Learn homesteading skills: my favorite blogs, podcasts, and channels

Learn homesteading skills: my favorite blogs, podcasts, and channels

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Whether you’re looking to brush up on old homesteading skills or delve into a completely new adventure on your homestead, modern technology gives us so many options for how to increase our homesteading knowledge. In fact, I sometimes think we have so much homesteading information right at our finger tips that we forget how lucky we are!

Some of you may be wondering where do I myself go when I need homesteading information? What resources are the ones that I use?

Well. Let me tell ya.

(Don’t want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!)

See, I didn’t want this to just be a list of random links that you can easily find by googling homestead information all by yourself. Instead, this is a list of my favorite homesteading channels, podcasts, and blogs, along with a few that were suggested to me — and I will differentiate between the two so you know what I actually listen to/watch/read and which are resources I’m just discovering myself.

But wait, there’s more! Instead of giving you a general link to the home page for each of these suggestions, I’ve chosen a specific video, episode, or post that I think is especially worth checking out.

You’re welcome.

Modern technology gives us so many ways to learn new homesteading skills. Here I talk about my favorite homesteading blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

Learn Homesteading Skills on Blogs

My go-to method for researching and learning homesteading skills is and probably always will be blogs. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer. Maybe it’s because I read fast. Maybe it’s because blogging is pretty well-established as an information source, and there are some amazingly helpful bloggers out there!

Flip Flop Barnyard

Jenna is a smart and strong homesteading wife and mama who just keeps treking along on her homestead journey in the face of much adversity. On her site you can learn about many things, such as raising pigs, homemade udder balm, or how to make a rag quilt.

The 104 Homestead

The purpose of Jess’s blog The 104 Homestead is to teach people how to homestead where they live, whether it’s an itty-bitty city lot, or a big piece of land in the middle of the woods. Jess has taught me many things—like how to make homemade Fire Cider, and the dang easiest way to peel tomatoes for processing. And if you’ve ever wanted to know how to correctly clip a chicken’s wings, Jess can show you how to do that, too.

Timber Creek Farm

At Timber Creek Farm, Janet raises vegetables for their table, and raises animals for fiber, eggs, meat and companionship! Wasting less and being more self sufficient is her ongoing goal. Janet has a wealth of experience and from it has come lots of informative articles like When Can Chicks Go Outside?, Free Range Ducks Pros and Cons, Dyeing Wool With Natural Plant Dyes, and How to Freeze Eggs (for later use!).

A Farm Girl in the Making

Once up a time, there was a husband and wife who decided that maybe one day they would live a life outside of suburban America. It’s a good thing they did, because from it came Ann’s blog, A Farmgirl in The Making. I’ve frequented Ann’s blog and I’ve learned a lot—from raising turkeys on the homestead to how to build a DIY boot rackAnn writes about lots of stuff—from gardening to canning, as well as raising chickens, ducks & goats. Check out her site and see what you can learn!

Grow Forage Cook Ferment

Colleen writes about a great many things—foraging, gardening, cooking from scratch, and permaculture—but the posts of hers that I am forever grateful for are How to Make a Gallon of Mead and 15 Easy Mead Recipes for Beginners.

Modern technology gives us so many ways to learn new homesteading skills. Here I talk about my favorite homesteading blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

Learn Homesteading Skills on Podcasts

A very close second for learning homesteading skills is podcasts. What I love about podcasts is that I can stick my earbuds in while I’m kneading bread, cleaning, doing chores around the farm, or any number of things—and I can be learning something at the same time. Listening to podcasts seems to be a great multi-tasking tool—it can also keep you entertained when you drive to work!

I spend way more time listening to podcasts (multi-tasking!) than I do reading blogs, and yet I have to put this as my second place option for learning for one reason only: there simply aren’t as many homesteading podcasts as there are homesteading blogs and so my options are limited in that respect. Here are a few that I listen to all the time:

Farmish Kind of Life

Did you know that I  have a weekly podcast? Y’all, if I could podcast every day, I would. I love podcasting—I think it must go back to my speech and theater days! Whenever I write a new article on the blog, I also record it as a podcast (with a little more information and occasional rabbit trails…) and it works out well for people who want the information but don’t have time to read—or, you know, want to multi-task. Listener favorites are currently 3 Reasons We Don’t Use Chick Starter and Raising Pheasants: 5 Things I Didn’t Know.

Modern Homesteading Podcast

Harold of The Small Town Homestead started his urban homesteading journey by making drastic lifestyle changes after being diagnosed with colon cancer in his late 30s. And let me tell you, Harold is doing a ton with the space he has: raised gardens, fruit trees, meat rabbits, fish, and more. He has a great podcast with lots of information, and he’s easy to listen to. I always feel like he’s someone I could sit down and have a cup of coffee with and we’d get along great. One of my favorite episodes of Harold’s is What is Homesteading? where he defines what it means to pursue a life of self-sufficiency and sustainability—it’s the best definition of homesteading that I’ve heard yet.

Pioneering Today with Melissa K Norris

Melissa’s podcast gives you the clear steps to create the garden, pantry, kitchen and life you want for your family and homestead. She talks about seasonal living, homestead organization, old fashioned advice and tips, as well as lots of things to help you in your homestead kitchen. In fact, my favorite episode as of late has been 12 Baking Substitutions Every Homesteader Needs to Know — I listened and learned a lot of things to help me in my kitchen (while I was splitting and stacking wood! Multi-tasking for the win!)

The Survival Podcast

I still remember when someone suggested that I should check out Jack Spirko’s podcast. And I still remember where I was standing in my garden when I realized that I could probably listen to every episode he’s ever put out and still want to hear more. Jack talks about many things on The Survival Podcast—homesteading being just one of them—and he’s really a wealth of knowledge on most anything that has to do with modern survivalism. His tagline is helping you live a better life when times get tough, or even if they don’t. Some of my favorites of his over 2000 episodes are One Nation Full of Ants and Self Ownership Over Political Activism. Neither episode centers specifically on homesteading, per se, but Jack’s episodes always inspire me to work towards more self reliance—which makes me a better homesteader.

Note: Jack can sometimes get feisty. Jack sometimes uses profanity. Jack also doesn’t care if you don’t like it. I think Jack is pretty awesome.

Modern technology gives us so many ways to learn new homesteading skills. Here I talk about my favorite homesteading blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

Learn Homesteading Skills on YouTube

YouTube is a great resource for visual learners—or for those homesteading skills that just need to be seen in action to understand how they work.

When I head to YouTube for help with something, I’m generally looking for quick information, not a full fledged TV show about someone’s homesteading journey. To be honest, I haven’t watched a ton of YouTube channels because for me, lots of homesteading YouTubers fall into the same category as TV—and I just don’t have time to sit and watch video after video. That’s the main reason why learning homesteading skills via YouTube is my third place choice. While I will occasionally go searching if I need something really broken down step by step, it’s definitely not my first choice. Therefore, the channels below came from a big list of channels suggested by many fellow homesteaders—I checked out their suggestions, and chose my top six.

Justin Rhodes

Justin’s channel was by far the most popular answer given when I asked about homesteading YouTube channels. He’s got almost 400k subscribers and it looks to me that he uploads just about every day! (That’s commitment, friend. Hats off to you!) A video of his you should check out is One Thing Every Meat Eater Must Do.

Roots and Refuge Farm

I think her name is Jess (correct me if I’m wrong) and I think she’s completely adorbs with her tattoos and nose ring and Proverbs 31ness – I think we could hang out and chat. I enjoyed checking out her channel and was happy to find this video: Making Money on a Homestead

Weed Em and Reap

The folks at Weed Em and Reap are a suburban family of four. They live on one acre of land in the city, and they turned it into a miniature farm. They claim, “while we may not be experts…we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty.” And I love that because really—who among us is an expert? Here’s a great video of theirs that I nodded my way through: Ten Things They Don’t Tell You About Homesteading

Lumnah Acres

The fabulous people at Lumnah Acres hope their experiences can help guide you in modern homesteading, self-sufficiency, and freedom. I really enjoyed their channel because they have a lot of how-to videos—which is exactly what I go to YouTube for. Case in point, I watched their video on how to build an Automatic Pig Waterer from a 55 gallon drum and a pig nipple drinker and now I’m pretty sure what I need to do before our next batch of feeder pigs comes this year.

Living Traditions Homestead

Kevin and Sarah used to work corporate jobs in Arizona, but now they are full time homesteaders in the Missouri Ozarks. On their YouTube channel, they share about their journey and the many things they’ve learned. I really enjoyed the discussion and information in their video Raising Meat Animals. What Animal First?

J&J Acres

Jared lives with his big family on a small farm in East Central Mississippi. He’s got lots of information on homesteading, gardening, permaculture, and raising animals. I especially like his how-to videos, like The Easiest Way to Feed Chickens and Ducks  where he shows folks how to build a feeder from a trash can.

Modern technology gives us so many ways to learn new homesteading skills. Here I talk about my favorite homesteading blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels.

There are so many ways to learn homesteading skills!

Isn’t it great that we have options for how to learn new homesteading skills?

Interestingly enough, I surveyed my newsletter subscribers about this very topic, and they were very forthcoming with information regarding not only what methods they did like, but why they didn’t use other methods.

Those who don’t use YouTube blamed a lack of wifi/unlimited data availability. Some simply said, “I don’t have time to sit and watch a video. And a lot of those videos are really long!”

People who don’t listen to podcasts said it was either a) because it was hard to find a quiet time to listen to them (think mamas of littles who have to keep their ears open) or b) because they didn’t understand the technology required to listen to one.

Those who said they weren’t into blogs generally stated that they a) didn’t like to read, b) needed something more visual in order to learn a skill, or c) were getting most their homesteading learning done during a commute to work and therefore needed to listen instead.

Where’s your favorite method of learning new homesteading skills? What are your favorite homesteading blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels? New resources are starting up all the time, and so I’m always thankful when someone shares one I haven’t heard of!

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1 thought on “Learn homesteading skills: my favorite blogs, podcasts, and channels”

  • Every page, podcast, blog, and vlog you mentioned are ones I was already checking out. However, it has been quite some time since I have listened to anyone else cause I’m trapped into binging this podcast from some lady in Minnesota.

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