We have several reasons, and in this post I want to break down the top three. If homesteading is a dream you have, but seems too out of reach, let me assure you that a plant based homestead is not only easier by far than one trying to utilize livestock for food, it is less expensive, less work, and more ecologically sound. It can actually bring your dream of a self-sufficient homestead much closer, much faster. So, read on if this sounds up your ally, or if you’re simply curious why anyone would build this type of homestead.
I do want to make note here that our farm does have animals on it, just not in the traditional way. We do not use our animals for food. Yes, we collect our chicken’s eggs, but we do not consume them ourselves. We sell enough of them to pay for their feed and use the rest to feed back to the chickens, in particular the shells for added calcium, and to go in our dog’s food bowls every meal. Eggshells also make wonderful additions to the compost pile. Our chickens will never be butchered, they will grow old here, enjoying a happy life. Our rabbits are the same. What we are really after with our small bit of animals, is manure. Our livestock are very small in number, and they are our partners in the garden. Some would argue this doesn’t make us a vegan homestead, and that’s true, which is why I say plant based homestead. Everything we do on our homestead relates back to plants.
With that in mind, these are our top reasons for building a plant based homestead rather than a traditional homestead. You may relate to some, all, or even none, but hopefully it gives you some deeper insight into our farm and lives.
We don’t eat meat or animal products.
This is really a no-brainer, but it is honestly the number one reason we opted for pursuing plant based homesteading. We eat vegan, so it didn’t make sense to produce food we wouldn’t be able to consume. We spent some time thinking hard about whether it made sense to produce these products to sell to others, but if they didn’t sell, we would be stuck with food that would go to waste since we can’t consume it. One of my top priorities is eliminating waste, especially waste that comes from long hours and hard work. Every time I set up a farm stand, I know that anything that doesn’t sell can be preserved for my own family the next day.
We chose a vegan diet, rich in whole foods, for both health and ethical reasons. I am so passionate about food, and the food I make and consume excites me! Being excited about the food I produce, excited to use it, makes it easier to put in the work. It also makes it easier to market that food to others because my passion naturally seeps in. I could not do that if I was trying to sell milk that I know is harmful to the human body. I struggle with the selling of eggs, which is why I mostly use them for my animals, or just give them to friends and family who consume eggs. At the very least, I know the eggs my girls produce are better for them than the store bought counterparts.
We can produce more food.
I am all about cramming as much food production onto our little two-acre plot as possible. Growing plant based food allows me to produce far more food per plot than raising animals could. We utilize permaculture methods such as crop rotation, companion planting, and food forest designs to pack in as much food production as possible. If we had to dedicate more space to livestock, our production would go way down.
For example, one 3x6 raised bed can hold three tomato plants, two pepper plants, two basil plants, and thirty-two carrots. That same space wouldn’t house even a single meat chicken. I could maybe put some quail in that space, but the amount of eggs they would produce in a season compared to all that plant life… It’s not even a question. The plants win every time.
While we do not have our full two acres cultivated yet, last year I was able to harvest over 300lbs of heirloom tomatoes from the area that used to hold our milk goats. That was just tomatoes. I also harvested hundreds of peppers and chilis, 50lbs of potatoes, countless herbs, hundreds of zucchini, dozens of winter squash… All in an area that used to supply just two quarts of milk a day. Which brings me to my next point.
We can develop more variety.
It is far easier to companion plant food producing plants than it is to co-mix animal food producers. This gives us far more variety in each food producing space, which in turn, leads to better overall health. When I harvest from our garden spaces, I bring in baskets full of different produce from tomatoes and peppers to herbs and flowers to zucchini and leafy greens. This enables us to eat more variety based on what is ripe at the moment, and also gives us greater variety for marketable produce.
While adding meat and dairy might give us some variety in cheeses, milks, etc, it’s not only far more work to produce and store those items, there still isn’t the variety you can quickly and easily plant. We grow more than five types of kale alone. Over a dozen different leafy green varieties. Having this variety in produce means we consume a variety of nutrients, helping to maintain a more balanced and complete diet.
There are a myriad of other reasons we choose plant based homesteading over more traditional homesteading, and while those are the big three, I could also talk about the ecological impact of raising animals, the ethical factors of raising an animal just to slaughter it, how it would hurt our hearts to butcher… Those are all very valid reasons for us as well. They may also be valid reasons for you.
In the end, plant based homesteading just made sense to us. Each year as we expand our gardens, add new varieties of food, watch our soil flourish, and see our children eating a rainbow of vegetables, it confirms to me that we made the right choice. Our little farm is flourishing and growing. Plants make people happy, and I have never been happier than building our homestead, our lives, around the ecology of plants.
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