Running your own homestead is a brilliant way to save money each year, as you can grow your own food rather than having to head to the grocery store every day! However, it’s important that you can take steps to control the cost of your homestead, as it can easily become an expensive game if you don’t take the right steps to save money. Fortunately, this guide contains some of the most effective steps that you can follow to cut the cost of running your homestead, so read on to discover more.
Make Sure You Focus On Security
The potential of having one (or several) of your animals escape from your homestead can be extremely costly, as would be having one of your animals killed by a predator that broke in, so you need to make sure that you can focus on security if you want to control costs at your homestead. Keeping your chicken pen secure so that foxes or wolves cannot access them should be a main priority, as they are easily scared and could pass away simply due to the presence of a predator, never mind having one actually get inside their pen! You should also take steps to secure your horses, cows, sheep and any other similar 4-legged animals secure inside your land, as they have a tendency to roam if you don’t get the right fencing. It would be a total nightmare to wake up one morning and find that your animals have picked up and left due to poor quality fencing, so find a good brand like Bekaert that is ultimately reliable. You should also consider some kind of scarecrow that can help to protect your crops from intruders too, as birds will no doubt be flying by to try and take your seeds, fruits or vegetables.
Master The Art Of Preserving
Mastering the art of preserving is one of the best ways to save money on your homestead. Having to throw food away can feel like a total sin, but realistically there is no need to waste any food that you harvest on your homestead. In order to keep your root vegetables for longer, you should always ensure that they are kept with the dirt still on them. Leaving mud on your root vegetables helps to protect them and keep them fresh, so put down the scrubbing brush and ensure they are nice and dirty! Pickling and preserving vegetables is also a brilliant option, as using vinegar, oil and other natural preservatives will allow you to use up lots of produce that stays edible for months after harvesting. Make sure that you experiment with lots of different cooking methods too, as you do many things with one type of produce. For example, tomatoes can be made into a passata, a purée, a pickle and even dried under the sun to be preserved in oil!
Saving money on your homestead has never been such a simple task when you can utilize these excellent tips and ideas.