How to Be a Homesteader (without having a farm) #1: Turn off the lights. Get cozy and tell ghost stories at dinner tonight by candlelight. Place candles in a solid base away from drapery and pedestrian traffic. If you have children, always discuss fire safety (keeping sleeves and hair away from the flickering candles). Cook by candlelight with the Triwick Survival Candle, pictgure left. The Triwick Survival Candle Stove converts into a stove with included aluminum brackets. #2: Hang something out to dry. String a clothesline with wooden clothes pins and let your clothes hang dry the homesteading way! Hang the line on a fold up drying rack for indoor use, a patio, the porch, a greenhouse, sun room or outside. Youll save money on the drying expenses as you practice your homesteading skills. #3: Make do or do without. Get into homesteading by cutting back on something or substituting something for greener living. For example: Make do without baking powder! Epicurious shows how simple it is to mix baking soda with cream of tartar to make your own homemade baking powder. It will taste better without the chemicals. Do without plastic bags: You can do without plastic sandwich and snack bags by stitching together or buying cloth sandwich bags, pictured left, or sending kids to school with a steel bento box, also pictured left. #4: Recycle something. If you have too many plastic bags, you can craft something new with plarn (yarn made of plastic). From plarn you can crochet a sturdy grocery handbag. #5: Make soup from scratch. There are five basic considerations for making soup from scratch youll need to: choose a type of fat select a base pick the meat pair the complementary veggies include the right spices Of course, after youve mastered your soup making skills, the grand finale is to select the perfect apocalypse soup toppings. Once you get the basics for making soup from scratch, youll throw in leftover veggies and turn tonights dinner scraps into tomorrows soup for lunch! #6: Try Composting. Start by throwing the leftover coffee beans in the garden. Eventually youll want to get yourself a compost bin, but start small with a compost bucket and put in egg shells, lemon and orange rinds, apple cores, celery stalk, potato and carrot peels, tea bags or tea leaves, and nut shells, excluding black walnut, which is toxic. (No meat or bones either.) Youll get the hang of it quickly. Pretty soon youll find yourself routinely saving food scraps for your compost pile. Want to get a little more advanced in your homesteading? Get a composting toilet. #7: Grow a Windowsill Herb Garden. You dont need land to grow herbs. All you really need is a sunny place inside your home. Here are the top ten herbs to grow according to organicgardening. #8: Build a bird feeder, nesting box or bird house. Birds are natural pest control! They eat a variety of insects, including aphids, mosquitoes, and spiders. Building a bird feeder or bird house will help your garden grow. You might also install a birdbath. #9: Make a gravy from scratch! Get out the fancy gravy boat instead of the can! Making gravy is a skill every homesteader should know. You can learn to make gravy worthy of filling your finest gravy bout. Martha Stewart shows how to make an easy gravy from scratch. #10: Braid a rug! An art that grew out of necessity, your rags of warn clothing could be transformed into something new and useful: a rug! Much of homesteading revolves around not letting anything go to waste, so if you have clothing your children have outgrown or that no longer fits, then put it to good use with a do-it-yourself rug. Heres the tutorial for how to braid a rug. #11: Become a Knit Wit. Knitting is among the skills prepper kids love. #12: Grind your own wheat into flour. Get out of the daily grind and start grinding! Among the top ten of essential homesteading skills is grinding wheat, but dont stop with wheat! Explore the other daily grinds... A grain mill is also useful for grinding: coffee; oats into flour or to make oats milk; popcorn into cornmeal; beans into flour or hummus. #13: Bake biscuits and make home-made gravy. Youll feel close to the farm if have biscuits and gravy. Biscuits are just as good for breakfast as they are for dinner; and home made gravy tastes so much better than what you get from a can. #14: Sprout something! With the seed sprouter, right you can sprout anything from alfalfa for the rabbits, fodder for the chickens or sprout for human consumption -- crunchy toppings for your sandwiches and salads. #15: Make home-made tortillas. Tortillas are a gluten free treat. Making tortillas is actually easier than baking biscuits! You need only Masa Harina (a special corn flour), salt and warm water. Make dough balls, roll them and fry. (Later, you can get fancy and buy a tortilla press.) Start a container garden. Even someone in an apartment can have a little homestead on the patio or deck with a container garden. Plant potatoes! While youre at it, pack some survival seeds. Tutorial for making home made tortillas. (It takes just 7 minutes, 34 seconds). #16: Churn milk into butter. A hand-crank butter churn, pictured left, is an easy prep and your family will enjoy the home made butters youll craft. Try flavored butters by adding herbs, fruits and rinds. Make emergency butter from powdered milk. You just need to open a dehydrated can of milk. Heres how to make butter from powdered milk. #17: Bake a pie crust from scratch. Whether you pick wild blackberries, apples from an orchard, or pumpkins from your patch, youll eventually need to learn to bake a pie crust from scratch to take advantage of the seasonal fruit. Pie making Hint: To help you gain experience, make a flaky pie crust with help from Dancing Deer Baking Co., pictured immediate left. The directions are easy and your family will love you for trying! Once you see that it isnt that difficult, you can move on to the totally from scratch kind. #18: Learn how to make yogurt without a machine. Yogurt is an ancient prepper food that was likely first made by mistake in a warm climate where milk had the opportunity to ferment. It was a delicious mistake indeed and a welcomed skill on the homestead. Raita is the Indian version of yogurt, which is served as a condiment to the many spicy foods of India. Want the tutorial for making yogurt? If you have a few minutes, give this video your attention and learn How to Make Yogurt at Home without a Yogurt Maker. Want to print a yogurt recipe? Jump to the recipe, and learn How to make yogurt at home with thekitchn - yes, its a kitsch name for a Web site, but loaded with great information on not just cooking. There are tutorials and advice along with the recipes. #19. Dehydrate fruits and vegetables. Owning a food dehydrator is a joy for dehydrating fruits and vegetables (the Excalibur, pictured right is a prized possession of many preppers, but there are loads of other methods of dehydrating foods, including: air drying sun drying (air drying in direct sunlight) oven drying smokehouse drying and even microwave drying for meats! #20: Dry some herbs (no dehydrator needed). Its easy enough to dry herbs, just pick herbs from your garden and hang them up. Even so, expert homesteaders have secrets to make sure herbs come out fresh as the day you picked them. Heres how to dry herbs. #21: Sew something simple. Its sew simple: sew something to get started homesteading. Darn some socks. Sew something simple by hand with needle and thread or just repair a pair of worn out stocks. Sew without electricity! Left, the treadle-powered sewing machine will be a luxury in a life in an off-grid world. #22: Get a clean start in soap making. While owning a goat is useful for making soap, you can make some soap with a few simple ingredients. Fabricating natural milk soap Soapmaking 101: Get wise to soap making with lessons for beginners with Soapmaking 101, a series of videos available on YouTube. Never throw away old soap. You can melt it back down or continue to reuse it with mesh bags, a tip from the Great Depression. #23: Clean your tools. Keep your gardening tools rust free and in good shape so you dont have to buy them again. Homesteaders always keep an eye on expenses and live life with thrift! #24: Chop wood, sharpen your axe, and manage your wood lot. Seasoned wood requires a season to dry, so you may as well get chopping now! Want a premium axe? Gransfors Bruks, Small Forest Axe, right. This premium quality axe is hand-forged at Gränsfors Bruks, a family owned forge in a small town in Sweden. The small Forest Axe has a handle long enough to allow powerful chopping but short enough to fit in a rucksack. This is the one to own! Get sharp on your axe: Sharpen an axe; and know the proper way to carry it. A free guide for your personal survival manual is The Scout and his Axe, by John Thurman. This 16-page guide, written in 1963 on the types of axes, is a PDF to print that will help you with choosing an axe, caring for an axe, sharpening an axe, safety, and proper felling of a tree. As well it has pertinent information on saws, hammers and wedges. Manage your wood lot: Properly managing the wood lot on your property means youll have more future firewood. #25: Seal some cheese in Wax. You dont need to be a dairy farmer or a cheese maker to start with a simple homesteading skill: waxing cheese. Waxing cheese will help you feel more self- sufficient because you can coat your favorite artisan cheeses for use years later. Get cheese wax and start preserving cheese at home. #26: Candle making (traditional and non-traditional). Light up the night with candle making! Whether crafting hand-dipped candles or making a primitive light source from what you have candle making is a necessary skill for a life off grid. Hint for making candles and simultaneously re-using supplies: You can use an expired tub of Crisco and add a wick to craft an easy survival candle. (Yes, even Crisco has an expiration date.) Keep wicks on hand for making oil lamps with other kinds of oils that go rancid. Such oil can serve as fuel for fire building as well. #27: Forage for edibles. Natures bounty is hiding outside. Get a book to help you find the wild edibles in your vicinity. Forage for edibles in the wild. Fruit Foraging and Berry Picking. Take a look around the neighborhood for free fruit. Pick blackberries or kumquats. Ask a neighbor or friend who may have too many apples, oranges or lemons if you can pick fruit that might otherwise go to waste. #28: Learn the art of Charcuterie. Charcuterie is the craft of salting, smoking, and curing, which began in France and Italy. Original methods of Charcuterie is responsible for the salami, sausages, and prosciutto we enjoy today. In modern definition, its the art of salting, cooking, smoking, and drying meats. A Prepper may learn to make sausages, terrines, and pâtés or even olive and vegetable rillettes, duck confit, mortadella and soppressata or smoked almonds! Left, Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, paves the way towards learning the skill of Charcuterie #29: Use honey for something besides eating. Apply honey as a natural antibiotic to heal a wound naturally. It works well on burns too. Discover 19 Natural antibiotics. #30. Know how to disinfect water without chemicals. Discover how to disinfect water with sunlight. #31: Learn to distill water. MomPrepares provides an easy way to distill water in a YouTube video, though there is an annoying birds background noise, the content is good. #32: Make a homemade disinfectant cleaner. Heres how to make a natural disinfectant cleaner. #33: Learn to use a pressure canner. Theres no pressure, but please visit our canning store for pressure cookers! Need more help? At Home Canning for Beginners and Beyond with Kendra Lynne, pictured left, will get you started. #34: Harvest the rain. Start collecting rainwater now. Even if you simply have a barrel its a good start because rainwater is safe to drink in a survival situation and a much better alternative than pool water. #35: Get into Root Cellaring. Set up your own natural cold storage of fruits and vegetables with help from the book, pictured left. Root cellaring is for advanced preppers, but just about anyone can have a barrel root cellar if they have a small space to dig. #36: Know how to prune and graft a fruit tree. Heres how to prune an apple tree. #37: Plant a tomato or potato seeds into a five gallon bucket. Here are other ideas for how to use a five-gallon bucket. #38: Cook a whole chicken. You dont need to know how to pluck a chicken, just yet; however, you should know how to cook a whole chicken! Then, make a soup or broth from the leftover bones. Better Homes and Garden provides the skills you need for handling meat and how to cook a whole chicken. #39: Cut your old garments. On the homestead nothing goes to waste. Cut up your old garments and make a quilt. Dont want to sew? Start snipping your old clothes into quilt sized sheets anyway and use them for when the toilet paper runs out! This material will surely store better than toilet paper. Youll also get use out the clothes as rags for cleaning. #40: Clip hair. Cutting hair is a self-sufficiency skill that can save your family ample money; however, its not a skill for everyone. Haircutting for Dummies offers and easy-to-follow guide on how to get salon- or barbershop-quality results on all types of hair - long, short, straight, curly, or kinky. #41: Build a Well. The time to build a well is before you need one. Pictured right, the Handy Well Pump is an easy and affordable way to make sure you always have a water supply from your well when the power goes out. #42 Make your own charcoal. Charcoal is ideal for composting too. Home made charcoal will aid in composting your garden, but dont try this at home with manufactured briquettes, like Kingston. Charcoal briquettes wont aid in the breakdown of organic matter, because they contain other ingredients to make them light faster. Youll need to dump your charcoal in an area separate from your composting. Tutorial for making charcoal. #43: Grow food, not lawns. Dont have any land in which to grow? Even if you simply plant one vegetable in a pot: get to it! Tomatoes are easy to grow and you can grow them upside-down in a five gallon bucket, so theyll be plump and juicy and you can pick them like grapes on a vine. Yes, its strange but true! Plant tomatoes upside-down in a food-grade bucket. Potatoes are rapid growing. Grow potatoes in a bag. Pioneers planted potatoes almost immediately upon setting foot in Salt Lake City. In about two weeks of planting, the potatoes were sprouting. Install a fruit tree. Think of it as a plant adoption! It may take 5-8 years for a standard apple tree from a nursery to bear fruit, but in so planting, you will be leaving legacy of goodness. Want faster gratification? A dwarf tree will take 3-4 years to bear fruit. Apples: Want to grow an apple orchard? Heres a good start to see if you can! Grapes: Concord Grapes need almost no attention to produce a volume of fruit, according to Caleb Warnock in his book, The Forgotten Skills of Self-Sufficiency used by the Mormon Pioneers, pictured at the top left- hand of the page. The book shows how easy it is to propagate grapes. You just dig up a volunteer vine and when it touches moist soil it can take root. (Of course finding a free volunteer vine is another story.) Cant grow much at home? If you want more than a planter box of fruit and vegetables or you dont have a backyard to grow food, then volunteer to do the gardening for a school or church, or take part in a local community garden project to nurture your homesteading skills. #44: Visit an apple orchard, a pumpkin patch, or a blueberry farm. Pick fruits and veggies from the source! Talk with the people growing food and ask the employees as many questions as you can to get more information about growing. Youll get a good grasp of what is necessary to grow your food. #45: Take a trip to the farmers market. Local farmers will show you their bounty and youll get a good idea for what you can plant at home. Feel free to ask questions and get advice. #46: Decide to raise Chickens! Check first with your local laws as many municipalities wont allow residents to have backyard chickens! Also be warned that while the humane society may have chickens for adoption; they may well be fryers or hens past their prime egg laying. So dont expect egg layers: expect instead, a pet who may lay eggs! #47: Raise rabbits. Rabbits eat just about anything green, and they are extremely prolific, making them an ideal source of meat for preppers. Yes, the wonderful thing about rabbits, is rabbit is wonderful food! Even so, youll need to supplement your meals with bacon. Why do you need canned bacon if you plan on eating rabbit for survival? Rabbit meat tastes just like chicken and it is an abundantly fruitful source of lean meat; however, you must have a source of fat if you plan on surviving only on rabbit meat. Humans will starve to death eating rabbit alone! Eating only rabbit will cause digestive upset and hunger will worsen. If you consume only rabbit and have no source of fat, you will get diarrhea, discomfort and eventual death eating only rabbit. Which is why youll want to have on hand some Yoders Bacon of course. Happy Prepping! #48: Ride your Bicycle. Head to the local farmers market on your bike and save money on gas. Bike to school or work. Be inventive about your biking opportunities: your bike may fit on a ferry or bus to transport you part of the way. #49: Make a Seed Bomb. Seed bombs or seed balls are dime-sized balls made of seed and clay that you scatter about in a vacant lot or other unconventional place you want to grow some food. When it rains, the clay softens and the seeds get a good start in the ground without being blown away. Heres How to Make a Seed Bomb. #50: Learn how to eat Acorns. If you live in California, Acorns abound! You may as well learn now how the Native Americans survived on Acorns for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Heres how to use acorns for food. #51: Do your own plumbing. Popular Mechanics shows you how to do your own plumbing and avoid disaster. Have fun, just cover your back end so you wont be the butt of any jokes. #52: Be your own electrician. The Do-it-yourself Network shows you how to build your own dimmer switch and more. Find electrical ideas, advice and project tips from DIY Network. #53: Construct an outdoor oven. You dont have to be fancy to construct an off grid oven. #54: Set up a system to recycle grey water. Why dont you recycle greywater water from bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, and even washing machines? For more information, visit the Greywater Action Web site for a sustainable water culture. #55: Erect a chicken coop. If you dont already have chickens, you can start planning for them by building a co0p. Heres how to build a chicken coop. #56: Draw maple syrup. If you have a maple tree, you can draw your own maple syrup. This is a homesteading activity to do with the kids. Its natures candy, so youll need a candy thermometer. Start with a 1/2 inch drill bit, a small tube or pipe, a bucket, a hammer with nails, and other things you may have around the house (like a pot, aluminum foil and butter). Heres the tutorial for drawing maple syrup. #57: Build a solar still. Heres how to build a simple solar still. As Off the Grid News warns: Distillation is a simple process, although it can be difficult to accomplish in quantity. #58: Build a knowledge of Essential Oils. Get into essential oils. #59: Get cultivated! Get a cultivator, pictured right, so you can get your garden going with manual power. #60: Do something fun with a mason jar. Visit our Pinterest page for Mason Jar ideas. #61: Cut your old garments. Start snipping your old clothes into quilt sized sheets. Then begin arranging enough for a quilt, which is the ultimate homestead accent to your country home in the suburbs! #62: Turn an old a pair of jeans into a skirt! Whether you want to make a gift or add to your wardrobe by recycling, youll love the idea of giving new life to your favorite old jeans by creating a brand new skirt. Heres how to turn an old pair of jeans into a skirt. #63: Make home made laundry detergent. Minimize the chemicals and get back to simpler times. Good clean fun is to make your own natural laundry detergent. Heres the recipe for home made laundry detergent. #64: Sharpen an axe and a knife. The best selling knife sharpener, pictured immediate left, on Amazon is around $5.99 and with available free shipping. Hell love the Axe and Machete Sharpener, also left. #65: Make home made yogurt. If you have a half gallon of milk and a half cup of starter yogurt, you can make a creamy and light yogurt at home, and you dont need any fancy equipment, other than a dutch oven, which is a tool common to many prepper homes. Heres how to make yogurt at home. #66: Cut or saw something! #67: Hammer something! #68: Make your own yeast. A good homesteading skill is to make your own yeast! Its good to know, since yeast expires! #69: Know the foods that grow from root cuttings. Propagating plants is a worthwhile homesteading skill. Did you know that there are at least 25 foods you can grow from scraps? In case youre wondering, yes you can grow your pineapple even if your urban homestead isnt in the tropics! #70: Make home-made cream cheese. Make your own cream cheese.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 23:54:47 +0000