Modern Homesteading

11 Things to Think About When Picking a Plan for Housing your New Chickens

Picture this: you’ve decided to add chickens to your backyard or homestead. You’ve spent hours researching basic healthcare and anatomy, you’ve visited all the forums (and become totally overwhelmed), and you think you know what chickens need to be happy. Now comes the big job – deciding on how you’re going to house them. Once [...]

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How to Care for a Refinished Cast Iron Sink

Nothing says ‘country decor’ more than a vintage cast iron sink. Except maybe a log cabin. Or a big pick-up truck. But nothing says ‘botulism’ or some other sort of nasty bacterial infection more than a vintage cast iron sink that’s been scratched and chipped and generally uncared for to the point where you couldn’t [...]

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Gift Ideas for Modern Homesteaders, Self-Sufficiency Fans, Off-Grid Dwellers, and Preppers

Looking for some practical, sure to be loved gift ideas for the modern homesteaders (or modern homesteader hopefuls), rural living fans, self-sufficiency fans, off-grid dwellers and preppers on your holiday list? Or just looking for practical gifts for your friends and family that will help them get a little closer to a self-reliant lifestyle? Here [...]

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Rural Winter Vehicle Emergency Kit Checklist

You’re driving down a long country road on the way to your weekend retreat, or maybe you’re on your way back to your rural home from the winter market. It’s freezing out. It’s snowing hard. And you’re miles from your destination. Suddenly, an animal darts across the road right in front of you. You instinctively [...]

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The Fear Factor: Modern Homesteading Style

The fear started before we even moved in. Staying in our old cabin alone had been on my bucket list for years. Along with sleeping in a tent alone (which, I have to admit, I still haven’t done). The cabin we now live in had been in our family for about a decade before we [...]

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How to Avoid Theft from Your Rural Property – A Checklist

Our new neighbours, not yet even moved in, recently had most (if not all) of their winter fire wood supply stolen at some point in the night. Our properties are far enough apart, and uphill from us with a creek and hill between, that we didn’t hear a thing. It was going to be their [...]

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How to Carry Firewood the Easy Way

Get the scoop on the easiest, cleanest, and most ergonomically correct way to carry firewood from the wood pile to your house. A product review of the Apron Tote, which you can pick up from Lee Valley Tools. I’ve been using this handy ‘gadget’ since early 2010 and wouldn’t be without it. It allows me [...]

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Raising a Child in the Country – 5 Reasons Why it Might be Right for Your Family

“Come see what I built!” It was an invitation from my then almost-9-year-old son to visit the space he had built for himself to ‘get away from it all’. He led me carefully through one of the many patches of undergrowth near our little cabin, thick with salmon berries just starting to bud with bright [...]

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Making a Living in the Country – 5 Tips for Success

“Did you start your business before you moved to the country?” “How did you figure out what business to start?” “We really want to start over on a rural property – do you have any advice?” Every week, I’m getting more and more messages like this in my inbox and on my Facebook page. On [...]

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Essential Oils on the Homestead

“Mama, where’s the peppermint oil?” My 9-year old son had eaten something that didn’t agree with him and was looking for relief. As is usual around here with all sorts of health maladies, we didn’t reach for pharmaceuticals or the remedies most of us used growing up (remember that pink stuff… yuck!) – we opened [...]

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