Can you picture yourself living a homesteading lifestyle?
Waking up early to milk the cows, release the chickens to scratch the barnyard, collect their eggs and then update your blog before your stay-at-home family rises. The rest of the day you do chores aimed at delivering an authentic human experience for people you love. You produce high-quality food and happy healthy humans. You have independence and security but still enjoy the fruits of modern convenience.
Yes, you can do it. Many families are already living the dream and sharing their experiences on YouTube.
Wikipedia succinctly explains homesteading as “a lifestyle of self-sufficiency…characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs.”
In the past, homesteading has been viewed as a rugged life full of hardship. Yet modern technology and creative farming practices now make it possible for nearly anyone to turn a home into a homestead.
These YouTube homesteaders highlighted below share their personal experiences through vlogs and courses. They teach methods for raising livestock, growing fruits and vegetables, preparing and preserving food, homeschooling, and saving and making money.
There are many reasons for the growing popularity of homesteading, but general motivations seem to be the following:
- Desire for independence from potential social disruption
- Craving the highest quality food to optimize health
- Desire to gain authentic human skills and experiences
- Desire to live in better balance with nature
One of the biggest challenges for all homesteaders, old and new, is financial independence. Despite the goal of “self-sufficiency,” homesteaders still need to make enough money to interface with society and to take advantage of creature comforts. Mortgages, taxes, insurance and addiction to imported coffee are stubborn things.
Besides being entertaining teachers, the YouTubers below are my favorites because they also share the secret ingredient to cooking up a sustainable homesteading experience – making a supplementary income from home.
Here are the 5 best homesteading YouTube channels worth binge watching:
Every day the Rhodes family puts out a high-definition video blog that records daily activity on their homestead. After studying permaculture and pastured livestock under the likes of Joel Salatin, Justin practices what he preaches. With help from his wife and four enthusiastic kids, the Rhodes homestead is a beautiful example of how anyone can produce high-quality food. Rhodes also teaches free webinars and sells a video course on raising permaculture chickens. Entertaining and educational! Visit their website here: http://abundantpermaculture.com/
You can check out their recent farm update below, but I strongly suggest binge watching their archives.
Jack Spirko runs the wildly popular 5-day-a-week podcast show called The Survival Podcast which covers “how to live a better life if things get tough or even if they don’t.” He also runs a YouTube channel that documents his adventures into raising pastured ducks and quail, permaculture design, and “Meads of the Week” among other topics. Spirko authentically lives the solutions he promotes. He explains why he does things and he’s not afraid to show his successes and failures. Spirko teaches live workshops, webinars and speaks at live events.
Below is the first episode of Spirko’s latest Duck Chronicles series:
The Wranglerstar family documents their move from city slickers to become modern-day homesteaders. Through vlogging their daily experiences and reviewing homesteading products, they teach others to “become truly independent from the mythological American dream.” Playlists include titles like “Back to Basics,” “Kitchen Remodel,” and “Survival Kit.”
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Below is a brief trailer of the Wranglerstar YouTube channel:
In every episode Becky shows you how to go from a consumer lifestyle into the self-sufficient homesteading lifestyle even if you never had any previous experience. Becky built a log cabin by herself. She grows gardens and keeps goats, chickens, pigs and more. Her videos are very educational and motivational. Visit Becky’s website at http://beckyshomestead.com
Watch Becky’s trailer below. It’s sure to convince you that anyone can do it and you’ll want to watch more.
An American Homestead follows three generations of a family who live completely off-grid with the exception of a phone line for Internet. They don’t have electricity or running water and yet they still manage to live an abundant lifestyle. Their videos will teach you to raise sheep, chickens and fish in their aquaponics system, rainwater collection, gardening, food preparation, how to store butter in an underground fridge, and so much more. They also run an excellent blog at http://anamericanhomestead.com/.
Here is a snapshot of why they became homesteaders and how they did it:
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I was a very big Wrangler Star fan till he made a video that outright said that everyone who uses Ad Blocking software was stealing from him and his family because we are not watching the commercials on his channel. Instead of apologizing or retracting such an awful statement he just hid the video. He did not even take it down, he just hid it. This tells you that his honest and sincere feelings on the matter.
Wrangler Star sure does have a good guy image, but when someone allows you to pear into their inner thoughts and you see something like that, it naturally makes people wonder if the person that is being presented to the public is nothing more than a fake.
He and his wife chose to give up a six figure life style and rough it, but now somehow we are all thieves if we don’t support him by suffering through the ridiculous ads. He even went as far as to compare his Youtube channel to major motion pictures in that Ad Block is basically pirating his hard work. Youtube is free, it has always been free, but not as far as he is concerned, you owe him. Perhaps reparations are in order Eh WranglerStar?
Who the guy really is, is anyone guess but I suspect that he is not even close to what everyone thinks. Everyone makes mistakes and I would never judge him by his mistakes, but how he handles the situation afterwards. The way he handled it made me hit that unsubscribe button after many years. CYA!