3 Must Haves For a Prepper Homestead

The first “must have” for any Prepper Homestead is water and lots of it! We are very blessed to have lots of water on our homestead. When we moved to our property, the former owners told us that the already established wells on the property never went dry. In 2012, the midwest went through a severe drought. My family was in St. Louis at the time and a nearby river was so low that I could basically walk across it. Wells were going dry and staying dry all over the midwest. Not so for our homestead, as we were told by the former land owner. While the water did get low in the 19th century wells on our property, they never went dry. The ponds also still had plenty of water to sustain the fish population.

Today, our property has 3 wells on it. Two are working wells that we use daily.

• Well number 1: Its a modern well that was drilled when we moved on the property. Its 140 feet deep and the water level stays about 40 feet from the top. We use a Simple Pump brand hand pump to bring water to the top. We have a motor for the pump that we will eventually hook up to a solar panel next spring. We will then be able to bring water to a nearby holding tank and then into the house. It cost us $1850 to have this well drilled.
• Well number 2: This well is one of two 19th century wells on the property. Its about 15 feet deep and so far we have never seen this well go dry. The former land owner said that the well didn’t run dry during the drought of 2012 when everybody else’s well did. The well is lined with hand hewn stone and we suspect the well is actually about 20 feet deep, but over the last 150 years, sludge and muck have filled it in a bit. We will eventually try to have this sucked out to see how deep the well really goes.

• Well Number 3: This is our other 19th century well that was hand dug and lined with stone. Its located next to a county road and the locals tell us that the well was used as a stopping point for travelers who needed a break to water their horses. It’s overgrown with brush and the stones are in disarray. It’s my desire this winter to clear it out and restore the surrounding area as much as possible. The well still gives its water and I think we can use this in the future as a backup well should we need it.

It’s interesting to note that our homestead homes and the first two wells are sitting about 150 feet below the summit of a 2400 ft mountain in the Ozarks. It is usually unheard of to have water that high up. What is even more interesting is that when a friend of ours who deals in lumber walked our property a few weeks ago, he noticed a number of sycamore trees around the top of the mountain. Sycamore trees have the ability to drink up to 600 gallons of water per day. It was curious to him to see these trees at the top of a mountain because they are usually found near streams in the valleys.

We are blessed with water. It is the most important resource we can have. For a prepper, having a homestead with adequate water should be a top priority.

The second “must have” for any Prepper Homestead is fencing. Good fencing is so important. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 acres or 200 acres. Having proper and adequate fencing for your land opens up an entire world of possibilities to you. If you ever want to raise your own livestock to supply meat for your own personal consumption or for barter and sale purposes, you will need fencing.

Having researched this topic extensively, we came to the conclusion that we needed a system of paddocks on the property that would allow us to rotate our livestock. Rotating livestock over many grazing paddocks allows them to be healthy and will actually improve the quality of the paddock soil over time.

Today, meat prices are through the roof and that is not going to get better over time. Its going to get much much worse. Having the fencing in place to contain even a small amount of livestock with the intention to perhaps grow your herd over time will certainly pay off. Food production is second only to our need for water. Fencing gives you a great amount of benefits and increases your ability to raise food.

Aside from the high price of meat is the quality of meat. The media is full of stories about meat glue and pink slime. What guarantees are there that the meat you’re buying at the store is the kind of meat you would want to eat? How was it processed? How was it raised? The bottom line is you are going to take someone at their word that the meat is labeled correctly. When you raise meat yourself, you know for a fact what you are getting.

Fencing also provides one more thing: security. It is a barrier, albeit small, to the outside world. Being able to gate off your property and limit traffic on your land is important if you should ever need to do so. In fact, having a number of gates and fences that must be passed through before one reaches your homestead would be optimal.

The third “must have” for any Prepper Homestead is a tractor. This may seem kindof out of the norm for some in the prepper community. But give me a moment and let me argue my case. There have been so many examples where our tractor has saved us time and money.

Since we moved onto our land, we have cleared a lot of that land. Our tractor is a Massey Ferguson 50 HP. We have used the massive power of this tractor to move felled trees, timber, and piles of brush.  It has also been vital to tow vehicles, till ground, and brush hog fields for livestock. It’s just been so helpful in so many ways. Having a tractor on a homestead really is a modern marvel that makes homesteading, especially off grid homesteading so much easier and worthwhile.

From the little I have learned about tractors and looking at them with a preparedness mindset, a diesel tractor is your best bet. And the older the better. There is a huge group of folks in rural America that love restoring old tractors and selling them. Older vehicles are just easier to work on and maintain. As an added bonus, many of them really sip the diesel fuel pretty slowly. Having a diesel tractor will also make it easier to provide an alternative fuel should the grid go down and make it hard to obtain true diesel fuel. I have even heard stories during the Balkan war in Sarajevo where one man was using pine tree oil to render down a type of diesel fuel for use in vehicles.  He was very successful when using it for barter. Most vehicles over there, including small cars, are run on diesel.

In short, our tractor has been a huge asset to us.  I believe that it would be beneficial for anyone setting up and building a Prepper Homestead to have a tractor.