From soil and seeds to livestock, preservation, and off-grid power.
By the Pantry Team Start with the honest version, because most of what you will read about beef this month is written to frighten you. There is no beef shortage at the American grocery store. The cases are full. What has happened is that the price of what is in them has climbed past the … Read more
By the Homestead Team Almost every vegetable garden runs on the same yearly cycle: till the bed, start or buy seedlings, plant, tend, harvest, then pull the spent plants and start the whole process over again next spring. Perennial vegetables break that cycle. Plant them once, give them a year or two to settle in, … Read more
By the Gear Desk A fruit tree is one of the few purchases that pays you back for decades on a single upfront cost. Plant it once, prune it a few times a year, and it feeds your household every summer after that with no ongoing input beyond your own labor. That is a genuinely … Read more
By the Gear Desk If you want the single best return on a small amount of yard space and a one-time purchase, berry bushes are hard to beat. A blueberry bush, a blackberry cane, a fig tree: plant any of these once and they hand you pounds of fruit every summer for fifteen, twenty, thirty … Read more
By the Pantry Team Most people who keep a stocked pantry have never answered the question that matters: if the grocery trips stopped tomorrow, how many days would that pantry cover? Not a guess, a number. It turns out most households either badly overestimate (a full-looking cabinet can be gone in four days) or never … Read more
By the Homestead Team Rain falling on a roof is free water that most people simply let run away, and capturing it is one of the most rewarding and practical projects a self-reliant household can undertake. Rainwater harvesting, collecting and storing rain for later use, provides water for gardens, livestock, and, with proper treatment, household … Read more
By the Foraging Team North America is remarkably rich in wild edible foods, and for those who learn to recognize them, the landscape offers a surprising abundance of nutrition growing free for the gathering. From nutrient-dense wild greens to protein-rich nuts and vitamin-packed berries, common wild foods across the United States can genuinely supplement a … Read more
By the Food Preservation Team Smoking is one of the most ancient ways humans preserved meat and fish, and it endures because it does two things at once: it helps preserve food and it makes it taste wonderful. The combination of smoke, and often salt and heat, has kept protein edible for far longer than … Read more
By the Food Preservation Team Dehydrating is one of the oldest and simplest food preservation methods, and it remains one of the most practical for the modern homestead. By removing the water that spoilage organisms need to grow, drying preserves food in a lightweight, compact, shelf-stable form that keeps for months or years. Dried fruits, … Read more
By the Food Preservation Team Canning is the preservation method that lets you capture a garden’s peak abundance in jars that keep for years on a shelf, no refrigeration or freezing required. Opening a jar of your own tomatoes or green beans in the depths of winter is one of the quiet joys of self-reliance. … Read more
By the Aquaculture Team In fish farming, one truth outweighs all others: healthy water makes healthy fish. Nearly every problem a fish keeper faces, from stunted growth to disease outbreaks to sudden die-offs, traces back to water quality, because the water is the fish’s entire environment, supplying the oxygen they breathe and carrying away the … Read more
By the Aquaculture Team For the homesteader who wants to raise fish intensively in a controlled way, a recirculating aquaculture system, or RAS, offers a compelling approach: raising a lot of fish in a relatively small volume of water by continuously filtering and reusing that water rather than relying on a large natural pond. RAS … Read more
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