This 5-week online course is for anyone who wants greater control of their food supply and envisions creating a mini homestead, expanding a garden or bulking up a pantry. If you have ever wanted to start growing and preserving your own food, making your own medicine and even exploring plans for off-grid self-sufficiency, join us for the homestead basics course.

With a strong emphasis on food security, the homestead basics course is divided into 4 major sections:

• Section 1: How to start from anywhere: learn to identify what you want to accomplish, what resources you have and what you can do with them, the skills you need to develop as well as a plan. We’ll work through a 1-Week Plan and a 1-Month Plan that will show you results right away in planning the kind of homestead you want to create!
• Section 2: Food Storage Methods: learn about short and long term food storage, shelf stability, equipment needed, preservation methods, ‘must-have’ staples to keep on-hand plus ways to increase your food security no matter where you live.
• Section 3: Animal Husbandry. From the ground up, learn how to introduce chickens and rabbits as sustainable sources into your yard or property, working with black soldier fly larvae, the basics of an aquaponics system, and creating sustainable fodder systems for your animals.
• Section 4: A homestead garden system. Whether you are in the city and just need guidance on balcony tomatoes and windowsill herbs or if you want to expand your gardens to include herbs, this course will introduce you to a solid foundation. Learn about wicking beds vs. raised beds, growing microgreens, utilizing herb gardens for medicine & food, foraging wild edibles, forest gardening, guerilla gardening, and composting, worms and soil health!
• Section 5: Independent homestead infrastructure. What is homesteading burnout and how can you avoid that? What is the best way to work together as a community to be successful? Learn about bartering, community shares, and also get introduced into adding a backup system with alternative refrigeration & cooking methods if your power fails as well as ways you can store and use your rainwater catchment systems!

There will be weekly downloads of charts, video lectures, PDF documents, reading lists in addition to weekly live sessions to cover each week’s materials.