Although many people associate homesteading with independence or even isolation, the truth is that homesteaders play an active role in their community. In fact, they’re often more connected to their neighbors than people living in the city are.
With the skills to grow your own crops, raise animals and build things from scratch, you can bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to any community, and there are numerous ways you can give back.
1. Help Make Repairs
Sooner or later, even the sturdiest, most expensive fencing needs a tune-up, whether due to weather, animals or simply time. Cars break down and saw blades get dull. If you’re handy, offer to help fix people’s farming equipment, greenhouses or tools. You’ll make new friends and hone your skills at the same time.
2. Volunteer
Need a short break from the homestead? Head into town and volunteer at your local animal shelter, soup kitchen or nursing home. Participate in a community cleanup and beautify the highways and city parks. It’s a great way to meet people and feel a sense of accomplishment and camaraderie.
3. Chop Wood
Do any of your neighbors use a wood-burning stove, firepit or grill? Head outside and chop a few logs for them. It’s especially helpful for people with limited mobility due to age or disability. Plus, it’s a great workout and makes you feel more connected to nature.
4. Vote in Local Elections
Fewer than 50% of eligible voters under the age of 25 vote in U.S. presidential elections, and fewer still participate in local polls. Head to the nearest voting booth and make your voice heard in elections for city council or mayor. If you want to take things a step further, attend town hall meetings and get to know your local politicians. Their policies can have a direct impact on your community.
5. Bring Food to Your Neighbors
Everyone appreciates home-grown ingredients. Surprise your neighbors with honey, meat, eggs or vegetables from your homestead. If you want to go the extra mile, whip up a homemade meal using products you grew yourself. Drop it off in a container your neighbors can keep.
6. Participate in a Fundraiser
If you know someone who’s struggling financially, donate to a fundraiser for them or start a charity drive yourself. Fundraising is also an excellent way to procure donations for local organizations. Find out if the library, fire station, beloved local restaurant or parks and rec department could use extra help.
7. Offer to Housesit
It can be hard to leave town when you’re running a homestead. Between the garden, greenhouse, goats and beehives, how do you find a trusted housesitter to take care of your property while you’re gone?
Offer to help your fellow homesteaders when they need to take a vacation. Write down a thorough list of caretaking instructions to guide you, and send your neighbors regular updates on how everything is going while they’re gone. They might let you keep any eggs or milk you collect as a bonus.
8. Teach Classes
Homesteaders have a wealth of interesting knowledge and skills. Teach classes on woodworking, birdwatching, knitting, canning or anything else homestead related. You can offer courses for free or charge a small entrance fee to help you buy supplies. Reach out to your local library, community center or university to see if they’ll host your classes.
9. Donate to the Food Pantry
Food pantries offer a much-needed lifeline for people struggling to afford groceries. However, they aren’t known for their healthy food. Many food pantries distribute cheap, nutritionally poor items like pasta, white rice, chips and corn syrup because that’s all they can afford.
Help your local food pantry by donating fresh eggs, milk, salad and meat. These home-grown staples offer variety, extra vitamins and a welcome boost of flavor to an otherwise monotonous diet. You can even donate small or misshapen fruits and vegetables that wouldn’t sell well. They still taste delicious!
10. Lend Tools and Supplies
If you see your neighbor trying to move a mound of dirt off their property, let them borrow your wheelbarrow. Offer your chainsaw to someone cutting down a tree the old-fashioned way. If you have duplicates of any tools, consider giving one away to a neighbor in need. It will help you clear out your messy garage or tool shed while building your relationship with the community.
11. Buy Local
Did you know that small businesses comprise 63% of the American workforce? When the holiday season rolls around, buy gifts from a local toy store rather than ordering them online. Purchase some of your groceries from the farmers market instead of the dollar store. Supporting your local economy is a great way to help people you know and create connections.
12. Start a Recycling Service
In many areas — especially if you live far from the nearest city — recycling services may be sparse or absent entirely. In other cases, people want to recycle but have limited time or mobility.
Offer to collect your neighbors’ glass bottles, aluminum cans, paper and plastic, then take them to the closest recycling center to sort them when you have the chance. You can even coordinate with City Hall to establish a recycling pickup service and give each resident a recycling bin to put out on trash day.
13. Grow a Community Garden
A communal garden is a place where anyone can help out with planting, weeding, watering and harvesting crops. It can take the form of a greenhouse, orchard or garden bed on an empty lot. The resulting fruits and vegetables are free for anyone to take.
Volunteering with a community garden is a great way for urban youth, older adults or people with disabilities to gain hands-on experience in their community. It also provides healthy food for people in need.
Using your homesteading experience, you can help start a community garden. You’ll probably need to coordinate with the city to designate a plot of land for the project. Then, you can create flyers and a social media page to recruit people who want to get involved.
14. Build Rainwater Catchment Systems
A rainwater harvesting system can range from a large, simple barrel to a series of pumps, pipes, purification systems and tanks that collect and store rainwater. These systems reduce reliance on lakes and aquifers, helping people save money on their water bills and preventing groundwater depletion during a drought. Help your neighbors and local businesses install rainwater catchment tanks to supplement their water supply.
15. Connect With Students
You’d be surprised how many kids have never visited a farm. Even fewer have milked a goat, sheared a sheep or harvested their own radishes. Reach out to your local schools to connect with students eager to learn some life skills. You can become a guest speaker in the classroom or host field trips directly on your homestead.
16. Build Birdhouses
Were you a whiz in shop class? Put your woodworking knowledge to use and build birdhouses for your local nursing homes, churches, parks and gardens. Research which species of birds frequent your area and find out exactly what they look for in a shelter. This project also makes an excellent workshop topic if you decide to teach classes.
17. Give Away Chicks or Fertilized Eggs
If you’re raising chickens, ducks or quail, you might have a few extra eggs or chicks when spring rolls around. Help people start their own flocks by giving away extra birds. You can also help them build a coop, educate them on animal husbandry and teach them how to butcher their own poultry if they want to become more self-sufficient.
18. Trade With Your Neighbors
If you live in a community of homesteaders, there’s a good chance your neighbors are raising animals or growing plants you don’t have. That’s great! It’s impossible to do everything yourself.
Maybe you have a bumper crop of blueberries this year, but your neighbor has excess pecans, tomatoes or beets. Start trading with each other to enjoy the spoils of each other’s labor. By sharing, you’ll help your community enjoy a variety of home-grown food.
19. Host Tours
Even if they can’t make it work for themselves, most people are very interested in homesteading. You can host tours of your property and give people a taste of the self-sufficient life.
Show them how to repair solar panels, trim a horse’s hooves, clip a turkey’s flight feathers[1] or determine when a pepper is ripe. Let them taste fresh plums and smell the dark, rich scent of compost. It’s a learning experience that serves to inspire more people to become homesteaders.
20. Join a Farmers Market
Sell your produce or artisan goods at a farmers market. Whether you attend every week or only participate in certain seasons, a farmers market is a fun community gathering that helps you befriend your fellow homesteaders, ranchers and gardeners. You’ll also get to know your customers better and save money because they’ll be buying from you directly.
21. Provide Seeds and Seedlings
Do you have friends or neighbors who want to start their own garden? If you have surplus seeds or sprouts, give them away and teach people how to grow them. Or, consider offering them as a free bonus when someone buys your products at the farmers market. It’s a great way to incentivize sales and help your community at the same time.
22. Donate Books
Does your local library have a section dedicated to self-sufficiency? If not, create one yourself. Donate books on animal husbandry, gardening, masonry, weaving and other homesteading skills. Ideally, you should donate books aimed at both adults and children. Make sure the books are in good condition and don’t contain highlighting or notes.
In addition to adding books to the library, you can create little free libraries around town. These are small, transparent boxes — similar to mailboxes or birdhouses — that contain books for anyone to borrow. People are supposed to bring the books back or leave their own in exchange for the one they borrowed. However, you should only donate books you don’t mind losing. The goal is simply to encourage reading and spread information.
23. Produce Your Own Fertilizer
Collect manure, food scraps and plant matter — such as lawn clippings and leaves — from friends and local businesses. Then, add them to a compost pile or anaerobic biodigester to turn trash into treasure.
The resulting fertilizer makes a great gift for farmers, gardeners and fellow homesteaders. You can also sell it at the farmers market to make a profit while helping people grow their own food.
24. Build Fences
If you live in a homesteading community, someone always needs a new fence. Constructing a fence is a long, laborious job, and it can be expensive to hire someone to do it. Offer to help your neighbors by digging postholes or pounding t-posts. If you’re not physically fit enough for that part of the process, you can also help by measuring and marking the layout for the new fence.
Do you live in a rural area with pronghorn, mule deer or grouse? If so, make sure the bottom rung of the fence is at least 16 inches off the ground so the animals can cross underneath. They struggle to jump over fences, and giving them a gap to cross under helps them migrate safely.
25. Help With a Barn Raising
Most modern farmers use a crane to build a new barn, but why not participate in a good, old-fashioned barn raising? Some homesteaders — especially those in the Amish or Old Order Mennonite communities — still build barns by hand.
It’s a difficult process, but it also engages the surrounding community and helps unite you under a common goal. Help your neighbors build a new barn or other outbuilding, and they just might do the same for you someday. Plus, you’ll almost certainly learn something new and build a little muscle while you’re at it.
Fostering Community
Even if you live off the grid, that doesn’t mean you’re disconnected from society. Homesteaders are in a unique position to help their friends, neighbors and local businesses while still maintaining independence and freedom. You can help by doing anything from donating money to sharing your knowledge — every little bit counts.
I wanted to use this phrasing instead of “clipping wings” to distinguish between trimming feathers (which is painless and simply ensures a chick doesn’t fly away) and pinioning, which is cutting off an entire portion of the wing, including bones (awful).
[Note: This was a guest post.]
Leave a Reply