Month: August 2023

Questions come up daily on a homestead. 

You need solid advice on how to build, grow, and manage your land. Luckily, you aren’t alone. There are tons of books available for homesteaders, covering everything from organic gardening to home medicine. 

Remember, information is power. No matter where you are in your journey to self-sufficiency, you can develop your skill set and improve your quality of life with these 17 homesteading books. 

Gardening and Growing

How to Create Your Garden: Ideas and Advice for Transforming Your Outdoor Space

By Adam Frost | 256 pages

This book is an excellent reference for those starting a garden from scratch. Rather than focusing on inspiration or ideas, Frost lays out actionable plans for designing and constructing garden space. 

You’ll discover step-by-step instructions for mapping, layout, materials, and strategies for building hardscapes and raised beds. With full-page photographs and detailed drawings, the book helps transform homesteading daydreams into food-producing realities.

The Family Garden Plan: Grow a Year’s Worth of Sustainable and Healthy Food

By Melissa K. Norris | 224 pages

This book aims to teach beginner homesteaders how to grow a year’s worth of food sustainably. It’s chocked full of tips for choosing what to plant, when to plant, how to harvest, and even how to protect your garden from pests. It features charts and worksheets for a practical approach, including region-specific details and outlines on how to keep soil healthy for next year’s garden.

The Resilient Farm and Homestead

By Ben Falk | 368 pages

This comprehensive guide to whole-system permaculture designs is based on Falk’s real-world knowledge and hard practice of sustainable gardening. It gives detailed explanations on building and developing regenerative agriculture anywhere, including colder climates where many deem it impractical or impossible. 

You’ll discover concrete plans and solid advice in these pages, coming away with a hopeful outlook for your homestead and our planet’s future.

The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible

By Edward C. Smith | 352 pages

This practical handbook covers productive food gardening across every region of the US. It lays out a roadmap to achieve high-yield results in any growing zone, advising on soil depth, timing, temperature, germination, and best practices for over 70 herbs and…

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With this idea, all you need is a clear plastic food container with a lid. Then you can use tissue paper cores or cardboard rolls to complete the greenhouse for your seedlings.

For more ideas on seedling greenhouses, check out this full tutorial video from OikoEco: 

Of course, if you want the faster route to growing seedlings, you can buy a full-sized greenhouse. It’s already available in Amazon, and you can choose among the different sizes and even designs.

There’s something nice about upcycling old items, though. Besides, turning them into something useful such as seedling greenhouses is a valuable skill.

Benefits of Seedling Greenhouses

The benefits of seedling greenhouses are numerous and can greatly aid in the successful growth of plants. Some of the key advantages include:

Controlled Environment: Seedling greenhouses provide a controlled environment, allowing growers to regulate temperature, humidity, and light levels. This ensures optimal conditions for seed germination and early plant growth.

Extended Growing Season: With seedling greenhouses, you can start your plants earlier in the year and extend the growing season well into the fall or even year-round. This enables you to grow crops that would not survive in harsh outdoor conditions.

Protection from Weather and Pests: Greenhouses shield seedlings from extreme weather events, such as frost, hail, or heavy rains, which can damage or destroy young plants. They also serve as a physical barrier against pests and diseases, reducing the need for chemical interventions.

Faster Growth: Seedling greenhouses provide an environment with optimized conditions for plant growth, leading to faster and healthier development. This can result in earlier and more abundant harvests.

Water Efficiency: Greenhouses often incorporate efficient irrigation systems, reducing water usage and minimizing wastage compared to outdoor cultivation.

Reduced Weeding: Since seedlings are started in a controlled environment, there is less competition from weeds, saving time and effort in manual weeding.

Experimentation and Research: Greenhouses allow for experimentation with different plant varieties, growing techniques, and environmental conditions, making them valuable for agricultural research and development.

Environmental Benefits: Growing seedlings in a controlled greenhouse environment can lead to reduced pesticide and fertilizer use, as well as lower overall resource consumption, contributing to a more sustainable agricultural practice.

Portability and Flexibility: Some seedling greenhouses are portable and modular, offering flexibility in terms of location and setup. This versatility is beneficial for hobbyists and urban growers with limited space.

These ideas are a good start. With some ingenuity and creativity, you can come up with even more!

These tips will also inspire you to start a cheap but effective garden. You don’t need to spend a lot — or any — money on greenhouse accessories and greenhouse equipment.

You can also create this homemade weed killer to protect the seedlings further. The most important thing is these seeds will grow and serve their purpose.

 Loading … Do you have other seedlings greenhouses ideas you can recommend? Do share them in the comments section below!

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You want to start homesteading but don’t have a lot of land? Lack of land is one of the biggest excuses I hear from people who’d like to become more self-sufficient but don’t get started.

I hear you because I also used to believe that homesteading required tons of land! That’s why I want to share these tiny homestead layouts with you. The homestead layout plans are 1 acre or under and help their owners achieve a considerable degree of self-sufficiency and even some income!

Read: What is homesteading?

1/3 Acre Homestead Layout

This homestead layout plan is from Lindsey at Chickadeehomestead.com. Yes, it is only 1/3 of an acre – but that is enough for the family to raise and grow 80% of their food and most of their personal care items!

How have they done it? Focusing on food sources that don’t take up a lot of space, for example, raising chickens and rabbits instead of cattle and sheep.

1/8 Acre Urban Homestead Layout

Melissa at Evergrowingfarm.com has a truly impressive homestead layout – particularly because it is an urban farm.

What started as a “postage stamp of dead earth” amongst busy streets soon became an oasis. There are:

• 165 sq. feet raised bed garden
• 260 sq. feet ground-level growing space
• Strawbale compost pile
• A dog run
• Chicken coop and two brooders
• Rainwater barrels that can hold 175 gallons
• 5 chickens (which later grew to 20 chickens)

How did they do it? It was all about smart practices like crop rotation and utilizing the space smartly. You can learn more about the urban homestead here.

½ Acre Homestead Layout

This ½ acre homestead layout comes from a 1950s brochure made by the California Agricultural Extension Service.

You’ll see that the home and living area haven’t been significantly reduced (you could put more garden space or chickens where those evergreens are!). Yet, there is still a lot of food to be reaped from the orchard and garden. Like with the first tiny homestead, rabbits and chickens have been chosen for their efficiency.

Other Tiny Homestead Layout Plans

The owners of these websites didn’t get back to me with permission to share their images. So, you’ll have to click on the website to see the tiny homestead layouts yourself. It just shows that there are many ways to improve your self-sufficiency through homesteading, even in a small space!

The Myth that You Need a Lot of Land to Be Self-Sufficient

Before starting my homesteading journey, I…

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I’ve been using Stockman knives for almost half a century. They are extremely versatile and capable of performing a variety of tasks. While not a heavy-duty workhorse, it’s the perfect fit for everyday carry and everyday tasks. 

From day-to-day tasks on the homestead to fishing, hunting, camping, and hiking, I have several of these handy tools tucked in various places around my home. From pockets to vehicles to bug-out bags, this is one knife I never leave home without. 

If you’re looking for an all-around utility knife to perform a variety of light-duty tasks, you can’t go wrong with the Stockman pattern. They’re discreet, lightweight, and versatile. Here are some of my favorite Stockman knives on the market today. 

Reviews of the Best Stockman Knives

Best Overall

Hen & Rooster HR313DS-BRK Stockman, One Size

Clip-point blade: 2 ¼” | Sheepsfoot blade: 1 ⅝” | Spey blade: 1 ⅝” | Weight: 3.2 oz

The Hen & Rooster Stockman features a classic Stockman blade configuration with two back springs sandwiched between two brass liners. On one end, you have a clip blade paired with a sheepsfoot blade. At the opposite end is a spey blade. 

The handle scales are made from authentic deer stag and are pinned to the liners with three brass pins. The serpentine handle is flanked with smooth and nicely rounded nickel-silver bolsters and features a Hen & Rooster logo inlay. 

The stag scales are rather thick in the middle and taper down towards the bolsters, for a nice, contoured feel. I like the beefy 4″ handle, which is larger than your average Stockman, providing a full four-finger grip. The full handle helps offset the smooth scale grip.

All three blades are made of Solingen stainless steel, which is commonly used in commercial cutlery. It is well known for its edge retention, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. The stainless-steel blades are easy to sharpen but do require frequent sharpening with routine use and may require some touch-ups out of the box.

All the tangs are stamped and display a full flat grind, giving it excellent versatility. Each blade has an easily accessible nail nick opening mechanism and a smooth satin finish that reduces its glare. 

The walk and talk of the blade is smooth, but snappy, with little to no blade rub. The larger size of this knife gives it a slight edge over the others and makes it the perfect general-purpose pocket knife that is more suitable for heavier workloads, albeit limited. 

Its size is large enough for gutting, skinning, and cleaning small fish and game in the field, or cutting through hay bail twine, rope, hoses, and other unmentionables around the farm. But it’s also lightweight and fits very comfortably in both the hand and the pocket.

Hen & Rooster is a trusted company with over 160 years of experience, and it’s…

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More and more people are looking to take charge of their own food preservation, and freeze-drying has become a leading method. Originally used to preserve biological samples and pharmaceuticals, freeze dryers have now evolved into the most effective way to preserve food. 

Able to preserve 90%–95% of essential nutrients, freeze-drying is a much healthier option than dehydrating or canning. So, if you want to start preserving large amounts of food with one of the best freeze dryers on the market, you’ve come to the right place. 

Freeze dryers aren’t cheap. They’re definitely an investment. So I’ve researched and reviewed the leading freeze dryers — and sorted through the hype — so you can invest in one knowing all the facts.

Reviews of the Best Home Freeze Dryers

Best Overall

Stay Fresh Freeze Dryer with Standard Pump

Capacity: Approx. 3 gallons | Dimensions: 20″ W x 26″ D x 31″ H | Weight: 161 lbs.

Stay Fresh is currently one of the few competitors capable of giving Harvest Right a run for its money, but it only has one size available — so far. This machine is the perfect option for anyone seeking a dependable and reliable freeze dryer for home food storage.

Stay Fresh focuses on solid quality control and inspects each unit for its freezing, vacuuming, and heating abilities before shipping. 

This machine receives lots of bragging rights for its ability to maintain a steady mTorr rating (measurement of vacuum pressure) without an abundance of spikes (fluctuations in the vacuum pressure), unlike competitor brands. 

With temperatures as low as -50°, this machine can freeze-dry up to 12 pounds of food in as little as 30 hours. 

Stay Fresh offers basic options for beginners that allow you to run a preprogrammed algorithm with the press of a few buttons. There’s even a pre-programmed candy mode if you’re into freeze-dried candy. 

There’s also an advanced option that allows users to set their own processing times for the best yield in production. The machine itself has a super responsive touchscreen with ample customization opportunities and simple step-by-step controls. The display even shows how much time is left in the process.

The Stay Fresh freeze dryer comes with four trays, but you can add additional trays to your purchase. This unit can easily sit on a countertop but does require space for the external pump. 

While the standard pump provides 7.2 cubic feet of air per minute (CFM), you can upgrade to a 10 CFM industrial-strength pump, which is slightly larger. The industrial pump is much quieter compared to any of the Harvest Right versions and cools down super fast. 

With the industrial upgrade, this unit is quiet enough to operate in apartments and small condos without disturbing your neighbors.

Another reason to consider the industrial pump is that it allows for 40 batches before the…

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