I Turned My 1/4 Acre into a Thriving Homestead – Here’s How

My neighbor Jerry swore that soapy water in a bucket would solve our mosquito problem. “Just Dawn dish soap and water, set it out at night,” he said, leaning against his fence post. “Works every time.” Three weeks later, after trying every homemade natural mosquito repellent recipe I could find online, I was ready to…

Building a simple solar dehydrator for homestead food turned out to be one of those projects that sounds easier than it actually is. Ben found plans online for a basic box design with screen trays and a slanted glass top, and we figured we could knock it out in a weekend. Three months later, I…

I’ve tried seventeen different homemade natural cleaning recipes for the homestead since we moved out here, and exactly three of them work. The rest either did nothing, made bigger messes, or in one memorable case, turned our kitchen sink bright orange for three weeks. Ben thinks I overthink the cleaning thing. “Just spray it and…

The chicken coop door hinges squeaked at 5:47 this morning when I went to let the girls out. That sound always reminds me of the three massive mistakes I made when we first started raising chickens for eggs and meat on our tiny homestead. Mistakes that nearly ended our whole chicken operation before it really…

I was standing in the feed store last month staring at a $89 feeder, doing math in my head about how much we’d spent on chicken supplies in three years, when Martha from the next farm over tapped my shoulder. “You know Ben’s building those now, right?” she said, pointing to a wooden version that…

“You know you can just hang them upside down, right?” Ben said, watching me fiddle with the dehydrator settings for the third time that morning. I had basil wilting on the counter and was determined to preserve our herb harvest using what I thought were proper food preservation methods. Turns out I was overthinking it…