In this final article in our series on self sufficiency for the homeschooling family, we will be exploring a number of resources available for learning the skills necessary to become more self sufficient. There is a wealth of knowledge available to anyone who desires to learn more and pursue a more self sufficient lifestyle. If your family is interesting in developing some of these skills, this list of resources should be helpful in guiding you to the right place to learn more.
Don’t miss the first two articles in this series, where we discuss the reasons why a homeschooling family might want to learn to be more prepared for an emergency situation and then move on to become more independent in their sources of food and other basic necessities. Old fashioned skills that provide food, shelter, and other life necessities are available for us to learn and can greatly benefit the homeschooling family both in terms of learning opportunities as well as supplying us with what we need to survive most supply chain issues or other challenges to gathering basic living provisions.
Below is a list of resources to look to for gaining skills and supplies, along with a brief explanation of the resource and how it might be beneficial. Not all these resources will be helpful to every family, but there should be something within this list each family will find useful.
Books
The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery
This book has been around for quite some time and is a well trusted source of information for almost anything you might need to know regarding homesteading and living a self sufficient lifestyle. It is a barebones style of book written in simple terms; it’s not flashy but it contains so much important information that that won’t matter.
The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan
If you are interested in learning more about raising your own sources of food, this is a great book to start with. This book lays out a clear plan for how to grow vegetables, fruit, and animals on a small amount of land. Efficiency and proper planning are the keystones of the information in this book.
The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour
This is a comprehensive guide to all things related to living sustainably. It contains plenty of solid advice on how to get started with an off grid lifestyle, including how to set up your home to run on solar and wind power, with other old fashioned skills thrown in for good measure.
Back to Basics by Abigail Gehrig
The subtitle of this book is “A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills,” and that pretty much sums up what this book is about. It is a treasure trove of time honored skills such as gardening, making maple syrup, building furniture by hand, keeping livestock, basketweaving, designing a gravity-fed water system, and much more. The illustrations in this book are as valuable as the information itself. Every homeschooling family who picks up this particular book with find themselves turning back to it again and again. This one is my personal favorites, merely for the shear enjoyment of flipping through its informative and well presented pages.
Websites and Blogs
From Scratch
This online magazine has endless amounts of information on how to do just about anything you would ever need to around your home. It’s a great resource for homeschooling families who want to learn how to do more for themselves without having to depend on other people to do it for them.
The Prairie Homestead
A personal blog chronicling the life of a homesteading mom, Jill shares her experiences with the self sufficient lifestyle.
The Self Sufficient Home Acre
This one is all about how to homestead on a small plot of land.
Reformation Acres
Get all the gardening, homesteading, and agrarian-living goodness here. It will help you get ready to live your homesteading dream today.
Youtube Channels
Guildbrook Farm, Off Grid Living
This a homesteading channel with a “prepper” focus. It is the place to go if you want to be prepared for any scenario.
Martin Johnson: Off Grid Living
Having traveled the world, even going as far as to live off-grid in a jungle village in New Guinea, the Johnsons have been developing their homesteading farm in Idaho since 2019.
A fascinating and sometimes hilarious look into the daily life of building and running a homesteading farm, raising crops and livestock, and rehabilitating old fields. It’s an exciting and deep look at how to build a farm from absolute scratch.
This channel teaches you everything, regardless of how little or much knowledge you have about either homesteading or prepping. The best thing about this homesteading YouTube channel, however, is that all of his advice is applicable whether you have a massive homestead, or even just a small urban backyard to work with.
This is far from an exhaustive list, but it should provide a starting point as you look into living a more prepared and sustainable lifestyle with your family. Hopefully this list of resources will be helpful as you and your family move toward a more self-sufficient way of living.
Kimberly Miller is the mother of nine children and has been homeschooling them for over twenty years. She has served HOME for almost fifteen years as the Publications Coordinator and a Regional Representative. In addition to those roles, Kimberly is also a freelance editor and a published author of several books, both fiction and nonfiction. In her spare time, she loves reading good books, sipping tea, working in her garden, and enjoying the animals on her family’s hobby farm in Western Maine.