The Side-Effects of Homesteading

I stood in the supermarket last week, holding a plastic package of "fresh" herbs that cost 35 NOK, and I actually laughed out loud. The woman next to me shuffled away nervously. I couldn't explain that I'd just realised that my herb garden is obviously worth thousands – free from last year’s seeds or perennials, plastic- and pesticides-free. That's when it hit me: homesteading has completely rewired how I see everything. And honestly? These "side effects" are the best part of the journey.

When you start this path, people tell you about fresh eggs and good exercise. What they don't mention is how profoundly it changes your mind. These transformations sneak up on you, one moment at a time, until you realise you've become someone entirely different – someone who gets genuinely excited about compost and reads ingredient labels like crime scene evidence. Let me share what's really coming your way.

I. You Can't Shop the Same Way Ever Again

You will definitely shop very differently once you homestead. You don’t buy nice clothes anymore because they're impractical and get dirty anyway. You focus more on “what do I really need”, and you start to think about where this item comes from and what impact it has.

Reading Labels Becomes an Obsession

The first change hit me in the bread aisle. I picked up my usual loaf and actually read the ingredients. Thirty-seven of them. For bread! My homemade loaf has four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. Why does shop bread need dough conditioners, emulsifiers, and something called "enzyme-modified soy lecithin"? That was the beginning of the end for my normal shopping habits.

Once you've eaten a tomato still warm from the sun, supermarket produce tastes like cardboard. Those perfect red spheres were picked green weeks ago, gassed to turn red, shipped from Spain or Morocco, and they call them "fresh." Fresh! My tomatoes travel thirty seconds from vine to table (or directly in my mouth). The taste difference is like comparing a photo of chocolate cake to actually eating one.

You start noticing everything. Why does yoghurt need fifteen ingredients? What's "natural strawberry flavouring" if it contains zero strawberries? Last month, I found myself properly annoyed by pre-cut vegetables in plastic containers costing three times as much as whole vegetables. And they'd added preservatives! To vegetables! Not to mention all the plastic it comes with. Meanwhile, my potatoes from last autumn are still perfect in the cellar, no chemicals needed.

You See Chemicals Everywhere

Here's what really gets you: suddenly you realise we're spraying poison on our food and everyone thinks it's normal. If you don’t want that, you have to pay a lot more for organic food. Most treat their lawn like a patient – fertiliser in spring, weed killer in summer, moss killer in autumn. They are murdering dandelions (salad, bee food), clover (the bees need it!), and every insect that might dare exist. For what? A green carpet nobody walks on? My garden is more like a field, made for the dogs to enjoy and insects to thrive.

The whole thing starts feeling insane. We poison bugs, then wonder where the birds went. We kill everything in the soil, then buy bags of fertiliser to force plants to grow in dead dirt. Meanwhile, my chickens eat the bugs, their poop feeds the soil, the plants grow happy, and I don't spend a single krone on chemicals. It just works, like it has for thousands of years.

II. Your Brain Gets Rewired

Homesteading is not only about moving to a place or building one, growing food, having some animals, and preserving food. It’s actually so much more. Something serious is happening with you – in a really good way!

You're Never Bored

Remember scrolling through Netflix trying to find something to watch? That's over. There's always something that needs doing – chickens to feed, eggs to collect, fences to fix, vegetables to preserve, compost to turn, seeds to start, coops to clean, gardens to mulch, wood to chop, water buckets to fill, a roof to fix. Every season brings its own endless list of to-dos. When you build something, you realise you need five other things to make it work properly. You fall into bed tired, not that weird office exhaustion, but actual physical tiredness from doing real things all day.

Your entertainment needs have completely changed. Why watch TV when there's real drama outside? Will the late tomatoes ripen before frost? Why is Bette Midler (my top hen) refusing to use the new nesting box? Is that plant dying or just dramatic? What to do before that storm the forecast announces? Every day brings new questions and tiny victories. The only things you will watch are other homesteaders or how-tos on YouTube or my vlog.

Your Work Has Meaning

This is the best part. Modern work often feels pointless – emails, meetings, spreadsheets that disappear into the digital void. For what? Only the paycheck? But collecting eggs? That's breakfast. Planting potatoes? That's the whole year’s dinner and a bit of income. Building a garage for my tractor? That's preserving your homestead machinery. Every task connects directly to survival and thriving.

I'm not saying it's all profound and meaningful – sometimes it's just shovelling chicken shit in the rain. But even that has purpose: next year's incredible tomatoes and happier girls. You sleep better when your body knows it did real work. That tiredness after a day of building raised beds feels completely different from office exhaustion. One depletes you, the other satisfies you.

You are so grateful for everything

Maybe it’s because you’re working hard for everything; you are grateful for everything you achieve. The eggs from your chicken, the veggies from the kitchen garden, a good harvest for the potato sale, that your buildings hold up in the snow storm.

You will recognise so many little things that make your heart jump. And that feeling, looking at your full pantry and freezer, knowing everyone safe and happy - priceless! You did all that! I developed a deep connection with the universe (others call it any kind of God) which is hard to explain. It’s a deep satisfaction, love.

III. You Reconnect With Reality

Here's something nobody expects: you stop fighting nature's rhythm. I used to feel guilty about having less energy in winter, forcing myself through with coffee and artificial light. Now I understand even my chickens slow down in the winter months. We're supposed to rest when it's dark at 15:00! There's nothing wrong with us.

You start eating seasonally because that's what you have. Root vegetables and preserved foods in winter, fresh salads in summer. Those expensive January strawberries stop looking appealing – your body remembers strawberries belong to June. There's something deeply satisfying about eating what's actually growing instead of what's been flown halfway around the world.

And I have to say, I actually eat better since homesteading! I have an abundance of healthy food. I’m not hunting myself, but every fall, I get moose meat from a local hunter that lasts for a year. As organic as it can get.

I’ve been a vegetarian for over 20 years, actually, but clean meat from the forest and some roosters are absolutely fine with me. I love animals. But because we don’t have enough wolves and bears, we need to keep the moose in check. And I simply can’t have eight roosters; they would kill each other (and destroy my eardrums). It’s just a fact that 50-60% of hatching chickens are boys.

It's natural to eat meat. But it’s not natural how we treat animals and how we just go into the supermarket and buy anything without challenging the ways it was produced.

You Learn Nature's Language

It might sound a bit much, but it's true – you start understanding what's happening around you. Birds get noisy before snow because they're stocking up while they can. Plants droop when thirsty (obvious, but when did you last notice?). My chickens have completely different calls for "hawk above" versus "gimme that food." The dogs know something's off before I see it.

This awareness follows you everywhere. You notice which trees bud first, where water pools after rain, and why certain weeds grow in certain spots. You can't turn it off. When the chickens go quiet and huddle, I bring the laundry in. They're never wrong about incoming rain.

IV. Your Values Do a Complete 180

Homesteading kills your shopping impulse. Even if you had the money, you would think twice. Do I really need this? And if you have to buy something, it’s most certainly for the animals, the garden, or to fix something. But before you do, try to fix what you have, use what you can find around the farm, and then check second-hand groups or shops.

Everything shifts. New clothes each season? These mud-covered trousers have years left in them, and the holes can be fixed. Fancy kitchen gadget? This old knife does everything. You find genuine satisfaction in using things until they're properly worn out. You learn to fix stuff. You won’t throw away old clothes anymore, because you’re happy to have a towel handy after working in grease and oil on the tractor. That really old, broken pitchfork? Fixed with scrap metal and some nails. Still going strong.

Skills Become Your Safety Net

Every new ability feels like (and kinda is) money in the bank – except better. Power cut last month? No problem. I can cook over wood, preserve food without a fridge, and have some solar power backup. When egg prices go crazy or another scandal leads to an egg shortage, the girls are working double shifts to help out the neighborhood. When another lockdown occurs, or in even worse cases, me and my animals and won’t starve, and I have enough to barter.

But it's more than practical stuff. It's the satisfaction of figuring things out and saving money. Fence broken? I'll fix it. Weird spots on the tomato leaves? I'll research it. The car is making a funny noise? Let me look before calling the mechanic. Washing machine acting up? YouTube University to the rescue. You stop being helpless. Most problems aren't that complicated once you start looking. You save money and time.

V. Living Between Two Worlds

The trickiest bit: you're living in two realities now. You see what's mad about our food system, but your friends still eat from it. Family dinners become exercises in keeping your mouth shut. Someone complains their tomatoes have no taste, and you bite your tongue instead of launching into a speech about industrial agriculture (or not).

You learn to translate between worlds. Instead of preaching, you bring egg gifts. "I have too many, please take some!" One taste of orange-yolked, rich, actual eggs, and they're curious. When someone says, "I could never do what you do," you mention herbs on windowsills, not the chicken coop you built from salvaged materials. Small doors open bigger ones.

And some people will look down at you – in your dirty, worn clothes, smelling a bit like chicken poop and motor oil. I couldn’t care less. I always think: “Wait, until…” If that “until” ever comes, isn’t the question. Because it does. In the form of another pandemic—hopefully not something worse—but maybe some restrictions. And it will definitely manifest as illness. Mentally and/or physically. You stop caring what others say. And, in fact, you will attract the right people. No stupid small-talk anymore. No nonsense. The amazing people I’ve met since I’ve been homesteading – I can’t count. Before, I thought they didn’t exist anymore.

Your Beautiful New Normal

So yes, homesteading completely changes you. You'll find yourself genuinely excited when it rains. You'll have strong opinions about different types of mulch. You are suddenly interested in things you never thought about before. You'll bore people talking about soil health. You'll know all your chickens' names and personalities. You'll choose to work on the homestead over almost anything else. You don’t wanna leave your paradise.

These changes run deep and are permanent. Each year, the "normal" world feels stranger. The supermarket becomes more surreal. The idea of buying eggs from tortured birds in cages seems increasingly insane. You'll find profound happiness in small things – the first pea shoot, successfully saving seeds, a well-built compost heap that's cooking perfectly.

Here's what I've learned: these aren't side effects to worry about. They are signs you're returning to something real. That frustration with plastic-wrapped everything? That's sense returning. The joy of growing your first successful cabbage? That's what achievement actually feels like. As Jane Goodall says, "What you do makes a difference." Every seed planted, every meal grown, every step away from industrial madness – it matters.

You're not going backwards or becoming weird (maybe a little, but that’s fine). You're just remembering what humans knew for thousands of years: soil is wealth, skills are security, and real food is healthier and tastier.