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....
Recycling Gold and Copper from Electronics
Some people actively prospect for gold and other precious metals across rivers, creeks, and streams. Images of Alaska Sourdoughs and California 49ers come to mind as they swirl their gold pans in freezing waters and look with hope for a speck of gold. But you don’t...
7 High-Yield Crops for Small Spaces
You don't need a big piece of land to grow real food for you and your family. What's more, you don’t even need special crops. Basic crops, the ones everyone is planting in their gardens, do just fine in containers, raised beds, and other places you might believe are...
7 Things You Never (Ever!) Need in Your Pantry
A well-stocked pantry is the heart of any homestead. You already know the drill and that's why you are canning your harvest, drying herbs, and also filling every shelf you've got in your pantry. But one thing that is extremely overlooked, even by experienced...
You Don’t Need More Plants, You Just Need These 4 Simple DIY Projects
Every spring it's the same thing. You pick up more seedlings, start more trays, squeeze in one more row, and somehow the harvest doesn't change at all. The garden gets bigger, but the results stay the same. This is incredibly frustrating! If this is something you...
Why My Grandfather Buried a Coffee Can Under Every Fence Post
I was maybe ten years old the first time I saw my grandfather put a coffee can into a fence post hole. He didn't explain what he was doing. He just did it, tapped the post down on top and moved on to the next one. I remember thinking this was one of his weird habits,...
DIY Pocket Generator (Under $20)
It comes as a surprise to some, but the combination of magnets and spark plugs will generate electricity strong enough to power a light bulb. Even more surprisingly, it will generate that electricity 24/7/365. The power is constant and the only thing to do is replace...
Weed Killer Safe for Pets – The Complete Guide to Pet-Friendly Weed Control
If you have dogs or cats that spend time in the yard, choosing a weed killer is not just a gardening decision. It is a safety decision. Most conventional herbicides contain chemical compounds that can harm pets through skin contact, paw licking, or ingesting treated...
7 Seeds You Should Never Buy From a Big Box Store
Every year, the same thing happens. You walk into the local gardening store full of hope and preparing for the new garden, and there it is by the register. A spinning rack of seed packets with bright pictures of fat tomatoes and rainbow carrots. The prices look good....
What Happens if You Bury Tea Bags in Your Garden
You've probably seen the advice floating online. People say you should toss your used tea bags in the garden and then watch the magic happen right before your eyes. It sounds like a perfect homesteader move. Free fertilizer and less waste, the perfect reason to drink...
The Native American Remedy For Mosquito Bites
Mosquitoes and other insects have been a problem since ancient times. Before the salves and topical creams, our ancestors relieved insect stings with common backyard plants. A poultice, or fomentation of crushed fresh plant leaves, may offer relief from pain and...
Why Tap Water Might Be Slowly Killing Your Garden (And What to Use Instead)
Has this ever happened to you? You feel like you've done everything right, but something is still off with your garden. You’ve followed everything by the book. You built up your soil with compost, started seeds on time, planted the best varieties for your climate, and...
How to Keep a Greenhouse Cool in Summer (10 Proven Methods)
A greenhouse is one of the most rewarding investments a homesteader can make. It extends your growing season, protects tender plants, and gives you control over your food production in a way that open-bed gardening never can. But that same enclosed structure that...
How Much Does Pest Control Cost? What You’ll Pay vs. What You Can Do Yourself
Pest control is one of those costs that can range from almost nothing to several thousand dollars depending on what you are dealing with, how established the infestation is, and whether you are paying someone else to handle it or managing it yourself. For homesteaders...
Organic Gardening: The Complete Guide to Growing Food Without Chemicals
Organic gardening gets described in two ways that are both incomplete. One framing treats it as a set of prohibitions: no synthetic fertilizers, no chemical pesticides, no herbicides. The other treats it as a lifestyle statement. Neither captures what it actually is,...
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...
Leftover Firewood? Here’s What to Do With It
I’ve been heating with wood almost my whole life and if your first choice in terms of heating is also wood, then you know that as soon as spring starts, you've got a pile of odd-shaped logs, half-rotted rounds, and branches that aren't worth splitting but feel wrong...
What Happens If You Boil Flour
I never thought much about what happens when boiling water and plain flour are mixed. I just imagined it sounds like something that makes a mess on the stove. Once I decided to actually look into it, I found out you can turn this simple mix into all kinds of useful...
How to Build a Predator-Proof Automatic Chicken Coop Door
Anyone who raises chickens is familiar with the usual list of daily, weekly and monthly chores. Clean and check the waterer, clean and refill the feeder, harvest the eggs, clean the coop and every morning and evening, lock up the coop. It can get wearying, especially...
NEVER Throw Away These Items! (Do This Instead)
If you're anything like me, you've got a corner of the garage or barn where random stuff just piles up. Old jars, bent screws, a cracked garden hose, that washing machine drum you swore you'd do something with. Most people look at that pile and see junk. On a...
DIY Smokeless Fire Pit: How to Build One That Actually Works (Step-by-Step)
If you have ever sat around a backyard fire pit and spent more time moving your chair away from the smoke than actually enjoying the fire, you already understand the problem. Conventional fire pits smoke. They smoke when the wind shifts, they smoke when the wood is...
Hurricane Ties: The Complete Guide to Protecting Your Home
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew tore through South Florida with winds exceeding 165 mph. When the devastation cleared, investigators made a shocking discovery: thousands of homes lost their roofs not because the roofing materials failed, but because the roofs were never...
How to Make Sour Cream at Home – Simple, Reliable, and Better Than Store-Bought
Store-bought sour cream is fine when you need it in a pinch, but once you start making it yourself, the difference is hard to ignore. Homemade sour cream is richer, tangier, and has a cleaner flavor without the stabilizers and thickeners that commercial versions rely...
Bulk Fermentation: The Complete Homesteader’s Guide to Getting It Right Every Time
If you have ever pulled a sourdough loaf out of the oven and found it flat, dense, sticky, or gummy in the middle, the problem almost certainly happened long before the oven was involved. It happened during bulk fermentation. Bulk fermentation is the first long rise...
This Is Why You Should Add Cinnamon to Your Lard
I keep two jars of lard in my kitchen. One is plain white, neutral, and good for everything. Frying eggs, making gravy, seasoning pans, you name it. The other has cinnamon steeped into it. That jar goes into my pie crusts, biscuits, fried apples, and anything sweet...
Stop Washing Fresh Eggs! (Do This Instead)
If you are raising your own chickens, or thinking about it, this is something to learn early on. Fresh eggs are not store eggs, and they should not be treated like store eggs. The way you handle them right after collection makes the difference between eggs that last...
The Hidden Dangers Behind Vacuum Sealing Meat
Vacuum sealing has become one of the most popular food preservation methods in recent years. Walk into almost any prepping forum or hunting community, and you will find people recommending vacuum sealers as a way to make meat last longer in the freezer. The idea...
Fermented Vegetables – A Complete Homesteader’s Guide to Lacto-Fermentation
Before refrigerators, before canning, before vacuum sealing and freeze drying, homesteaders and farming families across every culture on earth preserved their harvest through fermentation. Crocks of sauerkraut in German cellars, kimchi buried in Korean earthenware,...
This Great Depression Dessert Turned Stale Bread Into Gold
There is a high chance you have half a loaf of bread sitting on the counter right now. You might be thinking it’s already stale, so it's only good for the chickens or the compost pile. I used to do the same until I started baking this dessert the way my grandmother...
Pantry Moth Traps – How to Stop an Infestation Before It Destroys Your Food Storage
If you store food in quantity, pantry moths are a matter of when, not if. They find their way into homes on purchased grain, flour, dried fruit, nuts, birdseed, and pet food. A single infested bag of cornmeal brought home from the grocery store can seed an infestation...
Domestic Sheep Herding: A Practical Guide for the Small-Scale Homesteader
Sheep are one of the most forgiving livestock choices for a homestead. They ask for less than cattle, produce more than chickens, and reward patient management with wool, meat, and milk depending on which direction you take the flock. But sheep are also flock animals...
Quail Eggs: Nutrition, Uses, and Why Every Homesteader Should Raise Quail
If you have ever held a quail egg in your hand, the first thing you notice is how small it is. About a quarter the size of a standard chicken egg, speckled brown and cream, sitting in your palm like something from a different world. The second thing you notice, once...
Beekeeping Supplies for the Homestead: Everything You Actually Need
Bees are one of the highest-return additions you can make to a homestead. A couple of hives will pollinate your garden, orchard, and surrounding land, and a single productive hive in a good season can yield 60 to 100 pounds of honey on top of that. Beeswax for salves,...
Chicken Diseases: How to Identify, Treat, and Prevent Them in Your Backyard Flock
If you keep chickens, sooner or later you will deal with a sick bird. It happens on every homestead, no matter how clean the coop or how carefully you source your flock. Knowing how to recognize chicken diseases early, respond quickly, and put the right prevention...
Katahdin Sheep: The Homesteader’s Guide to This No-Shear Meat Breed
If you have been thinking about adding sheep to your homestead but dread the idea of annual shearing, worrying constantly about parasite loads, or dealing with a flighty breed that requires intensive management, Katahdin sheep deserve your full attention. This...
Goat Milk: The Complete Homesteader’s Guide to Raising, Milking, and Using It
If you want one animal that punches well above its weight for self-sufficiency, the dairy goat is it. A single productive doe will give you fresh milk twice a day for the better part of ten months. From that milk you can make cheese, butter, yogurt, kefir, soap, and...
Amish Chicken Coop Design – What Makes It Work and How to Build Your Own
Walk onto any working Amish farm and you will find chickens that look good: alert, clean-feathered, active, with good body condition and a production rate that most backyard flock keepers would envy. The coop those chickens live in is almost certainly not elaborate....
Beekeeping for Beginners – Everything You Need to Know to Start Your First Hive
There are not many additions to a homestead that pay dividends in as many directions as a beehive. You get honey, obviously. But you also get better pollination for your garden, wax for candles and salves, and a front-row seat to one of the most sophisticated examples...
Medicinal Trees You Walk Past Every Day
Every child has imagined living at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, I’m sure you have too. You might not realize it, but you live in a world similar to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Aside from buildings and concrete, nearly everything you walk by is edible in some...
Why You Should Never Throw Away Lemon Peels
Stop right there. Before you toss that lemon peel into the trash, you need to know something: you’re literally throwing away one of nature’s most powerful healing tools. Yes, that bright yellow rind you’ve been discarding your entire life? It’s packed with more...
Why the Amish Are Immune to Inflation and How You Could Be Too
Last week at the grocery store, I saw a woman ahead of me putting items back on the shelf. A jar of peanut butter and a bag of apples. She was probably doing the math in her head, deciding what her family could skip that week. Mark and I have been there. Maybe you...
Rosemary Plant Care: The Complete Guide to Growing, Pruning, and Harvesting
Rosemary is one of those plants that rewards you for leaving it mostly alone. Give it the right conditions and it will grow into a sprawling, fragrant shrub that lives for a decade or more, providing fresh sprigs year-round, feeding the bees every spring, and pulling...
No Cheesecloth? Try These 9 Household Alternatives
Cheesecloth has been the go-to for straining and pressing for a long time, and for a good reason. It works. But it's not the only option out there, and sometimes it’s so much easier to use what you already have at home. There are plenty of things already sitting...
Turn Your Kitchen Scraps Into Medicine (It’s Easier Than You Think)
When you are living on a homestead, most kitchen scraps end up in the compost bin, or, even worse, straight in the trash can. But some of the scraps you throw away so carelessly can help you save some cash you would have otherwise spent on your pharmacy bill. For...
What We Learned After Our First Year of Total Self-Sufficiency
The first winter morning I couldn't leave our homestead, I knew something was terribly wrong. Not with the weather, but with what we had built. Mark was flat on his back with pneumonia, our automatic chicken waterer had frozen and cracked, and Ben was texting from...
Why Homesteaders are Hanging Empty Jars on Trees
Homesteaders have been hanging jars in trees for centuries, Some of the traditions were based on superstition. It was the idea that evil spirits would be captured in the empty jars in the tree. What they did with the evil spirits in the jar after capture is a mystery...
You Never Thought You Can Hide These In Plain Sight
Caching isn’t just a survival tactic. It’s a time-tested strategy that has helped humans preserve food and essentials for thousands of years. From Stone Age hunters storing meat underwater to modern homesteaders tucking gear into outbuildings, rock piles, or even...
How to Survive a Flash Flood
You won’t get a warning. That’s what makes flash floods so deadly. One minute, it’s raining hard—and the next, a wall of water is ripping through streets, sweeping away cars, homes, and anything else in its path. These floods kill more people each year than...
How to Sew a Button (and Why You Should Learn It)
In a world where it's easier to toss something out than to fix it, sewing a button might seem like a small, outdated skill, which is why many do not know how to sew a button. But ask anyone who's torn a shirt while traveling, lost a coat button during a winter storm,...
How Does a Faraday Cage Work?
In today’s world, technology is everywhere. From the devices we use daily to the infrastructure that powers our homes, we rely heavily on electronic systems. But what if something went wrong? What if an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or a strong electrical storm could...
10 Common Household Items You’ve Been Using Wrong
Many of us are quick to throw things away. That’s a good thing because clutter is unsightly and an obsession with keeping everything leads to hoarding. But there are many uses for some of those things that we’re quick to dismiss as garbage, or that we simply see as a...
How to Manage Serious Wounds With Household Items
I was chopping an oak round. One misjudged strike, and the blade glanced off the wood, biting deep into my shin. Blood soaked my boot within seconds. Alone, with the nearest hospital two hours down washed-out backroads, I limped to the porch, cursing my carelessness....
How to Make Your Own DIY Homestead Defense Kit
At 3 a.m. one night, I noticed someone outside, wandering around with a knife in hand. When he got near the backyard, the chickens went crazy, then fell silent. I’d run through situations like this in my head before, but in the moment, my hands still shook. Then I...
I Joined The Wilderness Long-Term Survival Academy And This Is What Happened
I kept seeing promotional videos for this online course that promised in-depth wilderness survival knowledge. And that would not have caught my eye, except for who the teacher was – Nicole Apelian. She is one of the first women to survive for almost two months on the...
What May Says About Your Homestead
When May is here, you know things are going to move fast. This month comes with a lot of wonderful changes, such as rising temperatures and longer days. This combo is a gift, but it can also destroy everything you planned if you're not prepared. I've been...
How to Sharpen a Lawn Mower Blade (Step-by-Step Guide)
A dull lawn mower blade does not cut grass cleanly. Instead, it tears and shreds each blade of grass, leaving ragged brown tips that invite disease and weaken your lawn over time. The fix is straightforward: remove the blade, sharpen it, and put it back. This guide...
What April Says About Your Homestead
April is finally here, and there's a lot to talk about. Most folks see it as that in-between month where spring has shown up, but winter's leftovers are still sitting around waiting to be dealt with. Well, this is in fact true, and I know it very well, sometimes when...
Spring Maintenance for Lawn Mowers, Chainsaws, and More
As soon as spring comes, it’s time to get out and about and do some summer maintenance. But before I start on the yard and garden, the equipment we use needs some good spring maintenance as well. I'm going to cover basic maintenance you should do each spring for lawn...
DIY Heavy-Duty Hand Salve for Homesteaders (to Protect Your Skin During Chores)
If yard work and gardening are your thing, your hands usually take a beating. Mine sure did. Split knuckles from cold mornings, calluses from splitting wood, raw skin from washing buckets in freezing water, you know the drill. Maybe you’ve tried commercial lotions,...
What January Says About Your Homestead
For most of us, January is one of the coldest months of the year. It can make a lot of outdoor activities challenging or at least difficult to accomplish. It’s also a time when clutter, disorganization and occasional chaos seems to take over. The long warm days of...
The Holistic Guide to Wellness: Herbal Protocols for Common Ailments Book Review
When I first received The Holistic Guide to Wellness: Herbal Protocols for Common Ailments, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve seen herbal guides before that are either overwhelming with medical jargon or just a list of recipes with no real structure. This book felt...
DIY Anti-Microbial Laundry Soap
Whenever possible, I try to use a natural product that is safe for me as well as the environment, but finding a detergent that fulfills both criteria can be difficult. So, when it comes to pre-treating stains and hand washing clothes, I prefer to use my DIY...
