Our Homesteading Journey from 0 to 100 in Just 12 Months

How We Became Self Sufficient in Homesteading as a Family

By: Todd Bradshaw

Narrated by: Randal Schaffer

How we became self-sufficient in homesteading as a family

I want to share my life story with you as a way to help others going through a difficult situation. I realize that today many are facing financial and other major life issues. At first I went about my life, enjoying everything I had and none the wiser about how difficult things could become. However, that's when my life changed. It wasn't long after I lost my job that I found myself struggling to support my wife and our six-year-old son. I began to worry about what I was going to do and how I could possibly turn the situation around. That's when I learned about something called homesteading. I had never heard of it before, and it took quite a learning curve, but in just 12 months I was able to make our family self-sufficient and improve our life to a standard even better than it was before. So if you find yourself in a similar situation consider homesteading. Let me take you through my first 12 months and you'll be amazed at what you can do when you set your mind to it.

After listening to this book you will learn:

• Benefits of homesteading
• How to plan your homesteading
• Four "must have's" for a successful homesteading
• Twenty essential tools you will need
• How to get energy
• How to get lighting
• How to source water
• How to dispose waste
• How to find comfort in all four seasons
• How to raise livestock and chickens
• How to plan and grow a garden to feed your family year around
• How to harvest food
• How to properly preserve meat, poultry, egg, fish, fruits and vegetables
• How to build simple household items and furniture
• How to make simple beauty supplies, soap and cleaning products
• How to homeschool kids
• How to heal with herbal remedies
• First aid
• And much more

©2016 CSB Academy Publishing Company (P)2016 CSB Academy Publishing Company

Enjoyable, but brief.

Good narration. Pleasant listening. Wished it was a bit longer since I can listen faster than I can read. :)

High level information.

Tends to be like a list format sometimes. i would have liked more detailed examples.

Didnt want it to end

it was so helpful. I enjoyed it very ixh. I didnt want it to end.

doesn't tell you how they became self sufficient

This book only tells you the first part of how they became self sufficient. This felt like part 1 of a 4 part book. I don't recommend it.

for city folk

For people who never heard the word homesteading, planted a garden. or worked around the house. Best part: being self sufficient requires having a part time job off the homestead.

Not What I expected, and not good for what it was.

Having listened to several excellent memoirs of back-to-the-land homesteaders ("Gaining Ground" by Forrest Pritchard comes to mind) and several less well-written entries into the genre (I won't name names, but they exist), I bought "Our Homesteading Journey" thinking it would be along the same lines. As a part-time homesteader with dreams of making it my permanent lifestyle, this is a genre I really enjoy. But this book is... well, it's not a book. It's a collection of lists. It does not tell the story of a family learning to be self sufficient - it tells you, the reader (or listener) how you can become self-sufficient, based on the author's research and experience. In other words, it's a how-to.

Once I realized that, I continued listening with adjusted expectations, and those also were not met. Most of Bradshaw's chapters sound like they were written by someone assigned a basic research project, with very little in the way of personal experience or knowledge coming through. And several of the statements made are flat wrong. For instance, he writes "you definitely want to avoid feeding your chickens scratch feed, corn, and scraps." Back yard eggs taste better precisely because our chickens *don't* rely fully on commercial rations, but have the opportunity to consume bugs, grass and, yes, scraps. The chicken's job on the farm for centuries was as a scrap recycling animal. Why advise against that? My chickens get our kitchen scrap bucket several times a week, and it's one of their favorite things. Scratch grain and corn can also be useful in colder climates where chickens need added carbohydrates for winter warmth.
Bradshaw also says "the best food for goats is leafy grass or legume hay, plus 2-3 lbs per day of commercial feed." Goats are ruminants who prefer to browse. Leafy grass and legume hay are fine, but goats should also have the opportunity to clean off branches, saplings, vines, and other higher growing plant life. And there's really no need to give them commercial feed except maybe to improve milk production in post-kidding does.
I don't want to belabor the point because this is not an attempt to tear the author down - simply to say that his recommendations aren't always the best. I'm glad he's pursuing self sufficiency, and if following his blueprint inspires you to do the same, you should go for it, and maybe learn from other folks along the way. My point is simply that, however successful his own transition to homesteading has been, Bradshaw does not appear to have the writing ability or depth of knowledge needed to make a meaningful contribution to the growing field of literature on small scale farming and homesteading.