Uncategorized Archives - Homesteader DepotHomesteader Depot

5 Simple (Yet Crucial) Guidelines of Winter Survival

Spending some time in the woods in the wintertime, either voluntarily or because you wound up getting stuck out there, is no joke. You need to be able to take care of yourself, which means meeting all of your basic needs, lest you end up starving or freezing to death. Before the cold weather sets in for good, take the time to review these five guidelines of winter survival. Are you prepared? 1) Stay in One Place If you’re waiting for a rescue after being stranded out in the cold for days, then you need to stay in one place. […]

3 Effective Sheep Shearing Techniques

Despite some claims from animal rights groups, shearing is necessary to maintain the health and comfort of your sheep. There are 2 main reasons you need to have your sheep sheared once a year. If the sheep’s thick wooly coats are not removed before the summer months, they can become very uncomfortable. Additionally, the amount of dirt that can amass and become matted to their bodies could develop into a health risk. The wool from certain breeds is a valuable commodity and a good source of annual income. When raised correctly with a proper diet, a single sheep can grow […]

Decoding Diets: Which Lifestyle is Right for You? (Infographic)

My last post regarded healthy fats, and a few months ago, I posted an extensive list of some of the major health diets and the differences and similarities between each. I found this infographic recently and I thought it was a cool visual representation of common health diets and what they suggest emphasizing and avoiding. It also has handy macro references for how much protein, carbohydrates, and fat are normally consumed by the adherents of each diet. If you ever feel overwhelmed and confused by different diets out there, this might help you visualize what each one offers. Remember, while […]

Gardening Tips From Seasoned Gardeners

When you just get started with gardening, it can be easy to feel very overwhelmed! As a beginner, there’s so much to learn, and so many ways things can go wrong. But never fear–you can learn from those who have gone before you. We’ve got some great tips for beginner gardeners to help you beat the stress and have a flourishing, healthy garden in no time. Let’s begin! Ask for help Don’t be shy! Usually, seasoned gardeners love to talk gardening, so reach out and ask for help! People at your local nursery, in local gardening FB groups, or even community […]

What Should You Do With Your Grass Clippings?

Very few people like the job of cutting the grass, but whether you are in the suburbs or on a homestead, it is a fact of life. You need to make sure things are manageable and that they look good. Once the mowing is done, you are left with all those grass clippings, and you might be wondering just what to do with them. The “go to” option for some people is to put them into a bin or into bags and have them recycled or thrown away. In some areas, you are no longer allowed to throw the clippings […]

5 Ways to Preserve Garlic

We’ve all experienced buying a head of garlic, and sooner or later those little sprouts pop out and we need to use it up as quickly as we can. Or perhaps you’re lucky enough to grow it yourself, or simply find yourself with entirely too much garlic on your hands from a deal at the farmer’s market or a Costco bag of organic garlic that was too good to pass up. Well, I’m actually a believer that there’s no such thing as “too much garlic”, because there’s always a way to use it up, if it’s turning too quickly for […]

Homemade Rosewater Recipe

Rosewater is exactly what it sounds like: water infused with roses. It’s simple, but it’s incredibly effective to tone, moisturize, and give a wonderful scent to skin and hair. You can use it in many different ways, as a toner for your skin, a quick moisturizing spray, to add to homemade lotions or remedies or just as a natural perfume. You can make a bottle of homemade rosewater very easily and use for yourself or as gifts, or even as a chic and easy addition to a farmer’s market stand for your homestead. Wherever you live, if you happen to […]

DIY PVC Hoop Greenhouse (Video)

Spring is here, and I’ve got greenhouses on my mind! If you’re itching to get your garden started but it’s not quite warm enough in your zone yet, you might want to consider building a simple greenhouse. These easy, cheap, DIY PVC hoop greenhouses have been popular for a long time, and for good reason. You can start seedlings indoors and get all the benefits of a good greenhouse for a very affordable price. It’s a must-have for any serious gardener, especially if you’re wanting to jump start your garden this year. There are a ton of videos out there […]

Best Brands That Are Non-GMO (Infographic)

We feel strongly about living a healthy lifestyle, one that is both self-reliant and supportive of businesses that promote sustainable foods. This infographic lists some of the best natural food brands that contain non-GMO ingredients, so you know you’re getting the healthiest, most whole ingredients for your family. A lot of “natural” food brands just package themselves as healthy but really use GMO ingredients and donate to pro-genetic modification lobbies and companies, so it can be hard to make informed decisions on the fly at the grocery store. So we put together this list of a few companies you can […]

Where to Get Free Buckets

You will never run out of uses for buckets on the homestead. You can use them to carry water, feed, dirt, rocks, even your harvest from the garden or eggs from the hen house (if you have enough!). 5-Gallon buckets are one of the essentials of homestead or garden life, and you may have experienced this already. Trouble is, it seems like the more uses you find for them, the less you seem to have! While 5-gallon buckets are sturdy, it is possible to break them as well (quick tip: it’s important to keep them out of the sun and […]

The Productive Homesteader’s Secret Weapon

Does your to-do list start off on the fridge on Monday and end up buried in mail and seed catalogs on the kitchen table by Friday? You have the best intentions to manage your work and goals, but at some point, they just snowball and when Sunday night comes to an end, you’ve met only a few, if any, of that week’s goals. Or maybe you have a system for getting livestock fed and crops watered but are looking for a way to do it more efficiently and make more time for other things. If any of these sound like […]

How to Freeze Kale

Kale is an awesome source of vitamins and iron, but if you like to buy in season and locally, you can’t always find it fresh. If you shop at the farmer’s market or grow kale yourself, you might find yourself faced with the task of having to preserve a large amount of kale. It’s popular to dehydrate kale, but a lot of people don’t have a dehydrator. Fortunately, it’s very easy and convenient to freeze kale in large batches for use in soups, smoothies, and even stir-frys. Here’s what you do: How to freeze kale: 1. Take your bunches of […]

How to Warm Up Garden Soil for Early Planting

If you’re an avid gardening, you’re probably counting down the days until you can get started gardening again. And, if you’ve started your seeds indoors, you’ll need to make sure your soil is warm and thawed out by the time your seedlings are ready to be transplanted, as you will have a small window of time in which you’ll need to get them in the ground fast. Obviously, you can’t control the weather, and you may find yourself in a position where you’ve started seeds indoors, counting on the weather to warm up enough to thaw the ground out in […]

10 Best Chicken Breeds (Infographic)

If you are planning to start raising chickens, you might be faced with the decision of what breeds to buy, especially if you are ordering your chicks from a catalog or online. There are a lot of different breeds out there, that have all been selectively bred for different purposes and to suit different needs. Some chickens are excellent producers, some lay more in winter, some lay big eggs, some are more self-sufficient when free range, etc. This infographic from Commonsensehome.com is a great cheat-sheet for comparing the top 10 best chicken breeds, their class, size, size of egg, winter […]

DIY Lamp Oil

Ok, this is really cool. I had no idea it was so easy to make your own lamp oil, but as it’s basically comprised of rubbing, or isopropyl, alcohol, and distilled water, apparently it’s quite simple to mix up your own batch that’s guaranteed to be a lot cheaper than the kind you’ll buy pre-made at Walmart for tiki torches or old-fashioned oil lamps. Lamp for oils is a really important item to keep on a homestead. If you live off-grid or with limited electricity, it can easily light up a room in the evening and save on electricity. I […]

Tips for Gardening on a Slope

For most gardeners, space is a major limiting factor, these means that you have to make the most out of every square foot you have, whether it’s ideal or not. One less than ideal situation you might have is a slope, which many would leave unplanted and unproductive. While slopes do pose some real difficulties, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate the natural difficulties and take advantage of potential benefits from growing on a slope. If the slope is orientated so that it faces the sun you are in luck, your slope will maximize the […]

4 Tips for Starting a Garden When Living in an Apartment

Living in an apartment and gardening don’t really go together, but you can make it work, as we talked about in How to Homestead in an Apartment, and I know from experience. You won’t be able to have to same crop selection or the same yield that suburban backyard, or rural homesteaders get, but you can get started and gain valuable experience while increasing your health and saving money. Here are 4 tips I used to make gardening possible while living in an apartment. Grow Bags Space will be one of your major concerns, not just for growing, […]

The Off-Grid Winter Pantry (Video)

When most people think of living off-grid, there are usually two major challenges that come to mind: winter, and food storage. Well, this video shows us that with the right amount of supplies and planning, you don’t have to worry much about either! It is seriously one of my life goals to have a pantry like this one day. YouTubers and off-grid homesteaders An American Homestead shares their well-stocked winter pantry, with preserves made from their harvest for the year. Their viewers kept asking to see what they had, so they give us a tour of their impressive pantry, ready for […]

Honey Vinegar Cough Medicine

I am always on the lookout for new natural remedies. You’d think I’d have plenty in my arsenal by now, but I always manage to find something new. In a world with a multitude of quick fix, over-the-counter products that do little more than mask our symptoms, it’s great to find remedies that use natural, nutritious, healing properties and are easy to make at home. As much as I love herbs, I don’t actually use a whole lot of them in my standard natural remedies, so I was really intrigued by this recipe when I found it. It uses several amazing […]

Tapping a Maple Tree

Maple Syrup is a classic staple of the American breakfast menu. But, like so many food items, I just love seeing how it’s sourced. This video shows a Yukon man tapping a maple tree for sap, and it looks pretty simple and rewarding. If you’ve got maple trees on your property or nearby you, why not give it a try this summer? There’s a separate process for boiling the sap to make the syrup, so I’ll have to find a video on that later this month perhaps. In the meantime, enjoy! Alaskans are some of the most hard-core homesteaders there […]