Up-Cycling on the Homestead

We are definitely in the throws of our busy season on the homestead. Well, let's face it, with nine of our children still at home, a bustling homestead, and homeschool our life is always busy. But, this time of year it seems like there isn't enough hours in the day to get everything done that needs doing. Regardless, we are still putting one foot in front of the other and making things happen around here. I thought I'd share a little about how our family has been up-cycling and being good stewards of what the Lord has blessed us with. 

Due to the volatile economy and our family's personal employment situation we are making an even more conscientious effort to be as frugal as possible. We are thinking outside the box and being intentional to look for ways to repurpose items around our homestead. Every dollar really counts these days like never before, and I'm grateful we have cultivated a spirit of frugality over the years; because it certainly is coming in handy these days.

The above picture shows one of my new favorite up-cycled items. I prefer my herbs planted in containers as opposed to directly into the ground. On a walk a few weeks ago I found these awesome steps, they were missing one tread, but I knew it would be perfect for an herb box stand. We found some old wood to replace the tread that was missing, and once the garden wraps up, I'll paint the metal part. I love it so much I have everyone I know looking to find me another set of free-standing steps so that I can put the rest of my herb pots on them.

A few weeks ago we had a nasty wind storm which damaged some of our metal roof. While the metal wasn't suitable to remain on our house, we managed to salvage some of the pieces to use on our new chicken coop. I shared all about our new coop in this post.

We acquired this awesome cast iron caldron. We decided to drill some holes in it and use it as a giant herb pot. I can't wait to watch our pretty herbs start growing in this beauty.

It's amazing to watch how God provides for our every need. We have a good many tomato and pepper plants that need baskets to help stake them and prevent them from tipping over. We had purchased some metal fencing to make the baskets with, but it was not going to be enough. One day recently my husband overheard a friend talking about needing to get rid of some hog wire; he quickly told him we'd be glad to take it off his hands. We were able to construct eight baskets with the donated wire.

We are always reusing small food containers for starting plants. The above picture is a small portion of our recycled containers which have been used many times over to hold our tiny little seed starts. 

 We are extremely passionate about making our own natural health care products as well as bath & beauty items. Jars can get costly real quick. Whenever we receive a glass container, whether it be through store-bought vitamins or donated kombucha bottles (thanks to a dear friend who loves their Booch and gladly passes on their empty bottles to us) ~ we clean them up and repurpose them for our tinctures, glycerites, and other homemade body care products.

These containers stem from a funny encounter. My brain is always working overtime, trying to figure out how to do things the most economical way for our family. Well, one day we went to visit a friend and I saw that they had a shelf full of protein powder filled in these awesome containers. Now in a perfect world I'd store all our dry goods in glass jars, but can we say 'children'. Yeah, glass jars for everyday items such as our dry goods is a recipe for disaster, i.e. broken jars and glass everywhere. So when I saw these containers at my friend's house I asked her to save them for me. Thankfully, she was kind enough to donate them to us. I took the label off, washed them, and added a chalkboard decal that I cut from my Silhouette Cameo. These nice little buckets have served us well for many years now.

I believe a lot of people get wrapped up in thinking their homesteads have to look a certain way. To us the heart of homesteading is being as self-sufficient as possible ~ reusing and repurposing as many things as possible to limit our dependency on other people, especially running to the store to buy stuff. While we are 100% dependent on God to meet our needs, He has given us the wherewithal to also be good stewards with all the resources He has provided for us. 

The art of up-cycling is a frame of mind, it's a new way of thinking about everything that comes your way. Just the other day I was driving down the road and saw a pile of pallets on the side of the road. I immediately called my seventeen year old to go and pick them up, because goodness there's so many things we can do with old pallets. We simply placed them nicely on the side of our storage building until we have a need for them. Saving money and building our little homestead has been made possible by transforming our way of thinking, acknowledging that other people's trash really can be turned into someone else's treasures. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer