Homestead Life

The Green Homestead

sunflower with bees
Raise your own sunflower seeds for the flock.
How green are you?

Are You a Green Homesteader?

By their very nature, most homesteaders believe in living a fairly ‘green,’ or earth friendly, lifestyle. We wish to become more self reliant for many reasons. The benefits include: reducing our expenses, providing healthier foods for our family, preventing cruelty to the animals we rely on for food, returning to our roots, and (hopefully) reducing our negative impact on the environment.

Although we strive to decrease our dependence on outside sources, many homesteaders, gardeners, and small farmers still purchase and use some environmentally questionable products. They might seem like little things and it’s easy to justify some weed killer here and a bit of extra garbage there. But when you examine those little things over the year, or your lifetime, they can really add up.

tigerella tomatoes

What Do You Mean by Green?

When we talk about being ‘green’ we are usually referring to reducing the damage that we directly, or indirectly, cause to the environment. Every purchase we make has a potential effect on the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. By choosing to purchase fewer, more environmentally responsible, products, we reduce our negative impact.

Some examples of environmentally responsible practices are:

  • Using organic pest control and fertilizers
  • Treating disease and parasites with herbal remedies
  • Reducing fuel consumption
  • Using sustainable energy when possible
  • Purchasing organic foods and organic livestock feed
  • Making the most of what we have
  • Buying locally grown and produced products
  • Foraging for food
  • Avoiding synthetic hormones for livestock
  • Raising more of our own food
  • Buying in bulk reduce waste
  • Repairing and maintaining our tools, clothes, and buildings
  • Make your own all natural cleaners
  • Don’t use synthetic chemicals on your lawn

 

Of course, there are many more things that we can do to reduce our negative impact on the environment. Although most of us won’t be able to implement all of these ideas, the more you can do, the better. Our family strives to do what we can and every year we try to increase our self sufficiency and reduce our carbon footprint.

Some of these changes will also keep your family healthier and reduce some of your expenses. And learning to do things for yourself helps to prepare for difficult times. So think about changes that make sense on your homestead and work to implement them as you are able to.

Do you try to live a green lifestyle on your homestead? What are your favorite ways to live more lightly on the Earth?

8 Comments on “The Green Homestead

  1. Yeah, we do what we can in the way of eating what we grow, using homemade cleaners, scratch cooking, recycling and repurposing, using less resources by doing errands one day a week and choosing not to use pesticides on our HOA-monitored lawn. When we buy our farm, we will kick it up a notch with raising chickens, having a larger garden and a permanent clothesline! ;0D

  2. Love this post, and we try our best to live as gently as we can. It’s funny how easy sometimes it is just to REPAIR something instead of throwing it away & buying another. In the last few weeks we’ve repaired my coffee grinder by ordering a small part and my iron by replacing the plug – easy peasy. My favorite crunchy thing to do is hang 100% of our laundry out to dry 12 months out of the year. We also buy used when possible, have a large garden, preserve much of our garden overage, compost, collect rainwater and cook from scratch. It’s actually quite a bit of fun. I love learning from other comments as well. Love this post, thanks for sharing!

    ~Taylor-Made Ranch~
    Wolfe City, Texas

    1. Great ways to save money and live a greener lifestyle, TMR! I hang my laundry out during nice weather, but we have a pretty frigid winter here, so I don’t line dry then. Thanks for sharing!

  3. Trying and learning to be green all the time! One thing I learned last year was that poison oak dies just as well when you pour boiling water on it as it does when you pour Round-Up on it! On our future homestead we have several poison oak patches that we have been working on, and we have found that the most reliable method is: 1. persistence – don’t let the new green shoots grow for very long; 2. boiling water poured on every green shoot as it emerges, 3. Digging out any large roots, tracing from one shoot to the next. As long as these steps are done on a weekly basis, the poison oak is pretty much eradicated! It takes a while, but at least we aren’t poisoning the ground with herbicides! As I read over the blog posts in blog hops, linkys and parties, I learn so much from other homesteaders. It doesn’t seem to matter if they are homesteading from a small urban apartment or a 600 acre ranch – everyone seems to have good ideas and suggestions for things that they learned from their parents or neighbors, or read about in an old book, or discovered while surfing the net. I really appreciate your blog and those of others for helping me to be green! Haha – and it’s St. Patrick’s Day!

    1. Hi Vickie,
      Cool! I will have to try the boiling water, since my current method of ignoring it and hoping it will go away is definitely not working 😉

      You’re so right about all the great ideas that homestead bloggers share…my greatest source for inspiration! Thanks so much for reading and sharing 🙂

      I was hoping someone would notice my ‘green for St Patty’s day’ coinky-dink link 😉

  4. Yes, my husband and I live a green lifestyle. We strive to be a chemical free home, we buy organic when possible, we give our food waste to the chickens, recycle what we can, and heat our home with wood as our primary heat source. We try and support businesses that are local or that are doing business in a sustainable manner.

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