Articles · Topic
Articles about Homesteading
26 articles across 3 sections
Section
Self-Reliance
Animal Husbandry
A decision framework for keeping animals at household scale. What it actually requires before you buy anything, how to read your property, and how to choose which animal fits your household first.
Generating Your Own Power
Track 3 of the Energy domain. Continuous power generation at property scale across six areas: solar, micro-hydro, wind, biomass and heat conversion, continuous-duty engines, and site-specific sources. Written for a property that intends to produce its own electricity as normal operation rather than for a household sizing backup.
Ground Mount, Roof Mount and Tracking
Choosing between roof mount, ground mount and tracking for a property array. Tilt and azimuth, the winter bias that favours December over annual yield, snow shedding and airflow, and why adding panels usually beats adding moving parts.
Homestead Structures, Build, Skills
Homestead structures, site selection and permit thresholds, skid foundations on gravel pads, post-and-beam framing for small sheds, chicken coop design specs for ventilation and predator protection,
Intake, Penstock and Winter
Where the head you measured either survives or does not. Self-cleaning Coanda screens, the four jobs an intake performs, and pipe sizing worked at four diameters on one site, where a single size increase is worth 38 percent more power. Plus what actually freezes in a hydro system, which is less than most people expect.
Land and Self-Reliance
Your household's relationship to land determines its self-reliance ceiling. Guides for renters, urban lots, suburban yards, rural acreage, water rights, zoning, and buying land.
Micro-Hydro and Water Power
The Hydro track of the property-scale Generation section. Eight guides on generating power from moving water, which unlike solar and wind runs continuously. Measuring head and flow, the three system configurations, turbine selection, civil works, load control, and the water rights and permits that decide whether any of it is lawful.
Run-of-River Micro-Hydro
The standard micro-hydro configuration: divert part of a stream, run it down a pipe to a turbine, return it immediately. The eight-component chain from intake to transmission, why the penstock rather than the turbine is most of the project, what constant output feels like to live with, and the six sites where it is the wrong answer.
Rural Acreage and Self-Reliance: What Land Actually Makes Possible
Five acres to a working farm, food production, well water, wood heat, and energy options available on rural land, plus EMS response times, infrastructure costs, and self-maintenance requirements.
Solar at Property Scale
The Solar track of the property-scale Generation section. Seven guides covering what changes when an array has to carry a whole property rather than supplement a house: worst-month sizing, storage measured in days, mounting, code, and winter. One worked example runs through all seven.
Waterwheels
Overshot, breastshot and undershot wheels reach 75 to 85 percent hydraulic efficiency, better than their reputation and traceable to a mathematically incorrect 1704 analysis. The real drawback is rotational speed. Where a wheel beats a turbine, and why direct mechanical work suits it better than generating electricity.
Why Most Homestead Biomass Disappoints
The four patterns behind abandoned biomass projects: feedstock counted optimistically, labour that recurs daily, reject heat with nowhere to go, and a thinner equipment market than it appears. Set against residential solar costs that fell 65 percent while biomass physics did not move.
Wind at Property Scale
The Wind track of the property-scale Generation section. Seven guides on small wind, opening with the honest position that it is the most oversold source on the site. Site assessment, why most installations disappoint, horizontal and vertical axis machines, towers and their maintenance burden, system control and braking, and the zoning that decides most projects before a turbine is ever chosen.
Section
Preparedness
The Best States for Preparedness and Self-Reliance
All 50 states ranked for preparedness and self-reliance. Water, affordability, food production, hazards, and legal access scored and explained, with a parcel due-diligence checklist.
Where You Live Shapes What You Can Do
Before you pick a state, learn the questions experienced buyers ask first: dependable water, legal use, usable acres, true cost, and community. A calm starting point for thinking about where to live.
Section
Gear and Buying Guides
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
The standard reference for home canning, 400 tested recipes for water-bath and pressure canning, pickles, jams, and more. Why we recommend it, what readers say, and how to buy it or borrow it.
Classic Self-Reliance Library
The foundational texts of self-reliance, books that have been earning their shelf space for decades. Carla Emery, John Seymour, Hertzberg and Greene. Buy a copy, or find it at your local library.
Fences for Pasture and Garden
Gail Damerow
Food Books
The best books for growing, cooking, and preserving food, canning, gardening, and self-reliant kitchens. Buy a copy, or find it at your local library.
Land & Homesteading Books
The best books for land-based self-reliance, from the suburban quarter-acre to the rural homestead. Buy a copy, or find it at your local library.
Skills Books
The best books for practical self-reliance skills, from outdoor survival and bushcraft to homesteading and food production. Buy a copy, or find it at your local library.
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
Gail Damerow
The Backyard Homestead
How much food you can grow on a quarter-acre lot, and how to preserve everything you harvest. New York Times Book Review. Why we recommend it, what to verify for food safety, and how to buy or borrow
The Encyclopedia of Country Living
Carla Emery
The Home Water Supply
Stu Campbell
The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It
John Seymour