The Do It Yourself Homestead

The Do It Yourself Homestead is your homesteading manual. Do you lie awake at night, wondering how to make your family more self-sufficient in an uncertain world? Are you fearful and wondering how you are going to make it through to your homesteading dreams with your current finances? Are you wanting to gather your family together, as opposed to watching them drift apart, distracted by the siren call of the modern lifestyle? Are you wanting to feel more prepared for any eventuality so that you no longer experience fear when reading the newspaper? Are you wondering how to expand your homesteading efforts while still maintaining the rest of your life?

Maybe you’ve considered homesteading, but you’re stuck in an apartment, and don’t even know where to begin.

Never fear, The Do It Yourself Homestead is here!

>>>>—Pandemic Pricing Alert—<<<<

The Do It Yourself Homestead

Are you ready for the shift?

“You with the modern homestead heart are in the crux of a great societal shift.”

-Tessa Zundel from

The Do It Yourself Homestead

I am so pleased to announce the completion of my book! I’m also pleased you’re here learning if this book if for you!

You’re part of the positive change that is happening in the world; people becoming self-sufficient and learning to live abundantly.

I know that The Do It Yourself Homestead will help you go from home to homestead little by little.

“Intuitively, many people know that resiliency starts in the home, but as a culture we’ve lost the homestead arts. Not to worry. The Do It Yourself Homestead offers an eclectic recipe for success, whether you’re starting or fine-tuning. A great addition to any homesteader’s library…”

—Joel Salatin, farmer, lecturer and author of Folks, This Ain’t Normal and Everything I Want to do is Illegal

How is The Do It Yourself Homestead Unique?

The Do It Yourself Homestead covers eight topics, with each one given its own chapter:

• The Homestead Kitchen
• The Homestead Garden
• Green the Homestead
• Livestock Wherever You Are
• Homestead Finances
• Family Times
• The Homestead Community
• The Prepared Homestead

Are there more homesteading topics out there? Of course! You mean we doesn’t cover everything on purpose? Absolutely! The Do It Yourself Homestead covers fewer topics with more focus for the everyday homesteader.

No Bigger Than You Can Chew

So, then what makes The Do It Yourself Homestead unique? How will it be helpful to you?

Because it’s designed to fit the needs of all homesteaders by being divided into FOUR levels. If you’re new to homesteading, you will find information and projects to get you started adapting to the homesteading lifestyle. If you’re a seasoned homesteader who feels like you’ve got the basics covered and wants to know what to do next, you will be challenged by the information and goals provided here.

“Shelter, food, and love: Is there anything more important? In The Do It Yourself Homestead, Tessa Zundel weaves these themes together, making homesteader dreams a practical reality. If you value family, food, and farming, then this is your book.”

—Forrest Pritchard, farmer and New York Times bestselling author of Gaining Ground and Growing Tomorrow

Levels of Homesteadyness

There are four levels of homesteadyness (a totally made up word) in The Do It Yourself Homestead, ensuring that it truly has something for everyone.

• Are you a HOMESTARTER, the curious and courageous novice?
• Or do you belong at the HOMESTEADISH level, with a bit of experience under your belt?
• Perhaps you’re a HOMESTEADAHOLIC, eagerly pursing homesteading wherever you live?
• Are you the sage HOMESTEADED type who fully identifies with the homesteading lifestyle?

With each level comes its own education, challenges, goals and projects. Extensive resources are recommended in each section to provide further reading and study for the serious homestead student. Challenges are issued to help you expand outside of your comfort zone and build up your homesteading community – especially the community that is your home and family.

Save Time, Read Only What You Need

We homesteaders are short on time. We also often get into the habit of doing things a certain way, whether or not we’re using the most efficient systems or methods. By allowing you to pick your level of homesteadyness, I hope that the book will prevent both.

The Do It Yourself Homestead will open up the seasoned homesteader’s mind to subjects and projects that they may not have thought of before while allowing the newbie the space they need to grow without the pressure of doing it ALL right now.

The Do It Yourself Homestead Will Help You:

• Gain peace of mind because have clear goals and meaningful projects to engage in on specific homesteading topics.
• Not worry that you’re missing out on an important skill because you’ll see that all homesteading goals are connected and you’re taking it one step and at time.
• Maintain your family calm and security in the midst of crisis, uncertainly, and societal shift.
• Have the energy and presence of mind it takes to pursue your homesteading goals and your level and in a self-paced way.
• Start dreaming again, like you used to when you didn’t have debt, fear, and overwhelm.
• Get back your hope for the future, for your family, because you have the skills you need to thrive.
• Reach out to like-minded people to form a supportive homesteading network around you.
• Live in your happy-place every day. You’ve got happiness in your root cellar, pantry, and garden.
• Simplify your decisions with systems that work for you, so you don’t get overwhelmed in indecision.

The Do It Yourself Homestead Shows You How To:

• Grow your own food and plant medicines, whether you live in an apartment or on hundreds of acres.
• Grow a perpetual supply of healthy probiotics right in your own kitchen.
• Make your own food staples and use up what you already have on hand in healthy ways.
• Feel years younger and pounds lighter by letting go of clutter on your homestead, emotional baggage, and outmoded thought patterns.
• Learn to preserve surplus fruits and vegetables safely and even more efficiently than your great grandmother did, so that you don’t have to go to the grocery store as often.
• Learn how to forage safely and make use of the harvest that is conventionally overlooked.
• Find the livestock that’s right for you, even if you have no land.
• Create homesteading systems that are self-sustaining even if you live in the city.
• Gain a level of preparedness that doesn’t depend on how big your food storage is.
• Cultivate gratitude and provident living, so you can be happier and serve others in your homestead community.
• Invest in your children’s and grandchildren’s future, by passing on timeless homestead skills in ways that are meaningful to you.
• Get out of debt and live without feeling deprived.
• Start a homestead project that doesn’t consume your life.
• Teach your kids responsibility by getting them involved.
• Grow your own, whatever that means for you.
• And so much more!

 

What Makes The Do It Yourself Homestead Different?

Besides being divided up into four different levels of homestead experience, The Do It Yourself Homestead isn’t just theory, a rehash of stuff found in other books, and a listing of encyclopedic information. You won’t find a compilation of outdated advice.

In The Do It Yourself Homestead you’ll actually learn from people who are living on their homesteads and making a go of it right now.

Real Experience

I interviewed real homesteaders to complete this book! Some were living in apartments, townhouses, small city lots, small acreages, and rural farms. I wanted to get the skinny on what real homesteaders, of all levels of experience

• love about homesteading
• find challenging
• wish they’d done differently.

I also share my own hands-on experiences raising a family of five young children on our various homesteads, ranging in size from .17 to 20 acres.

The Do It Yourself Homestead is a book borne in the trenches of reality homestead life.

“The goal is to live abundantly, frugally and practically so that we are neither a burden, nor a drain on our fellow man, or the earth on which we live.”

–Tessa Zundel from The Do It Yourself Homestead

Do I have to Have Acres to Homestead?

Many how-to homestead books lay a foundation for building your homestead on acreage. If you live in an apartment with a North facing balcony, dream on. You’ll need at least a large city lot to apply much of the information in some other homestead books.

Still others have little to offer the experienced homesteader. Once you plant your fruit trees, house your hens, and double dig your garden, you’ll need to find another book to figure out what to do next.

In The Do It Yourself Homestead you find not just the foundation steps of your homestead plan, but graded layers of homestead knowledge. That north facing balcony is just the right spot for growing lettuce in pots in July. I’ve got you covered whether you are just starting out in an apartment, or you’ve got a little bit of land.

And you pick how deep you want to go. You can always come back to the book when you are ready to take it to the next level. Will you outgrow The Do It Yourself Homestead? Yes, and that’s the point!

When you are ready to move on from this book you’ll be ready for the Master’s Program of homesteading!

To get your own, just click here.

You are the link

Olden day practitioners of the Lost Arts of Homesteading were often more concerned about survival than about conservation and sustainability. But if we want to pass on this world to our children and grandchildren better than we found it, those values of conservation and sustainability are critical.

In The Do It Yourself Homestead, I focus on lifestyle choices that are both sustainable, and traditional. With a touch of humor I discuss the intersection of green living and homestead self-reliance, and hope to help you find your own way through, so that it feels right to your heart values.

“As a link between our farming heritage and our current, non-agrarian culture stands the modern homesteading movement. There’s a lot more that we can be doing than just waiting for the next disaster to strike or the next job loss to occur. We can grow food and raise animals, reduce how much we consume overall and learn to re-use and re-purpose what’s left behind.

“We can create systems in the home and on our land that are self-sustaining so that, regardless of what happens around us, we enjoy a certain measure of protection and normalcy. We can learn to be grateful for what we already have, increase our usefulness by continuing education and show an example of provident living to the next generation.

“I’m convinced that much of the saving grace for the children of tomorrow will be found in how well we, their parents, have learned to be useful and productive today.”

–Tessa Zundel from The Do It Yourself Homestead

Is The Do It Yourself Homestead for Everyone?

Most modern homestead books leave prepping to the preppers, even though being self-reliant in a sustainable way is the ultimate preparedness strategy. In The Do It Yourself Homestead I don’t shy away from prepping but integrate it into our foundation homestead plan. There is wisdom in being prepared for emergencies, even when you live in your ideal bug-out location.

But The Do It Yourself Homesteader isn’t for everyone. If you are looking for a book to tell you how to get the most amount of food from your rocky bottom, ¼ of an acre, with a creek running through, you might not be happy with this book.

Every piece of land is different, and while a book like The Do It Yourself Homestead can give you general principles of land stewardship, animal husbandry, and permaculture techniques, for difficult locations you may need to hire a professional to assist you. Likewise, if you have technical questions about what type of solar panels you should be using on your homestead, I deliberately leave out specific information that will be outdated a year from now.

While I do offer the real live perspectives of off-grid homesteaders, you won’t find brand name mentions or a treatise on the technology of solar power battery packs.

Resources to Learn More

For those with specific questions, never fear! I offer an abundance of resources throughout the book to help you even in these difficult situations or with tricky questions. But wait, there’s more! If you still need more suggestions, you can access the ample and extensive “Even More Resources For Every Homesteader” section.

This book is also not for those who only want to read and never do, staying stuck in cycles of planning but never really accomplishing much. The Do It Yourself Homestead requires you to start and maintain a homestead journal (I even provide one for you, if needed).

The book will also suggest specific projects and points to ponder on your own. You’ll be asked to think things through, make plans with your family and friends, sacrifice to achieve your goals and exert yourself to serve in your homestead community.

You will also be instructed to take a calm and measured approach to your plans—you will not be allowed to overwhelm yourself or burn out. If overwhelm and burnout of the homestead lifestyle is your desire, then this book is certainly not for you.

“Homesteading is about home, about family – even if your family consists of you and your hound dog. Homesteading is about making our family’s life as bounteous and self-sufficient as possible.”

–Tessa Zundel from The Do It Yourself Homestead

A Special Offer

Just for being here today and reading about the book, I have a little gift for you. Jennifer Cazzola of Scratchy Pixel did all the illustrations for the book and bonus material. I took her lovely designs and created some simple Homestead Stationary for my homesteading peeps. The next time you want to give the shabby chic look to your correspondence, I hope these will come in handy.

Just click on whichever graphic you like best below and download your stationary. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Do It Yourself Homestead Resources

Should you care to join us at The Do It Yourself Homestead Facebook group, please follow this link.

The Do It Yourself Homestead Journal – over 100 pages of journal prompts, DIY tips, challenges and more.

 

The Do It Yourself Homestead Unit Study – which can help you make homesteading come alive for children of all ages. A great cure to the summer blahs.