Food & Water
The two things a household runs out of first. Long-term food storage, rotating pantries, freeze-dried, canning and mylar — plus water filtration, storage, sourcing and treatment. The ground truth on what actually feeds and hydrates a household when the supply chain stalls. Plain reviews and honest taste tests, no panic.
Showing 388 videos · runtime 5–15 min
Top picks in Food & Water
Curated by topic, not commissionAll curated
Get Free Hot Water From Your Air Conditioner
How to capture waste heat from air conditioning systems to provide hot water, reducing energy consumption in off-grid setups.
Free Pig and Chicken Feed Using Foraged Apples
How to source free or low-cost produce to feed pigs and chickens on a small farm, reducing feed costs through gleaning and waste-produce strategies.
Bluetti FridgePower Portable Power Station: Keep Your Food Cold in a Power Outage
Review of a portable power station designed to run refrigeration during grid outages, with discount codes for purchase.
Burn the Candle at Both Ends: Accelerated Property Preparations
Tour a working homestead's bulk fuel storage, soil building, backup power systems, and animal feed sourcing amid supply chain pressures.
Modern Life Is a Trap: Building Food Self-Sufficiency on a Half Acre
How the creator quit multiple jobs to live debt-free on a half acre, growing most of their own food and eggs while minimizing property taxes and reducing financial vulnerability.
Mowing the landowner's yard with the herd, no fuel required
Six-minute walkthrough of using livestock grazing to maintain pasture and reduce external inputs, eliminating fuel costs through rotational animal management.
Compact Survival Fishing Kit
11-minute walkthrough of a minimalist fishing kit: hooks, line, sinkers, spools, and rigging methods for catching food with minimal gear.
Testing a Manual Root Puller at Our Homestead
Norwegian homesteaders unbox and field-test a manual root puller to clear overgrown land for cultivation, demonstrating real-world performance on different stump types.
Modifications to Our PF Filter Canteen and Integration to Your Survival Kit
Thirteen minutes on translucent filter canteens: design features, measurement markings, and how to integrate one into your existing water-carrying and camping kit.
Emergency Food Storage for Extended Family: Planning and Cooking for a Crowd
Real-number walkthrough on sizing emergency food supplies for multigenerational households, bulk-cooking methods for grid-down scenarios, and budget storage strategies using basic staples.
My Food Forest Has a Four-Legged Cleanup Crew
Eight minutes on integrating livestock into a food forest ecosystem to manage pests, soil fertility, and waste.
Harvesting Over 10,000 Gallons From One Rainstorm
Eight-minute walkthrough of a working rainwater collection and storage system that captured 10,000+ gallons during a monsoon, with lessons on pond, cistern, and overflow management.
The Most Corn We've Ever Grown: Harvesting 600 Ears and Building a Seed Landrace
Eleven-minute walkthrough of harvesting storm-damaged corn, evaluating four dent varieties for chicken feed, saving seed to breed a homegrown sweet corn variety, and building an 8-foot perimeter fence to protect crops from deer and rabbits.
Can You Bake Without Electricity? Testing the Ember Oven
Thirteen-minute real-world test of the Ember Oven, evaluating whether this portable wood-fired solution works for off-grid baking and food preparation.
When Everything Goes as Planned Living Off Grid
Homestead maintenance walkthrough: trailer axle repair, water tank relocation, and washing machine troubleshooting on a working off-grid property.
Bull and Sheep Herd Performance After Thatch Field Burn
Greg Judy walks through how his cattle and sheep herd responds to grazing a recently burned pasture, observing weed control and forage quality outcomes.
Is This the Emergency Water Filter You'd Trust? ITEHIL E01 Mini Tested
Seven-minute hands-on test of the ITEHIL E01 Mini electric water filter: setup, purification capability (removes 99.9999% bacteria and viruses), and off-grid solar-powered operation for emergency water access.
Building a Chicken Aviary
Nine-minute walkthrough building a 2,400-square-foot chicken aviary with natural enrichment, breeding control, and predator protection at lower cost than a traditional coop.
We Made Sauerkraut: Classic and Cool New Recipe
Thirteen-minute walkthrough of fermenting sauerkraut using a harvest salvage, including a fennel-sauerkraut variation.
Early September Zone 2B/3A Harvest
Walkthrough of early-season garden harvesting in Northern Alberta's short growing season, documenting what grows and yields in zone 2B/3A.
Rye Bread: Milling and Baking
Eight-minute walkthrough: mill rye flour from grain, mix and shape a rye-bread loaf, bake in a Dutch oven. Recipe and technique for making bread from scratch-ground flour.
Apple Trees Instead of a Fence: Growing Food in Small Spaces
Walkthrough of planting columnar fruit trees as a dual-purpose privacy screen and food source, plus fitting 14 crop rows into a 20×50-foot garden strip for tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and staple preservation crops.
I Tried To Tell You! There's No Food Left
Assessment of food supply concerns and what individuals can do to prepare for potential scarcity.
Interview: Josh and Jesse of Dirty Dog Farm on Regenerative Meat Production
Greg interviews two regenerative farmers about building a profitable pasture-based meat operation, from early struggles to current success.
Editor's note
“If you only have a weekend and $200, fix water before anything else — it's the prep with the highest ratio of survival impact per dollar. On food: most $400 emergency kits could be replaced with $120 of supermarket staples plus mylar bags. The expensive part of food prep is the marketing, not the calories.”
— Cockroach editorial
Fire Pit and Butane Stove Breakfast: Off-Grid Cooking on the Homestead
Five-minute silent demonstration of cooking without grid power: coffee and eggs prepared on a portable butane stove and fire pit during a quiet homestead morning.
What Size Oxygen Absorber Do You Really Need?
Eight-minute walkthrough on choosing the right oxygen-absorber capacity for different food types and container sizes, with practical sizing recommendations for jars through 5-gallon buckets.
7 Steps for Fall Garden Cleanup Before Winter
Seven practical steps to prepare your garden for winter and position it for spring productivity, covering what to remove, what to leave, and seasonal maintenance.
When Nothing Goes as Planned Living Off Grid
A day on an Arizona off-grid homestead: troubleshooting horse trailer axles, washing machine repairs, and managing setbacks in self-sufficient living.
Bird Flu vs. Thanksgiving: The Reality Check You Need Right Now
H5N1 advance into turkey operations ahead of Thanksgiving: what the data shows, Thanksgiving sourcing options, and what to watch as fall migration continues.
Think Like a Prepper: The Costco Deal I Couldn't Pass Up
Identify high-value bulk food purchases and understand how timing and venue selection impact long-term food storage economics.
Getting Water Out of a River
Six-minute walkthrough on safely collecting drinking water from a river using pack-carried gear and filtration.
Have you ever received a phone call like this?
Tour a major Mennonite supply store and learn about bulk purchasing options for homesteading and food preservation.
Fermenting Hot Peppers
Seven-minute walkthrough on fermenting fresh hot peppers to make homemade hot sauce—a shelf-stable preservation method for summer abundance.
How I'd Keep My Family Alive During a Global Famine
Food storage, cooking fuel, backup methods, gardening, and community: a six-minute breakdown of household resilience during serious food shortages.
100 Day Pantry Challenge: Day 1 - Let's Get Started
How to count the actual days of real meals your household can eat right now from your pantry — the baseline audit that kicks off a 100-day build plan.
Tour of Churchtown Dairy in Hudson, New York: Grass-Fed Cheese Operation
Seven-minute walkthrough of a grass-fed dairy farm in upstate New York, covering pasture-based production methods and cheese-making operations.
Food and Fuel Theft
Assess threats to stored food and fuel security in breakdown scenarios and practical countermeasures.
Global Oil Crisis: US Farmers Warn of Soaring Prices
Examine how petroleum price volatility affects agricultural input costs and food production capacity.
Growing Grass, Alfalfa, and Sorghum in the Desert with Rainwater Only
Eleven-minute walkthrough of a high-desert Arizona homestead using natural rainfall and rainwater harvesting to establish pasture, ground cover, and food crops on bare land without wells or irrigation.
Turn Garden Overgrowth Into Fertilizer: Chop and Drop Technique
Five-minute walkthrough of the chop-and-drop method to clear overgrown gardens while building soil fertility, featuring hand scythe technique and regenerative agriculture principles.
Building a Hunting Treestand in the Boreal Forest
Construct a functional hunting treestand and prepare a food plot for big game season in northern wilderness.
How To Prepare Your Pantry For What's Coming
Analysis of recent agricultural commodity price increases, retail timeline projections, and category-by-category pantry-stocking action plan with verified data sources.
Making Jalapeno Jelly — Epic Fail
Thirteen minutes on attempting to make jalapeno jelly: the process, what went wrong, and lessons learned.
Black Soldier Fly Larvae for Chicken Feed: Building and Running a Home Production Bin
Eleven-minute walkthrough on building a black soldier fly larvae bin from a tote, what to feed them, harvesting techniques, and lessons from two years of trial and error raising protein-rich feed for backyard flocks.
Fuel Shortage and Diesel Crisis: Supply Chain Disruption Risks and Preparation Steps
Analysis of global diesel shortage risks, supply-chain disruption scenarios, and household preparation strategies for fuel emergencies and downstream food-price impacts.
Starting a Successful Regenerative Grazing Business from Scratch (Part 5)
Part 5 of Greg Judy's step-by-step guide to establishing a regenerative grazing operation, covering practical implementation from pasture setup to livestock management.
Sweet Potato Harvest From 4 Grocery Store Potatoes
Six-minute walkthrough growing sweet potatoes from grocery-store slips using recycled pots and soil, plus garden updates on lettuce, okra, bananas, and homemade fertilizer.
Farm Tour: Off-Grid Setup, Irrigation, and Winter Preparation
12-minute walkthrough of an off-grid farm project, including irrigation systems and winter shelter planning for harsh-climate homesteading.