Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!

Over the past few years, I’ve seen quite a rise in people interested in leading more self sufficient lives, and especially a rise in the “homesteading” area. Which kind of threw me when I first stumbled on the community, since that was how I grew up, and no one called it “homesteading” back then.

There are now many, many websites, video channels, Pinterest boards, social media groups and even streaming services, dedicated to the them. On many of these, you’ll see references to “going back to how Grandma used to live”. Many extol the virtues of living a “simpler” life, going “off grid” and low tech. They’re learning how to grow gardens, raise animals, and preserve the bounty, moving away from certain materials, whether it’s plastics or hydrocarbon based fuels, or away from certain types of companies, like big box stores or massive online shopping services, like Amazon. The goal is to be more “green”, “sustainable”, etc. Just like “Grandma” used to live.

Now, these are laudable goals. I share many of them. But here’s the thing.

That’s not how “Grandma” used to live.

I mean, yes, most of those things were true, but they are true only from today’s perspective. In reality, whenever possible, “Grandma” embraced new technology, new materials, and resources. Canning wasn’t possible until it became cheap and easy to get standard sized jars, lids and rings. Techniques such as fermenting, brining, drying, smoking – these all were continually improved as new equipment and materials came available. Anything that made life easier, made it faster and safer to preserve food, or acquire material goods, was embraced.

Grandma was as high tech as she could afford to be.

When I stumbled on the RoseRed Homestead YouTube channel, one of my first thoughts was, THIS is Grandma. Our previous generations would have absolutely embraced all of the gadgets, if they could, and if they couldn’t, they found workarounds.

I’ll quote this from their About page.

We focus on three simple themes: Emergency Preparedness, Food Security, and Self Reliance. If difficult times are coming, we want to help our channel community be as ready as possible to sustain themselves for an extended period of time and to assist others when possible. You will find videos on safe canning, dehydrating, freeze drying, gardening, and preparedness projects from safe water storage to cooking off grid. We have even done scientific testing of new electric canners with a special “gadget!”

This channel has only been around since the spring of 2019, but is well filled with some really amazing and useful videos – and now they have a new website, too.

It’s really, really hard to pick just a few videos as examples, there are so many fantastic ones.

One of the things I love about this channel is their thorough experiments and comparisons. So surprise that Rose works in Science Education! This is one excellent example.

Here she preserves potatoes by various methods, including freeze drying – yes, she has a freeze dryer! Those things are expensive! – then reconstituting, tasting and comparing the final product.

Interested in pressure canning? Confused with all the information out there? Check this out.

Great information, but I’m also blown away by the gadgets sitting on her counter. 😀

Want to learn about dehydrating? She’s got you covered.

As someone who is interesting in grinding our own flour, I found this one quite useful.

Gotta love that 40 yr old mill she’s got!

In this next one, she tests out a “survival soup” recipe.

There is some great information on that one. In the “emergency preparedness” and “survival” areas, there are a lot of claims made, so it’s great to see some of them being tested out in such a methodical way.

Like this other one.

Here, she shows her off-grid kitchen gadgets – and how her back ups have backups!

It’s not all high tech, though. Here, she makes and demonstrates a home made solar cooker.

Then, when people commented about her many, expensive gadgets and asked if she could talk about some low tech options, she responded with this.

I look forward to her follow up videos on this!

This is just a sampling of videos covering a broad range, and I didn’t even touch all of the topics she covers.

This channel is an absolute gold mind, and I highly recommend checking out their videos, and learn how “Grandma” does things to live a self-sufficient, prepared lifestyle!

The Re-Farmer