Why Did My Hens Stop Laying Eggs?
You wake up and it’s a beautiful morning. As usual, you grab your basket or bucket and go to the chicken coop to gather the eggs. You lift the nest...
Foods That Grow Under Snow – A Homesteader’s Guide to Winter Harvests
The first winter I left carrots in the ground past the first snowfall, I figured I had just lost the crop. I was wrong. When I finally dug through...
How Are Cover Crops a Good Solution? A Homesteader’s Guide
I used to leave my garden beds bare all winter, figuring the soil just needed a rest between seasons. What I actually got was compacted, weedy,...
Too Much Zucchini? 10 Smart Ways to Use and Preserve It
This is one of the biggest and funniest problems homeowners have year after year. They plant zucchini and then the harvest is so big that they have...
How to Grow Sunflowers from Sunflower Seeds (Complete Guide)
Every summer I plant a row of sunflowers along the south fence of my garden, mostly because nothing else gives me this much payoff for this little...
DIY White Oil for Your Homestead
You probably love tomatoes, but they can be some of the most difficult vegetables to grow. Why? Because pests love them as much as you do. Maybe...
Cashmere Goats – A Homesteader’s Complete Guide
The first time I ran a metal comb through a goat's winter coat and pulled out a handful of fiber softer than anything I owned in my closet, I...
What August Says About Your Homestead
By August, you can already see the rewards the summer season had for you. The garden is full of tomatoes, the mornings start to feel a little...
How to Wash Fresh Eggs the Right Way
The first time I collected eggs with a smear of coop bedding stuck to the shell, I did what most new chicken keepers do. I ran straight to the sink...
How to Keep Your House Cool Using Plants
Every summer, you pay good money to fight the heat. The AC is on all afternoon, the electric bill keeps rising, and the house still feels hot by the...
Holstein Cow – What Every Homesteader Should Know Before Getting One
If you ask most people to picture a dairy cow, they picture a Holstein. That black-and-white spotted animal is the face of the dairy industry, and...
Bee Balm – How to Grow, Harvest, and Use It On Your Homestead
I put my first bee balm in the ground along the edge of my herb beds mostly because I wanted more pollinators around the vegetable garden, and it...
These 10 Watering Mistakes Waste 50% of Your Water
There’s a high chance you water the garden, walk away, and maybe think the job's done. But a lot of the water you use never gets near a root because...
Homemade Almond Milk Recipe – How to Make It From Scratch
I switched to making my own almond milk years ago, after doing the math on how much a carton of the store bought stuff was costing me every week for...
Organic Weed Killer – The Complete Guide to Every Method That Actually Works
I gave up on chemical weed killers years ago, not because of any single scary headline, but because I did not want that stuff anywhere near the...
7 Old-Fashioned Ways to Find Water on Your Land
If you own land, sooner or later you're going to need to know where the water is. Maybe you want to live more off-grid, or you just want to pay less...
How to Grow Bell Peppers – The Complete Guide From Seed to Harvest
Bell peppers earn their spot in my garden every single year, and if you have ever paid grocery store prices for a bag of three peppers, you already...
Fermented Pickles – The Complete Guide
There are pickles, and then there are fermented pickles, and once you have made a real batch of the second kind, the jarred stuff from the grocery...
11 Scam Items Homesteaders Fall For
If you've been homesteading for a while, you already know how tempting it is to buy things you don't actually need. And if you're just getting...
Planning a Cottage Garden – A Practical Guide from My Own Backyard
When I started planning my own cottage garden, I made every mistake you can make with a wheelbarrow and a stack of seed packets. I bought plants...
The Right Way to Preserve Vegetables in Oil
You probably saw a recipe online for garlic in olive oil. Maybe it was on Pinterest or on some pretty-looking blog with beautiful photos. The recipe...
How Many Eggs Does a Chicken Lay a Day?
The honest answer is that a healthy hen can lay at most one egg a day, and most don't even do that. It physically takes a hen 24 to 26 hours to...
How Long Does Ground Beef Last in the Fridge?
Raw ground beef holds up in the fridge for 1 to 2 days after purchase, according to the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Cooked ground beef...
How to Get Smoke Smell Out of Wood Furniture
I've brought home more than one "great deal" piece of furniture that turned out to be a smoke bomb in disguise. Estate sales, thrift stores, and...
How to Build a DIY Rainwater Collector
One of the utility bills that keeps going up (like everything else) is the water bill. People on municipal water sometimes have to wonder when the...
Chicken Dewormer – The Complete Guide to Treating and Preventing Worms in Your Flock
Every flock I've ever kept has carried some level of worms, and honestly, that's normal. Chickens live outside, they peck at the ground, they eat...
Should You Paint Your Chicken Coop Blue? Here’s the Truth
Maybe you've seen it on a homesteading page or heard it from a neighbor. Paint your coop blue and the wasps stay away. The spiders won't build in...
The Only Way to Save Your Garden and Produce Water When It Doesn’t Rain
A while back, I kept running into the same problem every summer. I felt like I didn’t have a reliable water source in case of an emergency. My rain...
Do Cows Have to Be Pregnant to Produce Milk? The Straight Answer
This is one of the questions I get asked most often by people visiting my homestead, usually while they're watching me milk a cow that very clearly...
Calendula Oil – How I Make It and Use It
Calendula is one of the first things I planted when I started my homestead garden, and it's never left. It reseeds itself, it keeps blooming from...
Why Your Garden Wilts in July Even When You Water Every Day
It’s such a beautiful summer day and first thing in the morning, you walk into the garden to see what’s happening over there. Everything seems fine,...
Seaweed Fertilizer – The Complete Guide to Feeding Your Garden with Ocean Nutrients
The first time I hauled a feed sack of storm-tossed kelp up from the tideline, my neighbor asked if I'd lost my mind. Two months later, when my...
