Once you’ve designed your chicken coop and decided on chicken breeds, choosing a style of feeder for your birds seems trivial, but it’s not! It can make your daily routine more efficient, keep your birds on a healthy diet, and reduce the chances of disease. Alternatively, choosing the wrong feeder can lead to overeating, wasted
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Chia Seeds Vs. Flax Seeds: What’s the Difference?
We hear a lot about the benefits of eating seeds. But when it comes to the goodness of chia seeds vs. flax seeds, do you know the differences? I’m learning.
7 Ways To Mouse-Proof Your Homestead
For homesteaders, the common house mouse is one of the most troublesome of pests. A small brown or gray rodent with little beady eyes, large ears, and a skinny three to four-inch long tail, house mice flourish under a diverse array of conditions in and around homes, sheds, barns, and outbuildings. The unwelcome intruders consume
How To Make Sausage
Do you love sausage but get tired of the limited options your grocery store sells? Making your own sausages gives you control over the quality of the ingredients, the spice mix, the link size, and any allergens. The flavor of fresh, homemade sausages is completely unique, and the process of making it yourself gives you
How To Smoke Meat
Nothing quite complements the savory flavor of meat as well as the tang of smoke. Smoking meat is a low and slow cooking method that gives delicious flavor to any type of meat or other foods like cheese. With the right equipment and a little basic knowledge, it’s very easy to get started smoking meat.
Best Garden Shoes
Gardening requires walking in dirt, and mud, and gravel, and mulch — you get the idea. Garden shoes are work shoes, and they need to be able to hold up in rugged conditions and keep you comfortable. Let’s go through our top picks, followed by some basic criteria to look at when deciding which are
Growing Peanuts
Peanuts are one of the most familiar staples of American childhood culture, from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to roasted peanuts at a ballgame. They are also notorious for causing deadly allergic reactions in some people. But surprisingly enough, most people don’t know anything about how they are grown or even that they are not
Making Homemade Soap
I started making my own soap out of necessity, but eventually it became one of our farm products. Around 2000, I started having severe rashes. I had combination allergies, which made me allergic to soaps, shampoos, laundry detergent and even toothpaste! I started out making my soaps with melt-and-pour glycerin, but that proved to be
What Do Goats Eat?
Many of us—particularly those who didn’t grow up on a farm—have some strange stereotypes embedded in our minds about what farms are like. All cows are black and white, all farmers wear overalls, all barns are painted red. One of the oddest ones I remember inheriting is the idea that goats enjoy munching on tin
Homestead Stories: The Day I Butchered My First Duck
Our Pekin duck was a problem. Belligerent and lascivious, he had taken the peace of our small flock and turned it on its head. Our ducks had stopped producing eggs due to his voracious affections, and his “favorite” had the bald spots on her head and the foaming eye to prove it. The rest of
Growing Ginger (With Helpful Tips For Indoor And Outdoor Growing)
Full disclosure: I may have more than a mild obsession with ginger. These days I’m finding myself craving it regularly. I love it added to my favorite Asian or Indian-inspired dishes, drinking it in tea form, and having ginger dressing no less than three times a week on my salads. The slightly spicy, savory flavor
What Do Ducks Eat?
Ducks, like chickens, are omnivores. So what do ducks eat? Typically, ducks eat foraged food including weeds, seeds, grasses, slugs, and other pests. Ducks also eat natural, homemade feed or commercial feed. To know what ducks want and need to eat, look no further than a wetland in your local park. There, in the early morning, you’ll
18 Laundry Room Ideas For Better Organization And Decor
Our laundry rooms are typically one of the smallest rooms in our homes, yet they are one of our heaviest-traveled spaces. I’ve often wondered: Why is such a well-used area given so little attention? Though I’ve seen the odd wine refrigerator or reading chair in a laundry rooms, most folks go with utilitarian decor. Most
Birdhouses: 32 Homes For Your Feathered Friends
If you don’t already have a birdhouse in your backyard, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. Undoubtedly you have at least a few friends or family members who are big fans of their avian visitors. Some of the biggest bird enthusiasts have many birdhouses adorning their trees and decks and windowsills. So, what’s
The Scoop on Organic Fertilizer: Is It Right for Your Garden?
Nothing could be simpler, or more complex, than organic fertilizer. Garden stores make it seem like it’s something that you buy in bags. Big Agriculture makes it seem like it’s something that’s less efficient than chemical fertilizers, and therefore useless unless you have a special interest for using it. Online, the options for organic fertilizer
How to Store Garlic
A staple in homestead gardens, garlic is easy to plant, easy to maintain, easy to harvest, and transports and stores well. With a little effort, homesteaders can grow garlic for home consumption and a supplemental cash crop. Garlic: fresh, pickled, dehydrated, packed in olive oil, or used to season savory edibles, is always a big
How To Choose, Collect, And Save Garden Seeds
Planting a garden may just be the most exciting part of the growing process. Whether it is your first time or your twenty-fifth season, the anticipation of fresh spring greens emerging in your backyard never gets old. As you browse through plant catalogs and uncountable wonders of seed suppliers making your necessary heirloom seed purchases,
How To Grow Sunflowers
I love sunflowers. Sunflowers display a bright splash of cheerful color against the garden fence, they provide an abundant crop of seeds which both our family and the birds enjoy, and they are so easy to grow. It doesn’t matter if you have a green thumb or not. If you can stick a seed in
How To Get Rid Of Flies: Natural And Effective Options
Flies are everywhere. In fact, entomologists have named over 100,000 species of flies on earth. Not only are flies annoying, but they also carry germs and diseases. Though flies are a tasty treat for frogs, they are not good for us. The following article will provide you with a variety of tips to repel and
The Basics Of Straw Bale Gardening
An ancient gardening technique dating back to the Romans, straw bale gardening is a simple concept. As a straw bale starts to decompose or break down, it turns into a raised, compostable, 40-gallon planter that’s ideal for growing vegetables. Straw bale gardens are inexpensive, easy to set up, easy to maintain, and biodegradable. Straw bale
How To Mulch For A Beautiful, Weed-Free Garden
I don’t like to describe anything as a miracle when it comes to gardening, but honestly, mulch comes close. Before I learned how to mulch, my garden was plagued with problems. While my square-foot garden did a good job of choking out weeds on its own (due to close spacing), my garden soil still seemed
Homestead Stories: What Color Is Your Bleeding Heart Flower?
“And what do we have here?” I shook my head as I worked around some sprouts that had poked through the ground. It was early spring and the garden was coming back to life. I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular — just myself. I do that a lot when I’m gardening. I hadn’t planted
10 Beneficial Ways To Use Epsom Salt For Plants
Epsom salt is an all-natural, time-tested mineral compound composed of magnesium, sulfate, and oxygen. Not only does it make bathwater soft and silky, but a long, relaxing soak in a hot bath full of Epsom salt brings soothing relief from the aches and pains of a long day digging in the dirt. But Epsom salt
Gardening Resources For Kids
One of the best parts about gardening is building community. There’s something special about sharing the experience of planting and nurturing seeds, and watching them grow — especially when it’s with kids. Their innate curiosity and ability to see things with a set of fresh eyes makes gardening a wonderful physical, mental, and educational activity.
10 Cheap Chicken Feed Ideas For Feeding Your Flock On A Budget
Raising chickens is extremely rewarding, but the costs of commercial feed can add up quickly. If you’re raising just a couple of hens for eggs, you may not mind paying the price for quality feed, but trying to feed a large flock can get expensive fast. Yes, you’ll get eggs and you can sell your eggs
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Welcome to Insteading. Every day, we help thousands of gardeners and homesteaders grow their garden and their skills. We have over 1,500 free articles and resources, written by folks out in their yards and fields who have been doing this for years. Truly, it’s over 1.5 million words of content – about 30 books worth!