To celebrate the launch of my new book Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking, I’m sharing an easy recipe for cheesecake.
Cheesecake is one of my favourite foods, but not something I used to make very often until I created this recipe. The recipe I’m sharing today is from A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen, and could not be simpler. It features the easiest cheese to make at home – a simple whole milk ricotta. Or you can use whatever soft cheese you have around the house, as long as it is drained well and is not too salty.
I usually make this without a crust so that it comes together in minimal time, but if you prefer, you can bake this in your favourite cheesecake crust.
This recipe scales up or down well – just weigh your ricotta and then adjust the amount of eggs and honey to suit – use 1 large egg and 60g (3 tablespoons) honey for every 200g (7oz) ricotta.
Ingredients
170g (1/2 cup) honey
650g (23oz) well-drained salted ricotta
3 large eggs, whisked
(Optional) zest of 1 medium lemon, or a dash of vanilla
Method
Preheat the oven to around 180ºC (350ºF).
If your honey has crystallised, gently melt it until it’s runny.
Thoroughly mix the honey with all the remaining ingredients using a fork or whisk until evenly blended. Place in a greased 9” (23cm) pie pan or cake tin.
Bake for around an hour, until golden and set. The middle will puff up while it bakes, and then sink down once it’s removed from the oven.
Serve on its own, or topped with jam, bottled fruits, or fresh berries.
My new book Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking is now available from several places online, and can also be ordered into any local shop.
The secret to a great French onion soup is the quality of the bone broth – it should be lovingly made at home from beef bones which have been first roasted to create extra flavour before being slowly simmered for 24 hours or longer, or until the broth is so infused with flavour and minerals that it smells delicious on its own when hot, and sets like a jelly when cold.
Allowing plenty of time for the onions to slowly caramelise also helps to bring out the best of a few simple ingredients. The caramelising can be happening in the background while other kitchen tasks are being done, making this an easy hands-off meal for the most part. Sometimes I run the onions through the slicing bit of my food processor to make the preparation extra quick.
The classic presentation for French onion soup is to serve it in ovenproof bowls, with a slice of crusty bread on the top, covered with cheese and briefly baked or broiled to melt the cheese. I just make toasted cheese sandwiches with my usual everyday homemade bread and serve these on the side.
This soup reheats well. I often make a bigger batch and serve it for a few meals.
Makes around 8 serves.
Ingredients
12 tablespoons butter (180g)
3 pounds onions (1.35kg), thinly sliced into half moons
Optional 1 cup red wine (or a splash of brandy, or extra broth)
8 to 9 cups (2 litres) beef bone broth
Salt, to taste
Method
Melt the butter in a large stewpot over medium heat. Mix through the onions and allow them to cook, stirring every now and then, until very fragrant, dark golden-brown, and soft. This can take anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes.
Once the onions are ready, stir through the wine for a few seconds, then add the broth. Put the lid on the pot and allow it to simmer for 20 minutes, before adding salt, to taste.
Serve with some combination of crusty bread and melty cheese, such as toasted cheese sandwiches.
If you’d like to learn about my favourite way to use whey leftover from cheesemaking, Norwegian whey cheese, check out my guest post at Practical Self Reliance here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/gjetost-recipe/
Make your own cheese at home, using natural ingredients
Anyone can make their own cheese. Whether you’re in the middle of a city, or on a homestead, you can make delicious cheeses in your home kitchen.
Making your own home dairy products was an essential skill in the past, and a skill that continues to create resilience and reduce food costs in the face of supply disruptions and uncertainty.
Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking is the book I wish had existed when I started making cheese. Many cheesemaking books present recipes to be followed in exact ideal conditions which can be hard to achieve on a homestead. I’ve gone beyond this, making cheeses in less-than-ideal conditions, sharing the results, and explaining why each part of the cheesemaking process is done and how to make this work in home kitchen and homestead conditions.
I’ve included heaps of information on storing, handling, and working with the seasonal conditions of milk. Instructions for making your own rennet from animals and plants are included, along with information about how to prepare and use several different homemade cheese cultures.
There’s a section on cheesemaking equipment, and how to get started with the absolute basics, most of which can already be found in a typical home kitchen.
If you’re not sure where to begin, or how to fit cheesemaking into your life, there’s helpful information included about the best cheese recipes to get started with, and how to grow your cheese skills from there, along with figuring out which cheeses will work best with your lifestyle.
“Understanding the cheesemaking process” is a large part of the book where we look at every step of the cheesemaking process in depth, why each step is done, and what each step achieves, so that you can confidently come up with your own cheese varieties.
The ideal conditions for aging cheeses are discussed, along with various ways to achieve this at home. I also discuss many ways to work with rinds: working with natural moulds, encouraging (and discouraging) different types of mould, and natural options for making cheese without mould.
Many cheese styles are covered in the book, from the best kinds for beginners to start with, through to advanced cheesemaking.
Also included are recipes for other homemade dairy products: how to make the best thick and tasty yoghurt, kefir, cultured cream, butter, and ice cream.
Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking is the ideal cheese book for homesteaders. 8×8” in size and around 140 pages, designed for practical use with every cheese recipe on a single-page spread and clearly written instructions to help you make your own beautiful cheeses at home.
When I first started making cheese I thought I was failing at it. The recipes said to stir constantly for a full 45 minutes or so, and in my busy kitchen I just could not do that.
The more I perfected my own style of making cheese, the more I began to think back about how things were done in the past: was the busy peasant really stirring for that whole time? Or did she, like me, also have many responsibilities in the kitchen and on the homestead.
Early on I also began to question the use of all these tiny expensive packets of ingredients. Why did the mozzarella recipe tell me to dilute citric acid with water? Couldn’t vinegar be used in the same way? I experimented, and it worked, and paved the way to more experimentation, and learning how things used to be done.
I think a lot of books are written from a specialist perspective: someone that has focused on just one thing, written about it in isolation, without providing any guidance for those who do not have the same perfect conditions. I like to think of my book as being written by a generalist: Yes, I am making all my family’s cheese, it’s an important part of my homestead and I love it, but I am also fermenting, baking, canning, preserving, gardening, butchering, caring for animals, building infrastructure, and all the other tasks that make for a diverse homestead.
I don’t ask you to stand there stirring for 45 minutes, because I know that it’s not possible for many people. I don’t ask for weird little packets of stuff grown in labs, because I know it’s possible to create great cheese without these. I’ve read between the lines of many cheese traditions and figured out a way to do this that’s perfect for the busy homesteader, and also suitable for the complete beginner. I’ve created a book that anyone can pick up and learn from, and once you’ve learned the basics, you’ll still be referring to it again and again as I’ve provided a lot of depth, and presented it in a way that isn’t overwhelming.
You can learn to make cheese even if you don’t have your own dairy animals, and my small batch recipes are perfect for learning – there’s less time to wait before you get to taste them, and they’re naturally made from smaller amounts of milk. Most cheese books are using between eight and twenty litres (two to five gallons) of milk and this can be a very expensive experiment for anyone that is learning. Most of my recipes can be made from four litres of milk or less. These recipes are perfect for anyone, whether you have a small herd of goats or a single house cow, or if you’re buying your milk.
The Kickstarter launches on the 15th August at 5pm USA mountain time (16th, 9am Australian eastern time), I’ll send out another quick post once it is live.
I’ve priced the book really affordably and provided a lot of bonuses that are only available while the Kickstarter is live. Also, if you back it in the first couple of days you’ll also get access to this extra earlybird bundle of ebooks and magazines.
Keeping yoghurt warm in a pot at the edge of the woodstove, one of the tricks I’ll discuss in this post.
Yoghurt with a taste similar to what we might find in a grocery shop was something I gave up on for a long time. I made only room temperature viili for years, thinking that a good Greek or Bulgarian style of yoghurt was beyond me. At some point I decided I preferred the taste of this style of yoghurt enough to find ways to make it work, and now I make yoghurts far tastier and healthier than anything I can find for sale. In this article you’ll find my recipe, along with extra tips to make really good yoghurt every time.
How to make yoghurt
Heat milk in a saucepan until it reaches 82ºC (180ºF) or higher, hold it at or above that temperature for half an hour, if possible, and then let it cool to around 40ºC (104ºF).
Pour into jars, then stir through around 5 tablespoons (75ml) of yoghurt for every quart (litre) of milk.
Keep your culturing yoghurt at 40ºC (104ºF) for the next 6 hours or more (I find that 12 to 18 hours is best).
How to keep yoghurt warm during culturing
A couple of ways to keep yoghurt warm are:
• fermenting it in an insulated food jar such as a thermos.
• surrounding a normal jar with hot water in an esky (cooler) or on the edge of a woodstove dying down for the night.
I use the latter method, as it means I don’t have to mess around with transferring yoghurt from one jar to another once it’s ready – I culture it in the same jar that I use for storage.
There are special non-electric insulated yoghurt fermenters available, where you fill it with hot water, place your jar of yoghurt inside, seal, and leave to culture, but I find the size of these limiting, as they will only hold a specific size of jar, and from my experience they aren’t that great at keeping the heat in.
There are also electrical gadgets, such as Instant pot and specialty yoghurt makers, but I avoid relying on electricity as much as possible so these are not things I have tried.
• In real life, the temperature does tend to drop over time, so it’s sometimes easier to start culturing it at a slightly higher temperature (up to 46ºC or 115ºF), and leave it culturing for twelve hours or more rather than six. Some of the helpful yoghurt bacteria will still be active in the lower temperatures, and the heat-loving bacteria will still have some time to grow during the earlier, warmer stages of culturing.
In winter I leave my yoghurt jar overnight in a pot of warm water on the edge of the woodstove as it cools down, and then refill the pot with hot tap water in the morning to give it more time to culture at high temperatures. I find that yoghurt tastes the best after around 18 hours of culturing in this way during winter.
Tips for making thick yoghurt
• Experiment with using milk from different animals or different sources. One of the goats here gives very creamy milk that makes excellent thick yoghurt, my other goats give milk that makes a thinner yoghurt. If I were mixing all the milk together I would not have noticed this. Full fat cows milk generally makes lovely thick yoghurt, and milk from a Jersey cow or other cow that gives extra creamy milk will make even thicker, lovelier yoghurt.
• Winter milk makes thicker yoghurt than summer milk. Sometimes it helps to just accept that winter is the time for thick yoghurt and in summer you might want to stain it through cheesecloth if you want it to be thicker.
• Yoghurt will be thicker if it is first heated above 82ºC (180ºF), and then left to cool to the culturing temperature. If you can heat it up slowly, or hold it at the goal temperature for half an hour, this will help to create thicker yoghurt. The high temperature changes the protein structures in the milk, to help create a thicker yoghurt.
• Allowing the milk to cool down and then reheating to 82ºC also can help make for thicker yoghurt.
• You can evaporate some of the liquid out of the milk, by leaving the pot on the heat with the lid off once it’s reached temperature – just observe the level of the milk you start off with, and then remove and allow the pot to cool once it’s reduced by ¼ to ½.
• For thick Greek yoghurt, allow your yoghurt to continue culturing at warm room temperature until the whey begins to separate. Pour it into cheesecloth and allow the curds to continue dripping whey until it’s as thick as you’d like it to be, anywhere between two and twelve hours.
Tips for reliable yoghurt culturing
• Yoghurt is best made at least once per week, to keep the culture fresh. It is worth keeping a small amount of yoghurt tucked away in the freezer, just in case your yoghurt gets contaminated or abandoned.
• Cultures that contain acidophilus seem to be more reliable home kitchen conditions
• If in doubt, add more yoghurt to start it off, rather than less. Some recipes advise using only two tablespoons for a litre (quart) of milk, but I always use 5 tablespoons and it doesn’t hurt it, it just makes the milk get colonised more quickly while the temperature is warm.
• To keep your yoghurt culture as active and pure as possible and avoid having to buy new culture, it’s a good idea to keep everything as sterile as possible: Heat and cool your milk in a pot with the lid on, heat-sterilise your jars, don’t leave them open to the air any longer than you have to, and be very careful with any jar of yoghurt that you’ll be using as a starter for your next batch – pour the yoghurt out rather than reaching in with a spoon (unless the spoon is heat sterilised). For even better results, make an extra smaller jar of yoghurt that you can use as your culture, and then it doesn’t matter what happens to your jar of eating yoghurt.
I sometimes get asked “how do you live without a fridge”, or “how do you get by without having to go grocery shopping all the time” and my answer every time is the same thing: We raise dairy animals and make the most of the milk they produce. When we have dairy, we have the key to self reliance.
When you have milk coming into the kitchen fresh every day, there is no need for refrigeration. Milk is often the most common item people will regularly rush out to the grocery store for, and home-produced dairy, especially when combined with cooking from scratch, gardening, chickens, and bulk good storage gives us much more resilience in the face of any crazy stuff that might happen.
Frugality
Keeping to a budget and noting down everything we spend, I can clearly see that the months with fewer shopping trips are the months when it’s been easiest to stay within budget. Going out frequently for milk, yoghurt, cheese, and other dairy products not only means we’re exposed to a bunch of tempting foods on the shelves at the same time, but also means more fuel costs for the car, more of a sense of our food coming from the grocery store rather than our own land, and more time away from our home, when we could have been working in the garden or doing something else productive.
If you have a taste for high quality cheeses, these can drain the food budget very quickly. When you make your own cheese, even if its not from your own dairy animals, you can create fantastic cheeses that will make you ignore the expensive gourmet cheeses on store shelves.
Homemade yoghurt and other cultured milks are even more affordable to make at home – yoghurt is often around four times more expensive than milk, but can be made very easily at home with nothing more than milk and some leftover yoghurt to use as culture.
Focus
Dairy animals need care every day, and once you’re outside caring for them, it’s easy to fit in other homestead chores, feel more like “real” homesteading, and have a more productive homestead overall. There is nothing like the feeling of bringing in fresh milk every day, and I like the rhythm and stability that dairy animals give to our lives: No matter what is happening around us, I know that every morning begins with milking.
Food and health
Dairy foods are simply delicious. The cheeses I make are tastier and healthier than any cheeses that I can buy, and we can eat as much of them as we like. There is not much that gives a feeling of abundance than having shelves full of many varieties of delicious homemade cheeses at varying stages of aging – some are food for now, others are food for later, all are absolutely delicious and truly make a meal. Cheese is a staple food in my house and can easily become a staple food in your home too.
Next on the blog I’ll be sharing some helpful information about making great yoghurt every time: this is something that I had trouble with for many years and I’m excited to be sharing my tips with you all soon.
This hearty one pot stew, based on the German dish Pichelsteiner, is my favourite meal to make with beef osso bucco (sliced bone-in beef shin).
The meat is first seared, and then slow cooked with the vegetables to tender perfection. The onions melt into the broth as the meat falls off the bone to form a sturdy broth that is full of deep flavour from simple, natural ingredients.
A meal to savour and enjoy again and again. Serve on its own, preferably with a slice of good rye bread on the side.
Makes around 16 serves. Leftovers reheat well.
Ingredients
Tallow or lard, for searing
Beef osso bucco from 1/4 of a cow (around 1.5kg to 2kg/3 to 5 pounds), or 1kg (2 pounds) boneless stewing beef
1kg (2 pounds) rump steak, round steak, or stewing beef
4 or 5 medium onions, chopped
a few grinds of black pepper
a mixture of carrots and turnips (or potatoes, or cabbage), as much as will fit in your pot
bone broth to cover (or water if you don’t have bone broth)
salt, to taste
optional cider vinegar, to taste
a large cabbage, chopped
optional handful or three of fresh parsley, chopped
Method
Heat a small amount of tallow in an eight litre (2 gallon) pot. When the fat is hot, sear both sides of the meat in batches.
Remove the meat from the pot and add a little more tallow, if needed, along with the onions. Sauté the onions until they are tender and fragrant, maybe starting to develop a little colour. Add the meat back into the pot, and top the pot up with as many chopped turnips and carrots as will fit, before covering the meat and vegetables with broth or water.
Bring to the boil with the lid on, reduce heat, and simmer on the stovetop, in a slow cooker, or in the oven for at least two hours, until the meat is very tender and easily falls of the bones. Taste the broth and add some salt, and maybe a splash of cider vinegar.
Remove the meat from the pot and cut or break it into bite-sized pieces. Remove the marrow from the bones and add this back into the stew. Return the meat to the broth. Top with chopped cabbage, and return to a simmer, cooking for 10 or 20 minutes, until the cabbage is tender.
Stir through the optional parsley, adjust seasonings with salt and cider vinegar, and serve on its own, or with bread.
This has ended up being quite a long post, as there has been a lot happening on our homestead in the past year. I’d like to try and share updates more frequently for this coming year if I am not too busy. We are in really exciting times on our homestead and I’d like to share a little about what we’ve learned and achieved.
Growing our homestead
Maremma livestock guardian dogs
This has been a long story with some sad moments, too long to share in this post (but maybe in a future post).
Some of the things we’ve struggled with on our homestead have been wildlife getting into our gardens and eating everything, and predators eating our poultry. These dogs want to protect us, our animals, and our garden from the wildlife, and we have been so happy to have them here.
Ducks
Ducks have always been one of my favourite two animals (along with goats). As I mentioned above, we have tried to keep them a couple of times, but the wildlife has always eaten them. Once we had our first Maremma dog, I asked my friends nearby who have an incubator if they would be willing to hatch some eggs for me, I found some fertile silver appleyard duck eggs and pilgrim geese eggs online – the goose eggs were damaged in the post and would not hatch sadly, but most of the duck eggs hatched and we were greeted by beautiful little peeping ducklings.
We raised these ducklings in a makeshift electric-free brooder next to the woodstove, putting them outside when they were old enough, and they are just lovely. It’s so nice to hear their duck noises, look forward to hopefully some naturally-hatched ducklings, duck eggs, and duck meat in future. The excess drakes that we ate were really tasty.
I read a lot about duck breeds, and narrowed down my choice for backyard ducks to Saxony, Ancona, or Silver Appleyard – all three are fairly large breeds that lay plenty of eggs, forage well, and are good mothers. The Silver Appleyards are easier to find here, so that is what I went with. For ducks further afield (perhaps on an island in a future pond, to protect them from quolls), I might try Muscovy ducks again.
Garlic
Winter is the most desperate time for the wildlife, and in past years the fence has had holes or other problems with it, and wallabies have gotten in and eaten anything we’ve had growing through the winter, including the garlic. This past year, even before we got the dogs, my husband had repaired the fence around our house garden, and wallabies could not get in. We grew enough garlic for ourselves, some to sell, and plenty to replant, so it has been a huge success that I am so happy about after all these difficult years.
More garden space
A couple of years ago we started clearing and fencing around 600m2 (1/8 acre) more garden space. This new space is sunnier than the garden around our house, and reasonably flat. The fencing was not ideal at first, as we did not cover the ‘foot’ of it properly, and there was a hole in one place that we took a while to discover, so wallabies were getting in. Possums were also a problem until we solved this with dogs. For most of the growing season this past year, most of the things I planted all got eaten, but once we solved these problems I managed to grow some food late in the season, as well as plenty of potatoes from earlier, which were mostly left alone, giving me confidence that we can grow a lot of food in this new area during the next year.
Lots of cheese
I’ve been more organised about cheesemaking this year. Rather than harvesting the milk, leaving it until late in the day, and finding I don’t quite have enough for cheese, I’ve been setting aside milk early in the day for cheese, using it very fresh, and making cheese in small batches. I’ve been making really lovely cheese, and plenty of it, as the cheese yields are higher if the milk is very fresh and by making cheese a priority and being organised to make it on time, I am just making more of it in general.
I wanted to diversify our homestead income by trying out selling homemade food at local farmers markets. I sell organic sourdough bread, ferments, sauces, and jams. Having a regular stall also means that if we end up growing extra vegetables or fruit later on, I can sell them at the stall.
Home brewing
We had a celebration coming up, and my husband asked if I wanted any alcohol from the bottle shop. It was really lovely to say “no, I’ve brewed enough”. Home brewing is an aspect of self reliance that can be done anywhere, whether you have a homestead or not. I’ve really been enjoying making mead, and recently have tried my hand at making an ale without hops, starting from raw organic barley, malting it myself, and then going through a standard all-grain brewing process. I’ll share details of this process on the blog later on.
Goals for the year ahead
House cow
We don’t have enough pasture to keep a cow at the moment, but with all the strange stuff going on in the world these days, and butter being an important part of our diet, it would make sense to keep a cow. I am finding that even buying in hay it would be worthwhile, as we get the benefit of the cow manure for the garden as well as all the lovely dairy.
Maybe some pigs
Making lots of butter, we will have skim milk, which can combine this with root vegetables and/or grain for a simple and healthy way to feed pigs.
More perennials and homegrown animal food
We got some terraces dug last year on around 1/4 of an acre, but did not fence them off in time to plant them properly. Looking at Sepp Holzer’s permaculture book for inspiration, these can become productive polycultures of fruit trees, animal feed, and perpetual fertility. My husband is currently working on the fence so I will be planting fruit trees, grain, and perennials such as sunroot and comfrey there.
Meat rabbits
We need to build something for them to live in first, but hopefully this is not too far off.
Better crop rotation and being more organised in the garden
The chook dome garden has been going here for many years now, and some of the beds I had potatoes on early on have now rested long enough for more potatoes. I’m coming up with a rotation system for these beds that works for this climate, producing food, fertility, and chook fodder.
For the top garden, we have 7 or 8 sections (the 7th and 8th not being cleared yet) of beds roughly 75cm (2.5’) by 4m (13’), with 8 or so beds in each section. We chose the width because I can reach the whole bed from one side and easily step over it, so jobs like planting and weeding a whole bed are more manageable, this is the standard width for many market garden tools, if we want to use these later on, and less cross-paths are needed. The length of the beds was decided based on the terrain – we have them roughly on contour, slightly raised above the paths
Our crop rotation is based on these beds being used in pairs, so we have 4 different crops or guilds growing in each section. There are two different rotations, so that we get a bit of everything, but in both sections are potatoes and the brassica family, which are on different beds each year, giving a four year rest. In both rotations there are plenty of grains and green manures to grow our own fertility.
Something I’ve learned over this past year is to be more organised and seize the moment – sometimes there are very short windows for getting certain crops planted, and other times, if I harvest some crops early enough, there can be a window to plant a second quick-growing crop or a green manure.
More blueberries
The blueberries we have here are thriving and the local possums aren’t interested in them. They are so tasty and healthy and can’t eat enough of them, and they also would make a good crop to take to the market, so I am considering making a larger planting of them this spring.
Lots more food in general
This past year we had hopes of vegetable self sufficiency and didn’t make it, mainly because of the wildlife issues. This year, we’ve solved those problems and are coming up with crop rotations and planting calendars to make sure we get things planted on time. The more I live this life, the more I see self sufficiency as a journey in itself rather than a destination, it is a beautiful life and I try to take the time to appreciate things and be filled with a sense of gratitude. I don’t want to end up like Andersen’s fir tree, thinking that the best in life is just around the corner and not appreciating the present – I want to appreciate what we do have now.
What I would like to do is to focus on things that grow very well here, and grow enough of these to feed ourselves even if the more experimental crops don’t go well: turnips and daikon to meet our fermented vegetable needs, leeks, multiplier onions, and garlic to meet our onion needs, and lots of potatoes and leafy greens for calories and nutrition. I am getting better at growing carrots each these so these are becoming more of a staple food now, and each year as we increase the fertility of our soil and experiment with different seeds and growing techniques, perhaps we’ll find that more and more foods can be reliable staple crops for us.
Flapjacks is a bit of a confusing name for this delicious slice. Some people use that word for pancakes, and other people know all about this delicious crunchy oaty buttery treat.
Flapjacks
This has been a favourite recipe for many years. At picnics it disappears very quickly, at my market stall I get complaints if I do not bring it along. When I want to make something really quick and simple for a treat, this is often what I turn to. Just three ingredients and some very easy steps.
Ingredients
450g (16oz) oats (either rolled oats, quick oats, or oats milled on the medium setting of a grain mill)
350g (12oz) salted butter
250g (9oz) coconut sugar or rapadura
Method
Melt butter. Thoroughly mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.
Press mixture into a lined pan around 10”x15” (26x40cm) in size.
Bake for around half an hour at around 180ºC, until bubbling and caramelised.
Allow to fully cool, then cut into slices. Can be stored in a tin for a couple of weeks if needed.
The best time to have started a homestead was ten years ago, the next best time is now. This is what I would do if I were starting out homesteading now.
Animals for food and fertility
Goats can be an excellent choice of dairy animal on forested land and in small spaces.
Look at what resources are around you and find the right animal to make the most of what is growing where you live. If you’re starting with lots of pasture, cows and sheep are good choices. If you’re in a small backyard, meat rabbits are a good option. If you have access to trees and scrub, goats make sense. Chickens and ducks are great for eating wasted food and scavenging for insects and seeds around the garden and can fit in anywhere. Even if you have to buy in food for your animals at first, in my experience it is always worth it, because not only do they give you better meat, dairy, and eggs than anything from a shop (and a reliable supply of it in these times), they also give manure to fertilise the garden.
Perennial food
Blueberries are a tasty and nutritious perennial crop that grows well on acid soils
I wish I had put more effort into this earlier. Even if you intend to have a big berry patch or orchard one day but it’s not a priority for now, it’s worth having some plants, as you can propagate new plants from these later on and get experience with growing them. In these uncertain times it’s hard to say whether fruit trees and berry plants will be easy to find in the future so it’s worth having some to begin with. Some of these plants can take several years to start bearing (although berries are very fast), so if you plant these early on your homestead, you will be harvesting them earlier and will thank yourself later on.
Grow and eat what grows well for you
Find an online gardening calendar for your local area and plant your crops at the right times. Experiment with growing a bit of everything, and then observe what grows best at different times of the year. I am pretty hopeless at growing cabbages (but every year I still try), but turnips and daikon radish grow easily here, so I plant lots of those and use these as I would use cabbages in cooking and fermenting.
Focus on staple foods
Potatoes and turnips, excellent staple crops for many cold climate homesteads
Find a combination of calorie-dense and nutrient dense foods that grow well for you. Calorie dense foods are those that contain lots of energy for their weight – potatoes, pumpkin/winter squash, swede/rutabaga, carrots, parsnips, beetroots, and other root vegetables.
Nutrient-dense foods are those that contain lots of vitamins and minerals for their weight, animal fats and leafy greens are good examples of this. These nutrient dense foods complement the calorie dense foods to form a complete diet – many meals are combinations of these two foods – baked potatoes with sour cream, root vegetables roasted in tallow, bread with butter, rice with bacon, and many more examples.
On my homestead, our staple calorie dense staple crops are potatoes, swede/rutabaga, turnip, parsnips, and carrots. Our nutrient dense staple crops are goats milk, goats cheese, eggs, and kale. I grow many more foods than these, but no matter what happens, we can survive on these foods alone, so I grow them in abundance.
Meeting water and energy needs
Ideally, a homestead should be able to meet its own needs for water, electricity, and cooking fuel. Finding a homestead with established firewood trees, or planting your own can be a big priority in cold climates. If you need to irrigate in summer, set up systems to catch water when there is rain, such as ponds and rainwater tanks. For electricity, it can first make sense to reduce the need for it as much as possible, and then to design a system to meet those reduced needs.
The Nourishing Hearthfire 