How to Work: Self Reliant Skills

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by Steve Maxwell
The author's family hand-built this handsome stone-and-timber home on their rural Ontario acreage. Knowing how to work, as well as having house-building know-how, was integral to completing the construction process.

Put into practice these six habits to master these truly make-or-break homesteading self reliant skills: how to work properly.

In October of 1986, I cut through a tumbledown wire fence and drove my old pickup truck onto the rural property I’d just bought with my life savings. I was a 23-year-old dreamer back then, with a desire to live in the country by the labor of my own hands. I’m now living that dream and thriving on that same property along with my wife, Mary, and our five kids. We built our own house, and we enjoy food, fuel and beauty from our land. We’re now blessed to see a second generation setting up a homestead of their own and putting their self-reliance skills to use on our family acreage.

Few other dreamers I’ve known have managed to fulfill their ambitions. In my experience, most dreams don’t die because of a lack of practical homesteading skills or passion, but rather become casualties of the failure of knowing to work efficiently to get enough of the right kind of work done. Bills pile up, gardens don’t get planted, roofs continue to leak, enthusiasm wanes. The cause of these problems often goes unrecognized until passion is cold, relationships frazzled and finances exhausted. Knowing how to work efficiently on a homestead where you are your own boss requires a specific skill set that contrasts sharply with the skills needed to work a traditional office job. I’ve worked for wages and now I work from home on my own land, and the two experiences are entirely different. If your goal is to be in charge of your own successful modern homestead, you must learn how to work, which is just as important as learning practical skills. Put into practice the following six homesteading habits to help you get the right work done in the right way, and you’ll bring the satisfaction of self-reliant living one big step closer.

1. Learning How to Work: Set Guiding Principles

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