I thought homesteading projects for families would be like those Instagram posts – everyone smiling in matching flannel, kids gathering eggs while the sun sets golden over the pasture. What I got instead was my eight-year-old nephew crying in the chicken coop because Hank knocked over the water bucket he’d just filled, and my sister…

Three years ago, when I was researching the best crops to grow in a small homestead garden, I made a spreadsheet. Color-coded it by yield per square foot, harvest windows, storage life. I had charts about companion planting and soil nutrient depletion. What I should have done was ask Martha down the road what actually…

Everyone told me you needed acres and acres to grow enough food for a family. The homesteading books made it sound like you’d need half your property in production, minimum. So when we were planning our garden the first spring, I sketched out elaborate plots covering most of our cleared land. Ben took one look…

“We should probably eat this before it expires,” Ben said, holding up a can of green beans from our emergency stash. The date stamped on top read March 2019. It was now October 2023. That was my first clue that building a 30-day emergency food stockpile for beginners might be more complicated than I’d thought….