So, you've made the decision to be more self-sufficient. Perhaps you have one or more of the following: a garden, backyard chickens for eggs, meat birds, dairy goats or cows, pigs. Of course as these ventures start to produce, you will want to learn how to use everything on your homestead so none of it goes to waste.
As you start to cultivate these ventures, it is likely you will face decisions on how to feed the animals, how to grow the garden and what to do with extras.
When we first started, as much as I don't want to admit, we did let things go to waste because we just didn't know how to use everything on our homestead effectively.
Now, our goal for our homestead is to use everything that we make in some way.
You may also be interested to know that by using everything on our homestead, we save at least $2500 a year by homesteading!
Want to take it a step further and make a profitable homestead? We currently make a profit on our homestead and manage it with these profitable homesteading tips.
So, how can you use everything on your homestead?
You may be thinking you won't be able to use everything on your homestead if you are getting into several different areas. However, in reality, most homesteading adventures actually integrate really well together.
Many of our homesteading activities actually lead to value adds to our other homesteading activities. It's almost as if being more self-sufficient was meant to be 😉
Here are some of the ways we manage to use everything we produce:
Broken eggs
If you have chickens and they have started to lay eggs then you know sometimes their eggs will get broken. Instead of throwing it out, we either put it in the compost or scramble it up and give it back to them for breakfast (you can break the shell up for them too for extra calcium!). You can also feed the eggs to your Livestock Guard Dogs if you have some.
Even if your egg isn't broken, don't forget to use the egg shells in additional ways.
If you aren't sure how to get started raising chickens, check out this raising chickens ecourse!
Extra milk
We have 2 goats in milk currently and sometimes we either have more milk than we can use or run out of time to do stuff with the milk.
You can always freeze milk and use it for later (soap, cheese, cooking).
When we have a really large surplus we feed it to our chickens in their fermented chicken feed.
Not sure how to make soap? This is our favorite soapmaking book!
If you have pigs, they would also LOVE some extra milk.
Want to know more about raising dairy goats? Join us in our Raising Goats eCourse!
You can make your own homestead profitable with these Profitable Homesteading Worksheets.
Garden scraps
If you went overboard with your garden planning and have extra stuff from the garden, maybe a bumper crop of different types of peppers. Or perhaps, you did some processing of your harvest and you have the ends of the green beans left, pumpkin seeds or other goodies. We toss them to the chickens and goats (also pigs if you have them) for an extra special treat!
Cleaning out the Garden
Once your plants are done producing and you are pulling them up toss them in the compost or out to the animals for a tasty treat (make sure not to give anything poisonous to the animals you have).
Extra food from the kitchen
Again this can all go to the compost pile or to your animals. For instance, we eat apples every morning with breakfast and since chickens can eat apples, we always give them the core when we finish.
Chicken Coop & Goat Stall clean up
When you are cleaning all the straw and poop out of your coops and stalls, don't let it go to waste! We put all of the waste into our compost pile which we then put on our garden each year.
These are just a few of our ideas we try to use everything on our homestead. And, as I mentioned, using everything on our homestead has allowed us to save over $2500 a year!
The super awesome thing? We not only save money but we have also turned our venture into a profitable homestead! And you can too, check out our profitable homesteading worksheets.
What are some ways you re-purpose things so you can use everything on your homestead?
Melinda Goodick says
We put eggshells in the oven on a pie plate to dry as we bake things We take out one each morning to grind with our coffee beans. The used beans and shell go to the worm farm, along with banana peels and some torn cardboard. In the summer we add the coffe grounds directly to the soil around potatoes.
Rochelle Aldridge says
We put most food waste on the compost feed to the chooks and goats, but always save a little bit for our worm farm. A little each week gives back a few hundred dollars worth of fertiliser which we use in our garden instead of buying at the garden centre, and also makes a great fundraiser for the kids to bottle and sell at school fair or pet day!
CHRISTINE CUSICK says
Hey you forgot about collecting rain water. We re-cycle old trash barrels and use them to collect as much rain as possible. This saves our well, our animals like fresh water and it's great in the garden. Thanks for all of the great tips.
MrAnimal Farm says
Hi Christine,
That's a great tip! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Best,
Kristin