When I first arrived in France, I landed on a 40-acre property with a historic Castle slowly crumbling down, along with five smaller buildings in dismay on the forested land.

So when we packed up our home to head a few kilometers away to our new dream property where we planned to set up our permanent homestead, we thought the renovation of this 17th-century farmhouse and preparation of land would be a piece of cake.

But we soon faced the untold truth: many owners of old homes shy from sharing with admirers – renovating an old house is tough work!

Pulling from our experience, here is what you can expect when renovating an old farm.

What Lies Beneath

When renovating any constructions that are 100+ years old, it is very, very likely that you will be tasked with ridding the home of asbestos and lead. These two things are located and recognized through a thorough diagnostic. But just because you know where it is, does not make them easy to take out.

Given the age of the buildings on the property, it’s almost guaranteed that you will find asbestos and lead beneath the layers of paint and paneling. For the most part, asbestos that may be present in the home would be around old piping or electricity panels that you will replace anyways, but the removal can be costly.

Some people are willing to take on asbestos removal as a DIY project, but I am not one of them. I much prefer to pay a professional to properly extract and dispose of it to ensure the health and well-being of my family.

Related: What I’ve Learned Homesteading With My Family of 8

Lead, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. When renovating an old home, many of us would like to uncover the original aesthetic of the house and put in the work of uncovering layers of paneling and paint that likely have been added on throughout the years.

Getting to the natural state of walls, doorways, and fixtures can be like peeling an onion and requires some muscle. Many layers of paint will likely have lead in them, making the process of stripping the paint a dangerous one. So it’s crucial to have the proper equipment for this, keep the room well ventilated and opt for using a chemical stripper to get the job done.

For old doors and moldings, it’s worth considering dismantling them and having them professionally dipped and stripped of the paint.

The surprises beneath the surface can be found outside too!

At our first attempt at turning the soil to prepare our garden, we found the ground much rockier than we had initially thought, making it unlikely to grow our usual range of crops successfully. We were then forced with the unforeseen task of creating elevated garden beds.

It Will Take More Time and Work Than You Thought

Building, arranging, and filling garden beds may not seem like a great deal of work, but it’s just another unexpected task requiring more time (and resources) to take care of.

Just as we would often do at the castle, we would set a date for when we would have the work done on a renovation. This is fine to do when building a new construction, but when working with old structures, you are bound to be thrown a few curveballs along the way. This makes it hard to get things done within a set timeframe.

And these curveballs mean that you now have more work than you thought!

For example, from our experience, simple carpentry work, like adding a new beam to reinforce a floor, exposes loose stonework or rotten wood underneath old cement patching. Now you have another project to tend to before moving forward with your original plans.

Related: 5 Mistakes To Avoid On Your Property

It Will Cost More Than You Think

Regardless of the amount of work we do ourselves for renovations and the clever sourcing of free or cheaply priced reused materials, renovation has always cost us more than expected.

If you want a realistic idea of how much the renovation of an old home will cost, take your initial estimate and increase it by 30%, just to be safe.

At both the castle and now on the farm, we ran into a few projects that we were sure we would be able to take on ourselves, only to later call in outside help simply due to a lack of needed tools/materials or, quite simply, proper know-how.

When lacking the know-how, we take great pleasure in learning from those who do these tasks as a profession, making us more at ease to take on similar issues if they are to arise in the future.

Some of the projects we called in help for included creating an opening in a stone wall and a piping system to bring well water into the home.

Our goal is to be 100% self-sufficient, but we have learned over the past several years of renovation work to old properties that there is power in knowing when to call in help. I much rather call in someone to help with more significant structural issues than to do it myself and need to readdress it within a few years and take away from the work we did in conjunction with the issue at hand.

It Will Not Be Perfect

This is different from what anyone wants to hear, but even with passion and dedication, your renovation will not be perfect – at least not at the start of your homestead life.

You will find that you will finish most of your renovation and feel content with the work done, but there’s always going to be something that you want to do differently, or yet another part of the property that needs fixing up.

That’s normal! A farm, let alone any large, old property, always has something that needs tending to!

So perhaps reaching the point where you consider your property to be in perfect state will never come, but indeed over time, you’ll find that it is nearly there.

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The post The Untold Truth About Renovating An Old Farm first appeared on Self Sufficient Projects.

But come the last week of January, the focus returns to the property and everything we must do before March.

The general maintenance of our property is a commitment, and it’s easier to do when we take the time to map out our property needs for the months ahead. Naturally, we will likely be forced to address unforeseen repairs and the like throughout the year, but knowing how and when we will care for other necessities helps ease life on the homestead.

So come January, we map our needs for home improvement, construction, or materials we must source. But the task that is always a top priority is the planning and preparation of our garden. Our garden provides us with a bulk of the fruit, vegetables, and herbs we consume, and we must put in work to keep it so.

Before March rolls around, these are the things that we work to check off of our “Garden To-Do” list:

Choose What To Grow For The Year

We get the most out of our garden when we establish what we would like to grow throughout the year. We generally make this decision by the third or fourth week of January. Our garden space is reserved for what we eat the most – we don’t waste space on crops we may grow tired of.

For Spring, we always have fresh herbs, radishes, asparagus, fava beans, cabbage, red onion, beets, new potatoes, ramps, cherries, and green peas.

In the summer we love endless access to zucchini, eggplant, bell and chili peppers, green beans, figs, peaches, and tomatoes.

Come fall, household favorites include sugar pumpkins, butternut squash, turnips, broccoli, celery, cauliflower pears, and apples.

And in the Winter many of our dishes include leeks, sweet potato, and spinach.

Start Seedlings / Sprout Bulbs and Rhizomes

To get a head start on the growing season, I love to start seedlings indoors by mid-January. I use a very makeshift “greenhouse” system by all of the windows on the first floor of our house to achieve this. All the plants are grouped based on their specific needs, based on temperature, light/moisture, and the amount of time generally needed for germination.

This makes for easy care. Just imagine changing the water for dozens and rhizoids – the time goes by faster when you concentrate on one spot. To get seedlings started, I use egg cartons to sprout most seeds and old jars for rhizomes and bulbs.

Related: How To Harvest Seeds From Plants You Are Already Growing

Prepare the Garden Beds

I’m the first to admit that my garden upkeep falls by the way-side come late November. My winter veg, like Swiss Chard and leeks, are fiercely independent and don’t need constant maintenance or protection.

But come mid-February, the garden is a mess and in need of attention. So before I put down any of our seedlings, I must prepare the garden beds.

After cleaning the garden beds of dead leaves and twigs accumulated throughout the winter, I test the PH of my soil. The necessity of testing the PH of your soil is a big debate in the gardening circle. But as I tend to let organic matter fall and rest on top of the garden beds, there is always the possibility that there can be an imbalance in the soil’s PH, and if it is off, I won’t be able to see much fruit from my labor, so I consider it worth the small effort.

Next, I aerate the soil and mix in a new layer of compost.

I also use this time as an opportunity to plan the layout of the garden. It’s important to rotate crops in their garden bed and pair them with neighboring crops that will help each other to thrive. Once the new spots are chosen, I install any supports that my spring crops may need, such as stakes or trellis’.

Related: How to Prepare Your Soil For Your Spring Garden

Tend to the Trees

I care about the well-being of the trees on our homestead, and we are sure to tend to them at various moments of the year. Before March rolls around, our trees are carefully pruned and trimmed. Doing this during the tree’s dormant period allows for them to heal quickly, making them less susceptible to disease.

As we like to have fresh greens throughout the year, it’s especially important that we give the trees surrounding a portion of the garden beds a good prune so that they grow in a healthy canopy. The shade they provide helps us to avoid having scorched greens in intense summer heat.

Planting Crops

We all know that it is best to plant our crops after the last freeze, but over the past few years, we have had very mild winter weather in late February and March, with a freezing period in April. This complicates the “Last Freeze” timing, as we are unsure when the last freeze will be.

I begin planting some sturdier seedlings and cold-resistant crops the first week of March. By this time, a majority of my seedlings are between 6-8 weeks old, which most gardening manuals tell you would make them ready for planting. I determine whether the seedlings are ready for planting based on the thickness of their stem and the number of leaves present. If the seedling has a sturdy stem and two healthy, grown-in leaves, I consider them ready for planting.

Once my seedlings are in the ground, I mulch the area and strategically place an almost excessive amount of DIY natural slug traps around them (the slugs in our area are relentless).

Throughout The Rest of The Year

Once the weather begins warming up, we transfer seedlings that need more time to develop into a portable greenhouse outside.

This is also where we germinate and grow new seedlings for late spring and summer planting.

Taking the time to plan and begin preparing your garden before March is a surefire way to ensure a year full of harvest without last-minute races against mother nature and the headache.

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When we first introduced chickens to our homestead, we mistakingly put our free-range hens near our vegetable garden. That summer, the clucky ladies had more courgette and tomato than we could collect for ourselves. We have since created a more significant divide between our usual chicken coop placements and our garden. We did not want to leave the hens in a barely open and flat field, so we introduced a variety of plants that grow abundantly. The plants we chose are all chicken friendly, and we are happy to share them with our girls. So here’s a list of some of the chicken-friendly plants we introduced.

Calendula

Calendula is one of my personal favorite super plants, and it is a favorite of our chickens as well. The beautifully fragrant Calendula is easy to grow and adds a beautiful pop of color to your fields.

We use calendula in many ways, including in herbal tea blends and to make salves that we can use on ourselves and our animals. We dry a large amount of calendula to mix into the chicken feed during the winter. They are nutrient-dense and give egg yolks a beautiful orange color. Get your Calendula seeds from here.

Climbing Roses

We seem to keep adding more climbing roses to our property every year. We placed climbing roses near the chicken coop, which provides excellent shade for the chickens during the hot summer months. We pull off the petals as they dry and add them to the mix of wintertime chicken feed. The girls love the petals but, luckily, they do not pick away at them until dry.

Related: Why You Should Raise Ducks Instead Of Chickens

Dill

Dill is rich in phosphorus and magnesium, which helps to maintain bone health in chickens. It is also rich in calcium, an essential mineral needed for hens to lay healthy eggs. Dill is also known to promote respiratory health in chickens. Dried dill makes an excellent addition to wintertime chicken feed.

Wormwood

We have several species of wormwood growing in our fields. The silvery foliage of the wormwood plants reflects the sun and helps to create cool, shaded areas for the chickens during the hot summer months. The chickens will pick at wormwood from time to time. Wormwood is great at helping to cleanse internal parasites that chickens may carry, such as worms. Cut-up Wormwood also makes a great addition to the hen’s nesting boxes as it helps to ward off mites and other insects.

Our main problem with Wormwood is that even though it is part of a big family with many varieties (most of which are medicinal) as we mentioned above, it also has a poisonous lookalike – for both animals and humans. If not treated immediately (luckily, with another plant that manages to flush out the toxins), it could lead to serious symptoms and even be fatal. Here’s what it is and how you can tell it apart from Wormwood.

Lavender

We all love lavender for its lovely aroma and the calming effect it has on our minds and body. Chickens love lavender for the same reasons! Lavender helps to reduce anxiety in the easily frightened animals and increases blood circulation. Dried lavender flowers are great to place inside the chicken coop to aid in creating a calming environment for the hens and help to keep insects out.

Basil

Basil is a nutrient-dense plant that will help keep your chickens in good health. Basil aids the production of healthy mucus membranes and is also known to help maintain a healthy respiratory system. Like many other plants on this list, dried basil is a great plant to add to your chicken’s winter feed.

Sage

Much like wormwood, sage is great for the intestinal health of your chickens. Sage will help to ward off intestinal fungi and is said to do the same for salmonella. Many chicken owners are known to add sage to the chicken’s water to promote intestinal health. Dried sage also makes for a special treat for your chickens.

Rosemary

The strong fragrance of rosemary will help to ward off insects, making it another plant that’s great to mix up in the bedding and nests of your chicken coops. Rosemary also promotes a healthy respiratory system and is known to provide pain relief.

Related: Ingenious Ideas For Taking Care Of Your Chickens

Mint

We love growing and using mint in various ways, and since chickens do not care much for mint, we always have a ton of it. Chickens may pick at the mint from time to time, but there are so many other plants around that they prefer. Like other plants on this list, mint is great to add inside and around the coop to keep insects away. Get your Mint seeds from here.

Amaranth

Chickens love nutrient-dense amaranth. This plant creates beautiful large veined foliage with bushy red-hued tails, making a great and colorful addition to any property. Although chickens can eat all parts of this plant, they particularly enjoy the leaves. Amaranth grains are fantastic chicken feed for not only winter but year-round. However, the grains should always be sufficiently dried or heat treated before giving to chickens as daily feed.

Parsley

Parsley is a powerhouse of a plant to keep around your chickens. It is rich in vitamins and promotes a healthy circulatory system in your girls. Parsley is rich in vitamins A, B, C, E, and K. These four vitamins help encourage blood vessel development which can help stimulate laying. Parsley may help you get from 7 eggs a week per chicken to somewhere between 10-12 eggs per week.

Wild Garlic

We have been fortunate enough to have a property that gives an abundance of wild garlic every year. Fortunately for other homesteaders, Wild Garlic is easy to grow in moist, shaded areas and absolutely safe for your chickens. Wild garlic helps ward off ailments and supports your chicken’s immune system.

Not everyone has a sufficient amount of space to have free-range chickens, and this is perfectly fine. However, your girls deserve to have a chicken run that gives them access to healthy and delicious plants! And while you are at it, why not add a few plants to create a beautiful space from your generous ladies?! These are just some plants that can help create a space where both humans and chickens can profit.

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Just as there are things to look for or to avoid when buying a property, there are Dos and Don’ts to buying livestock. There’s much more to buying and keeping livestock than simply making the purchase. Many things must be considered before bringing a new animal home: the amount of space an animal requires, transportation, veterinary care, budget.

Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts to buying livestock to help get you off on the right foot.

Do Know The Animal’s History

Similar to when you are bringing home or adopting a family pet, (or buying a used car) it’s essential to know an animal’s history before bringing them to your land.

There is a long list of questions to ask, such as: when was the animal born? What vaccinations have they received and when? Have they been given any medications in the past (particularly important question if the livestock is meant to provide meat)? Does the animal have a history of illness?

Knowing the animal’s history is going to guide you on how to care for this animal and the others who will be living alongside them.

Related: 7 Domestic Animals That Are Too Easy To Raise

Don’t Assume That You Have Room For Everyone

Animals need space. Some need much more space than others.

Before buying livestock be sure that you are understanding just how much space each individual animal will need for a healthy and just life on your land. In addition to the amount of space each individual animal requires, you must also factor in the space needed to provide shelters for these animals.

For reference, a cow requires one acre of land for grazing and ideally will require an additional acre to graze to allow their usual space some time to recover. The average small-scale farm or homesteader keeps three cows, so you will be in need of six acres in total for said three cows (or only three acres if you have a friend or neighbor who has land that your cows can graze).

Goats and sheep require two hundred square feet each, and just like cows, they should have an additional field to graze to allow time for their primary field to recover.

Do Keep Livestock That Is Of Use To You

It’s hard to fight the urge to start a small farm as soon as you acquire a new property, but animals should be acquired slowly. Whatmore, you should only acquire livestock that will be of use to you.

Animals of any kind are a great responsibility. They must be well cared for and looked after closely, and can become particularly taxing on new homesteaders. Introduce animals that you are in need of. Once routines are established and everything feels like smooth sailing, it may be time to consider bringing in the animals that weren’t urgent to have on hand at the start.

Start with animals that will bring the most benefit to you. Are you raising some cattle for meat? Are you going to be making goat cheese as your main protein source?

Ask yourself what animal is essential, and start with them before adding others.

Related: Chickens

Don’t Mix Your Livestock Straight Away

All new animals need time to get acquainted with their new environment. Being brought into a new home causes much stress and anxiety on your livestock and this can cause them to act out towards other animals, or even yourself. Not to mention, not all animals can live harmoniously together in a field, so even more precautions should be taken when mixing different species of animals together.

For this reason, it is important that all newly acquired animals are quarantined for a minimum of twenty-one days. During this Twenty-one day period, newcomers should be kept away from other animals. If this is impossible for you to do, it’s important to try to keep as much physical distance between the animals as possible, especially nose-to-nose contact (feeding and watering). Observe your new livestock for any stress or illness during this period.

Farm animals that can be successfully raised together are ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats) and mixed poultry, and pigs get along lovingly with poultry. Really, poultry are the easy ones.

Do Create A Budget For Keeping Your Livestock

Keeping animals does come at a cost. From feed to transportation and veterinary care, you can expect to be spending money on your animals.

Before buying animals, set a budget destined to rearing livestock and purchase your animals according to that budget. When creating a budget, take into consideration veterinary visits and vaccinations, feed, building shelter and upkeeping the shelter, the cost for slaughter, the cost for removal in case of death, etc.

Don’t Think You Can Go Without A Veterinarian

There will be moments when your animals will need to be seen by a veterinarian.

When livingin rural farming communities, you will find veterinarians who specialize in livestock and will make visits to your land to care for your animals when needed. In addition to extraordinary visits, your animals will need to be seen by veterinarians for their yearly check-ups (some animals, such as donkeys, require more frequent check-ups).

Just as for us humans, it’s beneficial to find a doctor for your livestock that will become your go-to for all visits. The animals will find comfort in being cared for by a familiar face, and your vet will be well acquainted with your livestock, allowing for more efficient care.

But most importantly, remember that animals do get sick, and they can make other animals sick as well. The health of your livestock is an utmost priority and you should seek a professional to help keep them in the best health possible.

Although it does happen to all of us homesteaders from time to time, the death of one of your livestock is utterly disappointing, try to avoid this from happening by having proper veterinary care from the start.

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A coup de cœur has everything you wanted and more: perfect view. A quaint barn out in the field. A stone garden-side cottage. Frankly, these properties have everything these owners want and think they need and are readily searching for a pen to officially put in their offer. But the reality is that there are many more things to consider when buying a new property.

So put on the brakes, and look over these examples of Do’s and Dont’s when buying land.

Do Consider Building Your Own Home On Your Land

It is very well possible that you have fallen upon a dream property that includes a beautiful old house to make your home. Old homes generally need a lot of work to renovate and bring up to date.

And not just aesthetically, a lot of work goes in to improving the overall health of the home (and eliminating health risks to you!). Badly deteriorated beams from woodrot or termites, ridding the home of asbestos, custom double pane windows for now deemed unconventional shapes and sizes, and new roofing are the most common projects that come along with old homes.

Although a couple of them can be manageable, a complete overhaul tends to be much more costly than expected.

Building your own home can be a great option for those who find themselves in this situation. Surprising to most people, it is an option that can come in at a much better value than renovating an old home.

Don’t Forego Land Environmental Tests

Your big plans for your fruit tree orchard, or your dream potager can become a never ending nightmare if your soil is not suitable for agriculture. When considering to purchase a new property, it is essential to conduct environmental tests to be clear of the state of your soil, air, and water.

Not only are having these environmental tests done important for your own personal health and plans for your property, but as the land owner, you are made legally responsible for the hazard your property may cause to the environment.

Before signing anything, be sure your environment is healthy or can be rehabilitated to reach optimum health without much of a fight.

Related: How You Can Find Out If Your Homestead Water Is Polluted Or Clean

Do Consider The Value Of Homes In The Area

Although you may be planning to build your forever home on your soon to be acquired land, there’s always a chance that somewhere down the line, you will want to list your property for sale.

It is important to consider the value of the homes in the surrounding area and refrain from exceeding the average value by much more. If you purchase a property where the surrounding homes are worth only $100,000 and you spend $400,000 on your own, you run the risk of not finding a buyer for your land. Or have the land listed for sale for several years before receiving an offer.

Don’t Disclose Your Plans To Neighbors

This piece of advice certainly does not sound neighborly, but it’s best to keep to yourself about your plans for your new land.

It’s very possible that the land you are purchasing has been sitting vacant for years. Your new neighbors may not be very warm to the idea that their surroundings are about to change. A new structure in sight from their windows, animals near by that weren’t there before, etc.

Don’t be fooled and think that you’re neighbors won’t go out of their way to try to throw a fork in your plans if they don’t like the sound of it.

Related: How To Live Next To A Neighbor Who Doesn’t Share Your Political Views

Do Check Local Land Zoning Regulations

Many of us looking to become homesteaders plan to make an income off of our land. But depending on how your property is zoned, your plans may not be legally feasible.

Zoning laws regulate what the land can and can’t be used for. It’s for this reason that you should have a clear idea of what you want out of your land and be sure the land you have your eyes set on allows for it. If your working with a realtor, they will be able to access this information for you quickly. Otherwise, zoning regulations for the property will be available at your city/town hall.

Don’t Be Surprised By Hidden Costs

Creating and keeping to a budget is essential for buying new land to make your home. But you can be sure that a few unexpected costs will pop up along the way.

One hidden flaw can reveal a slew of other things that must be tended to. For this reason, it is important to budget for the costs you know will need to be covered and keep a reserve for the costs that seem to come out nowhere.

Do Work With A Realtor

It’s becoming more and more common to forego using a realtor for purchasing a home and buy from owners directly. However, there is much advantage to using a realtor in your search for land.

A realtor will be able to help you easily nail down the best selection of land that falls within your budget and zoning requirements. They will also be much more realistic about the budget needed for repairs or preparing your property for certain activities or transformation.

Realtors want to sell the property as much as the owners do, however, they have legal obligations to keep to when it comes to disclosures about the property (owners do as well, but are not always savvy about their obligations), and a reputation to protect to secure future business. They want to help you get exactly what you want from your land.

Buying land is a unique adventure for every soon to be property owner.

Though, undoubtedly, there are common mistakes or struggles that many who have already purchased their land have experienced, and these 7 Do’s and Don’ts can help make for a smoother ride.

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Self-sufficient living is more than often made possible through the keeping and rearing of a variety of animals that provide us with goods. These products are staples in our diets and homemade products.

However, not just any animal is a good fit for you and your property. Some animals are lovely to tend to and give much to your life as a whole. Other animals, many quickly realize, are not so necessary and are a bigger headache than you could have imagined.

Poultry

The first animals most homesteaders introduce to their properties are chickens and for great reason!

Chickens are very easy to keep, give fresh, delicious eggs daily, and are a great source of meat. And it’s worth mentioning that their free roaming throughout the property adds an air of peace and relaxation to your everyday.

But poultry goes beyond chickens. Ducks are excellent sources of meat and eggs, Geese feathers are valuable to sell or use for your own needs, and let’s not forget about the turkey and its astounding meat production. There are, of course, cons to some of these animals (looking at you, messy ducks), but poultry is by far the easiest livestock to keep with a big reward.

Fish

Farming fish for your personal consumption is not one of the first ideas most homesteaders think of when considering which livestock to add to their property. If you have a pond, keeping fish is definitely something worth looking into.

After a bit of time and energy spent on building a working ecosystem in your pond, you will have an abundant protein source in your backyard without having to put in heavy maintenance. The type of fish you keep in your pond depends greatly on your location, but Tilapia, Trout, and Catfish are all popular fish to keep for homesteaders.

Once your pond and ecosystem are in working order, enjoy lazy afternoons fishing for fresh fish in your own backyard!

Related: DIY Aquaponics

Pigs

Pigs are some of the best livestock to keep due to their feed-to-meat conversion ratios and their easy, laid-back nature.

Compared to other medium-sized livestock, pigs require much less space as they are not extremely active animals. And unlike what most people think of pigs, they are actually quite clean!

The biggest con about keeping pigs is the volume of fodder needed to keep them well-fed. Keeping up with a pig’s appetite is an expense not always considered before bringing your piglets home. If you have the space on your property, free-roaming pigs will help to cut the expense of fodder, as they are expert foragers.

Goats

Goofy and curious, goats are entertaining additions to your property.

But more importantly, this small-sized livestock is mostly self-reliant, practical, and of versatile use on your property. One goat can give two to four quarts of milk daily. This milk can be used for cheese making, drinking or cooking, and is excellent for soap and tonic making.

Goats are also excellent livestock to keep to help tame hard-to-manage plots of land due to their non-stop grazing.

These animals are generally easy to keep, but any goat owner will tell you that you must install very sturdy, reliant fencing to keep them in their designated areas. Goats are excellent escape artists that will make a meal out of your flower garden or vegetable patch in the blink of an eye.

Related: Goats Or Sheep?

Sheep

Sheep are lovely grazers that act as a gentle lawn-mower for parts of your property, much like goats. However, they pose a few challenges that those looking for low-maintenance animals would want to avoid.

The two biggest concerns with keeping sheep are the annual sheering of their wool and footrot.

Wool from sheep is great for those who want to spin their own wool for clothing, or even to sell for those looking to keep a large herd. But the act of shearing the goats of their wool once a year is a lot of work and difficult for both sheep and humans. It is possible to hire professionals to sheer your sheep for you, but this is often expense homesteaders look to avoid.

Sheep are also sensitive to footrot. Their hooves soften and allow for a plethora of bacteria to grow. To avoid this, sheep hooves should be trimmed every 8 weeks.

Donkeys

Donkeys are livestock that can be more trouble than expected.

Donkeys are excellent companions out on the fields and trails and their milk is of great use to many, but these gentle creatures need more attention and accommodations than your smaller livestock.

Donkeys are heavy grazers who can easily become overweight. This weight gain opens the door to a variety of health issues that must be regularly treated with the help of a veterinarian. Just as sheep, footrot is a concern, and they should have their hooves regularly cleaned and trimmed.

And unlike smaller livestock, Donkeys are prone to dental disease and must have their teeth checked at least twice a year and more regularly for geriatric donkeys.

Dairy Cows

Dairy cows are a big investment of time, energy, and resources, and for these reasons, they are considered to be difficult livestock to keep on your property.

Dairy cows must be milked twice a day, a great commitment of time for homesteaders who already keep busy tending to other animals and projects on their land.

Cows also take up a large amount of land, with the recommended amount of land being one acre per cow. If you are keeping grass-fed cows and want the grass to have a chance to grow back, your cows will need to be moved to a different pasture, bumping up the recommended amount of land needed to two acres per cow. And unlike other grazers, grass and hay is not always enough to keep your cows in good shape.

Many cows require mineral supplements to keep healthy.

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For this reason, we dispense the bulk of our energy on our vegetable garden (or our potager en français). With so much time needed to tend to our veggies (and human children and animals), we have little time to give to the rest of the garden.

I’m a huge fan of exotic plants, but at the end of the day, I just can not commit to replicating their ideal environments.

What we needed at the start and what we still need today are low-maintenance plants. It took us a few years to understand how to achieve and maintain a lush and floral garden outside of our potager, but we did it!

Here is a list of 10 of my favorite low-maintenance plants in our garden.

Iris

With an orchid-like flower that looks like nothing else, Iris is appreciated for its unique beauty. Iris comes in various colors, but the most common variation is a beautiful purple and yellow. They come in bulbs (actually called rhizome) best planted in mid spring or early summer.

Iris blossoms in spring, but its hearty, stalk-like foliage will stay looking good until early winter, making iris an excellent choice to line garden walls or even place in front of your home. The plant likes a sunny exposure but also thrives in mid-shade. Once your iris are planted, they will come back every year with no additional work.

You can also easily multiply your iris by digging up the root-like rhizome and cutting it into different pieces for planting in new areas.

Roses

Roses have a reputation for being difficult: they need a lot of attention, an expert pruning, are sensitive to diseases, etc. This used to be true. Today the new varietals of rosebushes are much more resistant than your grandparent’s variety.

Roses can be planted in any sort of soil as long as it’s not excessively humid and preferably aired out in advance.

A good pruning once a year will help ensure that your bushes produce an abundance of flowers, but if you forget about it, no worries: you will still get plenty of everyone’s favorite perfumed beauties. To ensure the best peace of mind, avoid the climbing varietals that tend to grow fast and become invasive without regular pruning.

Tulips

Another bulb that requires little to no care, tulips are a gorgeous spring fixture. If you want to make a big, bold statement in your garden, plant many of them!

You can mix colors but try to stick to two or three maximum. Complementary colors work best. My favorite color combos are purple and yellow and yellow and blue; it turns heads, and the explosion of color sets everyone in its province in a cheery disposition!

Tulips will come back year after year like most bulbs, though the colors may shift.

Related: What Our Forefathers Did and Built Around the House (Video)

Honeysuckle

A climbing plant with beautiful flowers, can cover up a fence or a wall in the blink of an eye, smells like heaven and requires no maintenance? We love Honeysuckle!

If you wish for your honeysuckle to sprawl across a wall or hedge, be sure to place support, such as a trellis, so that the honeysuckles can swirl and weave themselves through. There are a variety of flower colors available but they all carry the same honey-like perfume. Honeysuckle is truly a set it and forget it plant once it reaches past its early stages.

They can grow out of control but this quick spread is easily manageable with light maintenance once a year.

Hydrangeas

A classic feature of flower gardens, with their impressive spheres of flowers, hydrangeas are also very easy to keep. Just make sure to plant them in acidic soil (available in most garden supply stores).

Hydrangeas also prefer shade, so it’s a perfect way to have flowers to keep in the darker corners of your garden. Once planted and established, hydrangeas will come back on their own every year.

Marigolds

Seeding every year to have annual flowers might sound like a chore, but marigolds make it easy. Put the seeds directly in the ground, hardly covered (a half-inch of soil), water, and wait.

With the first heat of spring, your plants will begin to make their appearance. They’ll give flowers until fall, without any real care outside of an occasional watering.

The marigolds will also reseed themselves, meaning they’ll come back every year naturally.

Related: If You Have This Plant in Your Backyard, You Will Never Run Out of Soap

Spotted Laurel

A lush, upright, and rounded evergreen shrub, Spotted Laurel is a great addition to shady areas in your garden.

This easy maintenance plant gives you dainty purple flowers in the spring and if pollinated, shiny, red ornamental berries that ripen in fall and often persist through the winter. A yearly pruning to prevent your plant from growing too tall is all the care this pest and disease-resistant plant needs to thrive.

Snow Drops

One of my favorite plants in our garden, Snow Drops is a delightful reminder that winter is coming to an end.

These bulbs generally show themselves in late winter in to mid-spring.

The foliage will show first and persist for some time after the slightly fragrant white flowers drop.

Myrtle Spurge

Like many gardens, we have a few sun-drenched spots with rocky soil. These areas turned out to be a perfect match for Myrtle Spurge.

These evergreen, succulent perennials grow in clusters with blue-green leaves. They love the sun and give small chartreuse to pink colored flowers. But take note – these plants are considered invasive in the western united states as they spread easily in perfect conditions.

Plum Royals (Coral Bells)

Plum Royals are a favorite in many gardens for their fuss-free nature. The lush, bell-shaped purple plants give beautiful purple foliage year-round.

They are quite drought and heat resistant, and the purple color deepens with sun exposure. This plant gives dainty flowers that shoot out of large stems in the early summer and is a favorite hangout for your native butterflies.

Which flower do you prefer, or which one would you recommend to add to a beautiful garden?

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The post 10 Low-Maintenance Plants You Should Add To Your Garden first appeared on Self Sufficient Projects.

But there are other major points to be considered when making choices for your garden, such as invasive qualities of a plant and, above all else, toxicity. Toxic plants can put children, pets, and yourself at risk. With plants being used for their medicinal properties since Ancient times, we sometimes forget that many garden favorites carry “looks that kill”

Here are ten of the most common garden staples to be avoided due to their toxicity and/or invasive nature.

Datura

There is a reason why Datura is commonly called “Hell’s Bells,” “Devil’s Weed,” or “Devil’s Trumpet”. Gardeners love their beautiful elongated flowers and their exuberant foliage. But every part of this plant is violently toxic, causing strong delirium and often death when ingested.

Although it’s been used by many indigenous groups in spiritual rituals throughout history and even today, it is best to keep Datura away from your garden.

Eucalyptus

Appreciated by gardeners for its fast growth and decorative foliage. Eucalyptus is also low maintenance, growing in various soil types and surprisingly tolerant of cold climates.

Despite all these qualities, there are good reasons to resist the temptation of adding these Australian natives to your garden.

Because eucalyptus grows so fast, it tends to lose branches which can pose a danger to those in the vicinity of the tree. But one of the most frequent issues that arise with this plant is its competitive nature.

Eucalyptus want to be the “king of the castle,” and they achieve this by poisoning any other plants that may be growing on top of their spreading root system.

Related: The Most Powerful Medicinal Plants You Should Have When SHTF (Video)

Castor Oil Plant

These plants can make a beautiful addition to your garden due to their graphic leaves that turn from red to green and their exotic-looking fruit. However, castor oil seeds are toxic and the plants are even listed as the most poisonous common plant in the Guinness World Records.

For those with curious children, it’s best to say no to the Castor Oil Plant.

Japanese Stilt Grass

This plant has grown in popularity over the past twenty years due to its similarity to bamboo, making it an easy ornamental plant to add to gardens.

However, this plant is notoriously invasive and hard to manage. Its quick spread allows for the plant to take control of garden beds and soil patches, pushing out all other plant life from taking place.

Lily of the Valley

A wedding bouquet favorite for its dainty bell-drop white flowers and their intense perfume, the beautiful Lily of the Valley is best kept out of your garden.

In addition to being highly toxic (and adorning attractive red berries), Lilly of the Valley is an invasive plant that can very quickly form colonies of dense vegetation suffocating all other plant life in its vicinity.

Wolf’s Bane

With a name like “Wold’s Bane,” it is clear that you are not dealing with an inoffensive little flower (although we’ve seen that names are deceiving, like “Lily of the Valley”).

Thought to be used as one of the first poisons in history, Wolf’s Bane was used to poison enemies in Ancient and Medieval times and to poison “menacing” carnivores such as panthers and wolves.

Although many gardeners around the world choose to plant this royal-purple beauty in their gardens, this quick-acting plant causes real distress to humans and animals. With just slight skin contact, Wolf’s Bane can cause headaches and nausea.

Related: Do You Have This Plant In Your Backyard?

Oleander

The “Rose Laurel” is a very elegant shrub whose leaves resemble the laurel. Very common in the gardens located in warmer climates, it is known for its toxicity.

Its bitter taste makes it unlikely for humans to get severely poisoned, but there have been cases of pets dying from eating the leaves or the flowers. The sap also causes irritation to the skin.

Wisteria

The star of climbing plants, Wisteria, is more than impressive when it reaches a certain age, producing a large amount of cone-shaped flower clusters, usually of purple-blue color. However, wisteria is toxic in all parts of the plant, mostly the seeds.

Aside from being toxic, Wisteria needs a considerable amount of time to give flowers, generally up to ten years!

For gardeners that are not patient enough to wait up to a decade to see the fruits of their labor, consider honeysuckle or climbing rose bush to achieve similar ornamental effects to the Wisteria.

Foxglove

Like all biennial plants (plants that live for two years), the foxglove gives an abundance of flowers, making it a favorite amongst gardeners. But this plant is a lethal poison that produces a great number of seeds.

Reseeding is common, and the plant will come back in greater quantities year after year. If the conditions in your garden are in the Foxglove’s favor, it can easily turn into an invasive plant.

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Hemlock

Remember Socrates? He was sentenced to death for asking too many questions and had to execute the sentence himself by drinking… hemlock (although some historians argue it was mixed with Datura and/or Wolf’s Bane).

Commonly found growing as wild weeds, Hemlock has been introduced around the world as an easy ornamental flowering bush to add to line garden edges or walls.

These plants grow and spread quickly and can be hard to keep under control without regular maintenance. And for those gardeners who are fond of foraging, these deadly plants look very similar to wild carrots.

When dealing with toxic plants, most of the danger can be avoided by simply wearing gloves when handling them.

Nevertheless, it’s important to understand what is in your garden and what these plants are capable of. Even more so for gardeners with young children, pets, and roaming animals.

As for invasive plants, their invasive nature can generally be avoided with heavy maintenance, but to save yourself the headache, it’s best to skip them altogether.

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When I first started gardening, I would often pull our most consumed fruits and vegetables towards the end of the season, cut them up, and freeze them for later use. Unless you have access to a flash freezer (definitely not the case in our home), frozen vegetables have a shelf life of 8-10 months in your home freezer. This is a good deal of time to ensure that you have your garden favorites ready for you to use, no matter the season. But there’s a setback to this storage method: space. Freezer Space.

Many homesteaders have a deep freezer, but that is not the case in our home. We like to limit our electricity consumption as much as possible, and having a deep freezer on top of our refrigerator and freezer combo wasn’t an option for us. But then I discovered dehydrating fruits and vegetables for long time storage.

One afternoon while having lunch with neighbors on their farm, I was surprised to see zucchini used in their dish. It was the beginning of spring!

Our talented chef for the day mentioned halfway through the meal that the zucchini used in the dish were rehydrated. And at that moment, dehydrating fever took over me and has been raging for over four years now.

There are so many things you can dehydrate for long-term storage, and these are just a few of my favorites.

Beans

Most of us buy our beans dried and rehydrate them when we’re ready to use them, so why not do it yourself! On our property, we dehydrate our favorites to eat year-round; black beans, fava beans, and chickpeas! I prefer to place the beans to soak in cold water before going to bed so that they are ready to use the next morning.

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Berries

Although it took patience and ongoing battles against slugs, we have a pretty impressive Strawberry patch that gives us perfect, juicy berries from late spring through summer. We’re also proud of our patch of raspberry and blueberry bushes. We slice strawberries before dehydrating them and dehydrate the raspberries and blueberries whole. We then use them year-round in oatmeal, cakes, and granola/cereal. It keeps the kids happy!

Corn

Although we’re working on the amount of corn we grow in our garden, we’re able to store a sufficient amount to add to dishes throughout the winter. What I love most about dehydrated corn is that I can use it for our hearty winter soups and rice dishes without rehydrating it before cooking. It goes straight into the pot!

Mushrooms

In addition to growing shitake mushrooms on our property, we live in southern Burgundy, France, surrounded by lush wild forests. We take many walks through the forest every fall and spring, foraging for our favorite Funghi; Morels, Porcini (and other Boletus family members), and Chicken of the Woods. They all end up tossed in the dehydrator or in autumn, strung up high above the fireplace to dry out.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are a year-round must! Of course, we end up making large batches of tomato coulis to jar and use throughout the year, but we love having an abundance of dried tomatoes to use throughout the year too. Some tomatoes are dried in the sun during the summer; other times, we dry our tomatoes in the dehydrator or on our woodstove. They are all then thrown into large jars and kept in the pantry. We slightly hydrate tomatoes to make jars of marinated dry tomatoes to use in salads and to give as gifts. The tomatoes are great to add to soups and rice dishes as well.

Apples

Like strawberries, we slice our apples during peak season and dehydrate them for later use in our morning oatmeal. I’m also a fan of dehydrated apple rings as snacks for the family, or rehydrating for use in an apple pie or tart.

Beets

Beets are one of the only vegetables that we dehydrate that we do not intend to rehydrate for later use. We love beet chips, and we dehydrate our beets and season them in various flavors. If stored in air-tight containers, our beet chips keep their crisp for several months.

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Peas

Much like corn, we love dehydrating green peas for their ease of use throughout the year. Green peas rehydrate rather quickly, and being one of our children’s favorite vegetables, we find ourselves digging into our green pea stock more than every other vegetable on this list.

Cauliflower

We use cauliflower in various ways, but we dehydrate cauliflower to use mostly in soups and purées throughout the year. After a twenty to thirty-minute soak, our sliced and dried cauliflowers are ready for us to cook and season.

Zucchini

As mentioned above, zucchini is the vegetable that introduced me to dehydrating food for storage. Like many gardeners, zucchini is a household favorite, and our plants give much more than we can keep up with. After our usual “zucchini gifting” tradition at the end of summer, we slice and dehydrate loads of zucchini to use in sautées, soups, purées, and to make my personal favorite: zucchini bread.

The rules for rehydrating your dehydrated foods are pretty simple: if a dish you are cooking does not allow for you to simply add your dehydrated fruits or vegetables directly to what’s on the heat, it’s best to rehydrate your goods in cold water.

Apart from beans, the items on this list are ready for use after a twenty to forty-five-minute soak.

When it comes to storage, remember to keep your items in air-tight containers that are kept in a cool, dry space.

My personal dehydrating project has now moved on to drying herbs and flowers to make my own tea blends and making my own jerky! Our list of dehydrated goods grows longer every year!

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The post 10 Fruits And Veggies To Dehydrate For Long-Time Storage first appeared on Self Sufficient Projects.

There is no more incredible feeling than to truly feel self-sufficient on your property and be able to generate money off of it.

So unless you are looking to open a significant farm or manufacturing facility, there are many small businesses that you can operate from your backyard to help bring in the funds you’re looking for to help support your self-sufficient life.

Seeds

For those serial gardeners, be sure to harvest seeds from your flowers, plants, and vegetables at the end of every season.

Seed farming is an attractive, diverse business that can be run from your property. An easy and interesting option for seed selling is to offer your seeds online for a chance to widen your audience. Seeds are lightweight and can fit in standard envelopes, taking the headache out of packaging orders for shipment!

Eggs

You would be hard-pressed to visit a homesteader’s backyard and not find chickens.

Hens are easy to keep, reproduce, feed, and boy do they give a plethora of eggs!

With one of the staple items in most kitchens being eggs, the demand for fresh eggs never ceases.

To start selling eggs from your backyard, invest in a coop that is easy to clean and move along throughout your property. The ability to move your coop ensures that your hens have plenty of dirt bugs to grub on.

Don’t forget that free time roaming in their designated area (away from your fruit and vegetables!) is essential for your girls. Well-fed hens showered in fresh air and sunshine give the finest eggs!

Nursery

Nurseries are great backyard businesses for those looking to start an activity quickly.

After investing in a sizeable greenhouse, you’re free to plant all your heart desires. You can care for your budding plants and place them in smaller pots for resale to gardeners looking for a quick start.

Nurseries are businesses that can easily be done in conjunction with other backyard businesses, such as vegetable, flower, and seed farming.

Flowers

You can become a backyard florist!

For those creative individuals who love an abundance of color and building something pretty to look at, growing flowers to sell out of your backyard or at a local farmers market is a dream.

Imagine the possibilities – local flowers, seasonal flowers, exotic flowers, edible flowers – you and your future customers will be spoiled for choice!

Related: How to Prepare Your Soil For Your Spring Garden

Beekeeping

Where would we be without Bees?

In addition to caring for these creatures that give us so much of life’s enjoyable (and essential) elements, the byproduct of your hardworking bees gives you a lot to work with. Honey, pollen, candles, balms, mead… Beekeeping allows you to build a business with a wide variety of products to capture a large audience.

Although many people believe you need a large amount of land to keep bees, even those with modest backyards can introduce bees to their life.

Fruit and Juice Producer

If your property has an orchard of fruit trees, consider picking your fruits to sell out of your backyard and at local farmer’s markets. The investment of a fruit press allows you to add fresh, unpasteurized juice to the mix – an in-demand commodity!

Cheese

Are you keeping goats in your backyard? Cheese-making may be for you!

Cheese-making involves a lot of skilled labor and allows for creative freedom and an abundance of opportunities to experiment on making the best new cheese available in your market.

But why stop at cheese? Goats milk, much like donkey milk, is versatile and can be sold in liters for drinking and used to make soap, lotion, hair products, and more!

Vegetable Producer

One of the first backyard businesses many think of is selling vegetables grown from their garden.

Although the space and time required for this sort of business are much more than many understand it to be, it is a very viable business to run from your backyard. And more, it is an activity that can easily be added to other business ideas from this list, such as seed and flower farming and running a nursery.

Important Tip: Don’t go too big too soon. It’s best to start with a smaller selection of vegetables until you are confident you will achieve a successful harvest after the first couple of seasons.

Related: The Best Vegetables To Grow To Turn A Profit

Tea/Herbal Mixes

For those with a penchant for health-oriented concoctions made from herbs and spices, growing tea plants and various herbs and flowers to create your own tea and herbal blends for sale is a gratifying and creative backyard business.

Many courses online and in rural areas are dedicated to educating those who want to learn more about the medicinal uses of plants and flowers to help you gain the knowledge needed to create healing blends for sale.

Canning

If you’re the type of person who enjoys spending time in the kitchen, consider canning assortments of fruit compote and pickled vegetables and sauces as a backyard business.

Your offerings don’t have to stop at fruits and vegetables either; pestos, rillets, and patés are all products regularly made by backyard canning businesses. Canning is genuinely a job for the gourmet who enjoys creating big flavors to share with others.

Even when keeping a distance from agriculture work, there are still many businesses you can run from the backyard; ceramics, woodworking, glass-making fiber-spinning, and more.

There’s a backyard business niche for everyone. Many backyard business activities can easily be combined with other activities to allow you multiple income streams.

To get off to a good start in whichever backyard business you choose, let your neighbors know what they can find in your backyard, place ads in local markets, magazines, and newspapers.

And the most effective way of getting the word out there is to rent a spot at local farmer’s markets to show off your goods and let everyone know where to find them!

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Not really understanding just how composting worked, I took a bowl of scraps I collected in my kitchen and dumped them into a plot of dirt I had on the side of my home. This happened in the fall when red and gold leaves covered the grounds of our property.

A few months later, in the dead of winter, there were tall new stalks in the same plot where I had naively dumped my kitchen scraps. Upon taking a closer look, I was able to determine precisely what the new growth was. They were leeks. Lots of beautiful, fresh leeks!

This very unexpected gift of growth set me out on a journey to find out what else I would be able to grow from scraps successfully. It turns out you can produce quite a large variety of foods by using their scraps or seeds from items bought in-store or at your local farmers’ market.

Growing From Seed

The next time you find yourself scooping out the seeds from your squash or melon, don’t be too fast to throw them in the compost! Instead, carefully clean the fibers away from the seeds and dry the seeds on a paper towel. Once the seeds are dried, you can store them and use them to plant your selected fruit or vegetables at the next optimal time.

Drying and storing seeds from store-bought or market-bought items work well with just about any member of the Gourd family, including melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, and zucchini.

Tomatoes grow from seed, of course; often by accident! Much like my personal experience with the intense and surprising growth of leeks in the winter, I have had the pleasure of being told the tale of the surprise tomato bushes time and time again. Tomato lovers toss an overripe tomato outside, or a child indulges in cherry tomatoes in the garden, and a few weeks later, property owners are blessed with beautiful fragrant tomato plants that quickly bear an abundance of fruit throughout the season.

Related: 5 Vegetables That Are Too Easy To Grow

Growing From Cut Tops

While preparing beets, draw up some water in a shallow dish and place the tops you sliced from the top of the vegetable, ensuring that the base of the beet greens is still attached. If changing the water in the shallow dish regularly, you will see regrowth in the beet greens.

The growth of the greens allows for two things; keep up with the maintenance of the beet tops to use the greens for cooking or using in salads, or plant the beets for regrowth. This method works well for most root crops, such as radishes, turnips, carrots, and parsnips.

Herbs From Stalks And Fresh Cuts

Store-bought lemongrass can be pricey. That’s why it’s an exciting discovery for lovers of this fragrant herb when they realize how easy it is to make your purchase give you a supply for months to come.

When using some of your store-bought lemongrass, be sure to save a piece of the stalk with some of the roots attached. Place the remaining stalk in a jar, submerge the roots in freshwater, and place it in direct sunlight. New growth will begin to develop on the stalks within a few days. When changing the water regularly, the roots will start to develop further. After a week or so, you can plant your stock and its newly developed roots in a soil-rich garden bed or pot. New stalks of lemongrass will grow over the coming weekends, easily doubling the amount of what you initially purchased.

This regrowth of roots from stalks works exceptionally well with celery, scallions, shallots, and garlic. However, note that frequent water change is essential, as rot can set in quickly.

Whatmore, similar steps can be taken to grow herbs from fresh cuts. Place freshly cut or purchased herbs in a glass with clean water. Change out the water regularly, and your fresh cuts will begin to sprout roots at their base! After allowing the roots to grow about one inch in length, your herbs are ready to plant and will give you new, beautiful bounties of herbs for use in your kitchen. Thyme, basil, rosemary, marjoram, coriander – you can grow whatever your heart desires!

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Good ‘Ol Spuds

Those potatoes are beginning to sprout. Quick: plant them! Potatoes quickly grow from older spuds that have developed eyes or sprouted. Allow the sprouts on your potatoes to grow around one to two inches long and plant in rich soil. Potatoes take up a lot of space underground. Many gardeners prefer to place potatoes in large planters or even large bins for easy harvest.

Sweet potatoes don’t sprout as easily as potatoes without a bit of push. Take an aging sweet potato and cut it in half. Suspend the sweet potato in a jar allowing only the uncut side of the sweet potato to be submerged in water without touching the bottom of the jar. After a few days, roots will develop in the water, and new sprouts/eyes will develop at the top. After the tops and bases have grown an inch or two, your sweet potato is ready to plant in the garden.

A tip for beginners: Collect a variety of jars and shallow dishes and create a “lab” by a window that receives direct sunlight. Once preparing food in the kitchen, you’ll be able to quickly and seamlessly place scraps in their appropriate containers and begin to experiment with regrowth without having to put too much thought or focus on the set-up itself.

The amount of crops that you can produce from scraps is astounding. Growing crops from scraps is a preferred method of growing comestibles for many homesteaders and gardeners. Even more exciting, you can put this practice to use for non-comestibles to help you create your flower garden, but we’ll save that conversation for another time.

Bon Appetit!

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I was a twenty-seven-year-old working in the spirits industry, traveling a minimum of 4 days a week internationally. I had been married for two years at that point, but unless my husband came along on my business trips, we weren’t able to spend that much time together. On the rare occasions, he was able to go on a trip with me, we would often retreat to the nearest countryside for a hike and a picnic.

It felt freeing to be among the singing birds, the forest, rolling hills. All things that were absolutely foreign to me, having been a city girl all of my life. We found ourselves dreaming of getting away from our every day and slowing it down in these moments. Slowing it down, to us, meant tending to our garden, where we grew our food – selling our crops at the local farmers market – spending our time in a hammock with a book.

Perfect Location

On one such occasion, we met with a business partner in Southern Burgundy, France, where he owned a small chateau. We were in awe of the slice of paradise he called home, surrounded by lush, wild forests and rolling hills. After a long weekend, we were convinced that this was what we needed in our lives and said so over a long lunch on the chateau terrace overlooking the surrounding mountains. Our host casually stated that he was in search of a new guardian couple, and if we genuinely wanted to call it quits, we could take on the role and be given a parcel of land of our own with cottage and forest and an open prairie in exchange for our keeping an eye on his property while he was away ten months a year.

Six weeks after that moment, we arrived with four suitcases and our two city cats. We felt so strongly about this need for a country lifestyle we gave up everything back home and moved with only the thought that we had no other choice but to do so. This was an opportunity not to pass up. Obtaining a visa for myself came fast and easy, as my husband is a French citizen, but that’s about all that came quickly. We had big visions of how we would organize our new country lives and live modestly and self sufficiently. Only the plans we made did not pan out the way we intended, and those visions never truly met.

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House Issues

First came the renovations. We wanted to renovate our new home to the point where we would not need central heating. The idea was that we would add sufficient insulation and a powerful wood stove that would heat up most of the house, which at that time did not have either one of those things. The insulation was easy, but our wood stove and exterior pipe installed not so much. We struggled with getting a perfect fit. We eventually were able to get it done, only to realize a few weeks later, with the first snowstorm, that we did not choose the wood stove’s optimum location to heat the entire cottage.

Backyard Issues

Then came the garden. The idea was that we would plant and grow enough crops to feed ourselves and sell on weekends at a local farmers market. So much easier said than done.

For those who have experience gardening on a large scale, you know very well the intense labor that goes into it. Being absolute novices, we ran into issue after issue that we could not immediately mediate.

One example, slugs. Oh, those slugs! We tried every natural attempt to keep them away from our precious crops that we could, and they would still put a dent in our leafy babies.

Another example, deer. The forest deer would often find their way into our garden, enjoying the heads of lettuce intended for the weekend markets.

And the last example, goats. Our goats. We had purchased goats for their milk without knowing very well what to expect from those hooved goofballs. Despite our attempts at securing their field, they always climbed their way out and enjoyed an all they could eat buffet in our girls in the early mornings as we were rising for the day.

We had endless problems with humidity, keeping enough wood, as we were sourcing the wood from our forest and cutting it ourselves. We spent most of our time that first winter and spring outside cutting wood for the fire, then inside enjoying its warmth.

Then, of course, we kept chickens, but we had endless chicken lives lost the sneaky red fox and the eagles and falcons circling the fields looking for prey. We wanted our hens to be free-range ladies, but no matter the precautions we took and the various caged in coops we built, they would still turn into another animal’s meal.

Related: 6 Small Animals You Can Raise On Your Property

Self-Sustainable Lifestyle

Everything that needed work done or tending to, we wanted to take care of ourselves. And we did! But the calm, quiet, relaxing life we had envisioned was far, far off.

We replaced our crazy days packed with hopping from meeting to meeting, city to city, with non-stop laborious days that seemed to never end. We never had a day off. Our comfort depended on our labor, and the work was always so enormous that comfort seemed like an idea out of a storybook.

Eventually, three years after starting our new adventure, things began to settle down. We know now that we very quickly and naively went into this new venture.

So much more thought, preparation, and education could have been made before committing ourselves to this life. But despite all of the challenging moments, we made it through, older, wiser, stronger, and deliciously self-sufficient.

So for all of the dreamers out there looking to commit to homesteading or just beginning their journey, I leave you with these words of advice: persevere, ask for help when needed, and enjoy the ride!

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Buying Too Much Land

This may not seem such a problem if your property is already purchased, but it can be. For many of us, our properties are surrounded by other masses of land that often will be pitched for sale by neighbors or local farmers that no longer see use in the parcel.

Acquiring more land may seem like a good idea, but the reality is that much thought needs to be put into how much land you need and what you need it for, instead of how much land you want.

With great amounts of land comes great amounts of responsibility and chores.

What does the landscape look like? Does it have a beautiful collection of trees on the boundary separating you from neighboring land? Are you equipped to remove fallen trees that make their way into neighboring lots? Will you have to call a professional for this? Is the lot filled with long grass? Will you be able to clear it yourself, or do you have a neighboring farm that will be able to come cut and bundle this for their use?

It’s always important to consider the laboring and logistical needs of land before buying it.

Not Asking For Help

Many of us, property owners, are guilty of taking on too much DIY. Sure, part of the dream is putting our hands to good use. But there are most definitely times where calling in professional help will save you time, resources, and cold, hard cash down the line. One of the most common mistakes that property owners make is overestimating their ability to address their property’s needs.

As many seasoned property owners will tell you, there is great strength in understanding your abilities and knowing your limits. If you are not well equipped to install those new gutters, please call in a professional. Remember that many needs such as roof tiling and tree falling are very dangerous activities even for seasoned professionals. Call in a helping hand!

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Too Many Animals, Too Soon

First comes the land, then comes the animals. But newly acquired land does not mean you are quite ready for step number two.

Much like the amount of land you acquire and what you need the land for, the same train of thought should be put towards acquiring animals. Once you establish what animals you want, you must then consider your landscape and seasons and whether it is a good match for your selected animals.

Of course, one of the most important things to consider is your own ability to care for your chosen animals. Is there sufficient space? Grass to graze? Can you provide suitable shelter and have fast and reliable vet access?

And though it may seem obvious, many property owners are guilty of adding new animals to their land before the land is prepped and ready.

Be sure to have the shelter, fencing, and food and water access set up before bringing your new animal friends home. It will save a lot of stress, worry, and guilt.

Related: 7 Domestic Animals That Are Too Easy To Raise

Growing More Than You’ll Consume

If you are not planning on selling your crops and homegrown fruits and vegetables at local markets, it’s important to avoid growing a selection that exceeds what you actually consume.

This applies to not only the amount grown on your lands but what you choose to grow as well. This is not to dissuade you from experimenting with new fruits and vegetables – it’s important to try (and hey, it may turn into a new staple at mealtimes), but gardening takes a lot of hard work and resources.

It’s best to preserve these things by putting most of your efforts towards items you know will be consumed and not tossed away. Assess the space you have for gardening and crops and make a list of things to grow. 60% of items that you know you will console regularly. 25% of items that you would enjoy adding in occasionally, and 15% of things that you would like to experiment with within your garden.

Buying New

Properties require quite a few tools and machinery to keep up with the land and its structures. But before you go running off to your nearest home maintenance store, consider buying used.

Many property owners like to keep up with the newest, shiniest models of the tools and machinery that hit the market, and if you are a similar personality, enjoy your new toys!

But for those who are keeping a closer eye on your savings accounts, this means that second-hand, gently used items are available on the market. Look at the local classifieds, stop to glance at the bulletin boards at the entrance of local grocery stores, or even let your neighbors know what you’re looking for. There is a big chance you can acquire all of the tools and equipment you’re looking for at a fraction of the cost.

Life, as we all know, is full of hard lessons learned from the mistakes we make.

But here, you have an example of 5 mistakes to avoid on your property to keep you from falling into the usual pattern. Remember before rushing to make decisions to heavily consider your options, as well as asking yourself if you are capable of taking on specific duties if you are prepared to take on certain responsibilities, and if you are in need of certain elements of home ownership, instead of simply wanting these elements.

Being sure that you are keeping these common mistakes in mind, you can be sure to a smoother start on your new property. Best of luck, and congratulations on your newest life chapter!

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The dream is that we will one day have our own home on a large piece of land. On that piece of land, we will grow our own vegetables, have an orchid full of fruit trees, and rear our own animals. For those who begin to make this dream a reality, the house on land and growing our own fruits and vegetables are the first things that we usually take on.

But when it comes to raising and rearing animals, many of us are more than hesitant. What do I know about these animals? What’s the benefit? Why take on all of the extra work!? Adding on more responsibilities in our already task-dense lives seems like a fool’s error.

But lucky us, some animals are not only worth the extra “responsibility,” but they are plain easy to raise.

Chickens

It’s lunchtime, and you are in need of a fast, fresh meal for yourself and your family. An Omelette will do the trick!

Keeping hens on our land is one of the easiest forms of animal rearing that we can take on. Sure, there’s the task of protecting your clucky ladies from wild predators, but you can see to their protection with a well-made coop. A movable coop is also a great option to ensure that your girls have access to a varied diet. Chickens love eating insects and worms. What’s more, they love your scraps. Handing over your dinner leftovers to these ladies before their bedtime helps keep them well-fed and happy. And, of course, it helps them produce those nutrient-dense eggs!

Pigs

Keeping pigs may sound scary, but they are pretty easy animals to raise. In order to successfully raise your pigs, they need very good fencing. Controlling their access to areas is very important because these curious scavengers can do a lot of damage to your land. And the term “smell like a pig” exists for a reason. The adorable animals do tend to smell. The best way o avoid their unpleasant odors is to keep them a distance from your house. Pigs are best for those who have a large piece of land for the pigs to scavenge. Otherwise, these hefty eaters can be costly when it comes to supplying their food.

Pigeons

Nowadays, most people associate keeping pigeons with raising Carrier Pigeons. In fact, pigeons are useful for more than delivering messages. They’re a great source of meat! They are also very easy to raise. Their feed is inexpensive, and their bedding/nests are made up of organic material such as pine needles, straw, and hay. Although they will reproduce more in winter, if you can keep their enclosure with a minimum temperature of 40 degrees F, you can keep pigeons without the use of artificial heat.

Rabbits

Raising rabbits is economical and straightforward. You can produce up to 180 pounds of rabbit meat per year with just two does and one buck! One doe can produce four to five litters per year! Most homesteaders start with the New Zealand breed/ This is because this breed of rabbit can grow to be 12 pounds by the tile they are 10 – 12 weeks old.

Rabbits require a rabbit hutch to protect them from predators, protect them in the winter, and provide shade during the summer heat. A well-made hutch is readily attainable through local home and garden stores, and many plans are free to access online. Rabbits are generally sustained with store-bought pellets, though they are big fans of straw and alfalfa. Luckily straw and alfalfa are cheap and easy to grow.

Related: 6 Small Animals You Can Raise On Your Property

Turkeys

Imagine this: It’s Turkey Day, and your fine-looking, perfectly dressed cooked turkey came from your very own backyard! This screams of Homesteader Success! Turkeys are very easy to keep. They provide large quantities of lean, nutrient-dense, and delicious meat. Turkeys produce a dressed weight of close to 75% of body weight. This means that there is less waste and more meat when prepping your bird for the dinner table. Turkeys are generally ready to consume by 20 weeks old. One of the best rules to follow is that if your turkey reaches a point where they are consuming a few pounds of feed per day and is not growing any larger, they are ready for harvest.

Goats

Oh, goats. These lovable animals are not only easy to keep and care for, but they provide countless hours of entertainment. They are curious and awfully funny addition to any family farm or homestead. And, of course, there’s the added benefit of tier nutrient-based milk. Two goats can produce enough milk to feed a family year-round. Add a couple of more, and you can benefit from the various products that you can make with their milk; yogurt, cheese, ice cream, caramels, and even soap! Keeping true to their easy-breezy nature, goats don’t need much in terms of shelter. All they require is a shelter that is clean, draft-free, and well ventilated. As for feed, goats like a bit of everything and are generally very easy to keep fed if you have land for them to graze.

Fish

Farming fish is worth the consideration for those who have a pond or swimming pool. The hardest part of keeping fish is recreating their ecosystem. Once creating their ecosystem is accomplished, the fish are easy as pie to keep up with. They provide an excellent supply of protein, as well as some recreation time. It’s important to keep fish that are compatible with your area, but Carp and Trout are generally safe choices.

Related: What Happens When You Bury A Fish Head Under A Tomato Plant

Animals do not have to be the headache that so many of us tend to think they will be.

Before bringing farm animals into your daily life, it’s essential to consider your location and whether you will be able to give them the space that they deserve to roam and spend their days. It’s also important to consider just what you aim to get out of keeping your animals.

Once these two things have been evaluated, you’re ready to add animals to your land, and any of the seven animals mentioned above can be an easy choice.

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Let’s take a look at the 8 common storage mistakes made when storing your food.

Refrigerating The Wrong Foods

No, no. Not everything is safe in the refrigerator. Particularly during the summer months, many of us tend to throw our goods straight in there. Surely the cold will keep it from spoiling, right? Well, yes you are right in that the refrigerator will keep a lot of foods from spoiling in a very short amount of time. But a refrigerator is not always a safe bet. For certain items, refrigeration dulls the flavor and consistency of your foods. Have you ever pulled out an onion or tomato from the fridge that seemed crystallized and bland? Yup, it’s because of the refrigerator. Other foods that don’t belong in the fridge are: potatoes, garlic, melons, baked goods, jellies, syrups, and condiments, such as ketchup.

Keeping Foods Too Long

Those leftovers you stored in your refrigerator 4 days ago? Sorry to break it to you, but they can go straight to the compost. Cooked foods don’t have a very long shelf life, and to avoid food-sickness from bacteria growth, it’s recommended that leftovers are eaten between 2-3 days after the initial meal has been cooked. Keeping a dry erase marker by your refrigerator allows you to easily date your leftovers with no struggle to wipe off the date for future uses.

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Washing Produce Before Storage

We’re not suggesting that you shouldn’t wash your produce – hear us out. Washing fruits and vegetables before putting them away is indeed a good habit, but you must be sure that these items are completely dry before storing them. Storing slightly damp items may actually make these things dirtier and more dangerous than they were before. When storing items damp they are more prone to growing bacteria and accelerating their life span. The best thing to do is wash your fruit and veg and let them air dry on a clean cotton towel or cloth. Once they are completely dry, they are safe to store away.

Storing Fruits & Vegetables In Warm Temperatures

Those apples sure look pretty in that bowl on your kitchen counter, but will you be eating them all before they start to rot? Believe it or not, apples belong in the fridge. Warm temperatures accelerate their release of ethylene gas which leads to sad, wrinkled apples before you can get through them all.

Other fruits and vegetables that should be kept in the refrigerator are: citrus (once they are ripe), mangoes, tubers, broccoli, cauliflower, and any leafy greens.

Are you thinking about buying a bigger fridge yet? A good tip is to keep the apples in the crisper and be sure to keep your refrigerated fruits and vegetables in separate airtight containers.

Keeping Flour & Grains In Bags

Of course, it’s convenient to buy our pantry goods in their very own sacs and paper bags, but this is not a long-term solution. Once your flours and grains make it to your home, they should be transferred into airtight containers. These containers will help to keep the quality of the flour and grains intact for several months. Airtight containers are also helpful in keeping weevils out of your goods. Once weevils make their way inside of your flour, it’s as good as gone. If you haven’t experienced having to dump a sack of precious flour due to these little critters, consider yourself lucky!

Too Much Light

These common foods tend to be given the least attention. Most likely, this is because they seem to stay good for weeks. But under the right conditions, they will keep for months! Potatoes, sweet potatoes, and squash can keep for 2-3 months when placed in cool, dark, and humid environments. A basement or washroom closet would be a happy place for these three items. Additionally, both garlic and onion call for the same environment in order to have a long shelf life, though they require more airflow than the spuds and squash.

Related: 13 Plants That Thrive In Shade

Plastic Wrapped Herbs

Surely either you or someone you know has done this one: keeping fresh herbs in plastic bags. You can keep the gross plastic-wrapped goop at bay by keeping the herbs in freshwater. Simply place herbs into a water-filled glass and place standing up-right in your fridge. The herbs will keep for 2-3 times longer when treated in this fashion. And keep an eye for any sprouted roots! Many times, if you are regularly changing out the water in the glasses, you may find that some of the stems are ready to start a family of their own. You just might have a new opportunity to plant a fresh bed of herbs.

Placing New Food In The Front

You’ve seen it being done in the milk aisle of your local market, and it’s a habit you should be doing at home as well. Understandably, grocery shopping can be a massive chore in itself, so we may find ourselves putting groceries away as quickly as possible. But to avoid creating waste and letting good food go bad, your refrigerator and cupboards need to be inspected and rotated. New food should always go to the back, and old food takes the lead upfront. As an added bonus, you’ll be avoiding unsightly sights and ghastly smells. It is called ‘FIFO’, and stands for ‘First In, First Out’.

If you’re paying attention, you will likely find storage mistakes being made in your home. Taking on new routines can be tiring, especially something as second nature as storing our food. But it’s worth the effort! We all want a bang for our buck and lasting results for our big efforts in the garden. Being mindful of these 8 storage mistakes can help you achieve both.

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The thought of increasing prices forced many of us to think about how we can preserve our lifestyles, if our everyday conveniences and comforts reached monetary heights that were far out of our reach. If you have the ability to build a self-sufficient life for yourself and your loved ones, there has likely been no other time where you have put as much consideration in to beginning your journey towards a self-sufficient lifestyle than now.

From growing our food to providing our heating, electricity, and maintain everyday conveniences, there are ways for us to take the jump towards a self-sufficient life on our land. Let’s explore the 6 most essential steps towards building a self-sustaining life.

Preparing Your Home To Withstand Varied Temperatures

During the harsh winter months, we all want a warm dwelling to hide away in. There are a number of ways that you can keep comfortable temperatures in your home without the need for gas or electricity.

The first and most important thing needed in order to maintain comfortable temperatures is efficient insulation. Every nook and cranny of your home should be insulated. Double to triple panned windows and hardwood doors are best for helping to keep out the cold. But even so, the insulation and caulking around the windows and doors must be properly done to insure that no cold drafts can break in. Trust me, a small crack makes all the difference. Heavy wool-lined curtains throughout the house will also help to prevent the cold and heat from seeping in through windows and doors.

If you have a basement and attic, it is crucial that both ends are well-insulated. Wood wool is one of the most ecological insulation materials available. A lining of a minimum of 25 inches is needed in both the basement, attic and along the outer walls of your home for optimum insulation. If you would prefer to be truly self-sufficient, bundling hay and using it in place of industrially-made materials is also a reliable means of insulating your home.

For heating both your home and water, a purchased or DIY rocket stove will provide sufficient heat for you and your family. A solar water system placed on your roof is also a great way of achieving hot water for use. An oldie, but a goodie – a nice medium range wood fire cooking stove allows for both cooking and heating your home. When placed strategically in a well insulated home, it’s possible to heat the entire house with one wood stove.

Building Your Own Energy Source

One of the best purchases one can make on their property (given that you would need property on open land) are solar panels and wind turbines, or a solar and wind hybrid system. Of course there are a myriad of free energy generators that you can make yourself at home.

Building solar panel lanterns is also an easy option for lighting up your home. Just place your lanterns outside during the day, and bring them in when the sun begins to set for the evening.

Related: How To Build a Solar Heater from BEER cans for FREE

Locating Your Water Source

Ideally, we would have properties with either a well or access to a natural water source. Tapping for water may be an option for your property, but you would want to speak to a professional for advice and guidance.

Collecting rain water in large reserves is brilliant for watering your crops and taking care of needs that call for water such as washing your clothes. Purification of water for drinking can be achieved from boiling and filtering your water, as well as using iodine directly in the water (be sure to educate yourself on the proper ratios, as too much iodine can be harmful to your health).

Exploring Transportation

Cars are most likely still going to be something you would have on hand and use as needed. This of course calls for the purchase of an energy efficient vehicle. A form of transportation that won’t force you to rely on anyone but yourself would be an electric bike. You can create your own charging station with an old bicycle or stationary bike.

Creating Fabrics

Of course keeping sheep pops in to the minds of homesteaders when it comes to making your own clothing and house linens. But if your locations temperatures allow for it, growing hemp is ideal for fabric making as well as an array of other house hold needs. Hemp seed oil is nutrient dense and great addition in any household. Hemp can produce 250% more fiber than cotton and 600% more fiber than flax with the same amount of land.

Food Production

Without a doubt one of the most important and time consuming tasks to master in order to be self-sufficient, is food. A well thought out and carefully planned garden is in order. Building a green house on your land will help to ensure that not only will you sprout your seeds for a timely planting, but you can grow some of your favorite items year round.

Rearing a nice selection of animals will keep you well fed throughout the year. Chickens and pigs are ideal. Chickens are easy to keep and ready to reproduce by 6 months old. This allows you access to the versatile egg, and a steady supply of chicken. Pigs when ready to butcher are plentiful and provide the extra benefit of keeping lard for cooking and use in a variety of house hold needs such as candles, soaps and balms.

Goats are ideal animals for fresh milk and cheese making.

Around 1,000 square feet of land will provide enough space to grow a bushel of wheat. A Bushel of wheat should supply around 90 loaves of bread. When used wisely and alternatively with tubers, this ensures a nice supply of carbohydrates throughout the year.

Related: 6 Small Animals You Can Raise On Your Property

There a hundreds of steps that you can make towards creating a self-sustaining life style.

There are hacks and systems you can put in to place to achieve similar conveniences of which you have grown accustomed to. With that, it’s important to note that these steps take plenty of planning and time.

The past year has proven to us all that we never truly know what the future holds for us. Imagine creating a world where you can rely on just yourself and know-how, and begin to turn it in to a reality today.

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Having plants and foliage that can be used in various ways is always an attractive plus in any garden. Though, some herbs are incredibly invasive.

What we first assume is a useful and attractive garden addition, turns out to be an uphill battle that we did not sign up for. A wide range of herbs fit in this category, but today we are going to focus on the most popular: Kudzu and Comfrey.

Kudzu

Also known as Japanese or Chinese Arrowroot, Kudzu is native to East Asia, South East Asia, and many of the Pacific islands. Sporting beautiful purple flowers and twisting and turning upwards of two meters in length, Kudzu is a hearty vine that can at times reach up to four hundred pounds! In Eastern medicine, Kudzu root, flower, and leaf have been in use since 200BC and were mainly used to help individuals overcome alcoholism. Today, this invasive herb is used to treat a large range of ailments such as measles, gastritis, and diabetes.

So, now you’re left wondering how this “invasive” herb be so bad if it has so many medicinal uses, and that’s understandable. For all of the good things that Kudzu can bring to help us thrive and heal, this herb is a real killer. Kudzu has a tendency to grow quickly and take over its surroundings. The vines are thick, heavy, and hard to remove.

Kudzu was brought over to the US circa 1876, with the intent to use the vine for ornamental purposes. Many people were fans of the sturdy vines and sweet-smelling blooms and within a short amount of time, this new vine was added to gardens throughout the country. What many gardeners did not expect was the fast pace at which the Kudzu would grow and how it was nearly impossible to keep up with. Kudzu wraps around houses, telephone poles, and sweeps garden beds and trees smothering the life out of the things that were given so much sweat, blood, and precious time to bring into existence.

Kudzu needs very little contact with moist soil to take off. They spread like wildfire through runners, quickly formed rhizomes and vines that root at their nodes. These plants can grow up to one foot per day. The idea of going on vacation for a couple of weeks is sure a frightening thought for those who have this invasive herb in their backyard.

In spite of its heartiness and fast spread, there are ways to combat and suppress the growth of this herb.

The first avenue to combat this herb is regular weeding. Pulling off Kudzu multiple times per week will prevent it from getting out of hand. Of course, this weeding is most efficient for small patches of Kudzu.

The most efficient way of controlling large patches of Kudzu is to allow access to it from grazers, such as goats and cattle. These animals enjoy this plant and their constant munching on the vines will help to weaken and eventually control the plant. For those who are open to the use of pesticides, the vines should be cut as close to the ground as possible and treated with an herbicide. The most effective moment to pursue this option is towards the end of summer when the plants are more susceptible to storing the chemicals in their organs.

Comfrey

Also known as Knitbone or Slippery Root, Comfrey is native to Europe and Asia. It’s characterized by its rough-haired leaves and bell-shaped yellow and blue flowers. Comfrey has a long medicinal history and was introduced to the US for its medicinal purposes. This herb contains high amounts of allantoin, a chemical compound also found in mother’s milk. It is believed that this compound increases the rate of white blood cell growth and is used to heal everything from bronchial issues to broken bones. Comfrey is often recommended to be ingested by both vegans and vegetarians as it is a great source of vitamin B12. This herb is also beneficial to the organic gardener for its excellent source of nitrogen. Comfrey acts as an activator to heat when used in your compost.

This herb can reach up to five feet and thrives in the sun and shade. Comfrey’s roots run incredibly deep (up to two meters) and its root regrowth is fast as lightning. In addition to that, Comfrey self-seeds. In cultivated environments, this herb can quickly spread blocking sunlight and soaking up a majority of the nutrients in the soil, leaving not so many nutrients for other plants and crops to thrive off of.

Just like Kudzu, many gardeners were not, and are still not prepared to keep up with the fast growth of Comfrey and often find themselves struggling to control the herb, or finding a way to eradicate it from the garden altogether.

One of the best ways of stopping the expansion is to dig the plant out of the ground. This, of course, is easier said than done when you have a large overgrowth, but feasible nonetheless. Grabbing every bit of their roots must be achieved in order to keep the herb away.

An easier and very popular method of ridding your garden of unwanted Comfrey is to use organic acids, such as acetic acid and citric acid. Both of these acids are effective at killing the cell membranes resulting in quick wilting Comfrey.

An easy and very accessible recipe for this acetic and citric acid combination is to mix 1 quart of vinegar (12°+) and four ounces of lemon juice. Place this mixture in a spray bottle and over several days, spray the leaves, stems, and roots of the Comfrey. This surely is one of the easiest ways of keeping the spread of Comfrey under control.

Related: 15 Gardening Mistakes You’re Making Right Now

So there we have it.

Almost every good thing has a downside, and that is certainly true for these two invasive herbs. If you choose to introduce these herbs to your garden, be sure that you are ready to put in some extra work!

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I wanted to help fight against Climate Change, but as a busy city-dwelling professional, recycling, foregoing a car, and sticking to a bicycle were pretty much the extent of my efforts.

But there, in our “new,” very old home tucked away in an isolated forest, getting rid of waste wasn’t as easy as tossing plastic bags into a large bin set outside of your home. We were responsible for taking our waste to the village’s collective “décheterie” or garbage disposal site. In those first several weeks, I helped my husband load the truck full of trash to be disposed of, and amongst the smell of damp earth and a chorus of chirping birds that called the forest home, I felt more and more… guilty.

Guilty that I could have gone so much of my life until that point without considering where my waste was going. Guilty that I wasn’t trying harder to do better, to consume less.

In the third month after our arrival to the forest in 2015, my husband and I made a conscious decision together to go all in. We wanted to free our consciences and start making more impactful moves that aligned with our motivations to seek countryside living in the first place. We were going to cut our waste dramatically. We would try not to create any at all.

Here are 9 things we do or have introduced to our lives to help us reduce waste:

Buying in Bulk

Our nearest city has a large organic market and a hypermarket, both with extensive bulk selections. Equipped with light as feather linen, tie string bags (homemade), we can collect many cupboard items without collecting the waste of conventional commercial packaging. Grains and cereals, nuts, dried fruit, snack foods, loose tea, and coffee are all stocked in our reusable linen bags then weighed and paid for. Once home, we unload the bulk items into XL mason jars for storage, freeing our bags for use when buying more bulk items or vegetables.

Grow Our Own Fruits, Veggies, and Herbs

We grow the things we tend to eat the most of, depending on the season, of course: cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, green beans, pumpkins, leeks, asparagus, strawberries, apples, and yuzu lemons. Being sure that we put our focus and labor on the goods we love to keep on hand helps create a distance from the temptation to run to the store to grab our favorites.

We also grow, dry, and store various herbs and flowers for cooking and late-night tisanes.

Chickens

We’re big egg lovers! We keep a small family of some fine-looking, clucky ladies in the yard, and we love them dearly. And what better last-minute dinner than an omelet made from some fresh eggs (and a crisp head of lettuce from the garden) from your backyard! Since we are so egg dependent, keeping chickens helps us avoid trips to the nearest store (a 20-minute drive) and helps us to dispose of our scraps and leftovers efficiently – the girls love their leftover treats once we’re wrapped up with our meals.

Seed Swaps and Fertilizer

About twice a year, we attend regional seed swaps. At these gatherings, gardeners and farmers share and swap various seeds for use in your gardens. Doing so, is not only a great way of obtaining tips from more experienced gardeners and professionals, but it keeps us out of the garden and homeware shops where people generally purchase seeds for their garden. For fertilizer, we use the waste of our animals as well as some from a neighbor.

Local Farmers Markets

For everything that we do not, or can not grow, or produce on our own, we go to weekly Farmers Markets. We are very privileged because we live in a region where we can find a high-quality Farmer’s Market almost every day of the week in our neighboring villages. We are always sure to bring our linen bags for fruits and vegetables and reusable containers for meat and cheese. We also buy our milk and fruit juice, and wine from producers at the markets that use glass containers that we return each week when we go back for more.

Buying Second Hand

Buying new is extremely rare for us. So instead, we buy absolutely everything second. Our car, garden tools, kitchenware, clothing, and more; we’re sure to give a second life to the abundance of items that are no longer wanted or needed by its initial owners.

Toiletries

When buying toiletries, we head to a local organic market with essentials such as shampoo, conditioner, hand & body soap, and lotion in bulk and accessible with reusable bottles. We often use the ashes from our wood stove to make our laundry soap (tip: essential oils help give a fresh scent equivalent to commercial brand detergent). I’m a loyal customer of an organic cosmetic store in the region that produces various cosmetics in-house and sells in reusable containers for makeup.

Related: If You Have This Plant in Your Backyard, You Will Never Run Out of Soap

Cloth Diapers

In 2017, our first of two children came along, and we were determined to set the example that waste and excessive purchases weren’t necessary when having a child. So, in addition to buying all baby essentials second-hand, we also stocked up on gently used cloth diapers that are still going strong today and in constant use by baby number 2. As a result, along with the help of cloth pads, we have eliminated the waste most associate with baby’s nappies.

Compost

Of course, we never let anything go to waste. When preparing our food, we store all odd ends and organic waste in a small bin that we transfer to a larger container in the garden, once full.

Understandably, the idea of going to Zero Waste can seem a daunting, absolutely time-consuming task. But with some patience, experimentation, and a lot of research on what’s accessible to you in your region, living a Zero Waste lifestyle or just focusing on drastically reducing your waste is attainable to all.

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The post 9 Ways To Reduce Your Waste first appeared on Self Sufficient Projects.

Vegetables contain many essential vitamins and minerals needed to keep us in tip top shape, this we all know. But did you know that some vegetables can also be a perfect vessel for toxins to accumulate in your body as well? Yes, even vegetables from your very own garden!

There are a variety of vegetables known for picking up a significant amount of toxins from their environments. Here we’ll take a look at the vegetables that tend to soak up the largest amount of toxins, and what we can do to avoid this from happening.

Leafy Greens

Examples: Spinach, Kale, Lettuce, etc

Yes, our good ‘ol leafy greens are very vulnerable to toxins in their close environment. If your garden is placed near a road, then of course you know that the leaves will be picking up toxins from the pollution left behind from passing cars. You can give your greens a good rinse before you dig in, but the real trouble lies in the soil. Soil can be a carrier of a large variety of different toxins and heavy metals. Leafy Greens are super absorbers of both cadmium and arsenic. Cadmium is a soft malleable metal found in zinc ores. Organic arsenic, as most of us know, is also a naturally occurring element. Although natural, these elements are extremely toxic to humans when ingested in small quantities over a long period of time.

Root Vegetables

Examples: Potatoes, Radishes, Carrots, etc

Just like our leafy greens, our beloved veggies that grow out of sight from the sunlight are prone to slurping up large quantities of naturally and (unnaturally) occurring elements in soil that we would like to ingest as little as possible. Root vegetables have a tendency to soak up large amounts of lead amongst other toxic elements, such as arsenic.

Related: 10 Foods Not To Store

Other Super Slurpers

There are other common vegetables that are so efficient in clearing soil of certain toxins, that they are used specifically for that purpose. Take our long lasting fall time favorite, the pumpkin, as an example.

At an old Magic Marker factory site in Trenton, New Jersey, the planting of pumpkins was used to help soak up the toxins in the soil in preparation for turning the old lot into an elementary school and apartment complex. It was suggested that pumpkins and their vines would be hyper-sufficient soaking up the abundant amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, lead, chromium and arsenic (amongst other toxins) that were found on the lot after having the soil tested. In other similar cases, Alpine Pennycress was used to help clean up old mine sites in Britain, and even more surprisingly, Sunflowers are used to help soak up radioactive metals near the Chernobyl nuclear site.

So what does this mean for you? And how can you be sure to keep toxins in your vegetables to an absolute minimum?

There are various things you can do to help keep high amounts of toxins out of your vegetables, and most of these steps are to be taken when planning to start your garden.

Test Your Soil

You can have your soil examined through samples sent by mail to specialty laboratories or through your local government (reach out to your town or city hall for more information). The tests will be able to show you a breakdown of exactly what is inside your soil. With this information, you’ll be able to establish whether the soil currently on your land is a safe choice for growing your veggies.

Keep Up With Soil pH

Having well balanced soil pH makes sure that your plants are focused on slurping up the right amount of nutrients it needs to thrive, rather than just anything and everything it comes into contact with. To put it more simply, a good soil pH will help keep toxins at bay.

Be Aware Of Your Surroundings

Of course there are areas where we should put even more thought into planning our gardens before planting. For example, it’s best to keep gardens away from your house, particularly if you happen to live in a structure built before the year 1978, to be sure that the soil by your home, as well as any dust created from the house, will not contaminate your crops from lead (paint) or asbestos.

If you happen to live in an area that has a fair amount of industry, there most likely will be toxins in the air that create dust that can settle on your soil. Toxic Metals from air pollution tend to settle on the top 2 inches of soil, and they’re there to stay. It may be worth considering covering your vegetables with a wind block on particularly windy or stormy days.

And lastly, keep your plants as far away from the road or driveway as you possibly can.

Related: How To Organize Your Garden For Maximum Harvest

Raised Garden Beds

Raised beds can help you have better control of your vegetables’ exposure to their surroundings. One of the easiest ways of reducing exposure to these toxins is by filling your raised garden beds with certified Organic soil from official establishments, such as the Organic Materials Review Institute.

Toxins really are everywhere, and in a perfect world, we would be able to avoid them all together.

At least, with the information we have on which of our vegetables tend to pack in large amounts of toxins, we can better control what ends up in our bodies.

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The post The Most Contaminated Vegetables You Should Look Out For first appeared on Self Sufficient Projects.