Before you jump into the commitment of homesteading, there are some key things that you need to consider carefully in choosing your homestead location. In fact, such things may seem small and have little effect on your life currently, but can turn out to be highly crucial to the success of your homestead. Luckily, you can find out about some of the most important ones in the post below.
3 Key Things to Consider For Your Homestead Location
Neighbors
Do you know your neighbors? Many people, as the post at https://www.bostonglobe.com, suggests don’t. In fact, they rarely even nod at them when they get in their cars to go to work each morning, let alone socialize with them or call on them if they are in distress.
However, when you are homesteading, it’s much more likely that you will be located in a sparsely populated rural area. What that means is your neighbors become much more critical.
In fact, they are the ones that you may have to call on in an emergency for help. They may be the only people you get to see regularly. Especially in a location that experiences harsh winters that make travel to the closest town difficult.
Once the snow falls, your neighbors may be the only folks you see until spring!
To that end, your relationship with the homesteads and farms that neighbor your homestead location are a massively important aspect of success. Something that means proper introductions, socializing, and fostering of relationships will be necessary.
The weather
How much does what the weather is doing bother you right now? Does it mean you need to put a coat on an use an umbrella when you head outside? Well, when you are homesteading the weather is much more than a tiny inconvenience. In fact, it can make or break your success for the year.
After all, if you get too little sunshine or too much frost, your crops can fail and leave you with little to eat and sell for the coming year. That is why it’s essential to carefully consider the homestead location of that you choose for your homestead. And you should prepare for the seasons accordingly.
You’ll also need to be careful of particularly extreme weather like snow and hail, especially if you are keeping animals. Leaving them out in the pasture in such conditions can put them in danger.
Happily, there is a way to stay ahead of this kind of weather, and it’s by using a service like www.hailpoint.com to track when your homestead will be hit. Something that means you can gather the animals and bring them inside before they are in any danger of being harmed.
Your soil
Finally, what soil you have around your homestead location may not matter to you now, but when it comes to your homestead, it’s crucial that you research this. The reason for this is that there are many different kinds of soil. And, not every type will be suitable for growing all crops.
What this means is you need to find a good match between the crops you grow to the soil you have. Yes, it may seem like only a small factor, but believe me, it can make all the difference to your homestead success.
Now you can see that choosing the correct homestead location is very important to the success of your homestead. Does your homestead location allow for these 3 key aspects?
For us, it used to be the weather, but there’s something magical about fall in New Hampshire that made winter seem a tolerable distraction;) thanks for sharing on the Family Homesteading and Off the Grid blog hop!