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How To Build Raised Garden Beds

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While it’s definitely easier to just buy a raised garden bed, kits or other premade/ prefabricated beds, I do think that building them from scratch is a great way to go. I’ll explain why in a minute. The idea of using raised beds was, at first, a ridiculous idea to me. I’ve got great soil, why do I need a bed? But after our first garden flopped, maybe learning how to build raised garden beds is a better idea.

What are raised garden beds?

Simply put, it is a structure that sits on the ground that you add soil, compost and other organic material to grow things. That’s it. But it is definitely more than that. You see, our soil in Georgia is usually red clay. But there’s a reason why Georgia is a huge agricultural state, we can grow just about anything in this soil. That also means that our weeds are super plants, too.

A raised bed is a great way to keep weeds from growing and stealing water and other nutrients from your plants.

Raised beds also help those with ailments or disabilities that can’t be on their knees in a garden.

Also raised beds help create a designated spot for fruits or vegetables that you want to save seeds from.

And they look prettier.

Susan over at Learning and Yearning as a great guide to raised beds. I took a lot of inspiration from her and Kathi over at Oakhill Homestead when I was brainstorming, designing and building our raised garden beds.

To Buy Or Build A Raised Bed

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? There are somethings you need to consider when it comes to building a raised bed. Things like your skill level, cost of materials, and customization. If you are not handy with tools or don’t have any skill, building a raised bed may not be a good option. The cost of lumber is extremely high in some parts of the country and that makes building one out of reach for some people. If you are looking for certain dimensions, building one may be a better option.

When we were looking at raised beds, I wanted to conceal the area in front of our front porch. The gutters get overrun when it rains and creates a lot of issues with run off.

Our dogs like to dig and wreak havoc in the front yard. The goats like to hide under the porch and the chickens like to lay their eggs under there too.

So I wanted to help hide some of this as well as keep creatures out. In front of the front porch is a 12ft section on each side of the stairs. And one side has a walk way to the porch, and the other side is wide open. The raised beds/ planters had to be tall enough to keep goats from walking right up to it. Trying to find something that was prefabricated was going to either be insanely expensive or not the right size.

It Was Better For Us To Build Raised Garden Beds

We found a couple of prefab’d raised beds like this one, and this one. But those are really expensive and still not the right fit for what we needed. So Jared and I brainstormed what we could do. I told him what I wanted: 2.5-3 feet wide, 12 feet long, and about 24 inches tall. He got to work designing and sketching and handed me a material list.

I went to Home Depot and got 45 dog ear pickets and 6 3x4x 8ft posts and he went to work. We also got some lattice to discourage the critters from going under the deck on the sides that would be open until we could build more beds.

How To Build Raised Garden Beds

It was pretty easy for Jared to build the beds and he got them both done in a day.

He stared with cutting all of the lumber to size.

Cut List

Pickets- cut off the dog ear. Then find your half way point (should be 5′ 5″) and cut there. If you are doing a custom size, cut to that number

3×4- Cut in half

Take your extra pickets (we bought 5 extra) and cut those to 18 inches

Instructions

On a flat and level surface (unless you want your beds to follow the contour of the ground), screw each picket onto a 3×4 timber.

Do this with the front and back of your bed.

Line them up so that you can attach your side picket. Do the same for the other side. You should have a rectangle.

Then start attaching pickets all the way up until you have your desired height. Ours was four pickets high.

Then go in and screw those 18in pickets half way between the 3x4s to help stabilize the pickets to help keep them from bowing when the bed is filled with soil.

Prepping Your Garden Beds

To start, I highly recommend using a liner. Katie over at The Homesteading RD has a great article all about different liners and why you should use them. Now, we didn’t use the cedar like she suggested for two reasons; one, cedar is still pretty expensive and two, because I didn’t to go BACK out to the store. Instead, I used our woven ground cloth.

If you are going to use any kind of plastic or cloth for your beds, I suggest stapling it to the sides of your pickets. But make sure you use plenty of slack in your liner, the weight of the soil, compost and other filler will tear it.

Filler

Since our beds were 12 feet long, 2.5 feet wide and 2 feet tall, we needed a TON of filler. Now, we could have gone and gotten a bunch of soil, but that’s expensive AND the soil will get compacted over time. That’s not what we want.

About 2 months ago, Jared went through the property and cut down a bunch of mountain laurel. If you don’t know, mountain laurel is extremely toxic to pretty much everything. But our goats didn’t get that memo and without fail someone always eats it and gets sick.

So I had this giant pile of laurel that needed to go. After a ton of research, including calling the Arbor Foundation, I found out that laurel doesn’t leach toxins as it decomposes. Score.

I filled the beds with as much laurel as possible. We cut down big branches and stuffed them in the bed, being careful not to puncture the liner. It took about half the pile but my beds were about 80% full.

Compost

Next, Chase filled the beds with compost. He’s in that wonderful teenage stage where he likes to pick things up and put them down. Repeatedly. But hey, it works for me. He did a fantastic job and the beds were about 90% full….. Or so I thought.

I ordered my soil, peat moss and the rest of the things I needed for finishing off the rest of the area. Including Halloween Decorations.

My poor truck was so low

I wish I would have realized before buying all of this that it was heavy. I knew it was heavy, but I guess I didn’t realize HOW heavy it would be.

Driving home, on curvy mountain roads was a test of not only my driving skills but also my patience. But we all made it home in one piece and nothing fell off the back of the truck. Score.

Soil

What you fill your beds with is totally up to you. As I said above, I would highly recommend using some sort of filler that is decomposable and a liner. When it comes to soil, we used regular top soil since we were adding peat moss and already had compost and the laurel in the beds. Also, since we aren’t 100% sure what we will be planting in these beds long term, I didn’t want to put in something that was going to be highly acidic or alkalotic.

Plants

What does well in raised beds? Literally everything. I want these beds to house our garlic, onion, and carrots. I may even put our regular potatoes and sweet potatoes in there. Again, I’m not entirely sure. But for now, I threw in some great fall plants and we’ll see what they can do.

Our Take Away

We figured out that raised beds are a great way to go to help conceal the disaster of the front porch.

It takes a TON of soil and other filler to fill these beds so take that into consideration when building these things. Not just height but width and length too.

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Run hardware cloth around the top if you want to keep chickens and goats out.

Do not compact the soil in these beds! As you add soil, spread it around so it can fill holes in your filler but don’t cram it in there.

The beds themselves only cost about $60 each to build but ended up running us about $100 each to fill. Keep that in mind when you start this project.

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Remodeling Our Laundry Room

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Hold on to your butts, this is a long posts.

Not everything on the homestead is about livestock, gardens and canning. Sometimes it’s about what is inside your home too. When we bought the house, we really didn’t care that the walls were wood paneled. Nor did we care that we would have to replace the floors. Those different upgrades that we were going to have to do was not a problem. We bought it for the land. Unfortunately, the house still does need to be updated and brought into this century, let alone this decade. So I decided to remodel our laundry room. To make it more of a challenge for less than $700.

Why The Laundry Room?

Well, simply put it’s the most hated room in our house, bar none. No one likes doing laundry. But since I hate it the least, it’s “my” chore. Which is fine because that means that the dishes go to someone else. Score.

But it was hard to find the urge to get in there and do the laundry, or even clean the space. It was drab and was just not nice to look at. The worst part was, no matter how many times I cleaned it, it always stunk.

I could have started anywhere in the house, but this seemed to be the most manageable. Plus, if we screwed something up, it was a small space. It had the least amount of the things we hated the most (paneling) and seemed like a quick remodel would be, well, quick. There was no way to know how wrong I was.

Before the laundry remodel could start, I had to at least think about that I wanted it to look like. The first thing I did, was figure out all the things we hated about the room.

The Things We Hated:

  1. Paneling
  2. Lack of storage
  3. Open shelves
  4. Chewed and clawed up door jam
  5. Popcorn ceilings
  6. Lighting
  7. No place to fold or store laundry while finishing the other laundry.

Then I figured out what I wanted it to look like. There were two things that needed to happen in that room, the paneling gone and more storage. Anything past that was fair game. So I started working on designing what I wanted.

Our house is not very big and that is just fine with us. But the downside is that we have to get very creative with storage options. I have found that putting in cabinets has helped a ton. Almost every single remodel or design idea has tons of shelves, cabinets and other storage ideas.

Where To Start: Paneling

Before we jump into the rest of this post, let me tell you something about paneling and trying to cover it. This is not for the feint of heart. Nor is it for someone not willing to work. Like most construction projects, it’s dirty, dusty, and there is a ton of heavy lifting. Don’t let any of the videos or other posts lie to you and tell you, “I just covered the crack in the paneling and painted”. That’s not what they did, trust me.

Back to the laundry room.

Once we got the majority of everything out of the laundry room, I decided to start with the wood paneling. While others may love shiplap, I hate it. So I started looking into how to cover up the cracks in the paneling and found that caulk is a good choice. Let me tell you, it’s not.

Boys helping cover wood paneling
Boys helping cover wood paneling

After twelve bottles of caulking, we weren’t even half way done. It also didn’t fill the cracks well. Once it dried, there would be an indent in the middle of the crack. So that failed.

When talking to a couple of friends who do construction, they suggested using drywall putty or mud. That worked a lot better, and was a ton cheaper so we went with that. But the problem we were still having was that, once dried, the crack was still noticeable.

The indent that doesn’t want to be covered

After three to four coats with the drywall mud, the crack was barely noticeable and ready to sand.

Let me tell you this, before you start sanding, make sure that you have a respirator like this one and great airflow in the room you’ll be working in. I used sheets and blankets to block off the doorway so that we could keep the dust to a minimum and it definitely helped. But the clean up was enormous.

Next: Ceiling and Electrical

Next we started working on removing the popcorn ceiling. For this job, it may have been better just to leave it. But popcorn ceilings are a close second in my hatred book. To remove popcorn ceiling you need two things, a spray bottle with water and a drywall knife similar to this, and the size doesn’t matter. You can buy a popcorn scraper but we found that it gouged the ceiling more and was harder to work with.

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Then you are going to soak the ceiling with water using some sort of sprayer, we used this one. Once it’s saturated, and yes you need to soak it, you can start working to scrape the ceiling. I will tell you it is extremely satisfying to do it. I don’t know why. Once you’re done, you can sand any rough spots.

Another option for the ceiling is to just sand it if you have an electric sander. After doing the scraper, I liked this method the most because it is a one and done. I also didn’t have to worry as much about gouging the ceiling when I sanded. Plus, I was already sanding the walls so two birds, one stone.

After the ceiling was done, dry and painted, it was time to tackle the nipple lights. I don’t know what they’re actually called but they look like nipples, sorry. It was also time to start pulling the black outlets and switches and replacing them with white ones.

Cue problem #93480382 of this remodel. The electrical was done to 1980s code, so it was pretty much a fire hazard. And since our house is all wood, it would have gone up like a matchbox. After cleaning out forty years of dust, bugs and debris out of the switch boxes, we were able to replace the switches. Only to find out, everything was backwards. Since Jared is amazing, he was able to get in there and help me get everything switched out. I love that man.

Once we got the new light fixture installed, we were ready to tackle the paint.

Painting Over Wood Paneling

Now, before we jump into painting, you need to know something about wood paneling. Much like painting previously painted wood, you need to sand your paneling. If you don’t, the paint won’t stick. We took our sander around the room and hit every single wall. Then we washed the walls with warm soapy water. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to have another problem, which of course we did.

I used Kilz Primer, because the previous owners had cats and I’m pretty sure the litter box was in the laundry room. So it stunk. After I hit the walls, ceiling, baseboards and door jams, you could still see the wood paneling AND the cracks.

We did four coats of primer and you could still see the orange through the paint. I was not happy. Mind you at this point, I still hadn’t picked a color for the walls. But after seeing that we would need a darker color to help hide the wood? Gray it is.

Storage

I’m not a decorator, but seeing everything start to come together is my favorite part. There were a lot of phone calls and text messages sent to my family and friends because I am absolutely clueless when it comes to this stuff. The two things I knew that I wanted was it to feel clean, even if it wasn’t, and to have a ton of storage.

Previously, when it was time to do laundry, we had a storage rack like this. It worked okay, but it was temporary because we lived in a rental. When we moved into this house, we couldn’t really use it. It blocked access to the attic and didn’t fit between the basement door and the dryer. So anytime we had to go into the attic, we had to unload this thing and move it out of the way.

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So I started measuring. I figured that I could put cabinets and shelves over the washer and dryer. I decided that I wanted to use cabinets and industrial pipe rod to fold our clothes. Here come the kitchen cabinets. The unfinished cabinets are much cheaper and are usually in stock at the stores.

I also grabbed a couple of decking boards to use as the tops and used a propane torch to burn them. To attach the boards to the cabinets, I used 1in corner brackets. Then, I found my stash of cabinet pulls and finished it off.

When we were placing the wall cabinets, we decided to use a French cleat system and it worked pretty well except, you could see where the top cleats where too low and too wide. This resulted in having to get a word art sign that could hide it.

Then came the shelves. We bought 1x10x10 boards and these shelf brackets. I really love these brackets! I’m not a fan of the normal shelf brackets because they look cheap to me. While these brackets were more expensive, I think it looks more finished.

The final touch of this remodel, was adding different storage containers for laundry detergent, bleach, etc. I didn’t want to just leave them in their packaging because, well it’s not nice to look at. While that may not bother some, I do want my home to look a little more put together.

Today, my laundry room looks like this and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Final Takeaways For A Laundry Room Remodel

–Drywall Tape -Next time we will be using drywall tape to help cover the cracks in the paneling better.

-Lighting- bright white light bulbs will help keep the room looking bigger instead of the more orange-y/ yellow-y bulbs.

– Use drop cloths to protect your floors if you will not be replacing them

– Give yourself at least an inch when measuring for cabinets. We ended up having to cram that smaller cabinet between the washer and dryer. The good news is that now my washer can’t walk out when it’s unbalanced.

-You don’t have to buy every decoration when you hit the final stage. You can, but I liked being able to find things as I liked them instead of switching things out and wasting money.

I know this was a long post. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking around. While this laundry room remodel took a couple of months and is still not quite done, it has been great. We have lived in rentals our entire marriage and it’s nice to be able to work together and make this home ours.

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What To Do With Those Feed Bags

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How many feed bags do you have laying around? Do you just throw them away? I’ve always been one to save dog food bags. I don’t know why. Probably the same reason so many people save shopping bags that they never, ever reuse. At least not at the rate they save them. But after cleaning up the basement for the 9 millionth time, and seeing a ton of bags, I decided enough was enough.

But how many bags do you really need? Well, according to my brain, I need all of them. It’s ridiculous. I cannot throw them away. No matter how hard I argue with myself about the fact that I don’t need to save every single one, I end up rolling it up and stowing it in another feed bag. So I started brainstorming, searching and the list below is how we reuse feed bags.

Don’t judge!

Why I save them

I feel like they are really good bags. They are made to hold 50# of food or more! That means they can hold all sorts of things. Plus, let’s be real here, you put anything sharp in a regular trash bag, even the heavy duty ones, and you are blowing a hole in it. Now, all that trash is all over the place. Not cool.

Another reason I am in favor of saving these bags is because I’ve already paid for them. Think about it, I bought the feed but I’m going to throw away a perfectly good bag because it’s empty? Absolutely not. Couple that and the fact that things are getting more and more expensive? I have all the reasons I need to hold on to and reuse feed bags.

Ways To Reuse Feed Bags

Trash Bags- Seriously, these make the most amazing trash bags! I don’t know where you live but trash bags by me are $15 for an 80ct box. When I am going and decluttering, I will reuse feed bags before I even touch my regular trash bags.

Tote Bags- Kathy over at Beyond The Chicken Coop has a great tutorial for making tote bags! These are seriously adorable and I will be making some! I love that I can make different sizes based on what I need. Plus, I know that if I can make the seams strong, they will be strong because again, they hold 50# of feed!

Hay Feeders- Danielle At DIY Danielle, talks about some of the pros and cons of doing it this way. I have found that it works well, until it doesn’t. I love the portability of this style bag, I can nail it to a tree or hang it in the goat barn. But it’s still only going to last so long.

Organizer- Yes, you read that right. We will use these bags to put all of the same type of stuff together. For example: We will store all of our nursery pots in a feed bag. Or if we are going the the back of the property to cut trees, we will put the bar oil, fuel, hatchet, etc in the bag. Now, we take them out immediately after so that we aren’t mixing chemicals if one should mysteriously open. BUT to get all those tools out to the area we are working now only takes one trip.

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Planters- We have grown some amazing potatoes, carrots, and onions in these bags. But be sure to use the plastic ones for this! Patrick and Jessie at Southern Dreams Homestead has a great and in depth post about growing in containers that will help you here.

Tarps- Yea, I wasn’t sure about this one but the idea is definitely there! Sweet Meadow Sampler has a great tutorial on it. We will be trying it soon though.

https://www.wickedgoodcupcakes.com/shop-online/thinking-of-you-boxes

Flooring- I personally would do this in the winter to make clean out in the spring easier. One of the biggest headaches we have come spring, has nothing to do with the garden. It’s cleaning out the barn and coop. Having these bags would not only insulate them from the ground, it would also help clean up all the pine shavings, poop, urine and more.

Compost- it is feasible that you could compost in these bags. The plastic would trap heat and allow break down faster. The thick paper bags are compositable themselves. In theory (I have not tried this yet) you could fill a bag and empty it in your compost pile. Or you could use the bag AS your compost pile. You can go more in depth about composting with The Homestead RD, Katie has some truly amazing posts about compost. In the post I linked above, she also uses feed bags as planters and can tell you how to do it.

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Wood- We will put our small pieces of scrap wood in these bags to help keep the basement cleaned up. We have a ton of projects around here and I’m not going to throw away or burn a piece of good wood just because it’s a smidge too small. By putting it in the feed bags, we reduce clutter and reuse the bag.

Projects- Sometimes when we have multiple projects going on, it’s hard to keep everything separated. So I will put all the supplies for a project in a feed bag and then write on the front what it’s for. This has helped a ton when it comes to organization.

How do you reuse feed bags?

Leave us a comment below. Do you throw away your bags? Reuse them?

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How We Organize A Deep Freezer

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Seriously, how is it that I can organize our freezer and within a month it’s back to being a disaster. Every time! But I have finally figured it out! I saw this hack on Pinterest and figured what did I have to lose? If it doesn’t work, I can reuse the supplies. But if it works? Well, my sanity may just be returned. Maybe. So how did we organize a deep freezer?

** Read All The Way Down For The 6 Month Update**

organize a deep freezer

https://www.wickedgoodcupcakes.com/shop-online/thinking-of-you-boxes

Let’s start with before

organize a deep freezer

Yup. A disaster. Would you believe that I reorganized everything in February when we butchered our meat chickens? I cleaned everything out, defrosted and wiped everything down. You wouldn’t know it to look at it now.

What you see here is about seventeen meat chickens that have been broken down into parts and bagged. What you don’t see is the half a cow that has to go in here. Now, I will say, we bought the half cow knowing that we would have to get a second freezer because there was no way we were going to fit half a cow, 17 chickens, plus all my creamer.

Yes, it’s an addiction. No, I’m not sorry.

organize a deep freezer
This is only about a third of our creamer collection

Bean water addiction aside, we needed more freezer space. But I knew that if I didn’t have some sort of a system, we were going to end up with a massive chest freezer that was nothing but piles of meat. Let’s be real here, not much sucks more than having to dig through frozen meat to find the one piece of steak that’s at the very bottom.

Tractor Supply

Enter Milk Crates To Organize A Deep Freezer

Milk crates have saved my sanity when Jared brought home the cow. I’m not going to lie, I was nervous that three coolers of meat was going to create more chaos than me. But we worked through it and got everything separated into five milk crates. They are overflowing but still stackable.

organize a deep freezer

The idea with the milk crates is to have the ability to pick up and move them to get to what is below them. So far it has worked beautifully and I will be buying more crates for my upright freezer to handle that disaster.

The problem with the using milk crates in the upright freezer is not having the ability to see through them to what is inside. Yes, we could label them but if my kids won’t put things up where they go, do we really think that putting a label on the crate will help? I guarantee it won’t.

One More Tip

We also write on our freezers. This helps keep an eye on inventory levels…. when someone remembers to deduct what they took out…. which no one does. But it’s a good idea.

organize a deep freezer

Now if anyone has a plan for a DIY smoker that would be really helpful.

https://www.wickedgoodcupcakes.com/shop-online/thinking-of-you-boxes

6 Month Update Of How This Has Worked

In the effort of full disclosure, this idea is fantastic. But it lacking in some areas and could improve in others. Here are the pros and cons

Pros

  • It has absolutely made finding things super easy
  • While it doesn’t necessarily save space because the milk crates do take up space, it has created “sides” for things to go. Pig on one side and cow on the other
  • The inventory system works well, as long as there is marker around it somewhere

Cons

  • Adding inventory that doesn’t fit the category of the milk create has created a massive headache. Things like a whole chicken or bacon.
  • Because the milk crates don’t have lids, things get disorganized very quickly. Like trying to find ground beef under a ton of pork chops.

Alternatives?

One of the things we are looking into is getting wire shelves and using them as separators. My thought is this, everything is going to end up in piles anyways. Why not create a system that organizes the deep freezer into piles. We’ll then take the milk crates over to our upright freezer and see how it works over there.

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5 Things I Learned Heating With Wood

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What sounds more homestead-y than a wood burning stove? Not much. But there are a lot of things to consider before you jump in with both feet. Things like; how much do you need? How are you going to stack it? How do you start a fire in an insert or wood stove? These are all questions I didn’t know I had, till I had them.

Our fireplace insert is pretty old but still works very well. Unfortunately, it is not very energy efficient. We also learned that when we lose power, we loose the ability to heat our home well. We also have a wood burning furnace in the basement. While it was cool but not cold, we decided to start the furnace to see if it even worked. Boy did it! The boys rooms were 95* before we were able to get the fire out. After some trail and error, we figured out the basics of heating with wood.

1. Cut or buy more wood than you think you’ll need

If it’s your first year, cut double what you think you’ll need. We only cut two cords. By the time the season was over, we had bought two more cords. Thankfully, we had a ton of downed trees on the property that were pretty dry. That allowed us to cut as we needed.

We still ended up running low and almost out on two separate occasions and of course one of those we had a winter storm baring down on us. Figures. This year we are shooting for 5 cords of wood. We already have 1.5 and it’s not even the end of March.

2. Get a good wood splitter

I love splitting firewood. Whether with an axe or with the splitter, it is incredibly satisfying to see your wood pile grow. Part of it is because you can see the progress of your work. The other part is you know you will be warm that winter. But you do need a solid wood splitter to get the job done faster. Trust me, after an hour of swinging that axe you will be tired and looking to trade out with someone. There are several kinds out there, but we have an electric splitter. I would prefer gas but with it being 3x the price? Electric it is.

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Our log splitter is smaller and we have to bend over to use it. Jared is tasked with building a table for it because after a while my back and hip start to hurt and I have to walk it off. Still, it beats having to use an axe 100% of the time.

3. Learn how to start a fire

You think I’m joking but you need to learn how to properly start a fire. There is no one way to do it but you still need to know how to do it. But you also need to learn how to operate your insert, stove, or fireplace. The basic jist is open your flue and add some sort of starter like paper, leaves, or similar. Light the starter and quickly add small sticks or kindling to it. Then add larger pieces of kindling until you can add a log without putting out the fire.

How I do it, put cardboard on the log holders and a couple small logs that are “scraggly” they are super dry and have little pieces of wood sticking off them. This acts as my kindling. Then I light with our propane torch. Easy peasy. Jared has this whole process of building and building and BUILDING. I’ve go other stuff to do so I choose the easy way.

4. Get a pot of water for your stove

A pot of water on the stove allows for you to create humidity. Without it, you will dry out not only your sinuses but it can also damage your home. If you have hard wood floors, or wood paneling like we do, it will cause it to dry, crack, and split. Thankfully, when we had a cord of wood delivered, I started asking the guy questions because he had heated with wood his entire life. He walked in the house and asked where our water pot was. Before he left, we fixed the problem.

I had no idea that was a thing until I ended up getting really sick. I had a patient that had bronchitis and she coughed on me. Because my sinuses were so dry, there was no mucus. No mucus= no protection from germs.

5. Storing Your Firewood

Next to cutting or ordering enough, storing your firewood is the most important lesson we learned. I knew that we needed to stack firewood off the ground. Also, I knew that we needed to keep it mostly dry. You should also probably not bring a ton of firewood on your deck or into your house because of bugs. What I didn’t know was the mess dry wood creates in a house. I didn’t know that you should store your kindling separate. Finally, I didn’t realize that tarping your wood will actually cause to stay wet.

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To fix some of these problems I made a wood storage box. It’s not pretty, but it does a fantastic job of making sure that the mess stays in the box. I also have a small ledge behind the lid that we have another box that holds small pieces of kindling. This box has been a lifesaver.

We pulled off the tarp and almost immediately wood that was previously damp, started to dry. We only pulled the tarp over our stack if it was supposed to rain. This helped a ton.

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Leave a layer of ash in the bottom of your insert! I swear, this was the key to starting fires quickly and keeping those embers warm. It acts as insulation and really helps keep your fireplace at the correct temperatures. I usually keep an inch or two in the bottom when I clean it out between fires.

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Can You Start A Homestead With No Money?

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The short answer is no. You do need some money but it might surprise you that you don’t need a ton of money to start a homestead. Ingenuity, hard work and a lot of sweat goes a long way. But at the end of the day, you will need at least some money.

When we started our homestead, we had about $2,000. Considering the amount of work we needed to do? It was not a lot of money and I was panicking because I thought we needed all the things to get everything done. Thankfully, between working a ton of overtime we have been able to slowly grow our homestead over the last year.

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How much do you need?

I would say a good rule of thumb to moderately build your homestead is $1,000 per acre to start. That doesn’t mean if you don’t have that $1,000 you can’t buy a homestead. But $1,000 is a good way to get started on a fair amount of projects without freaking out when you have to go back to the hardware store for the 15x in two days.

Replacing the water heater only took 7 trips in two days.

Also, depending on the state of your homestead, you will need to do a lot of clearing before you can even get to work on anything. When we first moved in, we had to pull tons of debris from the homestead. Fencing, barbed wire, posts, random pieces of wood with nails sticking out of them, etc. Even a burned out freezer was just hanging out.

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It took us a month and a half before we brought goats to the homestead to help clear land. But I will say is this, before you bring bigger livestock (goats, pigs, donkey, etc) to the homestead, make sure you have plenty of money set aside because your first fence probably sucks. Especially if you have never built fences for livestock. I’m not knocking your fence building skills, but those animals will find the weak points. We spent two hours chasing Bella between our property and our neighbors. So make sure you either have extra money on hand or someone who actually knows how to build livestock fencing.

Putting in gardens are going to be hard work. You will do a lot of work by hand instead of relying on a tractor. But I feel like it’s worth it to learn how to do it manually so you know how to do it. However, it would be really nice to have a tractor for pulling stumps, tilling the ground, and not spending two weeks working the soil.

Get Creative

If you can get creative with what is already on your property, you don’t need a ton of money to start a homestead. We had a ton of old material from various projects we did at our old house. We made sure to bring all of that with us. Since our new garage wasn’t big enough for the 2 sets of storage shelves we had in the old garage, we used the wood for something else.

New Kidding Pens

Some of the debris on the property has yielded us a couple of goat shacks, a chicken coop, plenty of roosting bars, and much more all without spending a penny. And while no it’s not pretty, it works really well. The goat shack above has about $2 worth of screws invested in it. Since it has been converted into a kidding pen it has another $10 worth of hinges and wood.

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There have also been instances of numerous projects that need to be done, and we only have $1,000 to all of them. Things get really creative then but when I look around at all the things we have gotten done around here, I’m pretty impressed.

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Don’t be afraid of buying a property because you don’t have a ton of money to get started. It takes time to get a homestead up and running, not money. Hard work goes a lot further than a dollar so please don’t get hung up on that part.

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Starting Canning Season Right

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On our homestead, we can a lot. I’m not talking about making just jams either. Not only do we can individual items like corn, green beans, peaches, etc but we also can meals like chicken noodle soup, beef stew and chilis. But as we go through these jars of delicious foods, we tend to just wash them and stack them up. This creates a problem during canning season.

Getting Your Jars Ready

As I said above, normally we just wash and stack our jars in the basement. They have no lids, rings, and are possibly not even clean. This creates a problem when I’m canning full force and putting up dozens of jars a day. So how do we go about getting all of our jars ready now while we wait for harvest? Every single case of empty jars comes upstairs, including all the lids, rings, and other odds and ends.

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I go through each jar and make sure that they all in good condition, no chips, cracks, dips or dings. Then I go through all the rings and sort them. I will keep the rings that have rust but they go into a different bin to use on a different project. I will also take inventory on my jars and see if I need to buy more. Then I start the washing process.

I use vinegar instead of dish tabs because I’m cheap and I think the vinegar does a better job at cleaning them. Once they are clean, they get a fresh lid and ring. Back in the box and stacked on our shelves for use in the basement.

Beyond Your Jars

Not everything revolves around jars during canning season. Weird, I know. But the jars are just the vessel that you are using to preserve your harvests or good deals. You also need to make sure that your canners, both pressure and water bath are in good condition and ready to go. Peak canning season (April to September for us) is a terrible time to find out that the gasket on your pressure canner is cracked or the regulator broken. Go ahead and check those things now and order replacements if needed.

Check to make sure that all of your strainers, ladles, and canning funnels are in good shape and you have enough of them. I have four funnels and I’m getting ready to buy a couple more that are much wider. I ordered this one. The reason is because during soup season, when I need to dump the last remaining goodness in that jar? I don’t want to spill it everywhere. Go ahead and grab one or two more jar grabber thingy’s. Nope, I don’t know what they are actually called but I know when I start looking for mine, it’s usually hidden under all the towels and hot jars.

Start Stocking Up

Now is the time to start stocking up on all your lids. Seriously, get as many as you can afford. Better yet, grab some reusable lids like Tattler or Harvest Guard. We use Tattler and love them. If you need more jars, get those too. During canning season, they will be hard, if not impossible to find.

Get your vinegar, garlic, salt and other herbs and spices for canning season. Remember, every other canner in your area is going to be getting these same items. Especially if they did not stock up in the spring like you are doing.

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These are just some of the things that you can do to make sure that you are ready for canning season. If you think of anything I missed, please comment below!

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How To Build Canning Shelves

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I could write a million posts about canning. How to can, what to can and how much to can. But I think the best post I could write about is storing canned goods. For years, I have tried to figure out the best way to store the things I canned. But we could never figure out a way that I liked and allowed us to see and use those goods. At least until Jared came up with my shelves. In this post, I will show you how to build canning shelves.

Why Is Good Storage Important

We can a lot of food. When I say a lot, I mean hundreds of jars a year. It’s not uncommon for me to put up 50+ jars of tomato sauce, 50+ jars of green beans, and more. The reason we put up so much is because it’s cheap. Before buying this property, I could buy a half bushel of peaches for $10 and end up with 20-30 pints of diced or sliced peaches. I could buy two bushels of green beans for $40 and can 75 quarts of green beans. I was able to get farm fresh produce and preserve it for pennies compared to buying it at the store.

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The problem was where we were going to put all this food. Jared attempted to conquer the problem by building Frankenstein.

Meet Frankenstein

Frankenstein was 5ft tall by 4ft wide and 2ft deep. If you’ve been canning for more than a minute, you know that jars got lost in the back. It was sturdy and it worked, but within six weeks this thing was crammed full.

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Back to the Drawing Board

At this point I was at a loss. I browsed Pinterest, Google, and canning groups on Facebook, but just couldn’t find what I was looking for. Plastic shelves aren’t sturdy. Metal shelves are held together by plastic clips. Premade shelves were expensive or the wrong size.

I told Jared, I wanted tall shelves that can hold several rows of jars. I wanted no more than three or four jars deep so jars don’t get lost. And I also wanted a lot of shelves on each unit. This is what my man came up with.

First of many shelves for my food storage room

I was in love. Not only with Jared but also with my amazing shelves. As canning season went on, we realized we needed more shelves for our canned goods. Not just the jars that I put up, but also the stuff that we bought in bulk like flour, sugar, cereal, grains, etc. So he kept building me shelves until we ended up with what we have now.

This is how we build our canning shelves

In total we have seven shelves that each hold approximately 300 jars each. This includes things like sugar, flour, coffee, rice, and extra jars just to name a few things. For now, I think we have enough shelves for canned goods but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

My friend over at Simple Living Homestead wrote an amazing blog post about all the different ways to store jars and lids. While I thought I had it all figured out, there are a couple of really useful items that I am looking at. Specifically, #5 the handmade wooden lid organizer! That would really come in handy, especially in the height of canning season when I lose everything. The canning tongs, rings, jars, my mind?

The measurements for theses shelves are 48″ wide by 12″ deep by 96″ tall. I believe we used 23 2x4x8 studs.

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How To Build Canning Shelves

Shelves to fit your jars of home canned goodness without losing them. Each instruction is for one shelf. The above picture is two shelves with a middle brace.
Yield: 1 Upright shelf

Equipment

  • Tape Measure
  • Drill
  • Circular or miter saw
  • 4 1" Block of wood
  • Level
  • T Square or similar
  • Hammer

Materials

  • 23 2x4x8
  • A LOT 2" Screws we used decking screws

Instructions

  • Cut 24 48" pieces for shelves
  • Cut 18 12" pieces for braces
  • To make your end pieces, lay out 2 2x4x8's and attach 1 12" brace to the top and 1 12" brace to the bottom. Place the brace between the 2×4 so that your finished width is 15". Make sure your corners are square and level before you screw it together.
    Do this twice
  • Next attach 3 2x4x48" pieces to the bottom of your shelf. Use a 1" block in each space to ensure that your shelves are spaced evenly. Once the bottom row of shelves are done, you can stand up the unit so you are not on the ground.
  • Now you are going to attach the next brace 12" above your previous shelf. Double check that a quart jar will fit between your shelves. I can fit my half gallon jars as well but it's better to measure and adjust now than to have an entire shelfing unit that is wrong.
  • Keep going until you reach the top. The top shelf to the top brace is not 12", this is normal. I usually put extra jars or half gallon jars up on top.

Notes

We love these shelves and Jared was able to build these quickly and with relative ease. 
Always double check your measurements. We wanted 4ft shelves but if you don’t have that much room, change the width. 
We used 2″ decking screws but feel free to use whatever. As long as it’s long enough to go through the shelf and the brace, you’re good to go. Just don’t use nails
If you are in an area prone to earthquakes or have a dog like Blu, figure out a way to attach these to the wall. We used spare 2×4 chunks and attached them to the rafters. 
On the note of earthquakes or a dog like Blu, figure out a way to keep your jars from falling off the front or back. We used furring strips to help keep jars from crashing to the ground when Blu decides to go running through the basement.

I hope you enjoyed this article and if you need any help with measurements or how to do it, just leave a comment!

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Setting Up The New Coop

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I have been browsing the internet for weeks trying to figure out something for a new coop. We’ve got more chicks and ducks coming and nowhere to put them. So I started researching the best options for a new chicken coop. I couldn’t find anything I really liked and to be honest, the wood coop that we have now, is starting to really stink, even after we clean it really well. I think using a metal shed for a chicken coop may work. Maybe.

We have seriously out grown our old coop. When we bought it, we weren’t really planning on having a ton of chickens. Our thought was, chickens are pretty easy so let’s get a couple. By a couple I mean 15 but only 9 survived. After offering our extra eggs for sale and current state of the supply train, we have decided to grow our flock. We are hoping that this will allow us to make a little bit of money but also sustain us food wise. You can read about our new flock here. 

Since, we will also be getting 20 ducks around the end of March AND the 36 chickens, we want to make sure there is plenty of room for all of them. I think this 8×10 metal shed will work great. It’s got plenty of space and if we can hang the new laying boxes and roosting bars, there will be plenty of room for the ducks to nest.

Also since we allow them to free range throughout the day, there shouldn’t be any problems with space during the day.

Now before anyone gets all up in arms about it, we know some of the problems with a shed like this as well as ducks and chickens in the same coop. First, we will be installing gables and vents to make sure that the heat can escape in the summer. They will also have frozen bottles on the ground to keep cool. Not to mention we made sure that the coop is in a shady area.

We will also be adding boards and hardware cloth to the bottoms to ensure it as predator proof as possible. The ducks and chickens can cohabitate in the same coop as long as they have their own spaces. The ducks will be on one side and the chickens on the other. I’m sure we will find more problems as we go but we will see.

Jared working on the new Coop

Summer Update

So this coop was built in the spring before it got really hot. What we have found is that the coop does not get super hot at night like we thought. Since we allow them to free range throughout the day and only put them inside the coop at night when the sun has gone down. We have not noticed a HUGE temperature increase.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still hot at night and it’s warm in the coop, but I was thinking like fatally hot and it’s not. We have been averaging 80* nights and the coop is 90* but also has fans blowing the hot air out.

One of the things we have noticed is that NONE of the animals want to go in their respective houses at night. That includes the goats. I think a lot of it is that it’s just too hot. When they are outside they can move around and find cool ground.

The chickens and ducks seem to prefer being outside during the summer and that’s fine. We have predator lights up around the property and so far we haven’t seen any signs of them being taken in the night.

I’ll update back after winter and let you know how that goes. But for right now the coop is working.

I will be posting updates as we go and once it’s all put together. If you want to follow us through this journey subscribe below and follow us on the social media of your choice!

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