How to Make Apple Cider at Home, Safely
How to make apple cider at home: picking a blend, grinding, pressing, pasteurizing at 160°F and storing it, from three extension services.
Gardening
How to Dry Herbs: Air Drying, Dehydrator, Oven and Microwave
How to dry herbs four ways, with the temperatures and times from the National Center for Home Food Preservation and Minnesota Extension.
Read the articleGardening
Growing food where you live. Frost dates and planting windows, soil and compost, raised beds, watering through drought, and keeping the deer and rabbits out of it.
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What to Plant in July: 12 Crops for a Real Fall Harvest
Wondering what to plant in July? These 12 crops sown over the holiday weekend still deliver a full fall harvest. Get the count-back math and zone timing.
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Gardening | Herbs | Vegetables
Growing Microgreens Indoors in Winter: A Practical Homestead System
A practical winter system for growing microgreens indoors: what to sow, how much light and warmth they need, and where the work usually goes wrong. This piece offers reflection grounded in real work and mistakes, not instruction. But winter is long, and a little structure helps keep the greens – and the spirits –…
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How to Start a Garden: A Frost-Date Guide With Cited Sources
Start a garden by working backward from your last spring freeze date, not a calendar month. A cited planting table for 36 crops, real NOAA freeze probabilities for 12 cities, and a companion-planting chart graded by actual evidence.
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How Much Compost Is Too Much in a Raised Bed? What the Extension Services Publish
Short answer: Oregon State University Extension caps compost at 25 percent of a raised bed by volume. The University of Maryland Extension recommends 33 to 50 percent. Both are land-grant institutions, both published those numbers, and almost every soil calculator online quietly hard-codes one side of the disagreement without telling you it exists. This page…
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What to Plant in August for a Fall Harvest: A Zone-by-Zone Homestead Guide (2026)
What to plant in August for a fall harvest, zone by zone. Frost-date math, the crops to sow now, and how to protect a homestead fall garden.
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What to Do With Too Many Tomatoes: A Homestead Glut Plan (2026)
The vines won again? A quick triage plan for what to do with too many tomatoes: freeze, can, dry, cook, or share the glut without burning out.
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Dehydrating Tomatoes: Dryer, Oven and Sun-Dried at Home (2026)
Shrink a whole basket of tomatoes into a jar: how to make dehydrated tomatoes in a dryer or oven, store them safely, and use them all winter.
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How to Freeze Tomatoes (No Blanching Needed) 2026
The fastest way to preserve a tomato harvest: freeze them whole with no blanching, then peel after thawing for soups, sauces and stews all winter.
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How to Preserve Tomatoes: 5 Proven Methods for a Full Pantry (2026)
Five reliable ways to preserve a tomato harvest — canning, freezing, drying, sauce and salsa — plus the one safety step every canned method shares.
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How to Drought-Proof Your Homestead Garden in 2026: The Mid-May Window That Decides Your Harvest
NOAA’s Summer 2026 drought outlook is locked. Here’s the mid-May action plan to drought-proof your homestead garden — drip, mulch, mix, and store.
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Garden Varmint Control on the Homestead: When a Suppressed .223 Earns Its Keep
Rabbits, groundhogs, coyotes — they cost a homestead more than a fence does. Why a suppressed .223 is the quietest legal answer in 42 states.
