10 Things You Should Never (Ever!) Store in Plastic Containers
You probably have a cabinet full of plastic containers. I sure do and some of these plastic containers are stained orange from spaghetti sauce, a couple are missing their lids, and at least one smells faintly of last week's leftovers no matter how many times I wash...
12 Signs Your Canned Food Has Gone Bad
Has this ever happened to you before? You go into your pantry ready to grab a jar of whatever you canned last season you look at it... and something is… not right? The jar does not look the same way it used to when you put it in the pantry and this is kind of...
DIY Natural Noise-Cancelling Walls
Has this ever happened to you? Staying in your backyard on a nice summer morning, thinking about what to do with this beautiful day and then BRRRRRR!!! You start hearing this unbearable sound and all you want to do is just go somewhere quiet. Most of the time, it’s...
Top 7 Best States to Be Self-Sufficient
Every once in a while, somebody emails me asking the same thing. They want to know where in the country they should move if they are serious about starting a homestead. They want land, fair weather, decent taxes, and neighbors who will not call the county on them for...
DIY UV Water Sterilizer That Kills Every Pathogen
The traditional methods for water purification have usually involved boiling the water for at least 3 minutes or treating it with chemicals with either a chlorine or iodine base. They all work, but they have some downsides. Chemical treatments often leave a chemical...
Plant These Herbs Once and You’ll Have Them Forever
The first time I planted thyme, I spent $4.99 on a tiny plant from the hardware store. That was eight years ago. The same plant is still out there in my garden, and I haven't bought thyme since. If you’ve ever gone to the supermarket and thought the prices for herbs...
2026 Spring Medicinal Planting Guide
You’re about to discover something most people never learn: the most powerful medicine doesn’t come from a pharmacy—it comes from seeds you can plant in your backyard this spring. While your neighbors are planting petunias and decorative bushes, you could be growing a...
9 Plants That Grow With No Water
I lost an entire garden in 2021 during the Western drought. Everything from tomatoes to squash gave up and I was desperate. All my hard work was gone and since then, I’ve kept wondering if there is a better way to do this. The secret lies in the plants you grow....
10-10-10 Fertilizer – The Complete Guide
10-10-10 is probably the most recognizable bag on the fertilizer shelf, and also one of the most misunderstood. It gets reached for as a default, all-purpose choice for everything from tomatoes to lawns, when in reality it's the right answer far less often than its...
How to Grow Spinach – The Complete Guide
Spinach is one of the first things I plant every spring, and one of the first things I lose to bolting if I'm not paying attention. It's a fast, nutrient-dense crop that rewards a little planning, and punishes procrastination by turning bitter and running to seed the...
2,4-D Weed Killer – What It Is, How It Works, and Whether It’s Safe to Use
If you have ever bought a bag of "weed and feed" for your lawn, there is a good chance you already own 2,4-D without realizing it. It is one of the oldest and most widely used herbicides in the world, and it works differently than the glyphosate products most...
Never Plant These Vegetables in a Container or Bucket
Maybe your garden is small. Maybe the only decent soil on your place sits in the wrong spot, or you're renting, or your back isn't up for digging another bed this year. So you start eyeing the stack of buckets by the shed and the old totes behind the barn, and you...
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 eight inches of snow in January, out came carrots that were sweeter than anything I had pulled in October. That discovery...
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, nutrient-poor dirt every single spring, and a lot of extra work undoing the damage before I could plant anything. Cover...
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 effort. Drop a seed in the ground, water it, and a few months later you have a plant taller than you are, buzzing with...
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 delivered on that in the first summer. What I did not expect was how much use I would get out of it beyond the bees. Once...
How to Make Bricks at Home, Step by Step (4 Methods That Actually Work)
Paying store prices each time you want to edge a garden bed, line a fire pit, or shore up a wall makes no sense and I have some good news for you. There’s no need to lose cash for this. You can make your own bricks at home with materials you can find under your feet...
Parchment Paper Substitute – 10 Real Alternatives That Work in the Kitchen
You are halfway through mixing a batch of cookies when you reach into the drawer and find an empty roll. No parchment paper. This happens more often than it should, and the good news is that a reliable parchment paper substitute is almost certainly already in your...
DIY Food-Generator in a Box
What if you could grow a whole season of food out of one big pot just by watering maybe twice a week? What if you never had to feed your plants and weeds wouldn’t be a problem anymore? Sounds too good? If you don’t believe it’s possible, I get it. Most of the time,...
DIY Closet Farming Guide
It may seem unusual, but a closet is an excellent location for an interior garden. Many people who try to create garden spaces indoors, especially during the winter, often have to sacrifice space appearances and put up with the mess of dirt on the floor and the...
How to Prevent Garden Runoff from Reaching Your House Foundation
This is one of those mistakes that you notice when it's already too late. Maybe you spent years building a beautiful garden and then you discover that same garden is threatening the integrity of your house. I'll give you a short checklist that can save you a small...
I Tanned a Hide With Nothing but Eggs and Animal Brain
If you raise livestock or go out hunting, you might already be familiar with the butchering process. The meat goes in the freezer, the bones go in a stock pot, and then you have the hide sitting somewhere in the shed doing nothing. You are aware that it’s worth...
The Most Overlooked Resource On Your Property
There is a high chance that you also have that one shed where you toss the things you don't know where else to put. Broken tools, half-empty paint cans, bags of feed you forgot about, holiday decorations and these are just a few of the things I used to have in my...
5 DIY Wax Projects for Your House
I got into all these beeswax projects purely by accident. I was trying to find a way to use less plastic. I was tired of plastic bags, plastic sheets, and all the plastic stuff you use on a daily basis in the kitchen. This is how I stumbled upon a guide that was...
Food Storage Bags – The Complete Guide for Every Job on the Homestead
I have a drawer in my kitchen that used to be a junk drawer, and now it is entirely dedicated to bags. Freezer bags, vacuum bags, paper bags, mesh bags, a couple of mylar bags left over from last fall's wheat. It took me a few seasons of ruined harvests to figure out...
Canning Carrots – The Complete Guide
Carrots store well in a root cellar for months on their own, so why can them at all? Because canned carrots are ready to dump straight into a soup or side dish with zero prep, and a well-stocked shelf of them means one less thing standing between you and dinner on a...
Deer Jerky Recipe – The Safe Way to Turn Venison Into Trail-Ready Jerky
A good deer season leaves you with more venison than your freezer really wants to hold, and jerky is one of the best ways to turn that surplus into something you will actually reach for all winter. It is lightweight, shelf-stable, and turns a pound of meat into a...
Homemade Kefir – A Complete Beginner’s Guide
The first jar of kefir grains I ever got came in a small ziplock bag from a woman at my local farmers market, handed over like she was passing along a secret. She was not wrong to treat it that way. A few dollars worth of rubbery little culture turned into more...
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 a product that's mostly water anyway. Once I saw how simple the process actually is, there was no going back to paying...
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 store shelf starts to taste like something else entirely. A true fermented pickle is not soaked in vinegar. It is...
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 told you to fill a jar with fresh garlic, cover it in oil, screw the lid on, and set it in the pantry like a jar of...
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 lasts longer, 3 to 4 days in the fridge, since cooking kills off most of the bacteria that raw meat is exposed to....
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 build a single egg from the inside out, so the math never quite lines up with a clean 24-hour cycle. That small gap is 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 bugs and slugs and each other's droppings without a second thought, and worms are just part of that deal. The real...
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 isn't pregnant at that moment. It's a fair question, and the honest answer has a little more nuance to it than a simple...
Cattle vs Cows: What Is the Actual Difference?
Most people use cattle and cows interchangeably, and honestly, most of the time it does not matter. But the moment you start planning to bring livestock onto your own land, that loose terminology stops being harmless and starts costing you money and confusion. Ask a...
How Long Do Chicken Eggs Take to Hatch? A Complete Incubation Guide
If you are raising chickens on a homestead, hatching your own eggs is one of the most rewarding things you can do. It closes the full loop of self-sufficiency, gives you control over your flock genetics, and there is genuinely nothing quite like watching a chick pip...
Goat Hooves: Everything You Need to Know About Structure, Trimming, and Common Problems
If you keep goats, managing their hooves is one of the non-negotiable maintenance tasks that comes with the territory. Neglect it and you will have lame goats, potential infections spreading through your herd, and animals that cannot move, graze, or thrive the way...
Can Chickens Have Pineapple? What Every Flock Owner Needs to Know
If you keep backyard chickens long enough, you find yourself holding a piece of fruit and wondering whether it is safe to toss into the run. Pineapple comes up often because it is a common household fruit that generates a lot of scraps, from the core to the skin to...
What to Feed Pigs – A Complete Guide to Pig Feed for Homesteaders
Getting pig feed right is one of the most important decisions you will make on your homestead. Feed typically accounts for 60 to 75 percent of the total cost of raising pigs, so what you choose to put in the trough directly affects your budget, your pigs' growth rate,...
When Essential Home Equipment Fails – A Resilience-First Triage Plan
Self-sufficiency does not mean repairing every machine without help. It means understanding which household systems are essential, noticing failures early, protecting people and property, and keeping a workable backup while the real cause is diagnosed. That...
These Crops Will Make You Rich
How would it be to cover all your property taxes, feed bills, truck repairs, and other expenses without needing to do anything other than homesteading? There are a few decisions you can make that would lead to this result, but probably the easiest one is to know...
The Worst Mistakes You Can Make When Buying Land
Let’s say you find a piece of land that checks every box. The grass is green, the creek is running, and you can already see where the garden goes and where the barn goes. So you sign the papers, and you feel good about it. Finally you’ll have the homestead of your...
7 Natural Amish Soil Boosters You Can Make for Free
The Amish farms in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, have been worked for generations, and they still sit on some of the most productive non-irrigated soil in the whole country. That didn't happen by accident. For a long time, a lot of those farms fed the soil with what...
Faraday Cage for Generator – The Complete Build and Storage Guide
A backup generator is exactly the kind of gear an EMP or major solar storm could take out in an instant, and it is also exactly the piece of equipment you would need most in the aftermath. That combination makes generator protection a genuine priority, but building a...
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 no idea what to do with it. It happened to me, it happened to my neighbors, it happened to anyone that I know and has a...
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 for bills; reading your land for signs of water is a skill worth having. Farmers were doing this long before anyone had...
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 corners. Some folks even say it keeps the flies down and calms the birds. This piece of advice gets passed around so...
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 evening. Meanwhile, the cheapest cooling system you can install doesn't plug into anything. Instead, it grows and you...
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 hand-me-downs from a smoking household all carry the same risk: gorgeous solid wood at a fraction of retail price, wrapped...
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 barrels would run dry by the middle of July, the creek would get low, and the only thing left coming out of the hose was...
What July Says About Your Homestead
You might think the big work is done by July. You’ve planted your vegetables, the animals are settled, and all you have to do now is just water and wait, right? That’s exactly the way of thinking that helps you have a half-empty pantry when fall comes. This is a...
What Is a Homestead? The Complete Guide to Starting and Living the Homesteading Life
Somewhere between a backyard garden and a full working farm, the homestead occupies a unique space in modern life. It is a place built around self-reliance: a property where you grow food, raise animals, preserve harvests, and take direct responsibility for as many of...
How to Use Cornstarch Around Your Homestead
You probably have a box of cornstarch sitting in your pantry right now, and you probably think it is only good for thickening gravy and pie filling. But I promise you that by the time you finish this article, you are going to look at that little box differently. ...
How to Keep Deer Out of Your Property Without Building a Fence
Yes, they're cute and all, but deer are a huge problem all over the country. You might have encountered them in your garden eating your crops, and if not, I am sure you had to deal with the aftermath. Deer are some of the most stubborn visitors a homesteader will...
What June Says About Your Homestead
We started the journey of this series in the winter and here we are… It’s already June! How is time even flying this fast? This is technically the first summer month and a surprisingly busy month when you’re living on a homestead. All the work you put in back in...
