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. […]

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 […]

We are coming into our third harvest season in a couple of months. Hard to believe. I am sitting outside in one of my spots, watching the leaves fall around me. It’s one of those days where I can close my eyes and hear them falling onto the forest floor. It is unseasonably warm today. As […]

Tools for Success Become a successful homesteader, farmer, and sustainable leader by managing time, money, and your business more efficiently by the following ways. Every second counts when you exclaim, “there isn’t enough time in the day!” Some of the biggest challenges that many people strive to improve on include time management, scheduling life around […]

Pumpkins are for laughter — for Jack-O-Lanterns and Halloween — during the cool, overcast days of autumn. Pumpkins are for pies . . . all winter long. And pumpkins are for extra cash: their sales bring in dollars when most other money crops are gone. A fellow homesteader put it this way: “Pumpkins are our […]

Find Cottage Food Laws for Your State! Shared from MOTHER EARTH NEWS – Written by Rebecca Martin Want to sell your homemade food but worry that the law won’t let you? Check out Forrager, an online clearinghouse for information on how home cooks and bakers can have their cake and sell it, too. Forrager focuses on […]

Forming a Community Tool Co-Op Written By: Dave Wortman, MOTHER EARTH NEWS Blogger There’s nothing like having just the right tools to help make your projects go smoothly. But, tools can be a big investment for homeowners. When money is tight, tool costs can make or break a project. And often, we only need that […]

Homestead Legalities Written By: Tasha Greer , MOTHER EARTH NEWS Blogger When I first started homesteading, I lived in a master planned city just outside Washington DC. It had many environmental and community well-being programs such as being walkable, maintaining a large nature preserve, re-wilding wetlands, lots of parks and community spaces, and free electric […]

Small-Scale Medicinal Herb Farming Success Written By: Susanna Raeven, MOTHER EARTH NEWS Blogger It’s been quite a ride and it is still going at a high speed. From the moment of realization that the world of healing herbs was calling me, to my first herbal class, to running a small-scale herb farm that grows medicinal herbs with […]