Let me tell you something right now: homesteading in Vermont ain’t your cozy Pinterest fantasy. It’s not sipping raw milk in a flower crown while your goat poses for Instagram. It’s real. It’s raw. And it will chew you up and spit you out if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I’m talking black flies in your eyeballs, pipes that freeze solid by October, and crops that rot if you blink wrong during August humidity. You either toughen up or get back to the city where people think basil grows in the spice aisle.

People romanticize this lifestyle without knowing a damn thing about what it takes to survive out here, especially in the Green Mountains where the only thing greener than the landscape is a flatlander trying to milk a goat for the first time. But for those of us who know what we’re doing—those of us who bust our knuckles fixing busted solar inverters during January sleet—we thrive. And we earn every damn bite we eat.

15 Homestead Skills You Better Learn, Or Go Home

1. Firewood Chopping and Stacking
   If you don’t know how to fell a tree, buck it up, and stack it so it seasons right, you’ll freeze your ass off and deserve it. Vermont winters don’t play nice.
2. Animal Husbandry
   Chickens, goats, pigs, sheep. You better know how to feed them, birth them, vaccinate them, and yes, butcher them. We don’t raise pets—we raise protein.
3. Composting
   Your waste better be working for you. Composting is the law of the land—nutrients in, nutrients out. And don’t come at me with that plastic bin nonsense.
4. Preserving Food
   Canning, fermenting, drying, root cellaring—if you don’t know how to make summer harvests last through February, you’ll be buying limp grocery store lettuce like a chump.
5. Basic Carpentry
   You’ll build chicken coops, cold frames, fences, and when the roof leaks? Guess who’s the roofer? You.
6. Water Management
   Gravity-fed systems, rain catchment, greywater rerouting—you need to make every drop count, especially when your well pump quits mid-winter.
7. Seed Saving
   Stop buying seeds like it’s a subscription service. Grow heirlooms, save the seeds, and you’ll never be at the mercy of shortages again.
8. Cooking from Scratch
   There’s no takeout where we live. If you can’t turn a raw chicken and a handful of potatoes into a week of meals, get out of my face.
9. Soap Making
   Because I’m not paying $9 for some factory-scented nonsense when I’ve got lard, lye, and lavender in my own damn backyard.
10. Knitting and Mending Clothes
    If you think darning socks is quaint, wait until you rip your last pair during a blizzard and the road’s closed for three days.
11. First Aid and Herbal Medicine
    There’s no urgent care around the corner. Chamomile for sleep, comfrey for bruises, garlic for infections. Know your plants or pay the price.
12. Chainsaw Maintenance
    The saw is your best friend and your worst enemy. Sharpen that chain, mix your fuel right, and respect it—or it’ll bite you.
13. Solar Power Setup and Maintenance
    You want off-grid? Then learn the difference between a charge controller and an inverter, or you’ll be reading by candlelight for the rest of your life.
14. Trapping and Hunting
    Rabbits, deer, maybe even bear if things get tight. It’s not about sport—it’s about putting meat in the freezer.
15. Plumbing and Septic Know-How
    One clogged pipe and you’re knee-deep in your own stupidity. Know how to snake a drain, insulate a pipe, and never trust PVC glue in the cold.

DIY Homestead Hacks That’ll Save Your Sanity (and a Few Bucks)

1. The “5-Gallon Gravity Shower” Hack
You want hot water but don’t have a fancy solar system? Paint a 5-gallon bucket black, mount it on a platform, and let the sun do the work. Add a spigot, hang a shower curtain in the woods, and boom—your very own hillbilly spa.

2. Eggshell Calcium Powder
Don’t throw those eggshells away! Dry them, crush them, and grind them into a fine powder. Sprinkle into garden beds for calcium-rich soil or feed to chickens for stronger shells. It’s like gold dust from the coop.

3. DIY Solar Dehydrator
All you need is an old window, some scrap wood, a black-painted back panel, and mesh trays. Angle it toward the sun, and you’ve got a food dehydrator that costs zero to run and works even during late September.

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Vermont-Specific Rants from the Trenches

Now let’s talk about Vermont specifically, because folks seem to think living here is like moving into a Norman Rockwell painting. You think Vermont means cozy cabins and hot cider? Sure, if you like shoveling snow 3 times a day, running a generator when the inverter gives up, and chasing bears out of the compost pile at 2 a.m. with a shotgun in your bathrobe.

Vermont’s short growing season is not a joke. If you don’t get your seedlings in by Memorial Day and have your beds covered by frost in late September, you just flushed your growing efforts down the composting toilet. Speaking of which—if you’re not managing your humanure system responsibly, stay the hell off my land. We don’t poison our soil with ignorance.

And let’s talk taxes. They’re high. Ridiculously high. You think you’re gonna sell a few jars of jam and skate by? Good luck. Every chicken you raise, every log you cut, every damn goat you sell comes with paperwork, fees, inspections, and a bureaucracy that’s never set foot on a working farm.

But we do it anyway. Not because it’s easy, but because we’re stubborn and free and refuse to live under the fluorescent lights of a cubicle farm. We raise our own food, fix our own roofs, grow our own medicine, and take pride in knowing that when the power goes out or the store shelves go bare, we’ve already got what we need.

That’s Vermont homesteading. It’s mud season and sugaring and frost heaves that’ll wreck your axle. It’s biting wind and biting insects and stubborn neighbors who’ve been on their land longer than the state flag’s been flying. It’s resilience, not romance.

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Final Word from a Grumpy Homesteader

So if you’re dreaming about Vermont homesteading, do me a favor: wake up. You’ll bleed, curse, and cry—but if you make it through a winter and still want more? Well then, maybe you’ve got what it takes.

Just don’t ask to borrow my chainsaw.