All Around the Homestead

After chores

• The greater gift
• The flying squirrel

All around the homestead

• Equipping the “ideal” homestead in the 21st century
• How we use time determines what our lives are, what we are
• It takes time to acquire tools and experience
• Time saving devices
• How many ways can you save time?
• Are you depriving your kids?
• Cold-stirred, no-cook lye soap
• Make a smoker from a cardboard box
• Flat-free tires
• Learning is saving
• They don’t make them like they used to
• My homesteading blunders
• Why are you interested in homesteading?
• How things were done in the 1800′s

Your homestead business

• Selecting and starting your ideal home business
• Thinking about a homestead enterprise?
• Do you really want to go into business for yourself?
• Marketing your crafts
• Spousal support in the home craft business
• It takes time to establish a home business
• Your time is worth something: Pricing your products in a home craft business
• Wholesale vs. retail, Part I: Retail
• Time for a crafty harvest
• A farm store can work for you
• New model for supermarket beef on a Georgia Serengeti

Alternative energy

• Practical solar power
• Forecast for alternative energy: Sunny, and exciting!
• Solar, wind and steam: A cost comparison
• Heating with wood
• Heat with peat moss
• A silent killer: Carbon monoxide
• Renewable system payback
• Free hot water
• There s a renewable energy system for you
• Site specific system designs
• 25 years off-grid, a retrospective
• Getting started with solar power
• Living off the grid: A wife’s perspective
• Piecing together a spanking new $600 solar-electric system
• Purchasing and using a masonry stove
• Selling the sun: Solar and wind options for grid-tied homes
• Series and parallel wiring
• Home heating from the good Earth
• Unfolding the complexity of wind towers
• Choosing the right off-grid inverter
• Stand-alone solar water pumping
• Calculating your daily solar energy harvest
• Midwest couple doubles their diesel dollars
• Battery options for your off-grid home
• Is homegrown wind power right for you?
• SIPping the good life – Structural Insulated Panels prove a good match for off-grid living
• Solar hot water, anyone? System options for every climate
• Using wind energy for direct water heating
• Cashing in on sunlight’s changeable nature. Efficient windows and thermal mass
• Electricity from wood? An old technology with a new twist
• Sizing a solar-electric system for worry-free off-grid living
• Install solar and wind electricity for a secure and sustainable future
• Portable generators: When the power goes out, you don’t have to worry
• Calling for backup: Standby generators
• Calling for backup: Part II: Battery-based backup power systems
• Going solar in a small way: Pint-sized inverters
• A Colorado family’s 18-year off-grid odyssey
• Real life in the off-grid dream
• Free hot water from your wood cookstove
• The real cost of going off-grid
• Cutting amps by ramping volts
• Timely tax breaks for energy efficiency
• Big results from a little off-grid welding shop
• Two solar hot-water systems you can (probably) build yourself
• Venturing out of the backwoods: Can your off-grid home survive without you?
• Brewing up some wind power: Axial-flux and other DIY wind turbines
• Our favorite bun warmer
• Living off the grid: Can you hack it?

Homestead housing

• A place to heal
• Living in the round: Life in a yurt
• Squatter nation

Homestead Construction

• Energy efficient homes
• Frequently asked questions about cordwood masonry
• Building for free with “alternative” natural material
• Construct a straw bale greenhouse
• Designing your ideal homestead
• A backyard lean-to
• Build a wood-burning cookstove from a steel barrel
• Build your own solar shower for pennies
• Build it with stone…build it for free!
• Build a homestead root cellar and smoker
• Hoard’s bike cart

The Homestead kitchen

• Learning to cook on a woodstove
• The Fab Four: How to survive on wheat, dry milk, honey and salt
• Cheese: A natural way to preserve your milk
• Solar food drying
• How To Make Vinegar
• Doc Salsbury makes sourdough
• Alternate heat sources for food dehydration
• No-frills oven-drying of fruits and vegetables
• Slow food A Celebration of Life
• Baked beans and stews
• The versatile meat grinder
• Fall butchering advice & reminders
• The best butcherin’ recipes
• There’s yeast in them there hills
• Mead: Gift of the gods
• Delightful eggplant dishes from Eastern lands
• It s easy to make your own yogurt
• Sourdough bread variations
• Africa’s delicious gift to the world
• Cast iron in the country kitchen
• Why eat whole foods?
• Here’s a tasty, healthful, inexpensive snack
• Make goat milk mozzarella & Make your own rennet
• Try some goat milk ice cream
• Stocking your emergency food pantry
• Read the instructions that came with your pressure cooker, or beware the ominous Red Rain!
• Taking care of your game meat
• Grow your own stir-fry
• Cider making: A pressing concern
• The whole wheat experience
• Cabbage: One of the most nutritious vegetables
• Cranberries: A healthy and versatile fruit
• Fill your pantry with help from Mother Nature
• Breakfast & beyond: Reinventing the egg
• Dry it. You’ll like it!
• A chicken in every pot
• Spinach: The prince of vegetables
• Cooking common fish
• Money saving tips from More Money Than Month
• Bread baking basics
• Warm up with horseradish this winter
• Make fois gras at home humanely and inexpensively
• Snow food is snow terrific
• Bringing Thanksgiving back to the farm
• All or nothing = nothing
• In a class of its own: Food and the Codex
• Can it already
• Menu planning & a clean kitchen
• Real “whole” whole wheat bread
• Muffin basics
• Whole wheat bread recipe: A variation
• Bake fresh-ground whole meal potato bread
• Gluten, dairy, soy, & sugar-free recipes
• Yogurt: An easy, inexpensive (and yummy) way to preserve your excess milk
• Living off milk abundance
• Debbie’s bread recipe

Country neighbors

• “Grow as you go”
• Homesteading in Malawi, the warm heart of Africa

Homestead crafts

• Design your own insulating window quilts
• A second life for bluejeans
• Rags to rugs

Crops & soils

• The soul of soil
• How to make compost
• Composting at home
• No-till, permanent bed farming
• Evaluating hay quality
• Weather and plant maturity affect hay quality
• Out to pasture: Nutrition more important than rotation
• Soil health

Fences

• On guard: Protecting the homestead herd with electric fencing
• Fences for livestock
• User-friendly gates: Tips for quick fixes
• The real meaning of stick-building
• Five Fencing mistakes you don t want to make

Homestead finances

• Do your research before buying your homestead
• How to thrive on half your income
• How we went from $42,000 to $6,500 and lived to tell about it!
• Coping with today’s economy
• Economics for homesteaders

Homestead firearms

• Is it time you started reloading your own ammo?

The garden

• How to buy a good garden tool
• How to grow mushrooms on a log
• Grow herbs in winter
• Can your garden provide homestead income?
• The beauty and bounty of basil
• Scarecrows that actually work
• Our greenhouse refuge
• Germination and transplant tips for vigorous plants
• The charm of chives
• Animal gardening
• The beauty of scythes
• Okra: Useful and attractive
• Feed your trees
• Strawberry delight
• This is not your Daddy’s okra! Big okra with big taste
• Kale in the fall garden
• Make a cold frame from your scrap pile
• Botanical Latin for the plebeian reader
• Preserving your harvest with turn-of-the-century methods
• The gardening game. Do you know where your seeds come from?
• Growing organic strawberries
• What is intensive planting? How does it work?
• An abundance of squash
• Earth’s most user-friendly composter: Used tires
• The secrets to growing delectable sweet corn
• The joys and challenges of growing herbs
• Try kohlrabi for a unique treat
• Extend your growing season with a cold frame
• Row covers extend the garden season
• Let’s get planting: Tips for starting your seeds off right
• Fruit trees: History’s movers & shakers
• It’s high time to revive the working family garden
• Autumn frost protection for your garden
• Mulch ado about nothing
• The $2 garden
• Get an early start in your garden
• K.I.S.S. your compost
• Growing fruit without sprays
• Gardening on a dime
• Spring gardening in the greenhouse
• Strawberry boxes
• Onions for food, flavor & fun
• Gardening is easier with “tables & tanks”
• Bridge over troubling teethmarks
• Growing apples in cold regions
• Ground squirrel eliminator
• Saving seeds
• The Victory Hoe

The Greenhorn’s Guide to Homesteading

• This land is your land; this land is our land
• Planning your homestead
• Location, location, location!

Homestead health

• Avian flu de-mystified

Homestead household hints

• Clean your home with homemade products

Homestead landscape

• Finding something deer won’t eat
• Soil-borne pathogens
• Herbicide use and its unintended consequences

• Take a tip from Nature: Farm wild
• Livestock on the homestead
• Donkeys on the homestead
• On the loose at the 15th Annual Wisconsin Grazing Conference
• The importance of biodiversity in livestock production
• 15th Annual Wisconsin Grazing Conference, Part III
• Eye inflammation in livestock can be caused by burrs
• Managing mastitis
• Off-the-grid alpaca farm
• Q Fever: A disease we definitely don’t need

• Getting started with bees
• Housing and feeding your new packaged bees
• Keep your bees healthy
• Your first year with bees: Now is the time to plan for next year
• Fun with mason bees

• Pasture and cattle: Some tips for beginners
• Love my Dutch Belted!
• Selecting cattle for your small farm
• Malpresentations & manipulations
• Watering your herd in winter
• Hardware in cattle
• Prevent coccidiosis in calves
• Tips on using an esophageal feeder or nasogastric tube
• The lady wants a cow
• Milking your own cow
• Trouble with twins
• Marketing grass-fed beef
• Preparing your homestead herd for winter
• Essential remedies for the dairy barn
• There’s nothing magical about cow warts
• What is a crossbreed or a composite

• In praise of the lowly corn cob
• Build a high protein dispenser and feed your chickens for free!

• Why Oberhasli Swiss
• Start your own meat goat herd
• True success comes with planning
• Small-scale milking machines
• Contain your kids with this handy disbudding box
• Goats are affected by nasal bot larvae
• All goats need some basic care
• Selecting a dairy goat
• Raising organically certified dairy goats
• Concrete hoof trimming

• Attending the newborn foal
• Horses I have known – There’s a breed out there for everyone
• Draft horses as useful today as ever
• West Nile Virus in horses
• Miniature horses: Caring for the ideal hobby horse
• The ten most commonly asked farrier questions

• Raise a pig in your backyard
• Cold weather planning for pigs
• Living high on half the hog
• Water your hogs without using electricity
• Raising your own backyard pig
• Harvesting the homestead hog
• The (long) weekend pig project
• Gloucestershire Old Spots

• Guineas for tick control
• Build your own small-scale chicken plucker
• Rearrange your chicken yard for fresh grazing
• Raising ducks and geese on pasture
• Use care when feeding ducks chicken feed
• Homestead poultry butchering
• Chicken feed and pig slop options
• Breeding meat chickens

• Fundamental principles of rabbit feeding
• Rabbit raising from a Pakistani view
• The art of palpation
• Hooked on Dutch: Give this delightful old breed a try
• Reflections of a rabbit raiser
• Overcoming the “cute factor”
• Raise rabbits for meat: They’re quieter than chickens

• What’s a geep?
• Milking sheep offer a new small farm alternative
• California Variegated Mutant sheep

• Backyard Poultry Magazine
• Dairy Goat Journal
• Magazine

In the wild

• The brown recluse spider
• Milkweed: A truly remarkable wild vegetable
• Sumac: The wild lemonade berry
• Cooking over the campfire
• Living on the wild side
• Drink nature-ally
• Wild onions punchy, pungent, perfect
• The pronghorn: Back from the edge of oblivion
• Identifying and harvesting wild plants
• Basswood: The ultimate wild salad plant
• Defending “ugly” fish
• Wild parsnip: It’s like raiding a garden, but better
• Wild things

Looking back

• The “antique” value of prudence and the psychology of economics
• Where the money went
• Discovering our roots: How the 1920s and ’30s shaped modern homesteading
• Food and the fast track

Notes from the Northwoods

• Our flexible, movable kitchen
• Eating out of your garden
• Homestead wine
• Build a homestead one-log hauler
• Rhubarb: A special plant
• Rise to a new height the workshop mini-bench
• Grapes in the north
• Horseradish: It s great with almost everything!
• The Manytracks solar oven
• Building and using a midwest solar food dryer
• From cucumber to pickle
• Start spring in the fall

Homestead politics

• Welcome to Anathoth
• Food security is a real issue
• The “National Animal Identification System”: A new threat to rural freedom?
• National Livestock Identification System (updates)
• The real impacts of the National Identification System
• Maverick: An interview with Bud Kerr
• The scene of the crime: Could raw milk get you in hot water?
• Chicken crimes
• American panopticon

Self-reliance/Survival

• The Great Ice Storm of ’98
• In Michigan s northwoods, they re always prepared
• How to purify water in an emergency
• Lost in the wilderness! Tips to help you emerge safely
• A simple hand-warming heater you can make yourself
• Water: The most important preparedness item

Homestead simplicity

• Living deliberately: How to approach simplification
• Homestead security equals free-range chickens, a good dog, and Jerusalem artichokes

Homestead skills

• Make a rope
• Welding for anyone

The smithy

• Make an e-z log poker
• E-z blacksmithing coal forge

Voices

• Whatever happened to the Food Safety Modernization Act?

Homestead water

• How to get water from a drilled well when the power is off
• Conservation tips for everyone
• Winterkill prevention on ponds and lakes
• Hydraulic ram pump how-to
• A 12-volt “walking” water system
• Homestead water procurement
• But the levee was dry: The truth about the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007
• Build a small pond in your backyard
• Once a pond a time
• Build a homestead pond
• Using grey water in the garden
• “Water rings” make watering a snap

The woodlot

• Build a firewood holder
• Aid to dependent woodland owners

The homestead workshop

• Build a redwood hot tub for under $300
• Make a homemade boot scraper