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Coconut Oil Candy Recipe

In case you have been living under a rock, coconut oil has soared in popularity in recent years for being an insanely healthy superfood. Regular consumption of coconut oil will provide a multitude of benefits, including: Reducing wrinkles and sagging skin Fighting fungus and bacterial infections Supporting the pancreas, liver and kidneys Preventing Alzheimer’s Easing digestion Improving bone health Maintains healthy blood sugar Reduces cholesterol The problem is, most people won’t feel like swallowing a spoonful of coconut oil daily. It is, of course, easy to incorporate into your diet by cooking with it or putting in smoothies, but if […]

Homemade Dish Soap Recipe

I love to DIY everything, but dish soap is something I’ve had trouble with in the past. It always streaks on dishes, doesn’t lather, or leaves a horrible film that’s difficult to remove. However, I really hate buying dish soap from the store, because if it’s not super expensive, it usually contains harmful chemicals. Even the supposedly natural and eco-friendly brands like Seventh Generation still contain sodium lauryl sulfate, which is something I try to avoid, if I can. However, I found this recipe recently and really liked it! The key ingredient is Sal’s Suds, which is a Dr. Bronner’s product. […]

Natural Oven Cleaner (Video)

Oven cleaners are some of the most disgusting and toxic kinds of cleaning products out there, but cleaning an oven can be a real drag. The high heat of the oven bakes in all kinds of grime and grease, and since it’s not a surface in the kitchen that we regularly use, it tends to get neglected for months, possibly even years. There are a few different options for natural oven cleaning, but this is one of my favorites, and the video will be quite motivating. If you browse Pinterest or housekeeping blogs, everyone seems to have their own version […]

DIY Salt Cured Fish (Video)

I recently posted a video about curing bacon, because I love cured meats of all time (and who doesn’t love bacon?). Curing meat seems to be a great homestead skill to have, wherever you live! However, curing fish is new to me, and this video explains how. It seems like a really cool process, using pickling salt, the sun, and a wood oven to cure and dry the fish. Seeing projects like this always motivates me to learn new ways to preserve food and add to my stockpile. Check it out: If you liked this, you might also enjoy… Become […]

Tips for Installing PVC for Irrigation

In ground irrigation can make a real difference for your lawn and garden, saving you time in water, and time and energy in failed crops due to your not watering. But installing PVC doesn’t always come without headaches, and for those that have never done it, it can be intimidating. It can also be expensive to hire someone to do. Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you are thinking of installing PVC in your lawn or garden for irrigation. Spray paint, or otherwise mark out where you are going to lay your PVC so […]

Getting the Garden Ready for Spring Now

Just because you don’t have a garden, or if yours is covered in snow and not producing, doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do now to get ready for next season. Getting ready now will help you start early and thereby increase the length of your growing season and with it, the amount of food you are able to produce next year. Here are a few things you can do now to be ready early for next spring. Start shopping now for deals on spring crop seeds. The longer you wait, the more uniformity you will see in rising […]

How to Preserve Flour for Up to Five Years (Instructions and Video)

Did you know there’s such a thing as canning flour? Neither did I, but I recently came across a video with instructions on how to do it. I’ve dealt with both weevils and pantry moths in the past, so I was pretty intrigued by this method, and it definitely seems like a surefire way to store flour for a long time. It’s not really as complicated as canning other types of food, but it follows the same principles. Here is what you need: Supplies: Flour that you want to preserve Half-gallon canning jars and lids Canning funnel (very useful, but optional) Paper […]

Canning Stone Fruits (Infographic)

I have always been fascinated by canning, and I’d love to do more of it myself. It always seems kind of intimidating, but it’s really not too complicated, and this handy infographic from SurvivalLife.com breaks canning stone fruits down into simple steps. Stone fruits are some of the easiest items to can, and the steps taken in this guide can be followed with a $10 canning kit from Walmart or any grocery store. Cherries, plums, apricots, and peaches, make great preserves, from jams and jellies to easy pie fillings. I think my favorite thing about canning is how long preserves last, up […]

Never Buy Fertilizer Again

It’s not just a clickbait title, with a few easy steps you can have nutrient rich soil forever, and never need to buy fertilizer again. How? Grow comfrey. Comfrey is beneficial it is borderline supernatural. As a dynamic accumulator comfrey gathers nutrients from where other plants cannot and transfers these nutrients to its leaves. These leaves can then be used in the place of store bought fertilizers with amazing results. Not only is comfrey an amazing alternative to expensive fertilizers, but it is also incredibly easy to grow, propagate, and use to enrich your soil, here’s how. Purchase some […]

3 Ways to Purify Water

If you are homesteading or in a survival situation, water will always be your primary need. If you have a source for fresh water on your homestead, that’s a huge advantage, but you also might need to purify the water. Whether you are collecting water from a stream, spring, rainwater, or what have you, it’s important to be able to make the water drinkable using one of many possible purification methods. Here are a few of the easiest and most popular purification methods for your consideration: Boiling By far the easiest way to purify water, it is not always the […]

How to Freeze Lemons (Video)

I saw this on Pinterest recently and I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. Freeze lemons, OK, so what? Well, it turns out that lemons contain unique compounds called “lemonoids” which do serious battle against cancerous tumor, particularly from breast cancer. Lemon peels are packed with vitamins, way more than the actual lemon juice. Aside from being amazing cancer-fighting nutrient sources, they also help to detox the whole body from health issues like worms, parasites, fungi, and bacteria, which can be responsible for a multitude of overlying health issues and are not often addressed by modern medicine. […]

Crops to Get Kids Excited About Gardening

Gardening can be fun for kids, though it requires more patients than most kids can muster up. Getting them started with an interest in gardening at a young age will increase their likelihood of eating healthy and continuing gardening as they grow older. Gardening can get kids off the couch and outside where they belong, learning about the world around them, and how they can relate to it in a beneficial way, both for them and the natural environment. Here are a few crops that are more likely than others to get kids excited about gardening. Stevia Stevia seeds […]

Beer for the Garden

Beer isn’t just great for the gardener after a hard day’s work, it’s also great for the health of your garden. One way to put this beverage to work for you is to use it to attract and to kill slugs that can damage your crops and even spread disease. Here’s how to use household items and little extra beer to keep your garden healthy and productive. You will need a small tin, like a tuna can or a cat food container, a large plastic bottle, and some beer. Empty and clean the tin. You don’t want to try to […]

30 Non-Food Items to Hoard

Yesterday I wrote about 30 items to purge in the New Year for a clutter-free homestead, and one of the purposes for purging is to make room for hoarded items that you do need! So here is a list of important non-food items to hoard in the New Year. Keeping with the trend of that article, it’s important to make sure you have a clean and orderly way to store these items. Keep them dry, organized in categories, and regularly go through your stash to make sure everything is in working order, not expired, and will still be useful to you. It’s […]

How to Build An Off-Grid Winter Cabin for $300 (Video)

YouTubers and homesteaders Pure Living for Life shared this video last year on how they built an off-grid winter cabin for a few hundred dollars. They had been living in their RV on their property, but as temperatures started to drop they felt they needed something warmer and more secure, and a structure to put their wood stove in. What’s really cool about this structure is that they built it using reclaimed materials. They bartered for the materials in their local community, and as the leftover materials came in, they figured out how to build with what they had, which […]

30 Items to Purge in the New Year for a Clutter-Free Homestead

For homesteaders, there’s a lot of things that are great to hoard and keep a good stock of. However, like any household, there are also often things that pile up and just create clutter and mess. If you’d like to keep a well-ordered homestead with plenty of room for a good stash of supplies, it’s important to purge as well. Also, if you live off-grid or in a semi-wilderness setting, clutter can attract pests and bugs that you might want to deter, so reducing clutter can have a lot of benefits there as well. Since it’s a New Year, if […]

Housekeeping Tips from the Plain Folk

I have always been fascinated by the Amish and Mennonites. When I think of the way they keep their land, houses, families, and communities, it always makes me wonder what has gone so horribly wrong with modern life that millennials are taking college courses on “adulting” and most women these days learn to keep house from Pinterest. Obviously, the way the Amish and Mennonites work the land is awesome, using old-school, pre-industrial methods to be totally self-reliant and self-sustainable. A lot of this has to do with their strong, tight-knit communities and iron-clad social orders, which there is certainly something […]

Guerrilla Gardening

Anyone that grew up a Duke Boys fan knows that sometimes making your way the only way you know how can be more than the law allows. This doesn’t just apply to reckless driving and moonshining though, this can apply to growing beans and tomatoes or raising chickens. All over the country and even the world, laws limit or completely outlaw basic human rights involving taking an active role in your personal food production. If you live in an area where this is the case, there might be something you can do, short of an armed revolt, that can […]

Curing Bacon, Step by Step (Video)

Who doesn’t love bacon? One thing I love even more than bacon is seeing processes like curing meat, so this video was fascinating to me. One of my favorite YouTubers, Down South Homestead, wanted to show their viewers how they cure their own bacon. I’ve always wondered what the exact process would look like since I love cured meats of all kinds. They take you through each step of prepping the meat, preparing the cure, how the cure draws the moisture out, drying it, smoking it, etc. If you’re not hungry by the end of this video, there’s probably something […]

Kohlrabi

Kohlrabi is a cold hardy vegetable in the cabbage family. There are both purple and green varieties, both produce edible leaves similar to collard greens that can be eaten raw or cooked and a bulb that can be eaten raw. The bulb grows above the ground and has a skin that should be removed prior to eating. It is a nice addition to salads, some compare its taste to an apple, though I have never grown any that taste as good as an apple myself. Here are some tips on growing kohlrabi in your garden. Plant kohlrabi in the […]