What They Don't Tell You About Homesteading | 3 Reasons It's So Hard

First, it's a gigantic financial commitment. Probably the biggest one, the biggest, longest one of your life. Probably a 30-year mortgage. Probably an uncomfortable rate if you're dreaming big. I mean, Grandpa bought this farm way back in the day in the 1930s for $500. He put half of his wage every month and paid it off in 2 years. My dad bought the farm from them for $20,000, and now, you know the story, we bought it from my dad and the estate for half a million. Nowadays, if you think about it, if he was put— if grandpa was putting half a year's wage on it, what does somebody make now? $50,000, $60,000? So half that, let's just say half that is $30,000. You can't buy this for $30,000 now. Committing to a piece of land is a huge commitment. My friend Jess from Roots and Refuge and her debut show on Abundance Plus said this. She said it's costly. Here's a clip.

Like, I have cried so many times over the last few months. I have stood at my back porch and looked out on my farm in the morning. It's my favorite. For so long I stood there and thought, thank you, Lord, for giving this to me. And now I'm saying, "Thank you, Lord, for giving me the opportunity to lay it back down." I wouldn't be satisfied to stay because I know what else we can do. But I don't want to leave. And we're leaving in the middle of the most beautiful time of the garden in full bloom. And that has been my sanctuary. That has been my safe place. That has been Genuinely, I found myself in that little 10,000-square-foot piece of earth. I learned who I was there. And because of that, I get to move on knowing who I am. But closing the door on that and moving on, that's not easy. It's costly. This is costly, but worthy. And most worthy things, they are costly.

The second big reason of why it's so difficult is, and a lot of people don't think about this, when you say yes to the homesteading dream, you say no to so much more. In-town convenience, guys, we don't have cell phone reception out here. The nearest convenience store is at least 10 minutes away, like a real town grocery store 20 minutes away. That can be inconvenient, especially if you're not used to that. There's the social aspect of things when you live that far out. You know what one of the biggest comments are when people come out and visit us? Friends or whatnot. You are out here. That's what they say. You are way out here. And a lot of places these days to even be affordable, you're going to be even way out there. Is way out there a word? Way out there. Most likely you're giving up a cookie-cutter life. I mean, You're not dealing with livestock, which means you're not dealing with dead stock. You're, uh, you're not dealing with live plants, which means you're not dealing with dead plants. And, and, uh, doing chores in the rain and, uh, having things being more predictable in that, in that cookie-cutter life. When you go to homesteading, things are very unpredictable. I'll sometimes go and shoot a vlog and think there's nothing to shoot that's interesting, we're just going to go out and do chores. But always, always something happens, some obstacle. Joel Salatin once asked me, "Do you ever run out of material? Are you ever afraid you're gonna run out of material?" And I thought, and I wish I had thought of this moment, I thought of it later, "Well, do I ever run out of problems? Then I'm not gonna run out of material." We have a problem every day that we're working to overcome. The third one is you might as well say goodbye to instant gratification. Let me show you. Sheep. We did a 1-year waiting list for sheep. Then we waited another year until they were old enough to breed. Then we waited 5 months for their babies. And now we're currently waiting 8 months to raise the babies through the fall for harvest. 2 years plus this monthage, a little over another year or so, 3 years and some change. Goodbye instant gratification. 3 years, 3 years to have our first homegrown lamb. That's kind of a bummer, but I'm going to give you 3 ideas to overcome. I mean, if you're saying goodbye to instant gratification, you're saying hello to delayed gratification, which is super rich. Because imagine when we first go down and eat that lamb that we waited 3 years to grow, that's going to be like nothing we've experienced before. That's like nothing we grew in the grocery store. We knew that story. We were part of that story. We overcame obstacles. We saw lambs, uh, die. We treated other, uh, ewes. We got everybody to that point. That meal is going to be glorious. Have big vision. So if you have big vision and dream and goals and you're always pushing forward, That big vision helps you through the hard times, helps you to prevent from burnout. If you're just doing chores for chores' sake, that can be hurtful. But if your vision is, I'm doing chores, I'm moving these animals around the farm, I'm making this a better place for the grandchildren, well then it helps a little bit when you have to go out there and work in the rain. All that makes me think of Jess's ability to just dream. Here's a clip.

I can't stay here because I've got this big thing and I know I could do it. I know how many people could benefit from it. So staying here while I could say, well, we'd be fine, we could be just great, I think that I would be just completely dissatisfied because I know what else we could do.

So think about it that way. I mean, homesteading is hard, but would you be dissatisfied if you stayed where you were? It might be scary to go into homesteading, but is the dissatisfaction of you staying worth the, the leap of faith into homesteading? Another thing is you want to make sure you're maxing out your current dream. Do you actually have a current dream. I don't care if you're in an apartment. If you've got a sidewalk from your apartment to the driveway, get a green stock. Get it. It takes up 2 square foot. I don't care if the HOA has gardening rules. This isn't really a garden. It's like, you know, it's garden, but it's in like a tower. Nobody's going to call it a garden. I don't think nobody's going to complain about it. Max out these current dreams. That helps. Once you've maxed out current dreams, It's like baby steps to the next big thing. You don't have to be thinking, "Oh, I've got to go from 0 to 5 acres." No. Be maxing out what you have, where you are, and that will prepare you for the bigger things. It's like baby steps. I really like what Jess says about surrendering to the impossibility. It's this whole idea of, "This is discomfort. Let's just embrace it. Here." hear it from her yourself.

I don't want to say that this is hard or bad because we're choosing it. I think it's worth it, but I'm extremely uncomfortable. This is the most uncomfortable season that I can remember having lived through voluntarily.

We're just scratching the iceberg here, and hopefully that helped you a little bit. Guys, we can dig a lot deeper. There are 3 things that I've identified with Abundance Plus to help people. Our whole motto is, you can homestead, we can help. This is a platform that can help you. There's an inspirational level, so you can get shows like While They're Still— the clips I showed you today, our TV show Rooted, other documentaries, other things coming down the line. So there's an inspirational level. We all need initial or continued inspiration. Two, there's a community level. So you're at— I didn't even mention that as a way to sustain and face the difficulty, but that's a huge way. You're going to feel alienated. You're going to lose friends. I should have said that's, that's a difficulty of, of starting a homestead. You're going to lose friends. You're going to lose current friends and even some family because you're going to pursue this dream. You're going to need a new set of friends and family, and we've set that up. We have a thriving Facebook community. We have a thriving community inside that where we, you know, we have people come out to the farm and do workshops with us. We're going to have a gathering at Homesteaders of America, just members. So it's this special thing where it actually feels like family. Thirdly, know-how. I mean, chances are many of you are starting from scratch. You don't know that much, and you need to learn and observe and figure things out. Well, we have over 400 videos in our video library, from permaculture designs like designing homesteads to raising chickens to doing gardens. To you name it— cows, pigs, whatever— to help you in this journey. So we have this big problem of facing this big mountain of difficulty in setting up a homestead, but we have solutions. I've mentioned some of it to you in this video, but we also have Abundance Plus. My heart is to help you guys, and we're helping many. Over 10,000 members in Abundance Plus already. That is people who want to put put skin in the game. They want to go beyond inspiration and actually do, and I'm proud of them. Consider them family, and we're in this together with them. And would love for you guys to join us at that level. It's at Abundance Plus. This week we have free stickers, while they're still stickers, to celebrate that show. Early access to the Sowards podcast as they release that, and a PDF on fall gardening. It's, it's fall gardening time. And 10% off if you use code word Justin. So offer code Justin, 10% off. Link for that down in the description, or you can just go to abundanceplus.com.