You want the truth about homesteading in Rhode Island? Fine. Sit down, shut up, and listen. This ain’t some Instagram-filtered fantasy where you grow lavender in a teacup and get paid in likes. This is real life. This is New England grit. This is Rhode Island, baby—where the summers are muggy, the winters are ruthless, and land doesn’t come cheap. But guess what? If you’re tough, stubborn, and about half-crazy, you can build a life out here worth its weight in heirloom tomatoes.

You want a homestead in the smallest damn state in the Union? Then you’d better be big in skills, big in heart, and not afraid of breaking your damn back.

Let me tell you something first: homesteading is not a hobby. It’s not something you do because you saw a cute TikTok with someone in overalls making sourdough. It’s a lifestyle. A choice. A full-contact sport. And around here, it requires a thick skin, a sharp mind, and a chainsaw that starts on the first pull.

Here are 15 skills you’d better damn well learn if you want to make it here:

1. Canning and Food Preservation – Your garden might explode in July, but if you don’t know how to can, dehydrate, or ferment, you’ll be eating sad supermarket mush all winter.
2. Seed Starting – You think you’ll just buy plants every year? Not at $5 a seedling you won’t. Start your own, indoors, in March. Get a grow light or watch them get leggy and die.
3. Composting – You’re gonna make a lot of waste. You can either send it to the landfill or turn it into black gold. Your choice.
4. Basic Carpentry – Chicken coops, rabbit hutches, raised beds, fences—get used to cutting wood and smashing your thumb with a hammer. Don’t be a baby.
5. Animal Husbandry – Chickens aren’t “easy pets.” They’re walking targets. Know how to feed them, deworm them, and protect them from hawks, foxes, and your neighbor’s stupid dog.
6. Beekeeping – You want honey? You want pollination? Then suit up and get buzzing. And yes, you will get stung.
7. Butchering – If you can’t stomach killing what you raise, go back to Whole Foods. Around here, we respect the animal by doing the hard part ourselves.
8. Firewood Chopping and Stacking – Rhode Island winters don’t play around. Learn to wield a maul or invest in a log splitter. Stack it right, or your pile will rot before Thanksgiving.
9. Rainwater Collection – Our water bills are outrageous. Set up a gutter system and start collecting rain in barrels before you cry over your next utility bill.
10. Cooking From Scratch – You’ve got 20 pounds of squash. Now what? Better know a dozen ways to cook it or you’ll hate the sight of it by January.
11. Wool Spinning/Knitting – You raise sheep? Great. Now learn what to do with all that fleece. Winter is long, and wool socks are gold.
12. Cheesemaking – Got goats or a milk cow? Learn to turn that milk into something edible before it curdles in your fridge.
13. Maple Syrup Tapping – You got sugar maples? Good. Drill those suckers in February, boil for days, and end up with half a pint of syrup. It’s worth it.
14. Cold Storage Building – A root cellar is your best friend. You can’t can everything. Sometimes, you just need a cool, dry place to stash potatoes.
15. Fence Repair – Rhode Island is wet. Wet means rot. Your fence posts will fail. Your goats will escape. Learn to fix it quick or kiss your veggies goodbye.

Three DIY Homestead Hacks that Actually Work:

Hack #1: Pallet Power Raised Beds
Find a stack of free pallets (they’re everywhere if you know where to look—ask your local hardware store). Tear ’em down, pull out the nails, and build yourself raised garden beds. Slap on a coat of linseed oil if you’re feeling fancy. Boom—free lumber, less backache, and no tilling nonsense.

Hack #2: 5-Gallon Chicken Waterer
Winter sucks. Your chicken water freezes solid. So take a 5-gallon bucket with a lid, install a few nipple waterers on the bottom, and place it on a heated base (cinderblock + heat lamp works in a pinch). No more lugging frozen pails. Your birds stay hydrated. You stay sane.

Hack #3: Trash-to-Treasure Cold Frame
Old windows are gold. People throw ‘em out constantly. Grab one, build a slanted box with scrap wood, and bam—you’ve got a cold frame. Start your spring greens 4 weeks early, extend your fall crops, and rub it in your neighbor’s face.

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Now listen. Homesteading in Rhode Island ain’t like Montana or Texas. You can’t just buy 50 acres for a handshake and a case of beer. You’re gonna pay through the nose for an acre, and the zoning board might make you fight for every goat, rooster, and shed. So get familiar with local ordinances. Learn to schmooze the town clerk. Show up to meetings. Be the “crazy farm person” who knows the law better than the law.

And don’t even get me started on the pests. Deer? Everywhere. Groundhogs? Little demons. Ticks? Ubiquitous. Your garden needs fencing like Fort Knox, and every animal needs a roofed pen or they’re lunch. Coyotes don’t care if it’s cute. They’re hungry.

Then there’s the weather. Rhode Island gives you everything. Blizzard in March? Check. Hurricane in September? Check. A heatwave in May? Absolutely. If you don’t have backups on backups—extra tarps, a generator, a sump pump—you’re gonna get wiped out.

But here’s the flip side. The reason we do this. The reason we keep going even when our hands are cracked and our knees ache and we smell like manure:

We eat like kings. Real food. Fresh food. Food with soul. We drink coffee with cream from our own cow. We eat eggs so orange they look fake. We walk outside, grab dinner from the garden, and sleep like rocks under handmade quilts.

We live outside the system, at least partly. We don’t panic when the store shelves empty. We don’t need to door-dash crap food. We don’t care about trends—we’re too damn busy planting, building, harvesting, living.

So yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry because too many people think this life is just “cute” or “aesthetic.” It’s not. It’s dirty, it’s hard, and it will chew you up and spit you out if you’re not all-in.

But if you are? If you’ve got guts and you’re willing to earn every bite of food and every moment of peace?

Welcome to the real homestead life.

Here in Rhode Island—we may be small, but we’re fierce as hell.