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11 Feasible First Year Homesteading Goals

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Homesteading for beginners: get started homesteading this year with these eleven, feasible first year homesteading goals!

Its a new year, and maybe you are ready to get your homesteading journey on its way. You’ve read up on what homesteading is, and you’ve decided its what you want to jump in!

Now is the time to start setting your first year, homesteading goals. No matter where you live, how much land you have or don’t have, or how much money is in your bank account, you can start homesteading today!

Don’t think you need a 10 acre piece of land equipped with outbuildings, fencing, and a pre-plotted garden. All you need is the desire and a little preparation and planning to start your homestead dream, right now.

Homesteading is all about being self-sufficient and there are plenty of ways that you can be more self-sufficient in your first year of homesteading. I’m gonna let you in on some of the most rewarding and feasible first year homesteading goals, and how to put yourself on the best path towards reaching them.

Related: What Is Homesteading And Is It For You?
Related: How to Homestead When You Don’t Have an Actual Homestead

How to Set Homestead Goals

Before you start to make your first year homestead goals, its important to be sure of what your values are as a homesteader.

Is it the quality of life you want?

Or, maybe the lessons it’ll teach your children?

Are you working towards becoming completely self-sufficient, or just always making a general effort towards self-sufficiency?

What are your priorities when living this lifestyle?

Its easy to watch how other people are living their homestead life and to just assume that you need to be doing everything they’re doing.

You don’t!

One of the most important things is to make sure your homestead goals and your actions toward them are completely in line with your own priorities and values.

Take a step back and look at the big picture.

In ten years from now, when you’re a full-blown homesteader, what are the things you’ll be doing and what kind of life are you hoping to live?

If its not in your big picture goal to ever be living without electricity, then there is no need to make small goals now towards living without electricity. EVEN if all your favorite homesteaders are doing it.

Be sure that your first year goals are in line with your long-term goals. Make sure as well that they support your overall values and priorities as a homesteader.

Well, are you ready?! Lets make some goals!

PSA: Did you know I have a FREE eBook on my 5 Secrets to SIMPLE, SEASONAL, OLD-FASHIONED, Homemaking?! Its an actionable guide that will help you to embrace this vintage lifestyle in your own home. I think you’d love it! Sign up for my email list HERE to get access to yours today!

How to Make SMART Homesteading Goals

First things first, when you’re making ANY kind of goal, you need to make sure you’re doing it in a way that will give you the highest chance for success.

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals before, yes? They apply here as well!

SMART goals stands for: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound.

Let’s see what that means when making your first year homesteading goals!

  1. specific – your goals need to be specific and clear. Instead of saying ‘be more self-sufficient’ think about what actions you can be taking throughout the year to be more self-sufficient, and turn those into SMART goals.

  2. measurable – be sure that you can measure the success of your goal. You need to be able to be completely sure whether you’ve achieved it or not! Instead of saying grow more vegetables, say grow 15 new vegetables throughout the summer, with ‘15’ being the part that’s measurable.

  3. attainable – its fun to be a dreamer and think of all of the possibilities around homesteading, but its always important to be realistic with yourself and to make sure you’re setting attainable goals. Not necessarily easy goals, but attainable. In your fist year of homesteading its probably not a realistic goal to raise all of your own meat. Instead, start with a goal to raise egg-laying chickens and go from there.

  4. relevant – make sure your goal is relevant of course to homesteading, then make sure its also relevant to your big picture and to your priorities and values. Again, if its not a long-term goal or a priority for you to ever keep bees, then don’t worry about working any kind of beekeeping goals into your first year homesteading goals (just as an example).

  5. time-bound – the best kind of goals have a deadline or some kind of time-restriction. You have to know when time is up and when you should have achieved your goal to know whether or not you reached it. This can be something along the lines of ‘have 15 egg-laying chickens by the end of May’, or ‘bake homemade bread twice per month’.

I’ll give you a general idea for each of your first year homesteading goals, but its your job to turn them into a SMART goal that works for you. I’ll also give you an example of a SMART Goal that could work.

Ready?! Here we go!

Feasible First Year Homesteading Goals

1.  Learn to Cook From Scratch

Learning to cook from scratch is an extremely valuable skill to have a as a homesteader. It allows you to eat healthier, save money, and be more self-sufficient. Food from scratch is also DELICIOUS!

    • SMART Goal: Cook two meals completely from scratch (no packaged ingredients) every week for the entire year.

2. Learn How to Can Food

Whether you’re growing some of your own produce, or you’re purchasing all of it from the store, you can start learning how to can and preserve fruits, vegetables, and other food, this year.

    • SMART Goal: Can 36+ jars of tomatoes by the end of the September.

3.  Grow Something

If you have the space and ground to plant a small vegetable garden, make this the year that you do it. If you don’t at the moment, try growing your own indoor herb garden. There are also plenty of varieties of plants that can be grown in pots on a porch or patio like tomatoes.

    • SMART Goal: Have a 12’x12’ vegetable garden planted by the end of May or plant and grow five different herbs indoors throughout the year.

4. Make Your Own Household Products

Making goals towards natural and homemade homemaking is huge in homesteading, and you can start doing it right now! We have a tutorial HERE for DIY dryer sheets. You can make everything from your own all-purpose cleaning spray, to hand soap, to laundry detergent.

  • SMART Goal: make a new DIY household product twice each month.

5. Make Your Own Beauty and Hygiene Products

Along the same lines, learning how to make some of your own beauty and hygiene products is a great first year homesteading goal. Soap making is a very popular homesteading skill to learn. You can also make everything from toothpaste to deodorant to lip balm. These are great as gifts too!

    • SMART Goal: make 7 new DIY beauty products by the end of July.

6. Get Started in Fermenting

Learning how to ferment foods is a very valuable skill to have as a homesteader and is another way to preserve your harvest, eat more healthy, and be more self-sufficient.

    • SMART Goal: make a new batch of kombucha each month throughout the year.

7. Eat Local, Pasture Raised Meat

You can make it a goal to start raising your own meat this year if you are capable of it. If its not a possibility for you yet, try looking for organic or local sources. Local farmers are a great source for pasture raised meat. You can save money by paying for a half cow, or a whole pig.

      • SMART Goal: only purchase chicken from local suppliers this year.

8.  Become More Familiar With Meat and Get Used to Cooking With Every Part of the Animal

This can be separated into a lot of different SMART goals, depending on what you have in mind. Like mentioned above, when you purchase your meat from a local farmer/rancher (or you raise it yourself) you’re not getting the same cuts that you would normally get at the store. Usually you’ll be handling a whole chicken rather than boneless, skinless, chicken breasts. Make it a goal of yours to start learning this year how to cut up and cook a whole chicken, how to cook with the odds and ends of the beef cow, using every part of the lamb, etc.

    • SMART Goal: only purchase whole meat cuts from the store (or a local farmer) for the whole year, no pre-cut packages.

9. Learn How to and Practice Making Your Own Herbal Remedies

Learning how to heal common ailments in your home naturally and on your own is an amazing, self-sufficient skill to have as a homesteader. There are a huge variety of herbal remedies out there that you can learn about and start practicing. I have a tutorial HERE on how to make your own homemade, herbal cough drops.

    • SMART Goal: make one batch each of homemade cough drops, homemade cough syrup, and homemade elderberry syrup by the end of the year .

10. Learn How to Sew, Knit, Crochet, or Quilt

All of these skills used to be commonplace in homes, but not anymore! When you know how to sew, knit, crochet, and quilt you can start to make and mend your own clothing, linens, etc. You could make your own Christmas stockings or knit your nephew a hat for his birthday.

    • SMART Goal: quilt three new queen size blankets this year or crochet 7 sets of hats and scarves by the end of December.

11. Read Up on Homesteading & Continue to Educate Yourself

You can always, always, always, continue to learn and develop your knowledge and skills on homesteading. Make a goal to read a certain number of homesteading related books this year to further your understanding of what you’re interested in. You can read general homesteading books or you could grab a book on something more specific, like raised bed gardening or beekeeping. This is my favorite of all of the first year homesteading goal ideas!

    • SMART Goal: read and finish one new homesteading related book each month for all of the year.

There you have it!

Eleven ideas for feasible, first year homesteading goals that you can make and start working on today. Use these eleven ideas as a guideline when writing your own goals.

Real quick before you go, if you enjoy the old-fashioned, homesteady, Little House on the Prairie-esque lifestyle, then I think you’d LOVE my email list community. Its a whole, big, group of old-fashioned souls like yourself.

As a perk for all of my subscribers, I have a super awesome, password-protected library of goodies. Ebooks, and cheat-sheets, and more. Sign up HERE to get on the list and I’ll send you the password. Can’t wait to see you over there.

Happy goal making and happy homesteading!

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