3 Things to Consider When Felling a Tree

3 Things to Consider When Felling a Tree

Cutting a tree down can be dangerous, even deadly.  But it is something that, if you are homesteading, you will probably be faced with sooner or later, if not regularly.  Felling a tree is not something that should be rushed into or taken lightly, especially if the tree is particularly large, or close to a structure.  Before felling any tree, give it some thought, and be careful.   Limb pattern Trees are not 100% symmetrical.  If a tree has anything obstructing its access to light on one side, it will grow more limbs in the other direction.  Limbs can also […]

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Developing Skills Prior to Homesteading

Given the drastic lifestyle changes inherent in making the transition from typical modern life to homesteading, preparation is a must.  Along with gathering tools and resources, one should not overlook practicing the skills that are soon to be a regular part of your life, but which are typically unfamiliar to those living in suburban or urban settings.  While not everything can be simulated, even a little experience can provide you with the skills and attitude that can transfer to many other aspects of your new homesteading life. Gardening Starring at a plot of fallow ground without having any experience gardening […]

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Going From Urban to Country Homesteading: What You Need to Consider

Going From Urban to Country Homesteading: What You Need to Consider

  If you are one of the many people these days considering a transition from urban or suburban life to country homesteading, then you are in for a massive lifestyle change. This will involve things you may have never considered since they might not have had a large impact on you in your current way of life.  Considering what these factors are and preparing for them may just make the difference between living happily ever after in an idyllic setting of your choice, or blowing your savings only to move back to the city with nothing to show for it.  […]

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Homestead (and Life) Lessons From the Great Depression

Homestead (and Life) Lessons From the Great Depression

The Great Depression was one of the most harrowing periods of history in our country, and there are many lessons we can take from it. It dramatically changed our economy, our government, our agriculture and our people. We made it through the recent Great Recession with far less damage than the Great Depression, but the possibility of something far worse seems to be constantly looming on the horizon and it’s hard to imagine we’d be prepared the way our resourceful ancestors were. The thing is, life has changed so much since the 20’s and 30’s, and we have become far […]

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Benefits of Bees for Homesteads

Benefits of Bees for Homesteads

Bees can be greatly beneficial to the homestead. Becoming a beekeeper requires some knowledge, but it is still relatively simple to get into the field. Once you start to look at beekeeping, you will see that bees can provide a number of wonderful benefits. If you have a large garden that is meant to feed you and your entire family, then you need to make sure everything is pollinated properly. Same is true if you have some fruit trees on your property as well. By having bees on the property, you can ensure the pollination and fertilization of various crops. […]

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Best Perennial Vegetables to Grow

Best Perennial Vegetables to Grow

If you are a new homesteader, one of the first things you want to think about when creating your plan is what vegetables you will be growing. You want to be as self-sufficient as possible, and that means growing and raising as much of your own food as possible. Of course, those who are new might not know what some of the best perennial vegetables are to plant. Asparagus One of the nice things about asparagus is that it is extremely durable as a crop. It also happens to be one of the first vegetables that you can harvest during […]

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How to Make Your Own Butter

How to Make Your Own Butter

You don’t have to have your own cow to make butter at home, although of course it helps. There’s nothing like fresh, homemade butter from your own dairy cow to make you feel like the ultimate self-reliant homesteader. But even urban homesteaders can easily whip (literally) up their own batch of delicious homemade butter with raw milk from a farmer or even cream from the store. The ingredients and process are simple: cream + agitation + time = butter. The process of making butter basically involves agitating the cream long enough to separate the fat from what will become buttermilk […]

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Surviving Life Unplugged

Surviving Life Unplugged

Living off-grid can be a hard transition, and it may include life without internet or cell service, at least for a time. If you are considering at least a temporary transition to unplugged life, here are some tips to stay connected when you’re not…connected. Keep Your Smartphone If you don’t have internet access and/or cell service on your homestead, it’s probably useful to keep your smartphone, even if you can’t always use it at home it will be your lifeline when you do go into cell range and can check in with email and social media. This probably seems like a […]

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Tips for Keeping Chickens Warm This Winter

Tips for Keeping Chickens Warm This Winter

We recently covered how to care for chickens in hot weather, but as fall seems to be whizzing around the corner, we thought it would be a good idea to cover how to care for them in cold weather, because it’s important to plan ahead. It’s simpler than you think really-chickens can, with the right conditions, keep themselves warm surprisingly well. 1. Let them breathe It seems like you’d want to make their coop completely insulated and airtight to protect them from harsh winter weather right? Wrong. While insulation is very important, and you should start fixing leaks in the roof and […]

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How (and Why) to Render Tallow

How (and Why) to Render Tallow

Tallow used to be commonplace a few hundred years ago, before it was replaced with mass-produced cooking oils like canola, corn and soy. What it is is rendered animal fat, (it’s normally called tallow for beef fat and lard for pig fat, but the same principles apply for each) and it can be used in many ways. Why Render Tallow The reason this is ideal for a homesteader is it’s always ideal to use every part of a butchered animal, and tallow gives you a great way to use up all the fat. But it’s not just useful-its super healthy and […]

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Dairy Cow Basics

Dairy Cow Basics

Dairy cows are a wonderful addition to any homestead. The nourishment their fresh milk provides is liquid gold-raw milk is highly nutritious and can produce delicious, top-notch butter, cream, buttermilk, cheese and yogurt. I think when anyone thinks of farming or homesteading, they think of owning a dairy cow. If you’re interested in getting a dairy cow, here are a few basic considerations: Your Homestead’s Capacity What breed of cow, how many to get, how often to breed and what to feed the cow(s) will depend on your homestead, what facilities you have, how much acreage you have, how much […]

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Top 3 Reasons You Should Be Growing Your Own Food

Top 3 Reasons You Should Be Growing Your Own Food

Whether or not you’re a homesteader, there’s no arguing that vegetables fresh from the garden just taste better than the ones you buy at the store. Even organic store-bought veggies just don’t have that same delicious taste that you get from vegetables that you grew yourself. If that isn’t enough to convince you to grow your own food, let’s take a look at just a few of the top reasons you might want to start a garden today: No Fear of Food Recalls Every year, we hear about different food recalls in different areas. People get sick from eating tomatoes, […]

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Preparing the Homestead for Winter

Preparing the Homestead for Winter

I know, I know, it’s not even labor day yet, but it’s never too early to think about preparing the homestead for winter. The key to a safe winter is planning, preparation and foresight. If you’d like to homestead one day or get more off-grid eventually, here are a few basic tips for winter prep you can start considering now, for this year or the next. Even if you’re not a homesteader at all, these are useful tips for disaster preparedness through the winter. Collecting Firewood This is probably what comes to mind first when you think of preparing for winter, […]

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5 Great Reasons to Get Goats

5 Great Reasons to Get Goats

Goats are awesome. They’re fun, cute, useful, slightly weird, and low-budget and low-maintenance options for livestock. If you’re not convinced, below are five great reasons to get goats. 1. Milk I don’t know about you but I personally don’t need any more reason than this. Goat milk is delicious, and what’s better than loads of free milk, from an animal who’s food you supply and who you see every day? A constant supply of free range, non-GMO, organic goat’s milk of your own is definitely the very best reason to get a goat. 2. Cheese There is such a thing […]

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Should You Be a Beekeeper? 3 Questions to Ask First

Should You Be a Beekeeper? 3 Questions to Ask First

All over the world, people are worried about honeybee populations. Declining bee populations mean a decline in pollination, as well as a decrease in food supplies for birds. Basically, if bees disappear, we’ll be in a lot more environmental trouble than you might think. As a result, homesteaders everywhere are helping their local bee populations out by becoming beekeepers, but should you do the same? There are a few questions you should ask before you commit to home beekeeping. Is One of Your Family Members Allergic to Bees? First, if anyone in your family is allergic to bees, then the […]

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Skills to Build While You Wish You Could Homestead

Skills to Build While You Wish You Could Homestead

Whether you’re stuck in a cramped apartment in the city or living in a suburban starter home while you save up to buy land, there’s no reason you can’t start building your homesteader skills now, as you dream of more self-reliant times ahead. You can check out our guide to how to homestead in a city if you can’t wait to free yourself from the grid, and also start developing the following skills to be ready when the time comes to fully escape the plugged in life:   Bake your own bread: We tend to take our packaged, fluffy white supermarket loaves for […]

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How to Homestead in a City

How to Homestead in a City

Many of us would like to be able to afford a plot of land in the middle of nowhere and set up an amazing homestead, but that’s not always an option for everyone. One of the big appeals of homesteading is becoming self-reliant. So while you may be tethered to an urban lifestyle for now, there’s plenty you can do to become more self-reliant and homestead right where you are. Grow Your Food: This one is definitely obvious, but many people aren’t aware of how much they can really do in a small space. Tower gardens, box gardens, window gardens […]

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Simple Green Laundry Hacks

Simple Green Laundry Hacks

When you begin learning how to eat and live more organically and self-sufficiently, it doesn’t take long for you to start noticing how other choices in your life could be greener. Did you know that more than 70% of natural streams in America have been found to contain traces of laundry detergent? Or that drying a load of laundry can create more than two kilograms of carbon released into the atmosphere? There are many ways to make your laundry eco-friendlier to reduce your carbon footprint and the chemical leftovers that are created while you get your clothes clean. Making your […]

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Survival Gardening [Video]

Growing food in your backyard when its over 100 degrees for more than three months? How do you do that? If you are looking for something more than the usual “mulch and drip irrigation” answer…. Find out what the old-timers used to do, what plants will work the best, what not to do (if you can avoid it), and some surpise options you probably have never heard of. Important Survival Gardening & Stockpiling Info… Learn life-saving survival medicine in an afternoon…

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