Tara Dodrill 
Keeping animals on the homestead reduces the family’s grocery store expenses, infuses more healthy whole food into the diet, and is often quite a joy. However feed storage is often an imposing obstacle that must be dealt with properly. If animal feed is not stored in a manner that prevents spoilage and rodent infestations you … Read more Storing Animal Feed to Prevent Spoilage and Pests
Dandelion infusions and tinctures have been used to garner the high nutrient content contained in the flowers, leaves, roots, and stems, and also to harness the potential natural medicinal properties the plant parts contain. Making a dandelion infusion is neither difficult nor expensive, but it does require both time and patience on the part of … Read more How to Make Dandelion Infusion and Tincture
Honey and camomile are two of the most popular additives to natural soap bars. Combining the two is to make, and the melt and pour soap base creates both a pleasing scent and feel when used. The use of honey in soaps infuses it with humectant compounds that help combat and prevent acne, as well … Read more How to Make Honey and Chamomile Soap
Chickens do not like to be dirty birds – they love dirt, and hate water. It is just that simple, fellow homesteaders. If you have ever had to give a chicken a bath – or a wash off a chick with the dreaded “pasty butt,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. To keep themselves … Read more 22 DIY Chicken Dust Bath Ideas for Your Girls
Growing your own duck food may not only save you an enormous amount of money over time, but will also provide both a sustainable and more natural diet for your meat and egg birds. It is possible to do away with store-bought commercial feed entirely if you cultivate aquatic and ground food plots for your … Read more How to Grow Your Own Duck Feed
Saving seeds so you can start a new crop the following season only makes good economic sense. Preserving the seeds from a tasty and bountiful vegetable, fruit, or herb harvest also helps you increase the odds of replicating the same flavor and yield the following year. Typically, seeds will last between 1 and 5 years … Read more So, How Long Do Seeds Last?
Starting a homestead-based business is a dream shared by many folks, regardless of how small or large the plot of land they live upon. Raising fiber goats on the homestead can be both an enjoyable and a lucrative endeavor. Keeping miniature or standard size fiber goats can help turn that dream into a reality – … Read more Raising Fiber Goats: Everything You Need to Know
Homeschooling with board games only increases the level of fun involved with educating children at home, it can also vastly enhance the learning process. Learning should be an adventure filled journey of discovery. Adding board games into the actual curriculum, and not simply regulating them into an hour or two slot on family game night … Read more 61 Board Games for Your Homeschooled Children
I think I have been homesteading my entire life in one way or another since I was a child. Perhaps I was inspired by my love of Little House on the Prairie and Grizzly Adams television shows that I loved, and my by Sunshine Family dolls. They were far more awesome than those superficial Barbie … Read more 6 Reasons Why I Started Homesteading – Tara Dodrill’s Story
Transitioning from regular school (be it public or private), to homeschooling is quite an adjustment for not just the children but the entire family. Ideally, transitioning from one type of educational experience to another should occur over the summer months to give everyone time to adjust, but such a perfect scenario is not always possible. … Read more How to Transition From Public Schooling to Homeschooling
It can seem like an eternity for chicks to hatch in your incubator or in a clutch of eggs beneath a hen. Once you notice the first peck hole in the egg the excitement builds and you call for everyone else on the homestead to come watch and share in the joy of new life. … Read more How and When to Help a Stuck Chick Hatch From Its Egg
Jewelweed is a drastically underappreciated “weed.” While you can eat jewelweed, it is most often grown or foraged it for its potential healing properties. While this attractive bush-like plant has many uses, it is perhaps most widely known for its antipruritic (anti-itching) value. This wild plant is an active natural ingredient in poison ivy rash … Read more How to Use Jewelweed on the Homstead
Adding fertilizer to a pasture or hayfield can help infuse nutrients back into the soil and bring about robust growth of highly nutritious hay or field grass for the livestock to eat … if you do it right. Making mistakes when fertilizing livestock areas can not only bring about a vastly disappointing hay or straw … Read more How to Fertilize Pastures and Hay Fields
Amaranth may not be a staple crop on American homesteads right now, but it should be. This nutrient-rich plant has been used as a dietary staple and natural home remedy base ingredient in many regions of the world for centuries. This beautiful and easy to grow plant that is often classified as both a grain … Read more Amaranth: How to Grow and Use It
Leaf miners are a destructive variety of insects that can kill a garden or orchard in a single season, or harm plants enough to drastically reduce their yield. These tiny black fly larvae leave pale lines or blotches on the plants they carnage. These bad bugs are the larvae of the Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera Diptera … Read more How to Identify, Treat and Get Rid of Leaf Miners
Feeding goats properly is essential to the overall health of the herd, and to the success of any meat goat, dairy goat, or fiber goat homesteading operation. Goats are ruminant animals, they have four stomach chambers. When they are eating the wrong type of food, too much of the right kind of food, or introduce … Read more 95 Things Goats Can Eat and 60 They Cannot