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Preparing Your Homestead Vehicle for Emergencies
For the average homesteader, one of the biggest and most undeniable benefits of the self-reliant lifestyle is the security of a constant, sustainable source of food and fuel, especially in our fluctuating economy. Security and preparedness around your home are incredibly important, but you could be one of many people who leave out a key location when it comes to securing yourself and your family, not just your home: the car.

Here are a few simple points to consider when building the right travel survival kit to meet your needs:
- Seating Capacity: How many people you vehicle can seat is a key factor in determining how many people to provide for in your kit. Even if you’re alone in your vehicle the majority of the time, you don’t want to have to bring along extra provisions when you have a passenger or two, and you definitely don’t want to be without provisions for them. Failing in this could mean having to share a pair of gloves or one protein bar between two or more people on a long walk into town. Plan to pack enough of each item for as many people as your vehicle can seat.
- Seasonal Gear: Keeping your kit to a manageable size is huge, especially in a compact vehicle. Help to keep unnecessary bulk out of your kit by rotating it each summer and winter. Trade winter’s packs of socks, handwarmers, and space blankets for summer’s sun protection items and extra water. Most of your kit’s contents, especially first-aid items, will remain in the kit year-round, but you should still check these at each rotation for expiration or damage.
- Identification: No matter the severity of the emergency, having clear and easy-to-find identification for everyone in the vehicle will make first responders jobs easier if you are unable to communicate when they arrive. Beyond just your driver ID, medical information such as blood type or medication allergies are crucial information. If you will be traveling with children, it’s a great idea to print this information on a label to stick on their car seat. Keeping this information on an index card in the glove box is another good option.
Even if you only make a trip into town once a week, once a month, or only travel a few times each year, it behooves you not to overlook your vehicle as part of the homestead and equip it for disaster preparedness. Just as you’d perform regular maintenance to keep your car or truck in good working order, you should see to it that it is stocked with a good emergency kit to be prepared for any roadside emergency situation.

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January 27, 2017
How To Convert the Homesteading Skeptics In Your Life

Have you ever gotten a confused stare in response to mentioning your homesteader lifestyle? Maybe even a disapproving scoff or an insult? You’re definitely not alone. While the revival of the homestead lifestyle is definitely gaining steam, the minds of many people in our modern world boggle at the thought of working toward self-reliance and living off the land.

For those of us still attached in one way or another to contemporary society via work, church, or family, justifying something even as small as keeping a compost heap or a dozen chickens is a source of constant frustration.

My advice? Stop trying to justify your choices. Stop explaining yourself to people who don’t understand. Keep your chin up each time you’re the butt of a joke. You have value independent of anyone’s opinion, and as a homesteader, you can wear the proud title of a producer, rather than just a consumer.

Rather than blowing hot air in yet another futile attempt to convince your friends and relatives of the merits of homesteading, here’s my simple solution:

Feed them!

Bring your skeptical in-laws a dozen eggs and a few fresh tomatoes. The next time your cynical coworker takes a sick day, bring him some immune system-boosting homemade kefir or kvass. Be sure to bring a growler of home-brewed beer or a bottle of sweet dandelion wine to the next holiday get-together.

Rather than explain all the ideological reasons to homestead or get frustrated with the skeptics in your life, share the fruits of your labor, literally! A slice of fresh, authentic sourdough bread with a smear of raw butter will go a lot further to convince someone than a red-faced tirade on the virtues of the self-sustaining lifestyle.

You never know; they just might ask you for some spare sourdough starter someday and start their own homesteading adventure.

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January 27, 2017
Common Mistakes When Going Off-Grid

Getting off-grid and energy independent is really appealing, but can also be pretty intimidating. It’s hard to know where to start when you’ve lived your whole life reliant upon a municipal grid, and as I wrote recently about homesteading in general, it’s OK to make mistakes.

But, you can always learn from the mistakes of others! There are common mistakes a lot of people make when first getting off the grid, and here are some of those mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. Aiming too high

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have goals and aim for the sky. However, when you’re thinking about going off the grid, don’t expect to have satellite TV, a dishwasher, run a crock pot, a video game console, curling iron, etc. all at once. When you get off-grid, you will have to scale down your life…drastically.

2. Wasting energy

This is obviously a broad category of mistakes, and there are many ways in which you can waste energy. Running a gas generator to watch a movie might be a good example, or using solar power to use a light during the day when natural light would work fine. You’ll need to conserve and constantly think about the most efficient way to use your resources.

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3. Buying gimmicky products

There are a ton of products out there to generate electricity off-grid, and some are really great, while others are probably a waste of your money. A lot of small solar products to charge small devices, for example, just straight don’t work unless there is direct sunlight on them for several hours at a time, so they could fail frequently. Do your research, read reviews, and again…

4. Failure to Prioritize

As mentioned in #1, you will need to take a cold, hard look at what you really need electricity for. We are accustomed to so many gadgets and gizmos these days, we don’t even think about how much we require electricity for the simplest of tasks. You will have to seriously reassess how much you really need an electric coffee maker or if you can make it in a percolator, if you really need a food processor or if you can mix things by hand, if you really need lights in every room or if you can use a lantern, etc.

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January 26, 2017
How to Secure Food When Your Garden Fails

Gardening is the first place to start if you’d like to be more food-independent on your homestead, and for good reason! There’s nothing quite as satisfying, healthy, and cost-effective as growing your own food. But, sometimes crops fail, or your garden doesn’t produce as much as you want.

It’s always important to have a plan B, especially when it comes to food, as well as supplementary and alternative options for food. If your homestead is for the purpose of being totally self-sustainable or prepared for when SHTF, you’ll need to make sure you have multiple sources of food beyond your garden.

Here are some options for food sources to plan on when your garden fails:

Learn to forage

Know what grows wild on your homestead and in your area, where to find it, and when it grows. Keep careful record of this, either in a notebook or with pictures (physical records are probably best as you never know when electronics won’t be reliable, but there’s a good chance it will correlate with a situation in which you’ll need extra food!). You’d be surprised how many edible foods there are out there, and even before you you’re in need you might greatly benefit from learning what you can forage!

Store food

As with so many topics on this blog, we will always recommend learning to can, ferment, and dry your food to preserve it for the long-term. Invest in a root cellar if you can, and when your garden is fruitful, preserve everything you can. Always try to have more food than you need!

Raise animals

Raising animals should really go hand-in-hand with gardening if you want to be food independent on your homestead. It’s also a great way to have an alternate food source if your crops fail, since the same conditions that might cause a small harvest from your garden might not necessarily affect your animals. Plus, they reproduce on their own, no replanting needed! (Although you’ll probably need to learn a bit about birthing livestock if you want to rely on this).

Learn to hunt

Like foraging, it’s very important to know what sources of food are available in your area, and hunting is crucial. Equip yourself with some weapons and learn to hunt now, so you’ll be prepared when you need it as a reliable source of food. Invest in a deep freezer so you can store whatever you get. This is nearly 100% free meat, so it’s an excellent way to stock up.

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January 26, 2017
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 kale and spread out, to make sure there are no clumps of dirt in between the leaves in the bunches.

2. Prepare your kale wash: mix a few tablespoons of vinegar in a big bowl of water or a full sink.

3. Wash all your kale leaves thoroughly by plunging into the wash and agitating around. This will remove both dirt and microbes.

4. Rinse thoroughly under cold water, inspecting each leaf for dirt.

5. Now, rib the kale, and, if you want, keep the ribs to add to stock or broth and freeze on their own.

6. Chop the kale leaves up roughly and pack into zip lock bags. Or, if you want, you can make individual smoothie packs by adding fresh fruit and a handful of chopped kale leaves to a sandwich bag. Doing this will make your morning green smoothie super simple to make!

7. If you’re freezing the kale by itself, just fill up a bag with just enough to still lay it flat, squeeze out the air, and lay in your freezer. You can stack the bags on top of each other so that they’ll freeze flat, which will make them easier to organize in the freezer.

That’s it! You’ll enjoy having kale to add to dishes or smoothies throughout the winter or whenever you don’t have fresh greens in the house.

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January 25, 2017
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 time for you to plant, but low and behold, once your seedlings are outgrowing their pots, the ground is still frozen and not ready for planting.

Fortunately, there is a quick and easy way to thaw out the ground in time for planting. You’ll still need a little bit of foresight for this to work for you, as it will take about 3-5 days, so try to think ahead.

What you need

All you need for this is some black (this is important, it will need to absorb the heat of the sun) plastic sheeting, some bricks or cinder blocks, both available at your local hardware or garden supply store, and again, a little bit of foresight. About a week before you definitely need to plant, you’ll want to get your thawing operation started.

What to do

1. Take your plastic sheeting and spread it out over your beds.

2. Weigh down at each end and in the middle if needed with the bricks or cinder blocks. You’re going to need the plastic sheeting to stay firmly in place for up to five days. This is why a heavy, thick black plastic is ideal.

3. Now you wait. The idea is that the sun will beat down on the black plastic and it will absorb the heat and thaw out the ground. Check daily to see how it’s progressing. When you can dig down easily into the dirt and don’t find any more frozen ground, you’re good to go!

Happy planting!

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January 25, 2017
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 hardiness, etc.

Getting an idea for what kinds of breeds are available and which ones might best suit your needs is a great place to start when considering starting chickens. Hope this helps you navigate the wide world of poultry farming! Enjoy.

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January 25, 2017
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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January 24, 2017