Anna Hess

The Weekend Homesteader is organized by month—so whether it’s January or June you’ll find exciting, short projects that you can use to dip your toes into the vast ocean of homesteading without getting overwhelmed. If you need to fit homesteading into a few hours each weekend and would like to have fun while doing it, these projects will be right up your alley, whether you live on a forty-acre farm, a postage-stamp lawn in suburbia, or a high rise. You'll learn about backyard chicken care, how to choose the best mushroom and berry species, and why and how to plant a no-till garden that heals the soil while providing nutritious food. Permaculture techniques will turn your homestead into a vibrant ecosystem and attract native pollinators while converting our society's waste into high-quality compost and mulch. Meanwhile, enjoy the fruits of your labor right away as you learn the basics of cooking and eating seasonally, then preserve homegrown produce for later by drying, canning, freezing, or simply filling your kitchen cabinets with storage vegetables. As you become more self-sufficient, you'll save seeds, prepare for power outages, and tear yourself away from a full-time job, while building a supportive and like-minded community. You won't be completely eliminating your reliance on the grocery store, but you will be plucking low-hanging (and delicious!) fruits out of your own garden by the time all forty-eight projects are complete.

A Twelve-Month Guide to Self-Sufficiency

The Weekend Homesteader

Are you sick and tired of pesky insects in your garden? Do you want to stay away from pesticides and harmful poisons that could be hazardous to your health and your garden? If you answered yes to both of those questions, The Naturally Bug-Free Garden has all the answers to your troubles. This book will show you how to bring your garden ecosystem into balance so that beneficial insects and larger animals do the work of pest control for you. Anna Hess has had seven years of experience growing all of her family's vegetables. Here, she sums up all of her knowledge and expertise, teaching you many hands-on pest-control techniques, such as succession planting, choosing resistant plant varieties, and shielding plants with row covers. Paying attention to the nutritional needs of your vegetables can also deter pests, and the remaining insects are simple to handpick. With Anna's expertise, you too can grow beautiful, healthy, organic vegetables for you and your family...with no chemicals.

controlling pest insects without chemicals

The naturally bug-free garden

Farmstead Feast

The days are juicy and sweet, but beware the seeds in a watermelon summer! Forsythia's bedtime stories as a child centered around the intentional community where she'd been conceived and which her mother had abandoned soon after her birth. So even though she was more familiar with subways than with milk cows, Forsythia knew she couldn't let the farm be sold sight unseen. She threw away her pre-college European adventure and resolved to be the catalyst bringing the ailing community back to life. Getting from the airport in no-bus-service West Virginia to the Kentucky commune where her mother once lived turned out to be the easy part of Forsythia's adventure. Harder was searching for an elusive father who felt cryptic notes and a library card were sufficient stand-ins for his presence. The piercing blue eyes of a perfect boy further complicated matters, making it difficult to hold onto her own ambitious plans for the future. Add in a rustic farmhouse, a flooded creek, and an unexpected betrayal, and the deck seemed to be stacked against Forsythia. But she couldn't give up because if the intentional community disintegrated, Forsythia would never really understand what she'd been missing. And she'd never meet her bio-dad.

Watermelon Summer

Grow twice the fruits and vegetables in half the space on the farm, in the backyard, or in your window! Have you noticed the extraordinary flavors and yields emanating from even a small garden when the soil is just right? If you’ve ever been envious of your neighbor’s dirt or just curious about homesteading, then The Ultimate Guide to Soil is perfect for you. The book begins with a personality test for your soil, then uses that information to plan a course of action for revitalizing poor soil and turning good dirt into great earth. Next, you’ll learn to start and maintain a no-till garden, to balance nutrients with remineralization, and to boost organic matter with easy cover crops. Don’t forget the encyclopedic overview of organic soil amendments at the end. Old standbys like manures and mulches are explained in depth along with less common additions such as bokashi compost and castings from worms and black soldier fly larvae. Learn when hugelkultur, biochar, paper, and cardboard do and don’t match your garden needs, then read about when and how to safely use urine and humanure around edible plantings. With an emphasis on simple techniques suitable for the backyard gardener, The Ultimate Guide to Soil gives you the real dirt on good soil. Maybe next year your neighbor will be envious of you!

The Real Dirt on Cultivating Crops, Compost, and a Healthier Home

The Ultimate Guide to Soil

Think of all the things you could do if you didn't have to spend $16,000 a year on rent or mortgage. Old single-wide mobile homes can often be found for free (and installed for a couple of thousand dollars) in rural areas, so trailersteading is akin to dumpster-diving, and can save you thousands of dollars each year. A trailer allows you to live without debt, to keep your ecological footprint to a minimum with energy bills at or below the national average, all while still blending in with traditional homeowners. Trailersteading profiles nine mobile-home dwellers who have used trailers as a stepping stone toward achieving their dreams. Some have spent the cash they saved on renovations involving extra insulation, pitched roofs, classy interiors, and even. Many also took advantage of a low-cost housing option to pursue their passions, becoming full-time homemakers or homesteaders. In addition to the case studies, this book presents easy methods of minimizing the negative sides of trailer life and accentuating the positive. Learn which parts of installing and upgrading your trailer are easy for a DIYer and which parts should be left to the experts, along with how to cheaply heat and cool a mobile home.

How to Find, Buy, Retrofit, and Live Large in a Mobile Home

Trailersteading

No more harmful sprays in the garden! Do you want to grow beautiful, delicious fruits and vegetables without poisoning your yard with chemicals? Naturally Bug-Free shows you how to bring your garden ecosystem into balance so that beneficial insects and larger animals do the work of pest control for you. In addition to ecosystem balancing, the book includes hands-on pest-control techniques such as succession planting, choosing resistant plant varieties, and shielding plants with row covers. Paying attention to the nutritional needs of your vegetables can also deter pests, and the remaining insects are simple to hand-pick. Hess's newest book sums up seven years of experience growing all of her family's vegetables. With the help of this photo-rich text, your garden can also be naturally bug-free. Free ebook with purchase of paperback through Amazon's matchbook program!

Anna Hess

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