The Happy Homesteader

I must admit, before moving to my homestead my diet was pretty much all American.  As our concerns grew about what we were putting into our bodies, we decided that growing our own food was the best choice.  Hence the homestead!  I remember the first year here wondering if we would really be able to do it.  Failures in the garden and seemingly endless time frames to when we would actually process any meat…

The Happy Homesteader

You can tell what season it is by looking at my side table with the stack of books that never leaves!  I have a permanent book pile that always contains an array of books that I am currently perusing.  The pile is always there, but the selection changes seemingly from season to season and year to year.  This is one of the things that I love about homesteading.  You have so many varied things that you do…

The Happy Homesteader

Last week we had a litter of piglets born and each year I look forward to it so much!  Baby piglets might just be the cutest thing on the farm.  When you homestead it seems that it is not complete unless you have a pig.  Watch any old movie where people lived closer to the land and grew their own food and you always see a pig in a pen.  Usually…

If you raise animals you will inevitably be faced with the decision to wean or not to wean. Weaning is something that has been manipulated by domestication for so long that it has become sort of complicated. In the wild there is no one telling the young fawn that it needs to separate from it's mother other than the natural instinct that both mother and baby have telling them to get on with their lives. Neither one puts up a fuss and weaning ALWAYS takes place. When people began putting…

The Happy Homesteader

When I was a child summer had a very different meaning.  We would look forward to summer as the ultimate vacation.  It meant no school, long lazy days with nothing to do but play, and carefree moments where time didn't seem to matter.  I spent my days in shorts and flip-flops exploring the woods and climbing trees.  Often we would take trips to Grandma's house to swim in her pool.  I remember my parents…

It's a delicate balance in my garden that I do not yet have under control.  Each year I prepare for cucumbers and pickles by trying to figure out how many cucumber plants I should plant.  The goal is always to have a constant supply of fresh cukes for slicing and eating throughout the summer.  They are delicious, but really, how many cucumbers can you eat?  In reality one plant would be enough for our family.  The problem is that I also make a lot of pickles and this means that you need a…

The Happy Homesteader

June is a good time around here to harvest the first of the year's honey.  When I first started beekeeping it took me a long time of observation to understand our seasons from the bee's perspective.  Pretty much as March rolls around we'll begin to see the bees buzzing on the first flower blossoms that appear.  By April they are in full flight and are bringing in honey at an alarming rate, so we give them…

The Happy Homesteader

Well, for most of us gardeners, around this time of year we begin to include the daily garden chore of bug hunting. For me it includes a small bucket with a couple of inches of soapy water in the bottom and my gardening gloves because I hate touching bugs! I go out first thing in the morning because that is when I can find the most pests. I go down the veggie garden and each time I see a bug that is bothering my…

The Happy Homesteader



With the summer garden fully planted now and the plants growing quickly I know that the harvest is just around the corner. It's this time that I do the most canning. Of course, I'm growing and preserving food all year long, but the summer provides a bounty of fresh veggies and many of them lend themselves to canning as the best preservation method.



For those of you that are new to canning, first let…

Before I started gardening I was able to close my eyes and picture a beautifully landscaped garden which was overflowing in vegetables.  For some reason the gardens I pictured were always quaint, inviting, and very decorative.  When I thought about growing home vegetables I didn't picture straight rows or mono-crops.  Instead there were flowers and trees interplanted with veggies, pathways, and garden statues placed around.  Little did I know that my instincts were right!  A "vegetable"…

Raising your own meat is not something that everyone does.  To a homesteader though, it's as common as growing your own tomatoes.  Funny thing is, I don't remember being so intimidated about growing a garden full of veggies as I was about doing something so huge as butchering a cow.  Putting the vegetarian debate aside, I wanted to talk about the logistics of butchering freezer beef.  When I first thought about raising a cow for beef I had no idea what to expect in terms of how much food…

Yes.  You actually can do this!  I'm not talking about the Flowbee haircutter that attaches to your vacuum and sucks up your hair, but actual haircuts that your family is used to.  You can be the stylist that your family depends on.  

At the cheap walk-in hair cutter's in town a basic men's haircut is $14.95 plus tip.  If you figure that the average man gets his hair cut about every 6 weeks, then that is almost $150 a year spent on hair cuts.  Got two kids?  Now you're talking…

The Happy Homesteader

This time of year everyone around us is cutting hay.  When you see a neighbor on the street or if you bump into someone at the hardware store the question everyone is asking is, "Did you get your hay up?"  It's this strange phenomenon that I never knew about until I became a land owner.  I actually remember the time that I asked what the difference between hay and straw is.  Now I know far more about hay…

The Happy Homesteader Blog

While my pantry is never bare and every season around here is a season to preserve food, this time of year is when things are the leanest.  July and August are the biggest canning periods and by now we have usually gone through much of last summer's harvest, but are enjoying the winter harvest.  Since warm season crops are already in the ground, then it won't be long before these veggies roll around…

I had to take a drive the other day which took me through many small towns, suburbs and then into the city.  It was a perfect spring day!  Temps were about 70's degrees and the sun was shining.  I was so happy to see everyone's flower beds blooming and tall grass had been cut.  It was the exact definition of spring.  Except, I was struck by the fact that it was a Sunday afternoon and there were no children outside.  

Where have all of the children gone?  When I was a child it would…

There's just no other month like April!  The grass is green and everything is starting to bloom.  It's the time of year that I get busy picking plants for medicine.  I have been called a squirrel when people hear about me walking in the woods every day with my clippers and bags saying I'm going foraging! I come back with bags and pockets full and lots of leaves pressed into my field guides of things I want to look up.  Each plant has it's ideal time for harvesting depending on what part of…

If your garden has not started producing yet or if you are in between cool and warm season crops and feeling the need for some fresh veggies then give sprouts a try.  Often in the dead of winter when all we are eating is canned and frozen veggies we feel our bodies craving the crispness and nutrients that only fresh veggies can provide.  Sprouts are the perfect thing to fill that gap because you can grow them in any season and under any conditions.  They are also packed with nutrients and…

The Happy Homesteader Blog

I know, I know...a homestead doesn't feel complete with out a milk animal, but it's so intimidating!  What used to be common place is now thought of as burdensome and challenging.  It's become so foreign to us that we worry about how we would handle being so close to such a large animal, how would we handle being tied down to milking her EVERY day, and how do we handle such a vulnerable product such as…

The Happy Homesteader Blog

It lies quietly still, never moving, barely breathing for months on end.  You stare at it with an aching heart, pleading with it to wake up.  "Grow, please grow," you whisper in your mind.  It seems it will never happen and the thought lies heavy on your shoulders.  Then, seemingly overnight, you look out one morning and things have changed!  Without you noticing, a blanket has covered the Earth.  A…

The Happy Homesteader Blog

I remember looking at unbroken land of weeds and rocks and telling myself that one day there would be a bountiful garden there.  In the coming years my plans would change and adapt as I learned more and more about gardening.  Today, the garden sort of resembles what my first plan was, but has many elements that I've changed as I figured out what our land was like and what I could handle in terms of…