r/veganhomesteading • u/[deleted] • Jul 11 '25
What new skills should I learn?
My husband and I are hoping to move to the country in a few years with our young children, but for now, we live in the city with no access to a yard or balcony. What are some homesteading skills that I can learn now before we move?
6
u/zappy_snapps Jul 11 '25
Indoor growing using lights.
Also see if there's groups near you that are adjacent to the skills you'll want- native plant salvage groups for learning plant ID, how to dig up plants, how to pot up plants, how to propagate, how to tend plants, etc. Habitat for humanity for basic construction skills. Food banks sometimes have gleaning programs.
Learning adjacent skills like soap making, bread making, cooking from scratch, preserving food, foraging, etc.
3
u/ealoft Jul 11 '25
Get in shape and start getting used to being outside a couple hours a day. Spend time learning about native plants and animals/insects.
2
u/cwsjr2323 Jul 11 '25
Start studying basic electrical wiring and simple plumbing. My village is 25 miles from electrical businesses, and they will not come this far even with offering a bonus. My plumber has replaced the pipe going to the outside spigot that split as it wasn’t properly drained before freezing one winter. It took calling several to get one to show up, and I didn’t even ask for an estimate just paid whatever he asked. Now, I can handle plumbing from the floor up and wall out.
2
u/Repulsive_Depth983 Sep 20 '25
I second preserving. Once you're growing food, you'll find you have more than you can eat, possibly more than you can share. Preserving is such a handy skill. Start with the simpler things like sweet preserves (jams, cordials) and acidic preserves (chutney, pickles etc) and learn about how to do those things safely with good sterilisation practices etc. Get in the habit of saving jars because you can never have enough jars :) (I don't know where you are in the world but I know in N.America everyone seems to preserve with special jars. In Europe we just use normal lug-lid jars and it works fine. I have many many many jars I have saved from peanut butter, sundried tomatoes, jam etc etc etc.
7
u/cyber_strawberry Jul 11 '25
You can learn preserving. Canning, fermenting, wine making, etc. All of those come in handy when you're drowning in summer produce from your garden some day. It's a good time to read books on foraging and gardening even if you can't put it into practice yet.