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.
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Top picks in Food & Water
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Cats and Chickens
Becky shares hard-won lessons on protecting chicks from cats, managing feral predators, and selecting trainable farm dogs for flock safety.
Why Do Permaculture Gardens Grow So Much Food? Tour and Harvest
44-minute garden tour and harvest walkthrough demonstrating polyculture planting, symbiotic plant relationships, soil building, and food production yields in a BC zone-5 homestead.
Vitamin Deficiency In Chickens: How To See It And How To Fix It
Becky explains how to address vitamin deficiency in chickens through daily meat protein and regular deworming with diatomaceous earth.
How Doing LESS Transformed My Food Garden & Saved My Sanity
Twelve-minute walkthrough of five core gardening fundamentals—water, soil, sunlight, timing, pest management—and how simplifying your approach builds sustainable food production.
3 Reasons I Love Keeping Backyard Chickens
Becky shares lessons from years of chicken keeping, covering coop design evolution, egg collection timing to avoid crows, and how chickens naturally manage horse manure in pastures.
July Garden Tour | Productive, Efficient No Till Garden
Walkthrough of a no-till organic garden in mid-summer growth, demonstrating layout, soil management, and yield efficiency from a homesteader using this method.
Design a Low-Effort Food Garden That Actually Feeds You (Complete Guide)
21-minute walkthrough on permaculture-based food garden design: site analysis, layout, water strategy, bed types, and plant selection for year-round production while working full-time.
AquaTru Reverse Osmosis Water Filter Review VS Gravity Filters
Side-by-side comparison of reverse osmosis and gravity water filtration systems, with demonstration of setup and use for household water purification.
DIY Hydroponics Fertilizer: Truth About Homemade Nutrients
Six-minute breakdown of DIY hydroponic fertilizer methods: what actually works, common pitfalls, and whether homemade nutrients are worth the effort for food growers.
What Every Gardener Wishes They Knew About Essential Tools
Guide to eight essential, durable gardening tools that handle 95% of tasks without waste or gimmickry—gloves, cutting tools, trowels, shovels, rakes, and watering gear.
Homesteading Ways: Making the Best of It
Three-minute walkthrough of repairing and repurposing an old chicken tractor from scrap materials to solve an immediate animal-husbandry problem.
Homestead Animals: New Chickens, Baby Bunnies and More
Tour of a working homestead's newest animals—chickens, rabbits, goats, and pigs—with practical context on raising livestock for food and self-sufficiency.
5 Chicken Mistakes Beginners Make (and How to Fix Them) | Backyard Homestead Guide
Five common chicken-keeping errors beginners encounter and practical fixes: straight-run surprises, coop upgrades, predator proofing, and flock integration.
How to Make a Potato Grow Tower
Six-minute walkthrough of building a DIY potato tower from garden scraps—a low-cost, space-efficient growing method adaptable to available materials.
Raising Chicks the Right Way: Moving to Grass, Adding Shelter, and Flock Growth Tips
Eight-minute walkthrough of moving chicks to pasture, building a second coop, expanding the flock, plus updates on sheep, orchard, and berry plantings on a family homestead.
Making Perfect Sourdough Khorasan Sandwich Bread with Tender, Moist Crumb
22-minute walkthrough on baking sourdough sandwich bread from freshly milled khorasan flour using a Vitamix blender as a makeshift grain mill.
Grow a 4-Hour Food Garden With These 7 EASY Crops
Seven high-yield crops (herbs, greens, berries, cucurbits, nightshades, roots, fruit trees) designed for balconies and backyards on a 4-hour weekly time budget.
Maintain Your Jerusalem Artichoke Bed for Success & Creeping Charlie Management
Six-minute walkthrough on refurbishing a Jerusalem artichoke bed for optimal production and managing invasive Creeping Charlie weed spread.
Moving Day for Our Chicks: Are They Ready for the Coop?
Walkthrough of transitioning chicks from brooder to coop, including readiness signs, coop setup for cold weather, and timing strategy.
Turmeric Harvest March | Zone 8a
Nine-minute walkthrough of harvesting turmeric across multiple seasons in zone 8a, demonstrating year-round production from just six plants.
Spring No-Till Garden: Easy Prep & Planting Potatoes
Five-minute walkthrough of no-till garden preparation and potato planting, comparing soil-building methods and demonstrating the creator's preferred cover-crop approach.
3 Signs Your Chicks Are Ready for the Coop
Quick guide to identifying when brooder chicks are ready to transition outdoors, with warning signs to watch for if timing is premature.
Top 10 Protein-Rich Foods to Add to Your Survival Prep List
Survey of 10 protein sources suitable for long-term storage and emergency use, covering canned meats, freeze-dried options, and pantry staples.
Castrating Piglets: Learn This Skill
Two-minute walkthrough of piglet castration technique, a foundational livestock-management skill for homestead pig farming.
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
Lazy Composting Yields Black Gold!
Composting walkthrough using the Salatin method: woodchips, manured bedding, and food scraps to build soil fertility.
When to Plant Your Garden in Spring (Don't Get It Wrong!)
How to calculate your last frost date, start seeds indoors, choose crops for pre- and post-frost planting, and protect seedlings from cold snaps.
Designing & Implementing Permaculture/Regenerative Systems with Takota Coen
Interview on permaculture design principles and implementation strategies for homesteads, covering food production, land harmony, and long-term system planning.
Mastering Meat Preservation: Techniques Unveiled
Five-minute walkthrough of curing, smoking, and dehydrating methods to preserve meat safely for long-term food storage.
How to Cook Chanterelle Mushrooms
52-second demonstration of identifying, preparing, and cooking wild chanterelle mushrooms foraged from the forest.
How to Mill Your Own Flour to Make Survival Flatbread & Flour Tortillas
Thirteen-minute walkthrough on milling wheat berries into flour at home, with step-by-step recipes for survival flatbread and tortillas using minimal equipment.
Tomboy Crab Apple: Very Sweet, Pink Flesh, Rich Flavor
Two-minute variety showcase of a dessert crab apple cultivar: flavor profile, growing characteristics, and suitability for home cultivation and storage.
Watch Before Buying a Gravity Water Filter System: How to Find Trustworthy Filters
18-minute guide to evaluating gravity water filters by certification standards (NSF 53, P231), with comparisons across major brands and guidance on contaminant coverage and filter lifespan.
Bread for Sandwiches and Wedding Rolls - Quick, Easy, Mostly Whole Wheat Recipe
32-minute walkthrough of a rich, whole-wheat roll recipe suitable for sandwiches and soups, from an off-grid homesteader in Wyoming.
Creating an Herb Wreath for the Kitchen: How to Dry Your Own Herbs & Flowers
37-minute walkthrough on harvesting, drying, and preserving culinary and medicinal herbs and flowers for year-round kitchen use in a mountain homestead setting.
Late Summer Garden Tour
Four-minute walk through a Minnesota homestead garden in late August, showing what's growing, harvest timing, and cold-climate vegetable varieties.
Homemade Tomato Salsa from Augason Farms Tomato Powder
12-minute walkthrough making fresh salsa from dehydrated tomato powder and other shelf-stable pantry staples, with exact measurements and texture tips.
Canned Eggs for Scrambled Eggs: Augason Farms Egg Powder Recipe
Eight-minute walkthrough making scrambled eggs from powdered eggs on a camp stove, with ingredient ratios and taste-test comparison to fresh eggs.
How to Store Water When You Have Limited Storage Options
Nine-minute walkthrough on storing emergency water in small spaces, including container selection, preparation, and filtration options.
Backpacking Stove Recipe: Hash Browns and Ketchup from Dehydrated Ingredients
Step-by-step preparation of hash browns and ketchup using dehydrated potato shreds and tomato powder on a portable camping stove, with single-serving recipes and gear rundown.
4 Days Hunting Ducks, Geese & Fishing in Nome, Alaska
Four-day hunting and fishing trip in Alaska: waterfowl and upland bird hunting techniques, subsistence salmon netting from the Bering Sea, field processing game, and cold-weather bushcraft.
Water Storage and Filtration for Emergencies
22-minute walkthrough on water storage volume planning and filtration methods for household emergency preparedness.
4 Days in Alaskan Yupik Village: Moose Hunting, Fishing, and Traditional Seal Spearing
43-minute immersion in subsistence hunting and fishing: field dressing a moose, traditional atlatl seal hunting, gill-netting cisco and sheefish, and butchering wild game for food preservation.
Can Food Growing Be Beautiful? Pollinator Garden, Compromising Aesthetics with Production
Ten-minute walkthrough of designing a productive edible landscape that balances food output with pollinator habitat and visual appeal on a homestead.
Digging a Pond: Permaculture Principle 1 — Observe and Interact
Six-minute walkthrough of site selection and pond excavation on a homestead, applying permaculture observation to build water resilience.
Building Soil to Regenerate an Old Pasture with Hay
Seven-minute walkthrough of a multi-year soil regeneration project: using hay and cover crops to restore degraded pasture for livestock integration and food production.
Homegrown Chicken Feed: Growing, Harvesting and Curing Corn, Sunflower, Garlic and Barley
Seven-minute walkthrough of harvesting and processing flint corn, sunflower, barley, and garlic as homegrown chicken feed on a Canadian homestead.
Harvesting Potatoes While They are Still Growing: New Potatoes Picked by Hand From Raised Beds
Seven-minute walkthrough on hand-harvesting new potatoes from raised beds without fully uprooting the plant, allowing continued growth and multiple harvests.
Micro Climate Planters: An Experiment that is Working Out
15-minute walkthrough of a micro climate planter design for extending growing season and maximizing food production in remote/challenging environments.