When we decided to leave the city behind and start homesteading, one of the first animals I wanted was goats. But the breed of goat became a big question. Fainting, Nigerian dwarf, Pygmy –? And then I learned about Angora goats, and I knew they would become our choice. By this point, we already had […]
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13 DIY Flavored Water Drinks to Stay Hydrated and Healthy
Stop already, you say. You’ve heard it all before: Drink plenty of water, stay hydrated, and stay healthy. You may think it’s boring. It’s old advice. But even though this is sage advice, few people pay conscious attention to the amount of water they drink in a day. How much do you drink daily on […]
Hugelkultur: What It Is & Inspiration For Your Permaculture Garden
Instead of putting those small branches, leaves, and grass clippings in bags by the curbside…build a hugelkultur bed. Simply mound logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost, or whatever other biomass and organic matter you have available, top with soil, and plant your veggies or perennial plants. What you’ll get in return […]
Homestead Stories: The Delicate Donkey Tail Succulent
“Oh my!” I exclaimed as I stood with a friend admiring her latest garden addition. She was more creative than I and loved to experiment with uniquely new things. “What did you say it was called?” “It’s a donkey tail succulent,” she said — once again happy that she had impressed me with a new […]
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 […]
The Fibonacci Sequence in Nature
The Fibonacci spiral appears not only in the perfect nautilus shell… …but in events and objects viewed from afar. An energy system in the shape of a fibonacci moves with limited losses. Hurricane Irene. What is the Fibonacci Sequence? The mathematics of the golden ratio and of the Fibonacci sequence are intimately interconnected. The Fibonacci […]
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 […]
Homestead Stories: The Festive and Whimsical Candy Cane Flower
It’s been one of those years. The pandemic of 2020, the uncertainty of life and all we hold dear, and even my garden struggled through the drought of early summer and flooding of early fall. I needed something positive to consider and plan for spring. Thoughts of my spring garden are what get me through […]
65+ Gardening Gifts
‘Tis the season of gift-giving. Since colder weather has many of us stuck inside instead of in the dirt, we figured this holiday season is the perfect time to find the best in gardening gifts including gear, decor, reading – and of course, don’t forget some of those extra homesteading specialties. We’ve compiled over 70 of […]
Tropical Homesteading: Growing Bananas
Bananas are a fruit instantly recognizable to just about anyone, anywhere in the world. Yet they grow only in tropical and subtropical areas. So how is it that grocery stores in temperate zones the world over manage to offer piles and piles of them year-round for 10 cents or less per fruit? Though part of […]
25 Stylish DIY Kitchen Islands to Upgrade Your Space
Creating your own furniture is a great way to make a piece that’s unique and special, and a DIY kitchen island is a fantastic place to start. If you are someone who enjoys DIY projects, building a kitchen island for your home can enhance more than just the appearance of your cooking space. Check out […]
25+ Sustainable Stocking Stuffers To Give This Holiday Season
It’s not always possible to buy that new greenhouse or build a rain garden as a holiday gift. At Insteading, we understand that garden gifts can easily run on the large and expensive side. We wouldn’t want to substitute our love of natural and sustainable products for a plastic and battery-operated gadget, though, so we’ve […]
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 […]
25 Functional and Elegant DIY Desk Ideas
Building a DIY desk not only allows you to custom make furniture that suits your unique needs, it is also an enjoyable and gratifying experience in and of itself. Not to mention, building your own desk from scratch can be more affordable than buying a new one. If you’re looking for ideas for your next […]
13 Useful & Fun Gifts For Chicken Keepers
As the holiday season approaches, many of us are struggling to decide what to get for our friends, to show thoughtfulness and care, without breaking the bank. This can be an especially hard decision to make if your friend is a down-to-earth, outdoorsy type who doesn’t care much about possessions. What gifts can you get […]
How to Make Beeswax Candles: 3 Methods to Try at Home
DIY beeswax candle making is a great way to add a festive flair to your home. Not only do beeswax candles provide a warm and inviting light, but their fresh fragrance is also appealing this time of year. Professional candlemakers spend years honing their craft and use specialized tools to make high-quality products. But that […]
13 Beneficial Chicken-Friendly Plants To Grow Next To Coops
If you’ve had chickens for long, you probably have noticed that they eat all day long. They peck and scratch at the soil and eat every last bit of our kitchen scraps and leftovers. Letting your chickens free-range, or giving them access to plenty of natural vegetation and/or rotating their grazing parameters, is the key […]
Homestead Stories: The Stinky and Captivating Konjac Plant
“What’s that smell?” I wrinkled my nose. “It smells like rotting meat.” “It’s my newest addition to the garden,” my friend explained. “I decided to plant it far away from the house.” “That thing over there?” I asked. “It’s huge!” “The world’s largest flower.” My friend was gleeful. “It’s called the konjac plant.” “Impressive.” My […]
10 of the Best Wine Grapes to Grow at Home
If you’re a wine enthusiast looking to venture into creating your own vintage, a relocation to Napa Valley isn’t necessary. Using some of the best wine grapes grown in a home garden will allow anyone to produce quality and delicious wine. Growing grapes to create wine at home can seem like a daunting task, but […]
20 Free Backyard Playhouse Plans
Treating your kids with a backyard playhouse is a fantastic way of providing them a safe outdoor sanctuary where imagination can run free. Unfortunately, a ready-to-use playhouse can be a costly investment. Fortunately, there are plenty of free plans — which is what we’ll help you find today. We’ve found 20 of the best free […]
Homestead Stories: Beautiful Wild Asters Galore
Generally speaking, I don’t like fall. Why? It precedes winter — which is a long, cold, nongrowing, nongardening season that seems to stretch on forever. However, I do enjoy some of the pretty colors and flowers of fall, particularly wild asters. The tiny, purple (both dark and light purple) and white flowers pop up everywhere […]
Growing Leeks: From Starting Seeds to Blanching Bulbs
If you’ve never had the experience of growing leeks, you don’t know what you’re missing! This straight-laced member of the allium family has a milder flavor than onions, and it’s extremely cold hardy, making it a great choice for Northern gardeners looking for fresh vegetables in the dead of winter. To reap the fancier flavor […]
25 Free Rabbit Hutch Plans to House Your Furry Friends
Whether you’re raising meat rabbits or looking for walk-in rabbit hutch plans for your favored pets, making your own hutch can save you money and help our environment by reducing waste. Fortunately, there are plenty of options available to find what works best for you when raising rabbits. Important Details to Consider When Building a […]
Tropical Homesteading: How to Harvest Coconut for Fresh Water and Meat
Coconut palms are astoundingly useful to tropical or subtropical homesteaders. They provide everything from wood to medicine to nutritious, high-calorie food. They’re hardy, need minimal to no care, and produce (on average) anywhere from 50-200 coconuts per tree, per year. The icing on the cake? You can process the fruit to make oil, coconut milk, […]
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 […]
Greenhouse Plans
A greenhouse is one of the most well-known garden structures. Providing shielding from extreme sun, wind, and rain — greenhouses can significantly extend your growing season. These sunny buildings come in a variety of shapes and sizes too. Heated glass greenhouses can fight against snow and cold in severe climates. Plastic sheeting can help create […]
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 […]
Homestead Stories: The Ghost Orchid
With Halloween around the corner and the thought of ghosts and goblins prowling the darkened nights, how about a real flower that looks like a ghost? Yes, that’s right. There is actually a flower called a ghost orchid, and its tiny, spindly flower with no leaves, looks eerily like a ghost clinging to the bark […]
Keeping Chickens In Winter: A Guide To Healthy, Happy Snow Birds
If you have chickens clucking around your backyard in the summer, you must know a thing or two about them. However, those long winter months are a different story. Some people don’t know what keeping chickens in winter really requires. Here are a few tips on how to care for your chickens when the weather […]
20+ Delectable Pioneer Woman Recipes
Whether you’re new to cooking or consider yourself to be an advanced at-home chef, we can all benefit from a new recipe or two. Even if you have tried and true recipes you always turn to, one of the most enjoyable experiences in the kitchen is cooking up something completely new. If you’re searching for […]
25 Free Bird House Plans to Welcome Feathered Friends to Your Garden
Ornithologists know something that many people don’t: Birdwatching can be a peaceful and restorative experience. Encouraging birds to visit your home or yard can be challenging, however. Especially if you don’t have any houses for those feathery friends. A well-made bird house could be the ideal place for a coupling pair to build their nest […]
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 […]
Growing Garlic
So you love garlic, and you are ready to take the leap into growing garlic on your own. This culinary staple is easy to grow and has a long shelf life, to keep your kitchen stocked all year. Look no further than this article for the basics of growing garlic, along with some tips, tricks, […]
How To Build A Worm Composter
Worm boxes are excellent additions to the garden. Vermiculture (the process of using worms to decompose organic food waste) is a method of composting that’s been used for centuries. This is a guide on how to build a worm composter. This is the final product. I didn’t want to paint my worm composter, so I […]
Homestead Stories: My Great-Grandfather’s Gladiolus
I have fond memories of walking with my great-grandfather through his garden. In late August, the gladioli would be in full bloom and much taller than me. Of course, I was only a 6-year-old at the time. With clippers in hand, Great-Grandpa would cut stalks full of blooms, and carefully lay them in my outstretched […]
20 Charming Little Free Library Plans
What we all need right now is community. Whether the community you belong to is online, across the country, or right in your own neighborhood, getting to spend time with people who share your interests or hobbies is incredibly special. And if the community that you feel most connected to is your neighborhood, there are […]
6 Beautiful Plants That Like Wet Soil
When you consider gardening in a heavily watered area, it is important to know which plants will thrive. Anything, from the sun you get to the seeds you buy, can affect the growth of your plants. When people struggle to grow healthy plants, it’s often because they live in wet climates—either it rains a lot […]
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 […]
Canning
For several years after I started cooking and farming, I avoided canning. It intimidated me. I was afraid of making someone sick. I was overwhelmed by recipes. I didn’t have any of the special equipment or know-how. Canning seemed complicated, technical, and elite. Best to leave it to the experts, I figured. I couldn’t have been […]
Creeping Thyme: A Beautiful Groundcover To Replace Your Lawn
“Is it edible?” I asked. I had to know. “Some say it is,” my friend replied. I bent down and ran a hand across the soft carpet of pink. A waft of something sweet filtered up to my nostrils. “It smells wonderful!” I exclaimed and stood up to further admire the display. “And oh, so […]
20 Interesting Uses for Coffee Grounds
If you drink coffee every morning or even just enjoy the occasional pot, the number of grounds left behind can really add up. Tossing those grounds into the trash may feel wasteful, but the good news is there are plenty of clever uses for coffee grounds. Not only is this helpful for your wallet, but […]
10 Fun Tire Swing Ideas for Kids and the Young at Heart
As a kid, you probably had the chance to enjoy a tire swing at least once. Whether it was at a local park or you were lucky enough to have one in your own backyard, a tire swing offered a whole afternoon of fun. Maybe you want one for yourself to relive the experience? Or […]
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 […]
How To Store Apples
It sounds like the title of a Hulu-only horror movie but it’s a fact: Picked apples are alive! “Fruit does not die when harvested,” cautions agricultural experts at Iowa State University. “It remains a living organism that continues to take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide.” After an apple is picked, it eats itself […]
Homestead Stories: Yellow Bells
When I lived on Vancouver Island, I enjoyed countless hikes in the untamed (or so it was then) wilderness. Especially in the spring when the lower mountain slopes were covered in a carpet of luscious yellow bells. With narrow leaves that project along the length, every erect stem supported one, sometimes two, yellow, bell-shaped flowers. […]
How To Store Potatoes Properly For Year-Round Use
Potatoes have been a staple food for centuries all over the globe. They seem to be extremely versatile and a survivor of ages. When you think of potatoes, I bet there are several different ways to cook them that come to mind. Boiled, broiled, baked, roasted, fried, or mashed — and that’s just the different ways […]
How To Store Onions For Fresh Garden Flavor All Year Long
Onions are an essential ingredient in a great many main dishes, appetizers, salads, slaws, soups, stews, and sauces. In fact, onions are the third most consumed vegetable worldwide. And you can enjoy them long after their harvest when you learn how to store onions properly. With proper handling and storage, it’s easy to store onions […]
20 Soothing DIY Wind Chimes
Wind chimes: They’re soothing, relaxing, and add a beautiful, decorative addition to your garden or backyard. Wind chimes come in basically any color, material, size, and price tag, and nowadays, you can find some pretty artistic options on Etsy and at other retailers. But if you’re the do-it-yourself type that wants the ultimate satisfaction of […]
