Are you simply surviving February, hoping to make it to spring? Stop! There are so many wonderful things to celebrate with your family and friends in the fantastic month of February. Don’t waste another minute simply truding through the month. Join us for these DIY-focused, super fun recipes, crafts, games, and more to celebrate the homestead holidays in February! 
For More Homestead Fun:
Upcycled Craft: Make Holiday Paper
Eco Friendly Orange Slice Ornaments with Herbs
National Holidays in February
As always, we begin our trek through holiday in February with those often goofy national days of celebration for us in the U.S. If you’re a lovely reader reading this in a country outside the States, nose around the internet and see if you have similarly fun national days of celebration.
I look for ones to celebrate that easily integrate into my homesteading, homemaking, homeschooling efforts. As I remind the readers in Homestead Holidays, for the busy homesteader, it’s important to integrate these special days into our already busy schedule.
- We want to have some fun without overwhelming ourselves!
Be sure to grab your own copy of Homestead Holidays so you can have easy to use, fun to include recipes, crafts, games, and more right at your fingertips. This book makes a great year-long unit study resource for homeschoolers, FYI! It’s also fun for parents and grandparents to use just because.
National Cherry Month
Are the cherry trees getting ready to burst forth into bloom where you live? Maybe yes, or maybe not quite, but either way, it’s time to celebrate all things cherry!
This annual celebration started in Washington D.C. in 1912 when the people of Japan gifted the U.S. with thousands of cherry trees as a symbol of friendship. Each year, the cherry blossoms are celebrated at the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
- For us on the homestead, depending on weather, we could be pruning our cherry trees anytime from the fall through the dormant season. Other concerns with cherries include devising methods to protect cherry trees from birds and natural controls for cherry worm.
Normally, I’m an advocate of full-sized fruit tree planting because they are simply hardier and more prolific. However, birds and worms are SO frustrating with cherry trees, that I grow semi-dwarf trees and prune them to keep them small so that I can more easily employ natural controls.
- Amy from Tenth Acre Farm has great ideas for creating a cherry tree guild for natural pest control. Guild planting is a permaculture term that is akin to companion planting.
Even though cherries are a pain in the butt to grow, they’re so delicious that they do, indeed, deserve their own month of celebration! The following are some of our favorite healthy cherry recipes and crafts for this month.
National Cherry Month Recipes & Activities
It's Cherry Season...
Egg Carton Cherry Blossom Branch
DIY Heating Pad
Cherry Lemonade Popsicles Recipe
Cherry Smoothie
Canning Cherry Pie Filling
How to Make Cherry Cordial (A Summer Drink)
More Holidays in February: Random National Day List
Use these random national celebration days to encourage you to try something new with your family. Try a new recipe, do a good deed, and otherwise have some fun together!
National Pizza Day (the 9th): Try our herby sourdough pizza crust recipe and toss on your favorite toppings! Pizza night is a family favorite because everyone can cutom make their dinner.
Random Acts of Kidness Day (17th): Pick any of these 15 family-friendly service projects and pay it forward together.
Chocolate Mint Day (19th): Whether you’re growing your own mint or not, try these chocolate mint marshmallows for a healthier treat than the commercial variety. Or maybe this chocolate mint ice cream is more to your liking. This one is naturally dyed blue with a very special flower!
Combine National Sticky Bun Day (21st) and the Cook a Sweet Potato Day (22nd): Plan ahead for these two day and set up our delcious sourdough cinnamon rolls made with sweet potato to make them rich and soft.
National Set a Good Example Day (26th): As homesteaders, it’s important that we help each other, especially with new homesteaders. Set the best example you can by becoming a homestead mentor in any of the ways we outline in the article. Or see if you can find some inspiration with our ways to build homestead community. You might already be doing some of these!
3 Practical Ways to Become a Homestead Mentor
10 Ways to Create a Community of Homesteaders
Yorkshire Pudding Day
If you’re British, you’ve certainly heard of and probably eaten traditional Yorshire pudding at some point. If you’re an American, you may have sampled a popover, which is basically the same thing. The delightfully simple eggy muffin-type breads are delicious added to a meal, or even topped with sweet condiments for a dessert.
Yorkshire pudding first show up in a 1747 cookbook called, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple. For modern cooks, the term “pudding” can be a little confusing since this dish is neither custard-like, nor a dessert.
In England, the earliest pudding referred to a sausage-like food. This eventually changed to a baked batter that was made of basic ingredients like flour, milk, and eggs.
- If the chickens are laying overtime and the cows or goats are in full milk, keep this recipe handy to use them up!
This flour-based pudding was cooked underneath roasting meat to catch the healthy fats and prevent them from going to waste. The resulting pudding was rich and served as a kind of nutrient-dense appetizer to fill the belly. The expensive meat dish that followed stretched farther in this way.
Traditionally, Yorkshire pudding is cooked in a large, shallow dish and then cut into squares. Today, it’s more common to see indvidual puddings baked in something similar to a muffin tin.
I first fell in love with these puddings in a pub in Yorkshire in my twenties. Today, I’ve adapted the traditional batter to a sourdough one for better digestion. Make our savory sourdough Yorkshire pudding (American popover) recipe the first Sunday in February and celebrate the day with us!
Non-Food Related Holidays in February: Candlemas
Ok, so many holidays in february revolve around food, BUT here’s one that is actually focused on light! Candlemas is the celebration of the presentation of Jesus (often referred to as The Light of the World) at the Temple by Joseph and Mary 40 days after His birth. It is based upon the account of the presentation of Jesus in Luke 2:22–40.
Candlemas is another way of saying “Candle Mass”, just like Christmas is a way of saying “Christ Mass”. In classical Christian faiths like Catholisism, it’s customary to use candles both during special services and as gifts for atendees as a way to spread light in the world.
Candlemas is celebrated all over the world from Mexico to France to here in the U.S. In our family, this is the time of year we make candles! We love to burn candles throughout the year (it’s a big part of creating a hygge homestead).
- We make all our dipped candles outside even though it’s still cold because dipping candles is a messy process. Rolled candles and poured container candles can all be done inside if you keep your workspace covered in cardboard.
If you’re not ready to make candles, try your hand at our wax ornaments or firestarters listed below. If you are ready for candle making, try the following links or grab your own copy of our little e-book, Candle Making in a Day!
Decorate Candles for the Holidays
Reuse Candle Wax to Make Christmas Ornaments & Melts
Make Natural Beeswax Fire Starters
Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day Holiday in February (Most of the Time)
Somestimes the holidays in February will move around the calendar. In 2025, Shrove Tuesday actually falls on March 4th, but I wanted to toss it in here because it often shows up in February.
- We do have National Pancake Day on the 13th of February but Shrove Tuesday is special.
Also known as Pancake Day, this is a Christian holiday that’s celebrated right before Ash Wednesday when the fasting days of Lent begin. Pancake Day is the last day of feasting before Lent begins and it’s time to use up eggs and fats before they’re proscribed during Lent.
- To learn more about Pancake day and Lent, grab your copy of Homestead Holidays – I wrote a whole section on it because I love it so much!
We celebrate this day by having pancakes for dinner and over the years we’ve tried so many different kinds of pancake. Take a night to eat pancakes together, laugh a lot, get covered in syrup, and have a huge stack of dishes to clean up afterwards. It will be totally worth it!
Here are two that we love and we hope you’ll enjoy them, too.
Sourdough Ebelskiver (Round) Pancakes
Buckwheat Sourdough Crunch Pancakes
By the way, if you’d like some help planning all these holiday celebrations, feel free to join our email newsletter family to access free worksheets and lists! Family life takes a lot of organizing and planning, and we’d like to help with that. There are actually several free holiday workbooks in the member library – download them all, if you’d like!
Family Valentines Day Celebration!
We can’t do a homestead holidays in February list without Valentine’s Day! In our house, Valentine’s Day is a family celebration, more focused on family unity than romance.
To explain the history of this holiday, here’s a little clip from our book, Homestead Holidays:
The truth is, like many holy days of ancient origin, the true history of Valentine’s Day has been lost to an tiquity. It’s a hazy mix of Roman feasts and edict-defying priests. Saint Valentine was an actual man who lived at the latter end of the third century in Rome. Even the Catholic Church doesn’t claim to know a lot about him, but the legend is that Valentine defied Claudius II’s edict preventing Christian couples from marrying.
Helping them wed away from the eyes of the emperor and then begin their lives in secret was apparently what earned Valentine the status of the saint of love, courtship, and marriage. Incidentally, he’s also the patron saint of beekeepers and epileptics. And travelers. He’s just as busy in his afterlife as he was in life, apparently.”
We have a whole section in the book on how to celebrate a family Valentine’s Day, from crafts to games to a Cupid’s Tea Party just for fun. Handmade cards and decorations are a must for this holiday that has become so commercial.
–>>Try your hand at these 3-D heart ornaments for an upcycled paper craft.
Family Valentine’s Day Dinner
Here’s another short clip from our book:
Make sure everyone knows they’re expected to be home for this special family dinner. Set the table and make it nice–lit candles, delicious juice or homemade soda, and an appetizer. The table should look inviting and cozy. However, you don’t need to get really elaborate with the meal. Want to know my favorite? Home made individual pizzas in heart shapes with salad. Ta da, that’s it.
The real fun of this dinner is the games. I’ve included descriptions for abasic, family-friendly, multiage game below, but feel free to play your own, or even play a board game.”
Try our recipe for our favorite sourdough heart-shaped pizzas and a silly game that every age family member can play. Wrap up the evening with a sweet treat like our favorite elderberry chocolate torte and lots of hugs.
Who is Amazing? (Family Valentine's Day Game)
Equipment
- Enough Chairs for All Minus One
Instructions
- Set up enough chairs for each person in the group minus one. Face the chairs inward and have everyone sit down, minus the first person who is “It” (“It” being defined as the person instigating the game, as follows).
- The person who is It approaches anyone in the group and asks, “Who is amazing?” upon which that person has to invent a qualifier for those who are amazing. For example, that person might say, “The most amazing are people who own dogs.” Or “the most amazing are people that are wearing socks.”
- At which point, everyone who owns dogs (or are wearing socks) gets up out of their chair and dashes off to find another empty one. It will also be looking for a place to sit during this melee.
- Whoever is left standing is the new It and goes on to ask another person, “Who is amazing?”
Notes
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