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Welcome to the Nourishing Hearthfire Blog. This is where all our in-depth articles, step-by-step tutorials, seasonal recipes, and honest homesteading stories live.
Whether you’re diving into natural cheesemaking with raw milk and heirloom cultures, baking perfect whole grain sourdough loaves, mastering lacto-fermentation and food preservation, cooking nourishing meals from your garden and pantry, or learning the full spectrum of self-sufficiency skills – you’ll find it here.
Every post is written for real homesteaders and off-grid families who want practical, no-nonsense advice that actually works in a busy, self-reliant life. No fluff, no shortcuts, no nonsense – just time-tested methods, beautiful real-food results, and the quiet satisfaction that comes from doing it yourself.
Browse the latest posts, search by topic, or dive deep into any of our main categories.
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Circular Chicken Tractor Gardening
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Chicken tractor mandala gardening I first found out about this way of mandala gardening from Linda Woodrow’s The Permaculture Home Garden. She provides a design for a complete system that involves fruit trees, wild animal habitat, annual vegetable beds, and chook fodder plantings, with chickens being rotated around in a homemade chook dome. It all fits together so beautifully, with each element benefiting another, and it inspires me to grow food in this way. I am in a colder climate…
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Young Liflin
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Note: If you’d like to learn more about how and why I keep dairy goats, I’ve had a couple of guest posts published recently on Practical Self Reliance, and Nourishing Days. These blogs have a lot of other good stuff to read about too. Liflin was born here, he’s the son of Snowy and Ned, and the cute baby goat you can see in my midsummer post. Last year we had high hopes for him, and he certainly tried his…
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My goat book is now published!
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For over two years I was deeply immersed in writing about goats. I dreamed of the goat book I wish I’d had when I first started, and began to create it. I wrote all about keeping dairy goats on a small scale, and making natural cheeses from their milk. Over 50,000 words later, with all kinds of unexpected surprises and struggles, I now hold the hardcover edition in my hand and know that it’s completed! I didn’t do this alone,…
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How to make rustic tomato passata
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Rustic tomato passata: An easier way to bottle tomatoes This year I did something I’d been thinking about for a long time. I bottled our entire tomato supply for the year… I’d delayed this in the past due to annoying finicky instructions that insist on peeling the tomatoes, removing seeds, putting them through an expensive single-purpose gadget, and all kinds of stuff, but in the end I thought it was about time I tried this myself, using nothing more than…
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Backyard Dairy Goats: A Natural Approach to Keeping Goats in any Yard
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I am excited to announce my new book Backyard Dairy Goats: A Natural Approach to Keeping Goats in any Yard You can read more about it by clicking here. Backyard Dairy Goats Work with nature to raise dairy goats in any yard Backyard Dairy Goats is a book focusing on raising dairy goats in a way that respects their nature, on any amount of land. Backyard dairying can be done by anyone. It doesn’t have to be a dream that…
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Sunshine and her Babies
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A goat birth story I wandered through the forest to check on her. It had been 5 months and a week or two since she had been introduced to the billy goat at her old home. We brought her here in July, she was from a large herd that had been raised wild in the forest. She continued her wildness here, staying close to where the other goats are and not drifting too far away. After a few days she…
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Raising pigs for meat and lard
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Raising pigs for meat and lard How much time does it take to raise pigs on the homestead for meat? How much of a commitment is it? What do you need to get started? How much does it cost?… I write this partly for myself to read next year, so that I remember how it all works, partly for others who are considering raising pigs. Choosing a breed The simplest way to begin it to buy piglets (also called ‘slips’)…
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Curing Bacon and Ham without Nitrates
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How to cure pork without nitrates There are two ways of curing whole pieces of meat – a salty brine, or just plain salt. I will share recipes for both. Which method to choose – brine cure vs plain salt Brine-cured meats are preserved for a shorter time, and also are ready to eat sooner. We chose to cure one leg of ham in the brine, to be boiled for our midwinter feast, and we cured the side bacon in…
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Cutting up a pig without a saw
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Before our pig kill (see this post) we had discussed what we wanted to do with each part of the pig. To keep costs down, we just had the mobile butcher here on one day to do the kill, hair removing, gutting, and sawing the pigs in half and leaving them to hang for a day before we would cut them up ourselves. If we wanted him to cut them into pieces he would probably have to come back another…
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Raising pigs for meat: Butchering Pigs on our Off-Grid Forest Homestead
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The next few photos are of the pig slaughtering process, with commentary, to help others who want to raise their own meat or understand a process that has mostly been forgotten in modern times. You can find more of my articles about raising pigs, butchering pigs, and making bacon here: About our naturally-raised forest pigs Our pigs have lived happy lives in the paddock above for the past few months. They have been able to express their pig-ness, and have…
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Perfection
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I am not that great at describing foods. I sometimes laugh at the descriptions on the back of wine bottles, and at the obsessions that plague the cosmopolitan boomer-inspired worlds of recipes and restaurants, when to me there is just nothing like simple foods created traditionally, and there’s not much to say except ‘perfect’. This cheese deserves praise though. I will post pictures of it and tell its story. This cheese was the last cheese I made this year, towards…
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Spiced Elderberry Oxymel (Elderberry Syrup)
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Here is a simple way to make a healthy medicine for the cold months ahead. An elderberry oxymel is like a slightly less-sweet elderberry syrup. I can’t say enough good things about elderberries, and this way of preserving them for the winter can be used either as a daily boost to health to prevent colds and flus, or as something taken when you are sick to relieve the symptoms and get rid of the cold or flu quickly, or just…
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Recent Posts
- Magic Overnight Sourdough Pizza Dough Recipe with Fresh Milled Flour
- Cooking year-round on a wood cookstove: the dream, the reality, and the practicalities of relying on our own firewood and being off the gas grid
- 100% Whole Grain Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Bread for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide
- Easy 100% Whole Grain Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread (honey-sweetened, and works with fresh milled flour & ancient grains)
- Natural Cheesemaking: How to Make and Use Your Own Cheese Cultures
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