals take time and effort. Do you have the time and will your enthusiasm remain strong?

It’s better to start small and grow your homestead as time allows, rather than to go at it all guns blazing and find that you have taken on too much.

If you are working a job outside of the homestead, realize that you will have less time available for the routine chores. You will need to plan your time carefully to ensure that you don’t put in a load of wasted effort.

Imagine working hard to prepare new garden beds and planting out the seedlings you carefully raised, only to have them smothered because you had no time to weed. Or imagine a garden full of produce rotting because you are too tired after a hot day at work to go out to the garden and work some more in the heat, collecting your vegetables.

What Will Your Neighbors Say?

This doesn’t apply to a rural homestead, but if you are planning an urban homestead, do consider that your friends on the other side of the fence could be less than enthusiastic about your chickens or goats. Even an improperly maintained compost pile near the fence could lead to some heated words.

It doesn’t take a rooster crowing at 4am to disturb the peace, chickens still make noise, especially when they are laying an egg. And goats will complain loudly if they are not happy.

Your locality may have laws in place that prohibit keeping any livestock on your property. So be sure to check out this side of things before you invest in animals and their housing.

You may think you can get away without the authorities ever knowing, but all it takes is one disgruntled neighbor tattling on you, to bring you an unwelcome headache to deal with.

Should I Go Off Grid?

Being independent of the utility companies is wonderful but it comes with up front costs.

On a rural property without utilities already connected, installing your own power makes sense, especially if the bill for connecting to the grid is high. But for a property where power is already connected, you may be better off just reducing your consumption as much as possible and staying on the grid.

Solar power systems don’t come cheap and are something that is best to add later on, using savings made on your food budget for example.

 Checklist

Draw up your own planning checklist. Whenever you think of a question about setting up your homestead, write it down. Then give it some thought, do some research and figure out the best way to move forward on that item.

Most items on your checklist will most likely be straightforward queries that are resolved easily. The purpose of brainstorming your homestead ideas at this stage, is to make sure you haven’t missed any potential problems that could trip you up later on.

Once you have resolved everything on your checklist, you can put your plans into action and create the homestead you’ve been dreaming about. Good luck and Happy Homesteading!