How to Homestead While Working a Full-Time Job

So, you are interested in homesteading. It’s your dream. What does it look like? A garden bursting with homegrown tomatoes? A flock of chickens to call your own? Row after row of jars of canned goods lining your pantry shelves? It can be done. All of it. The trouble is, as great as the dream sounds, it can feel like that’s all it will ever be if you are still working a traditional 9-to-5, or more likely these days, an 8-to-7…

I get it. It’s demoralizing. You look at the Insta feed and TikTok to see someone up and baking their own sourdough bread at dawn, tending to their cows before lunch, and canning at sunset: you and I know there’s no way you can have the same when you are working full-time.

Or can you? Have you believed a lie? The truth is, you can totally be a homesteader while still being employed by a “regular” job. Thousands of us do it every day. It’s just a different mindset and picture than the one you watch unfold on social media. Sometimes it’s not pretty, but it’s doable. Are you in? Keep reading.

Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew!

Before we go on, let’s address the #1 mistake I see people make: they get super fired up about homesteading, buy fifty chickens, plant an acre of crops, and decide to start making cheese all in the same month. Facing all that (and loads of failure) on top of their day job they burn out freakin’ hard and give up entirely, resigned to the grind.

Don’t be that person! Start with one thing. One manageable thing! Seriously, just one. Maybe it’s a small raised bed garden. Maybe it’s three hens in a tiny coop. Maybe it’s learning to bake your own bread. Pick something manageable that fits into your current schedule without completely upending your life.

Once that becomes doable in your off hours, add another. Then maybe another. Scale modestly. Consider how much time you actually have, and be realistic about your schedule. Don’t commit yourself to lifestyle responsibilities that demand twice as much time as you’ve got to give then feel like a failure when you can’t keep up.

Schedule Your Time

And stick to it! Otherwise, your homesteading chores will never get accomplished. It’s that simple. As with work meetings, family responsibilities, and other things, homesteading chores will be among the first ones that slip through the cracks.

Take my own schedule, for instance: Saturday morning from 8 to 11? Those are my gardening hours. Thursday evening after dinner? Chicken coop cleanout. Saturday afternoons, food preservation or practicing new skills for other projects.

To have a schedule means two things. Firstly, you will know that you have time to get work done. Secondly, you will know you aren’t falling short on the things you’ve classed as important. Create your schedule to take your energy levels into consideration as well.

I’m not a morning person, so I try to keep most activities in the evening or off hours. Some folks I know get their homesteading done in the morning before work because they’re useless in the evenings. Know thyself.

Use limited time as a constraint to level-up your game, too. Rather than watering the garden daily with a can, start setting up a drip irrigation system or plant in self-watering planters. Rather than canning enough each week to last a week, wait until you can put away a whole batch of food.

Involve your Family

You can do this alone, but a real working homestead works a whole lot better with a team. This is especially true if you’re already busy with being the breadwinner. Get your family on board in the form of chores. Just like in business and the military, delegation is key.

My neighbor’s kids assist in bringing in the eggs, watering the, ah, “damp-tolerant” plants, and simple weeding. Are they doing the same work as efficiently as he could have done by myself? Not at all. But they are learning some important skills and the work is still getting done.

The trick here is to make it suitable for their respective ages and proclivities. Teens and preteens are your best helpers besides your spouse as they can take on more complicated tasks such as coop cleanup or composting.

Even if you are living alone, you can always consider your friends and neighbors for help. Work trade deals. You help them on their projects in return for them “covering” while you are at the office. As a bonus, you’ll be forging meaningful bonds and making a real support network.

Make Your Homesteading Time “Top Heavy”

Here’s an efficiency hack that revolutionized things for me. Always, always tackle the most demanding tasks as soon as you can with what time you have. Your willpower, energy and intellect is finite. The more ground down you get, the longer the workweek drags on, the harder it is to tackle the big stuff.

A much better approach is to knock them out early so you can look forward to a relatively easy day of chores and projects when the week is winding down. When you defer or procrastinate, they tend to snowball and, somehow, less and less gets done.

Starting a Homestead Side-Hustle

There comes a time when your homestead can yield more than what you and your family can use. Or maybe you start homesteading with that as a goal. Either way, there’s no reason you shouldn’t try to make a financial return on it.

I’m not referring to leaving your job- yet! I’m talking about adding some revenue to help out with homesteading expenses and perhaps, if planned well, to get you started in making the transition of working to live, instead of living to work.

For instance, you might sell surplus eggs. Sell seasonal boxes of vegetables. Sell seedlings, cuttings and young plants in the spring. Hold workshops to teach the skills you know (a hot business right now!). Sell products like herbal remedies, skin care stuff, hot sauces, baked goods. Whatever!

But start small, and most importantly start legal! Check all of your local and state regulations about “cottage food” laws, and maybe zoning restriction. If you are lucky, you won’t have to worry about business licensing below a certain threshold. Just don’t get shut down because you didn’t do your homework.

Now, not everyone who loves homesteading for the joy of it loves doing it as an actual business for sustainment. Better to find that out now while you still have your day job, yeah?

Also, play it straight: Keep track of how much you’re earning versus what you’re spending. Keep track of your time invested, too. You may be surprised to find that selling eggs at $4 a dozen actually loses you money once you factor in chicken feed, supplies, and so on. Reinvest your profits into the homestead or save them in a cushion fund to facilitate leaving your job when the time comes.

When You Are Ready, Make Your Homestead Your Living

Maybe this day never comes for you, and that’s okay. Plenty of people happily homestead part-time or as a hobby forever. But if you do want to transition to full-time homesteading, the groundwork you’ve laid following my other advice while working your regular job puts you in position to make an informed decision.

You’ll know you are ready when a few things occur. First, your skills have progressed to the point where you are capable, smooth and proficient, not just stumbling through a hobby. Second, you’ve tested viable income streams as side hustles enough to know what’s actually profitable and sustainable. Third, you’ve got enough savings socked away to weather the no-job transition period. Fourth, and perhaps most telling, you can’t stop thinking about what you could do with your homestead if you could do it full time.

Before you pull the pin, keep in mind that other employment isn’t necessarily an either-or situation. You may negotiate to work part time at your present job. You could go freelance in your industry to pick up work when and as needed. Maybe your spouse wants to go to work elsewhere and leave you to manage the homestead.

The best advice I can give you here: Be realistic with the budget. There are precious few people who can derive all their income from their homestead efforts. And be realistic about the life change, too. Homesteading on a full-time basis is easily romantic until it dawns on you that you’re “working” seven days a week and can’t even take vacations anymore because of your responsibilities. You may trade a boss for livestock: both need to be fed and watered, if you get me! Different is not necessarily easier, in the end.

But assuming you’ve put in the time and done your due diligence, then turning your homestead into your full-time occupation can be the most rewarding thing you’ll ever experience. You’ll be living the dream you’ve worked so hard for.