Category: Homesteading

Here you find all kinds of tidbits on homesteading.

February 11, 2015

Gardening for Beginners: Helpful Tips

Gardening for Beginners

This post originally appeared in January of 2014. Since gardening time is near, I thought we’d re-run it for any new-to-gardening readers. Enjoy!

Photo Credit

Happy Friday, friends!! My dear friend Michelle, whom I secretly call my cooking and gardening extraordinaire friend, agreed to write a post for us on the basics of gardening for beginners. This gal amazes me, simply because the things that she does, she does very well. She’s a superhero in all things pertaining to house and home. She’s an amazing cook, her house is fabulously decorated, and she’s a pro and growing and preserving her own food, on top of being super sweet. So, my friends, gather up all of the gardening wisdom you can from this wise woman!

Over at RockinTheMomRole.com my motto is ‘Living, Life and Loving Both’. I try to educate, inspire, and enlighten on all things domestic. So, when my dear friends at Frugal Farmer asked me to share some of my home gardening tips, of course I said yes!

Recommended reading: Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre

Today we are going to discuss beginning your own home garden. Read more

January 12, 2015

What is Your 2015 Homesteading Plan?

So, you want to be a homesteader, or you are a homesteader: what is your 2015 homesteading plan? Today we’ll talk about how, if homesteading is a goal of yours, you can determine a plan for your 2015 homestead. Even if you live in an urban or suburban area, you can put a plan in place to begin or continue your homesteading life. According to Wikipedia, the broadly-defined definition of homesteading is “to lead a life of self-sufficiency”. However, any homesteader or aspiring homesteader knows that this means different things to different people, depending on where they live and where they are in their homesteading journey. Read more

November 18, 2014

10 Tips for Smart Long Term Food Storage

If you’ve read and understand the importance of having a long-term food storage plan, but don’t quite know where to start, you’re not alone. Food storage and survival preparation is a comprehensive subject and there can be a lot to learn. So today I thought I’d go over some basics, a food storage 101, so to speak.

What to Consider When Creating Your Long Term Food Storage Plan

Many times people planning for long term food storage in case of a disaster or other event simply fill up their basement with MRE’s, or some other form of dried up “foods” with a 30-year shelf life. While these products are definitely beneficial and have their place, we’ve chosen to go a different route for our food storage system. Read more

November 15, 2014

Saturday Morning Ramble: The Homesteading Community

Hey friends! Well, we’re working to accept the 10 or so inch snowfall that graced our part of the state on Monday. The kids love it, of course, but Rick and I – yuck! We truly need a winter home. 🙂

This week, I’ve been thinking lots about how vital and beneficial it is in the homesteading world to have a support community. Read more

October 25, 2014

Life Updates and Why Homesteaders Have Food Stockpiles

Can you believe it? Less than a week til the end of October. The weather this week has been pretty mild: up into the mid to high 60’s in the day time, which means we’ve been able to keep heating bills pretty low. Thank you, Jesus, for small favors. 🙂 My October challenge has met with mixed results: food wise I’m still doing really well: Had sugar once (fell prey to a DQ chocolate covered cone this week. 🙂 ) and flour three times this month. Total weight lost? I’ll tell you in a week. 🙂 Money wise Read more

October 19, 2014

2014 Garden Review

So, the garden is cleared out, ready to be tilled again for next spring’s planting. Although we didn’t do as well as we’d liked garden-wise, (our goal is to provide our family’s veggies for the entire year) we did have some great successes and gained much knowledge for next year’s garden. Read more

October 16, 2014

Garden Carrots 101

One of the things we’re starting to feel like we’re really getting the hang of as far as gardening goes is garden carrots. Carrots are super easy to grow and maintain, and as such, we’ve always gotten a pretty good yield from our garden carrots. We do eat them fresh, but mostly we peel, blanch and freeze them in a variety of sizes for later use. Here are some of the things you might want to know about growing garden carrots and how to preserve them for later use. Read more

October 4, 2014

Saturday Morning Ramble: Homesteading In Winter

Happy Saturday, my frugal homesteading friends!!! The Farmer’s Almanac tells us we’re due for another Polar Vortex hell of a winter again, so here at the Frugal Farmer homestead, we’re busily planning what we can do this winter to stay warm and not go broke. 🙂

Winter in the country, at least here in the northern Midwest, is, well, cold. Last winter, our first taste of the evil Polar Vortex, was, well, horrible. We had weeks on end of subzero temperatures, and several days in a row where it wasn’t even safe for us to leave the house. In the homesteading world, when you live in the country, things can get a bit tricky when it comes to handling weather extremes. Read more

October 1, 2014

Smoky Chipotle Salsa

Hey, friends! As we wade through what’s left of the produce to can and freeze, I thought I’d take a minute out and share with you the new Smoky Chipotle Salsa recipe we tried this year that has gotten rave reviews so far. Last year when we did our first salsa canning, we used our Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving’s recipe for their Simple House Salsa. We stayed on track with the recipe, except for that we added some jalpenos and habaneros, but we still found the salsa a bit mild for our tastes. This year we decided to do a little modification and see if we couldn’t spice it up a bit, and it worked! Here’s the recipe: Read more

September 29, 2014

How to Build a Mobile Chicken Coop Extension

Hey friends!!! Charlie is featuring an awesome post over at our sister site, www.backyardchickenguide.com today, about how to build a Mobile Chicken Coop Extension for your backyard chickens. Check it out!