Helping Families Learn Homesteading and Self-Sufficient Living
When planning a garden, one of the first decisions you’ll make will be whether or not to start your own seeds. This choice is critical for determining the cost and labor required to achieve your gardening goals. To start seeds indoors will require a little …
If you are tired of trying to produce biscuits with the perfect flaky, butter layers, then look no further than this homemade biscuits from scratch recipe. This recipe is far from dense or flat. The soft, buttery layers in these biscuits will have your family …
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There is a very wonderful movement happening in the world today where many folks are reclaiming their roots and diving into the world of homestead skills. After all, what could compare to the “slow and simple” life that is often portrayed by the homestead community. While living self sufficiently does slow you down to what matters and simplifies many aspects of life, it is not done by chance. It takes skills and effort to make it happen.
If you’re anything like me, you love to dive in headfirst. Burnout is your middle name. I am definitely a “go big or go home” kind of person, but I am really trying to get out of that mentality. It isn’t a race. So learning a few skills at a time gives you the opportunity to Master each one as you go.
In this article, I want to talk about the first 10 foundational homestead skills that are perfect for those who are just dipping their toes into the world of self reliant living. This will help those who are curious about homesteading and are looking for where to start.
By definition, a homestead is simply “a house, especially a farmhouse and outbuildings.” But I think it is a little more than that these days. It’s a reclamation of lost skills and ways of living. Homesteading used to be the norm. Folks used to grow their own food, trade for what they couldn’t, and take care of themselves and their local community.
But collectively, as a society, we’ve traded that lifestyle for convenience. Convenience is nice, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my own fair share of conveniences. But there are many people, myself included, who feel the longing for more. To pull their food out of the ground and to have the satisfaction of a full pantry to carry you through winter.
To successfully homestead, one must think of how to sustain themselves and their family. What will you eat? Do you have enough water for yourself, livestock, and a garden? What about infrastructure, and energy to power everything? Before we go into 10 simple skills for homesteaders, I want to cover the four pillars that all of these skills will be used for.
These are the four pillars that make a successful self sufficient homestead:
You will notice that food is at the heart of almost every homestead skill. It is also the easiest pillar to start skill building for a homestead life. Most people nowadays have kitchens. Even if you don’t have all of the fancy gadgets, you can learn a lot about your food: how to grow, gather, and prepare it. All of which are essential to homesteading.
Water is the lifeblood of our bodies. It is critical to life as we know it. Having access to clean water is an essential pillar to homesteading. You’ll need clean drinking water for yourself and your family, and for your animals and livestock. You also want to think about water access for your garden. Learning how to keep water from freezing in winter, and how to make water potable in the event of a power outage are critical homestead skills. At the end of the day, water is the most crucial aspect that can make or break a homestead.
What is a homestead without a roof over your head? Some folks opt to build their own dwelling, which increases the level of skill needed. But even if you opt to buy an already built home, maintenance is crucial to keep it lasting. And let’s not forget the art of Homemaking that is going to turn that house into a home worth working for. If you are opting to build a home, you’ll want to learn things like framing, roofing, electrical, plumbing, etc. If, like most, you are buying a home and then maintaining it, you’ll want to know basic handy man skills like clearing your roof of snow, changing an outlet, and maintaining systems like a furnace or HVAC.
All four pillars are powered by some form of energy. Whether that is old fashioned elbow grease, electricity, hydro power, animal powered, etc. You do not need to live off the grid to homestead. There are plenty who successfully do, but it is not a requirement. But you will definitely want to have the skills and knowledge in place about how to power your homestead (even if the power goes out).
The easiest place to start living a more self reliant lifestyle is in your kitchen. You can start cooking from scratch long before you ever even dream of owning land. Getting control over what ingredients are in your food, and learning the art of turning pantry staples into a whole, nourishing meal is at the top of my list of homesteading skills. This lost art is what sets homesteaders apart from the rest of the world.
My favorite resource to get started is Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone. She has such inspiring recipes that are simple, wholesome, and enjoyable.
Graceful Little Honey Bee was my starting point. When I first began learning homestead skills, her website offered wonderful articles on from-scratch recipes and frugality.
It truly helps to have the right tools in your kitchen to make your life easier when you are cooking mostly from scratch. I love using my Instant Pot on very busy days because I can pressure cook my bone broth in 3 hours and have it ready for dinner. There are also features for cooking rice, yogurt, and sautee features, so it minimizes the amount of dishes used.
I am also a strong believer in the use of cast iron pans. A good, sturdy set of cast iron will outlive you, so you never have to buy a new set if you take care of them. They are also perfect for cooking almost anything. I deep fry, bake, and sautee in my cast iron. Make sure to invest in a quality brand like Lodge, so you know you are getting the best!
I used to think that starting seeds meant tossing some seeds into the dirt and hoping for the best. Unfortunately, this led to a tiny germination yield and the leggiest plants you’ve ever seen. While this will still yield something, your best bet to make sure you grow enough to feed your family is to learn how and when to start your seeds for the growing season. This will be highly dependent on your particular geographical location. Here in Fairbanks, Alaska, we have a depressingly short growing season. This means that I start as much as I can indoors before the real season even begins.
Starting your own seeds instead of relying on transplants will also save you so much money. One plant usually cost anywhere from $2-$10, where one packet of organic, heirloom seeds is around $5.
This is also the perfect opportunity to include your kids in your own homestead journey. Seed starting, along with other skills are perfect for kids in the Spring. I’ve written an article about the 5 Homesteading Skills to teach your kids in the spring.
Before I became serious about gardening, I just used your typical seed starting tray and tossed it into a window for natural sunlight. I had to learn about using quality T5 grow lights for best results. I also lost many plants to the animals and children that inhabit my home. Cats especially love to knock these trays down. It is so frustrating!
I began looking for better options and now I use this handy seed starting shelf cart with wheels. It has grow lights fashioned onto each shelf, and the wheels really help with hardening off seeds later in the Spring because I can easily wheel the shelf onto the back deck during the day and bring it in at night.
You’ll be growing a lot of your own food on a homestead. Knowing how to preserve your harvest is essential. Even before you ever own land you can practice these simple techniques. There are plenty of preservation techniques, but I believe in starting with the easier ones and then building up to the more complicated ones.
Freezing is the most simple, though many vegetables do require blanching to keep the texture and flavor profile in the freezer.
Dehydrating is probably the second easiest option in my opinion. This can be done in an oven to keep it simple, but a good quality dehydrator is a great investment for a homestead kitchen if you’ll be dehydrating often.
Water bath canning is another one of those great beginner homestead skills. There is an easier barrier to entry than pressure canning, as you only truly need a large stock pot. I purchased this water bath canner years ago and it has worked well for me. I’m sure there are nicer ones on the market,but it gets the job done. Some ideas for canning the water bath method are jams, jellies, pickled veggies, and salsa.
Learn about the plants that surround you. Find out which ones have been used traditionally for food and medicine. There is such an abundance of wild plants and they usually have more vitamins and nutrients in general than their cultivated cousins.
Many plants can be used as both food and medicine, like the Birch tree. You can learn to forage for birch and harvest it’s leaves, bark, and Sap for various applications. The leaves can be infused into an oil that is anti-inflammatory and analgesic, that rivals pharmaceuticals. The bark can be used in crafts, and also ground down to make an edible flour to bake with. The sap is a delicious maple syrup alternative. It’s truly incredible how versatile it is.
This is another one of those homestead skills that is perfect to include your kids with. They can learn the various plants alongside you. It has been a very fun experience for my family. If you are just getting started, check out my guide to 5 Great Plants to Forage with Kids. These 5 plants are a great launching point with kids because they are easily identifiable and don’t have poisonous lookalikes.
Take the medicinal plants you gathered in the forest and learn to turn them into herbal remedies to treat mild injuries/illness around your homestead. Better yet, learn to grow medicinal plants like calendula, yarrow, and comfrey and turn them into herbal medicine like homemade Neosporin. I can show you how to do that here. Many herbal products are super simple to make like infused oils, balms, tinctures, and poultices. Learning to blend herbal teas can take you a step even further.
There is a plant for every ailment under the sun. I love making my own herbal products because I am able to control the ingredients and also keep a tradition alive. Herbal medicine is the original medicine. I am definitely grateful for modern medicine, but I love to use a holistic approach whenever possible.
There’s a reason why your grandma preached about using baking soda and vinegar to clean. That’s because it WORKS. You can clean just about anything with a dilution of vinegar and water. I like to add baking soda for an extra tough job or just to add shine. If your curious to make the swap, this is a great recipe to start with: Homemade Vinegar Cleaning Spray.
You can take this even further and use your orange and lemon peels to infuse your vinegar. This gives off a better scent than straight vinegar and creates a more powerful cleaner.
There are plenty of tips and tricks online to help with every surface and room in your home. This Ultimate Guide to Homemade All-Natural Cleaning Recipes will help you get started.
If you’re anything like me, then you probably first thought that you can just toss any food scraps into a pile to compost. While you don’t have to get too technical, there is a certain ratio of “browns to greens” that is optimal.
Making your own compost is a wonderful cost saver, especially if you are intensively gardening or have raised beds that will need compost more often. Those bags add up, especially for the organic stuff that most folks will want to buy.
I’ll also add that composting is a great way to reduce waste in your home. As a homesteader, you’ll want to put everything you can to good use, even your scraps.
The epitome of self reliance is producing all of your own food and preserving it for the Winter months. Go ahead and Google the word “homestead,” and you’ll find a lot of articles about stocking a homestead pantry. That’s because you are going to want to eat all of that hard earned food you’ve grown.
Eating in season is not only better for your wallet, but also better for your health. Unlike frozen produce that is harvested at the peak of freshness, those fresh strawberries in January probably traveled from far away and also will not have the same nutrient profile as the June bearing varieties.
During the Summer months and the growing season there will be an abundance of fresh produce: tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and many other fruits and vegetables. This is the time to bust out your recipes for salads and other summer goodies. Many people grill to avoid using their oven in the heat of summer.
Winter is the time for comfort foods. This is where those canned recipes from the garden will shine. Eating plenty of soups, and winter variety produce as well as drinking warm drinks, perhaps with herbs you grew over summer, is the best way to nourish your body during the colder months.
Believe it or not, your skin is the largest organ of your body. Nourishing it with holistic, handmade products is a wonderful way to take care of it. The “natural” products you’ll find in the store are wildly expensive, and at the end of the day, they still usually use questionable ingredients. Learning to make these products yourself is actually quite fun, and you’ll have the satisfaction of saving money all the while preventing harmful ingredients from harmful ingredients.
Here are a few of the recipes that I use to make my own beauty and wellness products:
Calendula Face Wash Recipe (with honey)
Knowing how to start a fire is a helpful skill for anyone, but I believe it is especially important for a homestead. If you are on a journey towards self reliance, you’ll likely heat your home with a wood stove at some point. Knowing how to get It going will be pretty important.
Other tasks that may involve knowing how to start a fire are clearing and burning brush, processing maple or Birch sap into syrup, and cooking over an open fire.
Even if you have no intentions of ever being around fire on your homestead, starting a fire is a great life skill and likely one that will impress your friends when out camping.
There are plenty of inclusive lists out there that will give you over 100 homestead skills to learn. These are wonderful for setting your goals. I am on mission to learn all of these that I can as well. But when first starting out, it can be overwhelming. Trying to decide what is important and what to learn first can cause decision fatigue. I hope that this list of beginner homestead skills has been a helpful starting point if you are just beginning your journey.
Remember, it’s all a journey and it’s not a race. Pick a few of these skills to pick up, master them, and then move on down your list. I wish you all the best on your homestead journey!
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Hello my friends and welcome back to the next chapter of Borealis Mom. I’ve been quiet over this past year, but have been hard at work behind the scenes. The life of this blog has been up in the air because of all of the changes in my life. I know I left without a warning, and I apologize, as that wasn’t fair to this lovely community. But we’ve been working and preparing tirelessly to finally purchase our Alaska homestead! We are ready to share our new homestead journey and show you what rural Alaska living looks like in real time.
Homesteading in general is a very broad term. It means something different to whoever you ask. Generally speaking, we’ve been homesteading in every home we’ve lived in over the years. We’ve gardened, raised animals, canned our harvests, cooked from scratch, went hunting and fishing, made herbal medicine, etc. But none of these places have ever officially been ours.
We did purchase remote land in 2024 that we started to work on, but we never truly broke ground and made progress. Now we have our log cabin on some land in the mountains with a creek running through it and it couldn’t be a more picturesque scene for a homestead. The benefit of owning land makes it all seem more official.
When people think of Alaska, they often think of folks living way off grid, miles into the untamed wilderness. There are definitely some hardy folks who brave these extremes that way, and who knows, maybe Austin and I will some day.
For now, we are focused on building our family’s life around a homestead. Though not “off grid” we do plan on becoming as self reliant as possible to reduce and eventually eliminate our need for the grid’s resources. Obviously, I’ll always need to rely on resources like the internet if I”m to keep this blog alive and running. But we are dead set on becoming as self reliant as we can.
We started this journey with the goal of being those people who live way out in bush Alaska. I can remember the excitement of renting our first dry cabin (insert eye roll at younger self). Oh what an adventure this Alaska Life has been. We were perfectly fine with using an outhouse and hauling our own water because we planned to live completely off grid anyway and so we would have to get used to it.
It is still appealing, but realistically not a part of our homestead journey at this time. When we moved here, we grew roots deep into our local Fairbanks community. Our children have friends and homeschool activities in town that would not be accessible elsewhere. We love all of the community events and do not want to take that away at this time. We are at a point in our lives where we would like to focus on becoming more self reliant rather than jumping knee deep into off grid life. This is the path that we’ve chosen to be the best course for my family to succeed.
We spent the first 3 years of our Alaskan Homestead journey in dry cabins with eventually 4 kids. It was quite the experience, but it helped us to save our money so we’d be capable of buying our own eventually. In December of 2024, we had the opportunity to rent this beautiful log cabin. It is close to Austin’s job, which is a rarity, and it’s rural, but not TOO rural. It was perfect.
We rented it knowing that it would go up for sale the following Summer. We knew immediately that we wanted to buy it. When Spring thawed the snow and the first green grass appeared, our hearts became tied to this place. It’s almost like our souls knew this was our home, where we’re meant to be.
Austin worked so much overtime, it was almost as if he married his job. We buckled down and saved like crazy people, and it worked! It was probably one of the toughest years that we’ve gone through as a couple, but it was worth it in the end. Our family, our relationship, and our quality of life drastically improved through it all. This is now our home, where we put our roots down, and that one day our kids and their kids will come to visit again.
I plan to write future articles on beginning a homestead in Alaska for those who might be interested. It is definitely no easy feat and the barrier to entry for most is in the know how. Having a guide and teacher would have been so wonderful, but we moved up here knowing no one. I’d also love to write a guide for what to know before buying land in Alaska. It’s so different up here than in the lower 48.
We bought 5 acres of raw land the Spring before last with big dreams of going off grid there. But there’s more to it than many think, so that is a future endeavor. My hope is to teach you from our trial and error so that you can have an easier experience if you decide to start your own homestead journey.
My goal with the future of this blog is to start diving more in depth about homesteading, self reliance, and also simple living in general. There is so much craziness, over-consumption, and stress out there in the world, but there is far more beauty, peace, and fulfillment if you know where to look.
My hope is to bring you along on my homestead journey towards a more simple, yet fulfilling life. One where I grow and harvest my own food, tend to my own home, raise my children under the midnight sun, and focus on family, home, and health. Health of the mind, body, and spirit. I already have a good base for this on my blog with articles on foraging, homestead skills for kids, and even how to get your kids outside more during winter.
I hope that up until my year long hiatus, I was able to be a good resource for you guys with all things outdoors. I will of course still be enjoying much of my time outdoors, but I hope to bring more than just that to you now. Some of my content will be spent indoors, as a part of homesteading is spent in the kitchen as well. I hope that you guys decide to stick around and see what is to come.
I am excited for this new direction and I can’t wait to share it with you all. Thank you to everyone who has supported me along this journey. I will resume my weekly posts, as well as keep my social accounts updated, so follow along for the updates!
