Let’s face it, not many of us were born with a green thumb or a strong grasp of poultry farming! So, with the rise of homesteading across the country, more and more people find themselves searching for educational resources.

At Country Tracts, we meet families every day who are buying land to make their homestead dreams come true. So we thought it would be fitting to highlight some of the best tools available to assist you in this journey. And since everyone has their own favorite way of digesting information, we scoured the web for the best books, websites, videos, and podcasts!

Let’s get right to it.

 

BOOKS

Storey’s Basic Country Skills (or any of the Storey’s books)

Whether you live on a small suburban lot or have many acres in the country, this inspiring collection will empower you to increase your self-sufficiency and embrace a more independent lifestyle. A variety of authors share their specialized knowledge and provide practical instructions for basic country skills like preserving vegetables, developing water systems, keeping farm animals, and renovating barns. From sharpening an axe to baking your own bread, you’ll be amazed at the many ways learning traditional skills can enrich your life.

 

 

The Ultimate Self-Suficiency handbook

This compact guide provides advice, tips, and step-by-step instructions for hundreds of projects, offering the entire family the tools they need to make the shift toward self-sufficient living. Readers will learn to dip candles, bake bread, make maple syrup, start a vineyard, and much more. With special features for young homesteaders, this is an essential family guide to self-sufficient living.

 

 

Back to Basics guide to traditional skills

Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast-food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

 

 

Websites

Homesteading.com

This site is extensive! If it happens on the homestead, it’s referenced here. Even recipes, home brewing, and homeschooling ideas have their place on this fantastic website.

 

 

Insteading.com

Over 1,500 free articles and resources, written by folks out in their yards and fields who have been doing this for years. It’s over 1.5 million words of content – about 30 books worth!

 

 

homesteadersofamerica.com

“Homesteaders of America was created to be a space, in person and online, for homesteading education, encouragement, and community. Over the years, we’ve learned and grown together more than we could’ve ever imagined. We take pride in knowing that a homesteader can be anyone who wants to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle—whether it’s in a high-rise apartment, or on a 100-acre ranch.” **Be sure to check out this organization’s events!

 

 

YouTube Channels

Arms Family Homestead

Follow this young family on their homesteading journey! Find educational AND entertaining footage on gardening, livestock, hunting, and homestead life!

Michigan Snow Pony

This homestead began in 1990 and the channel has TONS of content! Gardening, farming, canning, livestock, and more!

 

Stoney Ridge Farm

This 150-acre North Carolina homestead is a work in progress. Plenty of humor accompanies these informative, instructional videos! “The Stoney Ridge Farmer Channel is an ever-evolving regenerative farm project. We are building a way of life here on the farm and an income (eventually) to get me out of the corporate world and into the outdoors raising crops, animals and eventually children in a peaceful loving environment.”

 

Podcasts

Pioneering today with Melissa K. Norris

“The Pioneering Today Podcast doesn’t just inspire you, but gives you the clear steps for gardening, food preservation, cooking from scratch, natural medicine, and the traditional skill sets and wisdom to create the life you want for your family and homestead.”

 

 

Homesteady with Austin and Kendra Martin

“Don’t own land? Neither did we. Don’t make much money? Yeah, I was a construction worker. Don’t know the first thing about chickens? Little secret… they are not hard to raise. 

Homesteady is an adjective. A word that describes a noun (You are that noun). Maybe You are not an old timey homesteader who lives off the land from his bunker in the Colorado mountains. But you do grow herbs on your patio, and you are hoping to move to the country in a few years and get some chickens. 

Congrats, You are Homesteady. 

 

Get Connected!

Last but not least, get connected with like-minded folks in your community! Join a local community garden, get in touch with your local university extension office, attend homesteading events near you, or even start your own club! There’s something about sharing this journey with people you can experience connection with – in a good ole’ face-to-face way.