The first time I met a mulberry, it was a confusing introduction. At the time, I considered my general plant knowledge to be better than average, but somehow, this unfamiliar tree didn’t make sense. It was a beautifully shaped, open grown tree with scalloped alternate leaves that I couldn’t identify offhand (because mulberry trees come […]
Growing Rhubarb
Rhubarb pie does eternal battle with apple in my heart — each of them vying to reign as favorite. But I have to admit, there’s something about the tart-sweet of rhubarb that demands attention, and piques longing when it’s not there. I can’t be alone in this appreciation for rhubarb dessert. It wasn’t called “pie […]
Rainwater Harvesting: The Basics And Why You Should Start Today
Lead contamination. Chlorine and fluoride. E.coli. Fracking pollutants. Toxins and pharmaceuticals. There are so many things that might be mixed in the water that flows from the faucet, that turning on the tap may feel more like playing a chemical form of Russian roulette than getting a drink. But what if I told you that […]
10 Off-Grid Projects You Can Finish This Weekend
Going off-grid is a huge endeavor and one that could take years to accomplish as you search for land, make the move, and set up your self-reliant system. If you’re just getting started, it can seem like an insurmountable task to think about all that needs to be done. And if you don’t have your […]
Foraging for Dock
There are several plants that have become all but invisible due to their sheer ubiquity and the fact they can grow in less-than-desirable places. Dock is one of those plants – a colonizer of empty lots, a squatter in industrial gravel piles, roadside inhabitant, and pasture weed. For years, its subliminal association with unpleasant places […]
Homesteading Myths: 6 Things That Pop Culture Gets Wrong
I don’t expect the pop culture version of the world to bear much resemblance to the real thing. It exists to distract and entertain, of course, and in doing so, must grab our attention for as long as possible and by any means necessary. But even when we admit our disbelief is suspended (as we […]
Traditional Lawns: Their Environmental Harm & Practical Replacements
Lawns, as we know them, have held their landscaping tyranny over our yards for far too long. Backed by out-of-touch homeowners associations (HOAs), zoning requirements, cultural expectations, and longstanding history of conformity, lawns have kept too many of us out spraying, mowing, reseeding, and weeding for no good reason. It’s time for a change. Watch […]
10 Summer Flowers to Make Your Garden Pop With Color
Summer is a time of bold barbecue flavors, bright sunlight, vivid green on the fully-leafed trees, and hot temperatures. The garden would be remiss if it didn’t have colorful flowers to match the intensity of the season! Move aside, you pale pastel spring flowers, these eye-zinging blossoms are here to fill the garden beds with […]
Foraging for Wild Mint
There are some flavorings that don’t seem to bear any resemblance to their natural counterparts. Artificial cherry sodas resemble cough syrup more than a juicy, tree-ripened fruit, freakishly purple grape drinks hardly bring to mind anything that ever came from nature, and don’t get me started on banana-flavored candy. I have a special loathing for […]
Raising Pekin Ducks
When you think “duck” what image do you see? I bet for a majority of people, the endearingly chubby, orange-billed and white-feathered barnyard duck leaps (or rather waddles) into your mind’s eye. That duck is the Pekin. This duck breed is by far the most popular of the domesticated duck breeds, and its popularity has […]
How To Capture And Use Wild Yeast
I have a secret weapon in my kitchen. It makes my daily bread taste amazing (and far more digestible than anything store-bought). As long as I take care of the starter, this weapon is an endless material. And the best part of all? It’s free for the taking. I’m talking about wild yeast — a […]
Foraging for Edible Flowers
Not all foraging has to be sustenance seeking. Sometimes, it’s just nice to sample the “trailside nibbles” mentioned in foraging literature, and none are more pleasant to pick than edible flowers. They’re a nice bit of flavor that can freshen your mouth after a long hike, and offer some guileless, fun foraging. Their contribution to […]
5 Answers To Your Beginner Chicken Questions
It’s time for the next entry in our series of Homesteading Questions and Answers. As we get questions from you, we try to formulate the best possible answer to help you on your adventure. This month is all about raising chickens. There are few other animals so symbolic of the homesteading spirit as the humble […]
21 Essential Off-Grid Tools We Love
We recently asked our Insteading Community and YouTube viewers if they had any questions about homesteading that we might answer. You all replied with some great questions, and gave us a lot of ideas on material we can pull together to help you! Watch The Video So for our first installment in what we hope […]
12 Garden Tools to Start Spring Right
Can you feel it? That shift in the wind? The faint whiff of waking soil resounding with the chorus of sprightly spring peepers in the forest? Winter’s losing its grip, and for those of us with gardens and itchy green thumbs, the final thaw can’t come soon enough. It’s time to bust out the tools […]
Getting Started With Self-Sufficient Living (And Why It IS Possible)
Self-sufficiency. What other term in the homesteading sphere carries such a weight of history, responsibility, and hope? Watch The Video Visions of lush, productive gardens, cozy wood stoves crackling with hand-split hardwood, provisions lining the pantry shelves, and healthy animals moving through the fields; all dance in our heads backed by the resounding questions: Is […]
Different Ways to Cook Wild Greens
One of the delights of foraging is realizing just how much food is –quite literally –beneath your feet. It can be exhilarating to go out into the field or forest with a basket in hand, and return with free berries, nuts, and more greens than you can shake a stick at. Watch The Video But […]
Soil Temperature: What It Is And Why It Matters
On any given day, normal people are concerned with the temperature of the air. If you have to walk a few blocks to the subway, or you want to plan a barbecue, the ambient air temperature can affect whether you go out in a t-shirt or hunker down inside. But us gardening folk are a […]
How to Pay Off Debt by Thinking Like a Homesteader: 20 Practical Ideas to Try
When you have the burden of debt hanging over your life, you don’t feel free. Living paycheck-to-paycheck, coasting by on minimum payments, and playing hot potato with your credit cards is not the way anyone wants to live. Watch The Video It can feel like you’re stuck in a dead end rut, working hard at […]
Why You Should Start Using A Clothesline
When I think of using a clothesline, I think of a conversation I had when I still lived in the city. While hanging my laundry, my neighbor’s little boy poked his head through the fence. ”Whatchoo doing?” “Hanging up my laundry.” “Ain’t you got a dryer?” “We got rid of it. The sun and the […]
How To Make Soy Milk
Back when I lived in the city, well before there were dairy goats in my barn, I had an automatic soy milk maker. I lived in an area where raw milk was (frustratingly) illegal, organic milk was really expensive, and store-bought soy milk had too many additives, so the machine gave me some sense of […]
6 Different Ways To Use Thinnings and Scraps
When you start gardening, you start the process of raising your own food from the soil and cooking meals you grew with your own hands. It’s an amazing feeling, but as you begin to read gardening manuals and cookbooks to expand your skill set, you’ll come across phrases that make the hairs on the back […]
5 Goat Fencing Options And Details To Consider
Among goat owners, there’s a well-known saying: “A fence that won’t hold water won’t hold a goat.” And though that hyperbole may seem extreme … it’s certainly proven true by the generations of goat-escapees that have tested the patience of their fence-builders. I think it’s also safe to say there is no one perfect solution for comfortably containing […]
What is Seasonal Eating?
Have you noticed the idea of seasonal eating “cropping up” in lifestyle magazines and organic-themed publications? I find myself viewing the trend with the same strange feeling as when I read modern articles about off-grid living, or pasturing livestock. Though these concepts are presented as new, they honestly couldn’t be more ancient. As mislabeled as […]
Off-Grid Heating Options & Alternatives
Last month, we debuted the first post in our series of Homesteading Questions and Answers. As we get questions from you, we try to formulate the best possible answers to help you on your adventure. This month is all about off-grid heating options. Sarah wants to know about “Heat alternatives that don’t require the grid, […]
Foraging for Plantain
Children pick these leaves out of the lawn in idle fidgeting. The plants crowd edges of streets and sidewalks. Counselors fashioned tiny boats from them at summer camp — with an acorn cap as hull and the omnipresent leaves for sails. They’re at your doorstop, the edges of your garden, and in the park. The […]
10 Ground Cover Plants to Replace Your Grass Lawn
Though it’s outside, there’s really nothing all that natural about the picture-perfect lawn. Artificially grown, watered, fertilized, and maintained, it’s a strange picture of modernity. We’ve made our case against the “normal” patch of featureless fescue, and if you agree with us, perhaps you’re ready to change up the backyard for something new and less […]
5 DIY Composting Toilet Ideas And Details To Consider
Most of us were raised on flush toilets. You go in the bathroom, do what you’ve got to do, and then the press of a shiny lever flushes all your unpleasantries into oblivion, never to be thought of again. But that modern luxury — and it is a luxury — is something that many of […]
8 Mistakes to Avoid as a New Homesteader
If you’re a new homesteader on new land, you’re in an interesting place. You’ve probably just left everything in the city, your job, your friends, your family, your inherited way of life, to start over in the country. And, like earlier generations of back-to-the-landers, you may not really know what you are doing, have had […]
Raising Cayuga Ducks
Though it was hardly a masculine name, I couldn’t help but refer to our male Cayuga as “Lisa Frank Duck.” He may have looked like a simple black duck in the shadows, but as soon as he waddled into a shaft of sunlight, a dazzling array of rainbow hues burst across his glossy feathers. And […]
How to Find & Store Cheap Leftover Pumpkins After Halloween
I have been waiting for this day all fall. Specifically, I’ve been counting down the days until November 1. You see, now that the money-grabbing fall holiday has passed, the money-grabbing winter holiday is steamrolling its plastic, glittery way into place. There’s no room for the two to share. Thus, anything fall-themed absolutely needs to […]
Foraging for Brambleberries
This is an open letter to the brambleberries of the world, particularly those blackberries growing along the edge of my ravine. Dearest Brambleberries: It is with great perplexity that I write to you. There is an understanding between berrykind and humankind that has endured for thousands of years. You produce delicious, sweet fruit. We eat […]
8 Winter Vegetables You Should Plant In Your Garden
August rolls around, and lots of us start looking at the garden with a sad sigh. The cucumbers are petering out. The tomatoes are still going strong, but the first frost (is it really looming already?) will wipe them (and the okra) from the plot until next year. The summer squash is gangly and tired, and […]
Raising Muscovy Ducks And Why You Probably Want Them
With their clawed feet, bizarre-looking caruncles, mohawk-like crest, and lack of quack, Muscovy ducks don’t quite fit the “bill” (if you pardon the pun) for what you might consider a “normal” duck. But on our homestead, these are the only ducks we want to keep because they have won our hearts with both their utility […]
How To Make the Most of Garden Failure
“Oh, fiddlesticks! Another dratted hornworm has eaten a plant. How exceedingly grumpy I am.” You’d correctly guess these were not my exact words as I plucked the corpulent caterpillar from the stick formerly known as a lush jalepeño pepper, but they’re close enough for this article. I felt an understandable wave of schadenfreude as I […]
Foraging for Wild Spinach
“Eat more healthy! Eat organic leafy greens!” The bleached-smile exhortations of the nutritional elite ring out from websites and health shows. So we trundle over to the grocery store and are greeted by the sight of an $8 bundle of organic spinach that would barely feed a rabbit — much less a whole family. Then […]
10 Considerations For Your Backyard Duck Coop
When it comes to barnyard livestock, ducks are probably the easiest-going of the bunch. When there is a slight drizzle, the goats complain and run into the barn. When the north wind blows ice crystals across the fields, your chickens are floofed-up and hiding in the coop. Meanwhile, the ducks are blithely waddling across slush […]
Ground Rules for Foraging Safely
Foraging is more than a hobby. It’s a means of sustenance, and for some of us, it really is a way of life. Pretty much everyone has an idea that some wild plants are edible whether they work in a city high-rise or hoe weeds on the farm. Even in this strange modern age, many […]
Healthy Homemade Homestead Snacks
Sometimes, you just get a hankering for something salty and crunchy. Usually, that itch is scratched with a snack from a shiny, throwaway bag that has more multisyllabic chemical ingredients than there should be. But on a homestead seeking both a healthier lifestyle and a less wasteful existence, those Bag O’Salt crunchies really shouldn’t have […]
Foraging for Pokeweed
Elvis sang about it. Gardeners loathe it. Old-timers grew up on it. Suburban moms are afraid of it and pull it out with gloves … and foragers? They’re inconsistent about it. It’s a miracle cure, a deadly poison, a nutritious food, a pest, a gift. It’s pokeweed! Watch the Video: This hotly contested, rich-historied, delicious […]
Useful Knots for the Homestead
Once upon a time, there were things that needed to be held in place, tied down, hoisted up, and cinched shut. The humble rope — and the knots it could tie — was the answer to all of these problems and more. Ropes stretched throughout our ancestors’ histories, securing the rigging on a ship, crisscrossing […]
Eating Acorns: From Foraging To Cooking & Recipes
The first summer my family and I moved to our homestead, we were not able to get a garden into the rocky, wild ground, but somehow we had a fantastic fall harvest and started accumulating jars of dry goods from the plenty. How was this possible? One surprising word… acorns.
Foraging for Wild Strawberries
One of my earliest foraging memories is crouching in my childhood backyard. I nudged the leaves of a low-growing plant aside with a tiny, slightly grubby finger — and the white flowers that were there a week ago had changed into dimpled green spheres. I asked my mom, and she said they were strawberries. But […]
Foraging for Field Garlic
Winter is long. Even if you have a well-stocked root cellar brimming with canned goods and root vegetables, by the time January and February roll around, most anything that was green is long, long gone. And if you’re like me, your eyes and palate might start yearning for that verdant, lively color to return. Watch […]
In a Plastic World, Recycling Ain’t What It Used to Be
“They’re saying I haven’t delivered, but it’s not my fault!” I heard Recycling’s sobbing wail, and pulled out a porch chair to sit. “Sheesh, Recycling, what’s this all about?” Recycling sniffled loudly. “I’m not what they think I am. I can only do so much.” PVC pellets started to rain from Recycling’s triangular eyes, scattering […]
Make Your Own Delicious Sourdough English Muffins
There are many things in this strange world with names that don’t suit them. Jerusalem artichokes are actually a sunflower. The peacock mantis shrimp is neither peacock, mantis, nor shrimp. The blindworm is a legless lizard that can see just fine. And don’t even get me started with the lesser broomrape. I don’t know what […]
How to Make Olive Oil
Olive oil has been an important food source, lamp fuel, religious material, cosmetic, and medicine for thousands of years. More than just a salad topping, olives join wheat and grapes as the core foods of the Mediterranean. In the modern age, it has enjoyed waves of popularity as a health food and DIY ingredient. This […]
Free Land: Where and How to Find It
Land, free for the taking, just waiting for someone to work hard enough to claim it as their own. Does a sentence like that send shivers of longing and hope down your spine? “But those days are gone” you may concede with a sigh. Gone along with the covered wagon, the real cowboy, and herds […]
Goat Shelter Basics: What You Need to Know to Keep Your Herd Safe
Goats are remarkably hardy animals. They can survive on forage and browse that would make a cow or sheep’s stomach rumble in discontent, and their clever feet can scamper among rocks, cliffs, and scree that are impassable to even the most surefooted human. For all their apparent toughness to inhospitable environments, however, there is one […]
How to Protect Plants From Frost: 12 Clever Methods That Work
As winter wanes and patches of bare ground open up in the fields, my green thumb gets crazy-itchy. I am eager to get back in the garden and get my eyes full of living, growing things again. With the season’s change, however, comes the age-old game of chicken that gardeners play with the weather — […]
