For a while now homesteading influencers have flooded short-form video platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Youtube Shorts). These people often have good information that can help you see success with your garden, homestead, or off-grid lifestyle. The problem is they often leave out how much time and money goes into getting your homestead started. The majority of these influencers are already deep enough into their projects; to the point where they are fully self-sufficient and stocked up on canned foods, cured meat, and animal feed. If they're not, they're presenting themselves as at that point.

I think this is dangerous for anyone dipping their toes into homesteading because they watch these influencers and get the idea that all of this is easy. In some ways it is, the whole idea is once you have a system in place you're doing easy work. It might be tedious work (letting the animals out every morning, watering your plants, pruning trees, etc.), but it's easy work. The part that is not easy is establishing that system.

What you may need to get a homesteading system in place

🏡 Property

According to our robot overlord Google, the average cost of an acre in the US is $12k. You might want more or less land depending on what you want to do, but for most homesteaders an acre should be enough to work with, and you'll probably want a house on that acre as well. Again, according to Google to average cost of a 3 bedroom house in the US is between $100k - $200k. We'll go in the middle and say $150k, which I'd imagine is still pretty low in this market.

With the one acre of land you're looking at $162k. For most people that's a big investment, and

🛻 Vehicle for moving supplies

There may be times when you need to bring large items from the farm store to your home; not just lumber and metal t-posts, but even large equipment like lawn tractors. When I first started this journey, I had a small SUV and an enclosed trailer that was dangerously close to the SUV's max tow weight. This was great because when I needed to pick something big up I could just attach the trailer to the car and go on my way. Without the trailer, bringing home things like fruit trees would've been a chore. If you're going to start homesteading, you'll definitely need a large trailer or a truck; or you'll be paying quite a bit for delivery.

🥚 Chickens

Just about every homesteading influencer has chickens or ducks. Getting eggs every day is great, but even a small setup for chickens can be pricey. You can build a chicken coop yourself but lumber, at the moment, is not cheap. Even small pre-built chicken coops are at the least $150, but almost all of the pre-built coops can't fit as many chickens as they advertise.

When you get chickens, you usually have to buy them as chicks. Chicks are cheap enough, I usually see them sold for $2 or $3. You'll need a cage, chick feed and feeders, and a heat lamp. You'll want the coop ahead of time, so you can get them moved into the coop as soon as they're ready.

Keep in mind, chickens usually don't lay eggs until 4-6 months. That's months of no ROI on the food you're buying/growing for them.

🛠️ Equipment

You'll need quite a few tools on the homestead. A lawn tractor for cutting grass. Shovel, rake, and shears for getting work done in the garden. For making structures like greenhouses or coops you'll need at least a drill, hammer, saw, measuring tape, and a speed square.

For things like lawn tractors, I recommend buying used off of Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist and learning how to fix/maintain it yourself. Yes it would be nice to own a brand new high-end zero-turn lawn mower, but why spend on the money on that when an older mower does the job just as well?

Back to my point

The list above just outlines that the cost of getting things set up, not even the time it takes. I can't count the number of videos I've seen that describe how to make a tunnel-trellis out of T-posts and wire fencing, and all of those videos show off all the amazing fruits and veggies the creator grew in those tunnel-trellises. Obviously utilizing vertical-space is a great way to maximize your harvest, but these ideas are going to cloud the minds of people just trying to get started.

Raised garden beds are great for those with accessibility needs, and they look damn good too. For most people, are they really necessary? No. Please do not go out and spend $3.50 each on a bunch of 2x4's and tons of bags of garden soil at the beginning of your homesteading journey. Start with planting in the ground.

Money aside, you're not going to be quitting your job right off the bat to go head first into homesteading, and your free time will be spent on your normal every-day chores on top of starting plants, weeding, watering, canning, taking care of animals, etc. Please do not spend your extra time building, idk, a chicken coop with an intricate obstacle course so your chickens don't get bored.

Instead of doing all these things that you see online right at the beginning of your journey so you can show all your friends how garden-pilled you are, start out with the bare minimum. Your first few years you might not get much of a harvest, or your chickens might give you only a few eggs. Imagine doing all the work to keep up with TikTok homesteaders just to get almost no return out of it. You'll feel a lot better when you've done what you need to do, fail, learn, and adjust.