Expanding Your Home Outdoors Homesteading requires creativity and ingenuity. In the depths of winter, I often find myself dreaming of days and evenings enjoyed outside. On our homestead, we have discovered opportunities to expand our living spaces by creating private areas outdoors as well as creatively using outbuildings. Wintertime is the perfect time to plan […]

Here in Vermont, trees are starting to come out of their winter hibernation as their sap starts to flow from the roots on warmer spring days. The trees stored the sap during the shortened days of autumn. In the early spring, the sap occasionally travels from the roots to the leaf buds awaiting to unfurl. […]

We all wish that we could go back to our younger selves and give some advice. For example, I’d like to tell my 20-year-old self to get married sooner, have kids younger and save more. Although we can’t go back in time, we can learn from those who have lived before us, and who have […]

Help Your Chickens Thrive This Winter Most breeds of chickens are hardy animals. Just like songbirds, they have feathers and a voracious appetite to help keep them warm when the temperatures drop. On our homestead, we choose to raise breeds that are hardy, good layers, and good mothers. Two breeds that we found represent these […]

Healthy Chickens=Healthy Profits Healthy chickens result from careful planning. Your happy hens will lay eggs regularly which you can turn around and sell for profit. Following are the practices we implement in our flock to encourage optimal health in order to produce the most amount of eggs. Ways to save money It can be easy […]

Cottage Food Laws Cottage food laws allow small-scale individuals to produce particular food items using their home kitchens without governmental oversight. Baking, cooking, canning, pickling, and producing other low-risk food items are a few options. Cottage food laws by design help give the small people a break. Affording small-time producers, the opportunity to try out […]

Guest post by Charlie Baulm Farming: Rich soil, bright sunshine, and … addiction recovery? Strange as it may sound at first, people are farming to help them recover from alcohol and drug abuse. When you learn “why,” their reasons make a lot of sense. Whether it be to build a sense of community as in […]

Animal tractors are bottomless pens for housing livestock. They are designed to be moved easily. Whether you have an existing barn or coop for your animals or you are considering adding livestock to your homestead, animal tractors may be a good fit for you. Virtually all small livestock and poultry can be housed in an […]

The weather here was unseasonably warm through much of February. We’re used to having a foot or more of snow on the ground this time of year but found ourselves wading through mud and teased by warm temperatures that felt like we should be doing productive things outside. While it’s too early to begin much […]

We plant rows of sunflowers every year here in the gardens at Pleasant Valley Farm. These beautiful flowers provide a surprising number of benefits! Our garden field is roadside, next to our farm stand. Each spring it’s exciting to see tidy rows of vegetable plants. But as the season progresses, it seems each year the […]