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!

As I found myself delving further into recourses for the “homesteading” community – a term I still find strange, since it’s how I grew up, and no one called it “homesteading” back then – I saw a lot of really great information. It was very encouraging to see so many young families in particular, diving into lives of self sufficiency and self reliance, while also being part of a larger community that was more than happy to share information and help each other out.

Many happily share their experiences online. Some of the interesting and helpful articles and videos I found where those sharing about the mistakes they made, or what they wish they’d know before they started, and so on. These often included lists of things that they really didn’t think about at all, until after they started homesteading, like unexpected costs of living (home insurance is a big one!).

I also saw a number of sites that had lists of things to help people prepare for homestead living, before they got to actually doing it. One item that I saw cropping up more than a few times was just how much physical labour was involved, and stressing how important it was to be fit and healthy.

Except, in this day and age, when people say “fit” or “healthy”, what they’re really saying is “be skinny.” Also, able bodied and young.

Which is amusing to me, because I’m old, broken and fat, I have a disabled husband, and even my daughters have their own health issues they have to work around. Yet, here we are.

Today’s recommendation is someone who is also breaking all the “rules”, and doing it anyhow: Our Half Acre Homestead.

Don’t have a lot of land? They have only half an acre.

Don’t have a lot of money? They are a single income family that when through a bankruptcy and still managed to buy the property only a couple of years later.

Feel like you’re too old? In one of the earliest of their earlier videos, she mentions that she was 50. That video, at the time of this writing, was 11 years old.

That’s right. This couple has been on their half acre homestead and making videos for more than 10 years! Their oldest video was done in 2009.

As you can imagine, they have a LOT of videos!

The above video was done in 2010. You can see they’re still just setting up their garden, the house is being worked on, they’ve got chickens and talk about the plans they are working towards. Talk about starting from the ground up!

This next video was uploaded in 2011, and shows how things had grown and expanded over the previous years, from the building of a chicken coop and incubating eggs, to building a small barn and getting a calf and goats.

In that half acre, they are able to have chickens, cows, goats, pigs and rabbits – that I’ve seen so far! – supplemented by hunting. Mrs. V is an excellent shot. They’ve got their garden, bee hives, and even tap their own sap and make their own maple syrup.

All of this accomplished by a couple that is older, rounder and kinda broken. Like me! 😀 They’ve also been at it for a long time, and have much to share. Along with the many cooking videos and gardening videos, you’ll also find videos like this one.

Peameal bacon is also sometimes known as Canadian bacon or back bacon.

Now that I’ve seen the video, I want to make some of my own! That looks amazing!

You’ll also find “grocery haul” videos, like this more recent one, showing what they add to their food supply.

You’ll find videos sharing frugal ideas, like this one…

… using bits and pieces to make and can stock.

There are also live stream videos, and shorter Tea Break videos.

Many of the videos are sorted into playlists, too.

Like us, they’ve been itching to get out in the garden, too!

They’re in Eastern Canada, which has a longer growing season than we’ve got. While this video was being made, we were getting more snow, and still dealing with the new snow from our recent storm.

You’ll find videos on butchering and how to dress a deer, baking, cooking with a slow cooker or an Instant Pot, YouTube tax problems for Canadians, and even live streams from the Freedom Convoy 2022. There’s videos on how to knit, and make Christmas ornaments. There are videos on freezing, canning, dehydrating, growing, seed saving, product reviews…

There is just so much that’s covered, as one might expect from someone who’s been making videos for more than a decade! New videos are added very frequently, too.

There’s just a vast wealth of information available, and I highly recommend checking out Our Half Acre Homestead.

The Re-Farmer