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Ethan Archer – Page 33 – Homesteader Depot

Homesteader Depot

Author: Ethan Archer

  • What to Do When You Can’t Raise Animals for Meat

    What to Do When You Can’t Raise Animals for Meat

    I posted earlier about a great video showing the complete process of butchering a cow. This is one of the big draws of homesteading-raising and butchering your own meat. Having a reliable source of high-calorie sustenance like animal protein is one of the cornerstones of self-reliance and sustainability.

    However, getting yourself in the position to raise animals for meat is no easy feat. It requires a lot of resources, resources you might not yet have access to, like pasture, shelter, feed, proper equipment, etc. Whether you are an urban homesteader, aspiring homesteader, or just getting started and aren’t yet in the position to be raising livestock, there are definitely still options for you to eat great pastured, sustainably-raised meat while you’re still dreaming of raising your own. Here are some tips:

    1. Find some farmers

    If you live in or near a rural area with a lot of farms, keep your ear out for farmers that sell either butchered meat or whole animals that you can yourself take to the butcher. Ask around, look on local community bulletin boards, on websites like Craigslist.com or in local Facebook groups. You can save a lot of money this way and fill your freezer up for the winter.

    2. Share a cow

    It is common for both milk and meat for a few families to pitch in and buy a cow. For meat, since cows can be pretty expensive to buy whole, you’d all pitch in and buy one when it’s ready to be butchered, you can get quite a bit of meat and share it.

    3. Find a CSA

    CSAs are not just for vegetables, a lot of farms will include fresh meat in your orders too. If you’re lucky, you can find one in your area and have a regular supply of farm fresh meat delivered to your house.

     

    Pastured meat is not only sustainable, it’s also much healthier and more nutritious for us. You don’t have to raise your own to enjoy farm-fresh meat and support a local farmer too!

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  • Never Pay a Butcher Again! (Video)

    Never Pay a Butcher Again! (Video)

    Now, this is what homesteading is all about. Take warning: this video is NOT for everyone, and you’ll have to have a strong stomach. But if you’re weird like me and greatly enjoy learning all about cleaning and butchering an animal, you’ll love this video as much as I did.

    You get to see the entire process of a cow being butchered, from the moment it’s slaughtered, to packing it up for the freezer. Butchering a cow is definitely no easy process, but the reward is a full freezer and many healthy, nutritious meals to come.

    One of my biggest homesteading goals is to raise enough animals to live off of, so this is incredibly inspiring, so I hope it is for you too! Remember, you don’t have to homestead to benefit from fresh, pasture-raised meat like this, which we’ll discuss in a subsequent post. Until then, enjoy!

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  • It’s OK to Make Mistakes Homesteading

    It’s OK to Make Mistakes Homesteading

    Starting out with gardening, raising animals, or full-on homesteading can be very intimidating. There’s a lot of pressure to get it right, to come up with a good plan, choose the right crops, the right tools, the right animals, etc.

    And while we are very fortunate to live in a period of time in which we have a plethora of information at our fingertips, it also can set our sights pretty high, or make us feel like failures when we aren’t living off our own food and meat and still buying most of our groceries at Costco after the first year.

    But here’s what you have to embrace about homesteading: you will make mistakes. 

    Mistakes are actually a necessary part of homesteading. You can learn a lot from trial and error, and you just might find that disaster one year might result in problem-solving and valuable research that will greatly contribute to crucial prevention for the same disaster next year and for years to come.

    Most people learn best by doing, and you’re simply not going to learn how to homestead without getting out there and trying it out.

    For example, you might experience a huge pest infestation and lose a crop that you put hours of labor into planting and maintaining. As you desperately try to troubleshoot how to address the infestation using organic insecticide, you’ll start looking up how to treat it, talking to other more seasoned homesteaders, and trying out different methods of getting rid of the pests.

    Before you know it, you’re an expert on not only the pests in question, but the plant they’ve infested and what it’s usually vulnerable to. You might learn that because of certain environmental conditions in your zone or on your land in particular, that wasn’t a great choice for a crop. Or you might learn some companion planting choices that have been known to have great success repelling this particular pest.

    See how it works? Embrace mistakes! Everything is a learning experience, and you definitely won’t have it down right away. Don’t worry. There’s always next year, and you’ll have learned a heck of a lot since!

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  • How Much Land Should You Get for Homesteading

    How Much Land Should You Get for Homesteading

    If you want to live as a homesteader, you will probably be searching for some land that you can call your own. Of course, it is certainly possible to develop self-sufficient skills that do not require you to have a large homestead, or any land at all for that matter. Once you are ready to get some property though, you need to make sure you are getting the right land for how you plan to live as a homesteader.

    Many people have big plans and little knowledge when they decide that they want to homestead. They end up buying too much land, or land that is far too expensive, and they have no idea what they are doing to do with all that land. One of the first things you need to consider is the amount of land you need. If you have a relatively small family, you could probably get by with just a couple of acres. You will have room to grow food, have some livestock and more.

    Those who have bigger aspirations or larger families will want to consider larger plots of land. People who have the time could find lots that are between 20 and 40 acres and still maintain it. One of the benefits of having the extra land is the fact that it provides you with more opportunities for self-sufficiency. When you have the extra land, it means you can cut wood for your own supply of firewood, and even lumber. You will also have that land for hunting and fishing.

    Everyone is different when it comes to the amount of land needed. It will depend on your budget, the size of your family, as well as how you plan to use the land. Consider these things before choosing a piece of land.

     

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  • Tips for Growing Herbs Indoors

    Tips for Growing Herbs Indoors

    Herbs can be a helpful addition for any homesteader. They can be used for flavoring food, and in some cases, the herbs will even have medicinal purposes. Depending on where you live, you will not be able to have a garden all year long, and this would normally mean an end to your herb production until things warm up again. However, if you still want to grow your herbs throughout the year, it is possible. You just need to grow them indoors.

    Types of Herbs to Grow

    When you are growing herbs, think about the best types for your needs. Consider the herbs that you will be using the most of and that you want fresh. What are you using in your food? What might you need for medicine? Some of the most popular options when it comes to indoor herbs include mint, thyme, oregano, parsley lavender, and sage. Once you know the herbs you would like to grow, spend some time learning more about them and what each one takes to grow.

    Prepare the Soil

    One of the big differences between growing outside and inside is that when you grow your herbs indoors, they will usually require more maintenance. You need to make sure you have a layer of small rocks on the bottom of the pot before you add the soil mixture. The mixture should be 20% perlite and 80% soil. Make sure that you know about each of the different herbs you are growing and anything special they might need to thrive.

    Misting the Plants

    When you are growing the herbs inside in the winter, there is a chance for the herbs to dry out. This is especially true when you have heating in the home, as you naturally will during the cold months. Instead, your best option is to use a spray bottle to mist the plants. You can add some water to the soil, but you should also mist the plants about once per week.

    Although you want to be sure the herbs do not dry out, they still need to have good drainage. If the water sits in the soil and has no way to drain, it can cause the roots of the herbs to rot. Add drainage holes to the pots.

    The Temperature and Light

    You will find that you do not have to change the temperatures too much to make the indoor herb garden happy. The plants will do well in the mid-60s to the mid-70s, which is typical for interior home temperatures in the winter. Overnight, the temperatures dip a bit, but the plants are fine with this as well. It closely mimics temperatures outdoors during the warmer parts of the year.

    The herbs should get at least four hours of sun each day. Placing the herbs in windows that are facing the south or the southwest should give you plenty of light.

    When you first start your indoor herb garden, you will have a period of trial and error as you start to grow different types of herbs and try to perfect your techniques. Overall, it is easy though, and you will get the hang of it quickly.

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  • Herbs for Hens

    Herbs for Hens

    There are so many great medicinal herbs out there, and humans don’t have to be the only ones who benefit. Your hens can greatly benefit from herbs as well!

    One of the big reasons commercial eggs are so unappealing these days is that the chickens that produce them are usually pumped full of antibiotics, as they typically live in close quarters, to protect them from illness and disease. This of course means there are antibiotics in the eggs, and it’s far from healthy to consume antibiotics you don’t actually need. It messes with your immune system and gut flora, which is something you definitely don’t want to do.

    So, if you’re raising your own chickens, especially if they’re free-range and get to eat lots of healthy, natural foods like grass, bugs, and organic feed, they already have a much better chance against disease! But of course, even free range hens can get sick, and preventative measures are still prudent to take. Feeding your hens powerful, but safe antibiotic herbs is a great alternative to common poultry antibiotics, and won’t effect their eggs, which means it’s safer for you too!

    Here are some wonderful herbs that are great for hens:

    Oregano: 

    Oregano can be fed to your hens in bunches, and they’ll love it fresh! It is a great natural antibiotic, for hens and humans, and you can also incorporate into their feed, or into their bedding to ward off pathogens.

    Lavender: 

    Lavender can be incorporated into your hens’ bedding to keep them clean and smelling fresh. Lavender has wonderful antibacterial properties, so it’s great for hens to eat, as well as keep their nests fresh. It also has calming properties, which can help them relax and potentially produce more eggs.

    Sage:

    Hens will love to eat fresh sage as well, and it will also help ward off pathogens. Some research has been shown sage in particular can reduce salmonella in chickens’ guts.

    Comfrey

    Comefrey is a homestead wonder plant in so many ways, but one of them is as a powerful first aid salve, which you can use on chickens as well. Since chickens can have skin issues on their feet or gloves, it can help a lot with things like this.

     

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  • The Coin in the Freezer Trick

    The Coin in the Freezer Trick

    Have you ever suffered from a long-term power outage or been evacuated from your home due to a natural disaster? In the event that nothing catastrophic ends up happening to your family, you will probably end up in a frustrating situation that many find themselves in after power has been out for a prolonged or unknown period of time:

    You don’t know how long the food in your freezer has been sitting in a freezer without power.

    So, the reason this might be relevant to homesteaders is if you are working on getting off-grid or already living this way, live in a rural area with frequent power outages or rely on unreliable sources of electricity like generators or solar panels, this could be insanely useful for times when your freezer for whatever reason loses power.

    It’s very important for food safety to be able to determine whether or not food in the freezer has completely thawed, so what you do is this:

    1. Find a small, freezer-proof container that you can keep in the freezer without taking up too much space. A small plastic Tupperware or disposable plastic cup would be perfect.
    2. Fill the container with water.
    3. Place in the freezer, and let it sit overnight, or until the water freezes completely.
    4. Place a coin on the top of the frozen water.

    How It Works: 

    This is now your handy frozenness indicator. When your freezer loses power, over time, the water (and all your food) will begin to thaw. If the power goes back on before you are able to check, the water will freeze again. So, if the coin is sitting on the top of the water when you are able to get back to your freezer, or when the power goes back on, your food has remained fully frozen and won’t be spoiled. However, if it is sitting in the bottom of the cup, the food has thawed completely and is most likely spoiled.

    This is handy even if you remain at home, because in order to keep your food frozen as long as possible in a freezer that is not receiving power, you will want to keep it closed for as long as possible.

    Freezers are wonderful modern inventions that can keep food fresh for long periods of time! It’s important to have a backup plan in case they lose the power that makes them work.

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  • How to Can Beef Soup (Video)

    How to Can Beef Soup (Video)

    I recently discovered that a really great homestead blog, Homestead Acres, has a YouTube channel that is packed with great videos on this homeschooling, homesteading family sharing their experiences on their thriving homestead.

    This is one video on a series on homesteading, and I think it’s a really useful recipe for one who is trying to build up a good stockpile for your home or homestead. What’s cool about this recipe is that you start baking broth out of beef bones, which is not only a really economical way to store calories, it’s also insanely nutritious.

    The beef soup is canned using a pressure canner, which is a bit of an investment, but well worth it if you want to seriously expand your stockpile with nutritious and caloric canned foods. Pressure canning allows you to preserve things like beans and meat, so while water bath canning, which can be done without a pressure canner, is great for fruit and vegetables, a pressure canner is what you want if you want to store protein and fat, which you’ll need for serious long-term survival or self-reliance.

    That’s why I love this recipe: it uses the very affordable base of bones and vegetables for a hearty, healthy soup that will provide serious sustenance, whether you want to produce a lot of meals in a short period of time or prepare for hard times ahead. Enjoy!

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