The key to understanding both preppers and homesteaders is to understand their motivations – one is geared towards and emergency and one is geared towards a lifestyle.
Both, however, utilize many of the same skills and to a degree, the same mentality, to accomplish their goals.
Why I Feel Like Homesteaders and Preppers are the Same: I honestly feel like homesteaders ARE preppers — at least to a certain degree. They have learned to grow their own food in gardens. They also might be found to raise animals which would also provide food for their family in the form of milk, eggs and meat. They grow as much food as they can in as many ways as is possible for them, and if there are any portions of that food that might spoil or go bad before they can eat it, they learn to preserve it – canning, fermenting, curing, dehydrating, freezing, etc.
There are also those homesteaders that make their own cleaning supplies from common household ingredients (like laundry detergent and dish washing powders), hand wash their clothes and hang them to dry, and harvest rain water to water their gardens. Now to you, this may seem like a bunch of “homesteady” stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with prepping —
I, however, would challenge that line of thought. I think it IS prepping. You see, most preppers are getting ready for “SHTF” or “TEOTWAWKI”. They’re stocking up on food (which is what homesteaders do), finding new ways to generate their own power (which is what a lot of homesteaders do), and have at least one gun (which most homesteaders already have — and practice shooting on a regular basis).
Let me ask you this — what is the end goal? Survival and self-sufficiency, right? Both of which are important to preppers and homesteaders alike.
So why am I so adamant that preppers and homesteaders are alike? Preppers feel that when the SHTF, they’ll be ready and able to live off the grid. Lots of them practice bugging-out to a remote location where they have a base camp set up and ready to go. They hang out for the weekend (some stay longer), foraging, hunting, and fishing for their food (or eating homemade MREs), sleeping in a shelter that’s at least semi-primitive, and trying to make life a little better every day.
Homesteaders feel that if the stuff ever hit the fan, they’d already be safe in their homes. They have all the comforts of home — many with extra safety and security measures ready to go at a moments notice. They have lots of homegrown food stored in various ways with means of getting more when needed. They, too, are trying to make life a little better every day — but they do it every single day, it’s how they live.
Prepping for a disaster and homesteading are not the same, but they have many similarities, including utilizing many of the same skill sets to survive.
The overlap of skills and mentality is undeniable and unavoidable, but the differences are there if you look, mainly in how they approach everyday life.
To learn more about this debate, please visit Survival at Home.
Seems like homesteading is a way of life and prepping is getting ready for that way of life if you’re thrown into it.
They are absolutely not the same thing. Being a homesteader myself. Homesteading is a way of living while providing basic necessities of life. As a homesteader I provide electric, water, food, shelter all for myself but I go to the store to buy toilet paper to wipe my$#%&!@*with, I go to the store to buy nails instead of making them myself. Homesteading is living off the grid providing the majority of what you need by yourself but using the grid for other things, I call them luxury goods such as toilet paper, I could wipe my$#%&!@*with a leaf, and I dont have anything stockpiled except for food and only because I cant grow in the middle of winter. Preppers on the other hand is a completly different nature, they are “prepared to live off grid” But in reality unless everything hits the fan they still use city or county water, they still use electric provided by a power station on grid, they still buy their food from walmart. But at the same time they have an underground bunker with a lifetime supply of toilet paper and food in case if something bad happens, in truth most of these guys wont last a year off grid because they aren’t prepared to live off grid, just survive long enough for everything to quit blowing up. truth is if it doesnt quit blowing up the homesteader will still plant his crop next spring, still reuse that same nail he bought a decade ago, maybe start wiping his$#%&!@*with toilet paper but a prepper will be running out of food trying and hoping the garden will provide not having any clue wtf to do when supplies run out.
Not even close.
Prepping is getting prepairedfor a SHTF scenario but not necessarily living it.
Homesteading is living it. A prepper could easily beco.e a homesteader but probably their scenario will never happen and they’ll continue to live as a modern everyday person.
I would say homesteading is prepping, but prepping isn’t homesteading.
After going back and forth with this issue my husband and I realized the best way to be is homesteaders. We figure we needed to get back to basics. If you prep and stuff happens your not gonna make it if you haven’t started living it. Now don’t get me wrong. We prep and gave stuff on hand but hello I live where we get hurricanes. So we learned what works what doesn’t. So I guess we’re preppers but we’re homesteaders to. I like your answer so much. I couldn’t have said it better. :))
To me the only prepping you should do is having books and tools. With those things you can do anything from hunting, using a hunting book and a rifle (tool), to building a house.
They are like cousins
Prepping is stockpiling supplies in case we have a SHTF $#%&!@*hits the fan) scenario. Homesteading is living in such a way you dont need to stockpile.
I think Prepping is stockpiling goods and skills that will get you through a serious time when conventional methods of living will be unavailable, while Homesteading is a way of living now so you won’t have to change when a situation comes along.
Nope
Nope
Homesteading is a life prep
They are not the same but maybe all that one can afford. Homesteading also teaches survival skills if the circumstances are such that your homestead was taken over or destroyed
Homesteading offers you the freedom of time to creat what and how you choose to live, bugging out means serviving no matter how you can with less.
Nope, one is living in the moment , a life-styled around contentment.
The other is based on Fear of the future.
Homesteading was the common practice of the day nearly 40 yrs ago. You grew in a garden and raised in the coop. What you didn’t have, you traded with your neighbour. During the seasons, you preserved what you could and it was all in an effort to supplement the food bill of the larger families than we see today. Prepping has, respectfully, a slight paranoia that was last seen during the financial depression of the early eighties. People will always be fearful of losses that are adjacent to finances… jobs, investments… they tend to collect and protect more so than the homesteaders.
IMO, from what I have observed.
In my opinion homesteading is the ultimate in preparing, growing your own food , living a self sufficient lifestyle, if all goes to hell you will be in good shape!
Here here
Close
Not even close
HA HA HA HA HA!!!! NO!
No debate. Homesteading is living as much as possible off-grid. Providing your own water, power, food, etc. Prepping is preparation and stockpiling for the worst that EVENTUALLY has to come.
Justin Gilbert
A man is not a man who does not try to make his world a better place.
Definitely not the same. I want to homestead because I find enjoyment in caring for myself and teaching my boys the value in that way of life. But I do agree that there is overlap in skills required for both. Although one lives and uses those skills daily for enjoyment and the other uses those skills for a potential outcome.
No
here is an easy answer to that question, you can prep in a 1 bd apartment, but you can’t homestead in one