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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 — […]
Seed Saving: 5 Things I Never Knew
Before I moved to my homestead, I was gifted a huge jar of heirloom seeds by a friend who understood what we were trying to do and had experience in seed saving. I remember dreamily sorting through the tiny baggies of beans, kale, and beets; my inexperience and ignorance of gardening temporarily gilded with happy […]
How to Turn a Single Chicken Into 5 Delicious Homegrown Meals
For many a homesteader, putting meat on the dinner table is not a simple, thoughtless endeavor. Meat is precious. The chicken we roast for an evening meal isn’t just a random chunk of flesh from the supermarket, but a bird that we carefully raised and protected until the dinner bell tolled. As such, making sure […]
How to Make Soil Acidic: 3 Natural Methods That Work
When you think of the word “acidic”, what images first spring to mind? Perhaps visions of lemons, vinegar, and upset stomachs — but I will hazard a guess that a pile of soil didn’t join their number. If you’re hoping to grow a bumper crop of blueberries or potatoes, soil acidity and learning how to […]
Soil pH: What It Is And Why It’s Important
I know, I know, as you’re browsing all the excellent articles on Insteading, you see that this one is about soil pH and you probably want to just gloss on past it. When there are tomatoes to pluck, chickens to chase, and compost to turn, rehashing 9th-grade chemistry terms might seem a bit dry. BUT […]
A Helpful Homesteader’s Guide to Harvesting Sunflower Seeds
The humongous, cheery blooms of sunflowers, nodding head and shoulders over the garden gate, is a welcome addition to any food plot or house corner. But these sun-following flowers aren’t just for show — they provide protein-rich, delicious seeds for both humans and animals. Here’s our guide for harvesting sunflower seeds as well as cooking […]
Long Beans: How To Grow, Harvest, and Cook This Delicious Legume
Our first year on the homestead, before we got all our gardens started, we bought the bulk of our fresh produce at the local farmers market. I remember one sunny, late-summer morning when I spied a glossy, purply-green bunch of unbelievably long beans at a vendor’s stall. Generous handfuls of beans were tied in neat […]
Harvesting Basil: Helpful Tips For How to Harvest and Preserve Basil From Your Garden
Where would we be, culinarily, without the mint family? This gregarious and generous tribe of plants gives us such kitchen stars as thyme, lemon balm, oregano, and of course, the many piquant mints. Vying for prestige as best of the family, however, is probably the large-leaved and aromatic basil. Sweet, spicy, attractive, a pollinator-magnet, a […]
How To Add Nitrogen To Soil & 5 Natural Methods To Try in Your Garden
When you just start gardening, your knowledge of how to do it may be deceptively simple. Take a seed, put it in some soil, add water, and voila! Couldn’t be easier, right? And while this approach is a wonderful way to start, the beginner may notice that some sprouts do better than others. Surely there’s […]
Harvesting Lettuce: How to Harvest and Store Lettuce For Fresh & Delicious Garden Salads
Go to any cheap restaurant, and you’ll see a sorry showing of lettuce. It usually is represented in two forms: either a single leaf of romaine, apologetically separating your burger from the bun, or the translucent, colorless chunks of a sodden iceberg that makes up the bulk of the salad you regretfully got instead of […]
Harvesting Garlic: How To Gather, Store, And Enjoy Your Garlic Harvest
There are few garden plants I know that require as little upkeep as garlic, yet require as much time as garlic. If you’ve grown this wonderfully spicy, flavorful bulb in your garden, you are well acquainted with the near-year wait time till you’re finally at the point of harvesting garlic. You also know that the […]
How To Make Easy Blackberry Wine
Midsummer comes over the horizon, and with it comes humidity, mosquitoes, firefly nights, and hard work in the garden. But one of my favorite summer arrivals is wild in nature, both delicious and hazardous. It’s blackberries! The ravines and forest edges that were full of white-spangled spring brambles are now absolutely loaded with free fruit […]
6 Reasons to Overcome Your Fear Of Spiders On The Homestead
I flipped open the new issue of my local conservation department’s magazine. Filled with gorgeous photography and information about nature in my state, I often learned things I had never known about the forests and fields around my homestead. But as I glanced at the letters to the editor, I put down my tea mug […]
8 Meat Chickens To Consider Raising For Your Table
Many of us, unsatisfied and even disgusted with the treatment and quality of animals in the food processing industry, have begun homesteading as a way to reclaim food responsibility. On that journey, we discover the joy of raising meat chickens as a small-scale declaration of independence. Chickens are an ideal animal to start with when […]
A Beginner’s Guide To Restoring Cast Iron
Let’s say you’re walking down the aisle of an antique store, mildly browsing the booths, hunting for treasure. All of a sudden, there! You see it. A cast iron skillet. Sure, there are rust spots, and it looks like it hasn’t seen service for a few decades, but you’re smart enough to know this thing […]
Grow Healthy, Flavorful Fruit With The Best Fertilizer For Tomatoes
“You get your tomatoes in yet?” My neighbor smiled with his usual good-natured grin, but there was no denying the competitive edge to his voice. This was no mere neighborly exchange. It was the opening to a summer-long challenge where plants were pawns and bragging rights, the prize. As a newcomer to the Ozarks, I […]
20 Ways To Use The 5-Gallon Bucket: The Most Useful Tool On The Homestead
We homesteaders love our tools. We hang them from our belts, carry them until the handles show the impression of our hands, and use them to accomplish amazing things. As we keep our acres and animals in good working order, certain items start to become near extensions of our arms and take on their own […]
