DIY & Homemade

I think I have cheerleader tendencies…

No, not like a pom-pom carrying cheerleader, rather, I really, REALLY enjoy cheering others on in their homesteading pursuits. It makes me so stinkin’ happy.

(Side note: I wasn’t a cheerleader in high school… I was the awkward, weird girl in high school. Annnnddd, not much has changed.)

But even though I love encouraging everyone I know to get chickens, or milk a cow, or make their own sauerkraut, deep down, this old-fashioned lifestyle isn’t necessarily for everyone…

So I’m putting my cheerleader tendencies aside this week to help you dig deeper into figuring out if this lifestyle is for you (or not). Curious about the 4 questions you should ask yourself BEFORE moving to the country and starting that homestead? Watch now!

4 Questions to Ask Yourself BEFORE You Move to the Country and Start Your Homestead

Other Homestead 101 Posts:

• How to Start Homesteading When You Feel Overwhelmed
• How We Homestead on One Income
• How to Set Homestead Goals You’ll Actually Achieve
• The BIGGEST Homestead Mistakes We’ve Made (so far)
• How Two City Kids Became Homesteaders
• Does This Homesteading Thing Really Matter?

The post 4 Questions to Ask Yourself BEFORE You Start Your Homestead appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

This Article Was Originally Posted at theprairiehomestead.com Read The Original Article Here

Real life is always more interesting than the polished version, don’t you think?

Which is why I can’t help but smile when I look at this very real life shot of my kitchen… Flour on the counter, dishes drying by the sink, and baskets everywhere… (always too many baskets and bowls).

Mine is a working homestead kitchen… that means we do battle together on a regular basis as we ferment, can, sauté, bake, roast, and preserve. It’s the most-used room in our entire house, and it shows in the ever-present crusty bits of who-knows-what that lives on the cabinet doors and behind the sink faucet.

It’s also a small space, which means I’m pretty picky when it comes to the kitchen tools I keep. I love timeless, durable stuff– items I can maybe even pass down to my kids.

So I’m taking you inside our homestead kitchen in this video and showing you my absolute favorite homestead kitchen tools.

The Top 5 Homestead Kitchen Tools I Can’t Live Without

Pssst. Anything trendy or plastic? It didn’t make the list.

The post 5 Homestead Kitchen Tools I Can’t Live Without appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

This Article Was Originally Posted at theprairiehomestead.com Read The Original Article Here

Expansive veggie gardens. Flocks of laying hens. Chicken coop construction. Milk goats. Home baked bread.

Just the normal to-do list for the average modern person in 2019, right?

Hahahahahaha. Haha. HA.

Overwhelm is a THING when one embarks upon this homesteading gig… Having one foot planted in the 21st century while adopting homestead practices from a much slower and simpler time ain’t no joke, y’all.

If you’ve ever felt flutters of anxiety when you’re planning out your homestead projects (or let’s be honest— sometimes it’s a steamroller— not a flutter…), you gotta watch this week’s video:

• I’ll show you my tried-and-true formula for stopping overwhelm in its tracks
• Look over my shoulder (literally) as I work through the exact exercise I use whenever I’m tackling any brand new (BIG) project
• I don’t like fluffy suggestions, so if you’re looking for a video that tells you to take a deep breath, this isn’t it.

How to Start a Homestead When You Feel Overwhelmed

(Watch the video here, OR keep scrolling for the text version of the video!)

If you’re in the beginning stages of building a homestead or planning a homestead and you can’t shake that paralyzing feeling of being overwhelmed, this video will give you my step-by-step formula for turning your overwhelm into action. This is my no-fluff approach and the exact same method I use in my own life to get all of my big projects done!

It’s no secret that we have done a lot of big projects over the years, whether it was our house remodel, building a shop, or pretty much redoing every inch of our homestead property. And while we aren’t in the “start a homestead stage” anymore, we do have big projects happening elsewhere in our lives.

Our latest project really had me feeling paralyzed for a while… (It’s actually a blog project and I’ll get to tell you more about it in the upcoming weeks!) When I first started to conceptualize the project, I remember feeling this crippling sense of fear and overwhelm– I felt like I couldn’t take action because I didn’t know where to start. However, once I used this mapping method that I’m about to show you, everything started to flow.

(The explanation is best seen in the actual video, because you can watch me write everything out. However, here is the text version!)

1. Get it Out of Your Brain

The first step of this process is getting all the jumbled ideas, goals and worries out of our head and onto paper, because when they’re floating around in your brain, they seem a 1000 times more daunting and overwhelming then they really are.

You can do this exercise in a planner, on a giant whiteboard or just on a piece of scratch paper. It’s totally up to you. The first step of this process is to write down everything you have swirling in your head and get it out of your brain. For the sake of this video, I’m going to pretend like we’re starting a homestead.

Theoretically, if I’m in a “build a homestead” scenario, these might be some of the things I’m seeing on blogs or YouTube that I have floating around in my head. I want to do all of them, I want to do all of them now and I don’t know which one to start first. (Can you relate to that feeling? Ha!)

2. Organize the List

Once you have your list, go through and assign dates or time periods for each of the items on your list. Some of these might not happen for a couple years, some of them might happen next week. It doesn’t matter when they happen, as long as you have a plan.

For the sake of this exercise, we’re going to pretend that chickens are something I want to have happen within the next two months (March). We’ll say the garden is on track for April, the goats will wait until next year, the bread baking will wait until winter time, the bees are two years out, and cheesemaking will happen in the winter time when things are slower.

Once I have my timeline laid out, I’m going to highlight the projects/tasks I need to start working on immediately. For the case of this example, that would be chickens and the garden, primarily.

Now I have my three things chosen (your list might be more or less), I need to make an agreement with myself to be at peace with the rest of the things I am going to mentally and physically put on the back burner for now.

3. Break It Down Even Further

Next, I’m going to make a new column for the immediate action items I chose (chickens and a garden). I need to break down each of these projects and get very specific on what needs to happen for each of these goals to actually occur.

For chickens it might be, make roosts, make or find nesting boxes, source chicken feed, and figure out my electricity situation.

For the garden, I may need to borrow a tiller, amend the soil with natural fertilizer, make a map of the rows so I know how much food I could feasibly fit there, and order seeds.

Obviously this is just an example and you will likely need to break it down in a different way, depending on your situation. However, keep in mind the more granular you can get with your steps and your processes, the more tension will lift from your brain.

4. Assign & Prioritize Tasks

Once I have a break down of each item, I need to prioritize each step and then figure out who is responsible for each step. If you have a spouse, maybe they’ll be more prone to doing some of these items, or maybe you have a child or someone who can help you.

Or perhaps it’s just you and that’s perfectly okay, too. For our situation, I would probably assign Christian to figure out the electricity and also find a tiller, while I would likely work on the rest.

Then I prioritize which comes first, so I know exactly what I can start working on tomorrow and what must wait. Mapping out rows in the garden would be first, ordering the seeds would be second, finding the fertilizer or manure would be third, and then Christian could figure out the tiller situation closer to springtime.

For chickens, figuring out the electricity would be first and foremost to make sure chickens could actually be a possibility for us. Then nesting boxes would be second, roosts would be third, and right before I’d get the chicks from the feed store, we’d work on making sure we have a good source of chicken feed.

5. Do It Scared

The last step? You just gotta do it! Like I mentioned on my video about setting homestead goals, starting anything of value is almost always like leaping off a cliff. Oftentimes, it’s vital that you just “do it scared”, butterflies and all. Do your homework, break it down, but then know at some point you just gotta dive in– overwhelm or no overwhelm. Action almost always cures fear.

That being said, breaking it into these simple steps WILL make it easier because you’ll get a little dopamine hit from your brain every time you accomplish one of the mini-steps and that makes you much more motivated to tackle the next one.

The Comparison Trap

When it comes to the feeling of being overwhelmed with a homestead, one of the biggest contributing factors to that is often comparison. When I personally start to feel like I’m not making progress fast enough or there’s too many things swirling in my head, I can usually trace the feeling back to me spending too much time watching what other people are doing. Comparison truly is the thief of joy and if you find yourself struggling with this, I recommend taking a little break from social media (or wherever you’re finding those feelings of comparison creeping in), so you can focus on your own projects and progress.

Your Turn!

Alrighty friends– your turn! How do you deal with overwhelm as a homesteader? Any tricks to share?

The post How to Start Homesteading When You Feel Overwhelmed appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

This Article Was Originally Posted at theprairiehomestead.com Read The Original Article Here

Oh Wyoming…

I love you, but you sure can be frustrating when it comes to grocery shopping sometimes…

Walmarts and traditional grocery stores abound, but if organic foods are your jam, well, things get a little more complicated…

I figured I surely can’t be the only one who has to get a little extra creative when it comes to shopping for slightly less conventional groceries, so on the small chance this might be helpful to a few of you, here is how I manage to stock our pantry, cabinets, and larder, with pretty decent options– even though there isn’t a Trader Joes or a Whole Foods in the entire state.

How I Grocery Shop for Organic Foods in a Rural Area

(This is the video, but if you prefer the text version, keep scrolling!)

Grow It!

The first strategy I use when I’m stocking our pantry or freezers is to grow as much as possible, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise to any of you. Our food production really, really takes the edge off of our grocery bill, even though it ebbs and flows depending on the seasons.

What We Grow:

• All our own beef (about one steer every 12 to 18 months)
• Most of our pork (about one, two hogs every other year or so)
• All of our own chicken (we do a batch of 30 meat birds one to two times per year depending on how much room I have in the freezer)
• A lot of our own dairy (which does vary a bit depending on the cow’s lactation cycle or how much cream she’s giving)
• Almost all of our own eggs, although the chickens sometimes go into seasonal periods where they stop laying and I have to supplement from the store.
• Enough vegetables, potatoes, garlic and onions in our garden to last for about 8 months of the year, although it depends on how robust the garden was that year.

I know growing a ton of food at home isn’t in the cards for everyone, but I do think that everyone can grow at least a little something, even if it is a herb garden in the windowsill. However if you can’t grow your own meat, eggs, or dairy, I do recommend taking the time to seek out local producers or farmers for those items.

I love being able to support local growers whenever I’m a little short on pork in the freezer or tomatoes in the garden. And I don’t mind paying a little bit more for products that I know have been grown sustainably or grown ethically or grown locally with better practices and standards.

Supplement with Conventional Grocery Stores

We do buy a few things locally at our regular grocery stores (about 35 miles away) even though we don’t have a lot of options there. There is one tiny natural food store in the town is south of us and that’s where I will get sometimes low-temp vat-pasteurized milk if the cow is dry, pastured eggs to supplement the hens if they’re not laying (and I can’t make it to the farmer’s market), or the occasional organic pantry item.

I also get some things at just the regular old grocery store– yes, really. We follow the 80/20 rule, which means I’m just not hung up on eating a “perfect” diet. Sometimes I buy tortillas or sandwich bread or chips– I know how to make those things myself, but it doesn’t always work with my schedule, plain and simple. And sometimes you just gotta prioritize your sanity.

We also pick up things like bananas or avocados at the local stores–those aren’t items we’re able to order, and growing them here in Wyoming ain’t gonna happen.

The Farmer’s Market

We have a farmer’s market that runs in our area from August to October. It’s not quite as robust as markets in other areas, but I will occasionally grab boxes of fruit or larger amounts of vegetables for preservation (if I had a bad year with the garden). I don’t go as much as I like, as driving all the way to town on Saturday mornings generally doesn’t mesh with our calendar, but hopefully you have a more available or more accessible farmer’s market in your area and you can take advantage of that in your grocery shopping.

Costco Wholesale

Another store I add into our routine is Costco (I like them WAY better than Sam’s Club). The closest one is about an hour and a half away, so I don’t go there all the time (usually once every 1-2 months). We didn’t get a membership until last year, but I’m actually using it way more than I thought I would. I love Costco for things like quality cheeses or organic lunch meats to have when we have crews of people working here. I also grab organic pasta, organic tortilla chips, coffee beans, toilet paper, paper towels, and organic produce there. I’m usually pleasantly surprised at what organic options they have, if you know where to look.

Thrive Market

I’ve known about Thrive Market for a while now, but honestly I didn’t really fully take advantage of them into last year. Basically, they’re kind of like a cross between Amazon and Whole Foods, but they’re entirely online. You do get a membership just like Costco and then you order whatever you want, whenever you want.

They usually have free shipping for orders over $50, so I keep a running list and only place an order when I have a considerable number of items. until I’m over that $50 threshold and then I buy a lot of organic pantry staples or dry goods or greens, nuts, things like that.

Things I Love to Get from Thrive Market

• Sea salt
• Maple syrup
• Sucanat and coconut sugar
• Coconut milk
• Popcorn
• Spices/herbs
• Dried beans
• Rolled oats
• Nuts
• Organic condiments (ketchup, mustard, apple cider vinegar, etc)

Thrive Market fills in a ton of the gaps I have from living in a “whole foods desert” and they save me trips to town, which is a huge bonus.

Get an extra 25% OFF your first order + a 30 day free trial membership when you sign up at Thrive Market! (Valid on orders $49+, max $20 discount)

Azure Standard

The last option that I’ve used intermittently over the years is Azure Standard. (They don’t deliver everywhere, but if you live in the west/midwest, you probably have access to them) Azure is a bulk food-buying coop, so you do have to find a group in your area to order with, but they are a good option to save money if you need larger quantities of whole/organic foods.

Because of the way they ship the food in on a semi truck, you do have to coordinate drop times, which is a little tricky when you live as far out of town as we do. That, combined with the fact, I don’t really feel the need to have 100lbs of beans in my basement at all times, has kept me from ordering with them recently.

What I Used to Get from Azure Standard:

• 50 lb bags of whole cane sugar, whole wheat, lentils, beans
• Large pails of organic peanut butter and raw honey
• 50 lb bags of kelp and diatomaceous earth for the animals
• Boxes of organic apples, peaches, etc, for canning

And there you have it folks. My grocery shopping method isn’t perfect, but it works for us. And now that I’m in the routine of it, it really doesn’t take that long. I firmly believe you don’t have to live in a mecca of organic foods or stores to have a more whole foods lifestyle that’s much healthier for you

YOUR TURN!

If you live a rural area like me, I’d love to hear your best tips for treasure-hunting organic and whole foods!

The post How I Grocery Shop for Organic Foods in a Rural Area appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

This Article Was Originally Posted at theprairiehomestead.com Read The Original Article Here