The Weekend Homesteader Review
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The Weekend Homesteader: A Twelve-Month Guide to Self-Sufficiency by Anna Hess is an inexpensive guide to get you started with homesteading. Loaded with color photos, this book would make a good “coffee table” book, conversation starter or idea brewer.
How the Weekend Homesteader is Organized
The Weekend Homesteader is organized by month, starting with April and wrapping back around to March. (Alternate months are suggested for those living in Australia.)
Each month includes four “projects’ – one for each weekend – presenting you with activities that would be appropriate for that time of year. For instance, April projects include:
- Find room to homestead
- Survey your site
- Plan you summer garden
- Kill mulch
Many of the activities could be completed in an afternoon or weekend. Others will require an ongoing time investment.
For instance, you can roast a chicken in one afternoon (November), but Building a chicken coop or tractor and raising chickens (August-September) will be an ongoing task.
Things I Like About the Weekend Homesteader
Anna is obviously passionate about what she does, and is not afraid to share her mistakes. The photos and charts get you thinking and provide handy references.
Here’s an excerpt from the Chicken Coop or Tractor Section:
And here’s another examples from the Survey Your Site section:
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The print is large and easy to read, the overall quality of the photos and book is very good.
One of most functional parts of the book was where she discussed diversifying your income, and broke down the real hourly wages that are likely to be earned from various common “homestead” options, such as selling eggs, selling honey, running a CSA, selling grapes and an online microbusiness.
When you run the numbers, according to her calculations (and I think she’s spot on with this) – standard homestead activities for profit typically net a very low hourly wage.
You can save yourself a fair amount of money doing things for yourself, but most of us would be unable to pay the bills with only “standard” homestead income.
This is a critical concept to understand for those who dream about “living the simple life” – it doesn’t pay very well (monetarily).
Set realistic goals, make steady progress, try new things – that’s what the book is about.
Things I Didn’t Like About the Weekend Homesteader
I was rather surprised to find out that the “Weekend Homesteader” book was written by a full time homesteader.
I was even more surprised when I read, “When you live on a farm, there is an endless array of chores and projects right at your fingertips, and it’s tough to stop until you keel over from exhaustion. If my husband hadn’t held firm by requiring weekends off and regular quitting times each day, I’m pretty sure I would have burnt out by now.” Maybe another title would have been better?
In the canning section, she recommends boiling your canning lids – big no-no. If you want to can safely, check out the Ball Blue Book. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a freezer with everything stacked in cylinders of deli tubs like she showed, either. I don’t think this is realistic for most people.
As a northern gardener, many of the garden activities were not timed correctly for my location. I don’t do anything in the garden in January and February – because it’s frozen solid. Up here they don’t generally recommend most tree planting in fall, either.
Her primary suggested crops don’t really match too well with mine, either. I don’t know anyone personally who would grow okra as one of their main crops, and most of my gardening friends grow cucumbers, which she seems to have problems with. Just a different climate and different preferences.
Overall, this was a good book to get ideas brewing and help set project timelines for more southern gardeners.
Check out other book reviews and suggestions from our library, such as:
I think the top thing we want to learn more about is starting seeds and green house growing. We have not done anything other than an outdoor garden, so extending the growing season in WI is of a huge interest.
I grew up around my grandparents farm every weekend and half of most of the school holidays so to me “homesteading” became so ingrained in me that despite living in an urban setting I have always ensured that where I lived was capable of allowing me to enjoy this lifestyle. Even when purchasing a home I have always looked for homes that are already fairly self sufficient by having wood heat, some fruit trees, room to garden, and maybe even a bit more. My current home was built in 1925, is wood heated, has a few fruit trees, a green house, 3000 square feet for gardening or whatever, and even a root cellar! I love urban homesteading! Then in 2007 I was run down by a hit and run driver, leaving me disabled for life. I thought the lifestyle I loved had been taken away. Thankfully my family and friends would not allow that and went about restructuring my home and yard to make it so I could still be fairly self sufficient, regardless of my new limitations. Garden beds raised to 3 ft. off the ground, green house shelves lowered, and even a chute from the wood pile that runs all the way to a box next to the wood stove! Their creativity inspired me to return to my passion! Just before my accident I had wanted to try my hand at raising chickens as I am allowed up to eight where I live. This coming spring I am hoping that with the help of my support people a coop can be built that will make the chickens happy, and yet still functional for me to manage. So hopefully, this coming year one of my latest challenges to overcome will be learning how to successfully raise some chickens, along with preserving what I grow now that the number of raised beds has become more than I need just for feeding my family on a seasonal basis… it grows double that, so it is also time to figure out preserving in my “new” life. Any and all info on chickens though would be great as I have never raised them before. Plus, I am sure there will be many other ideas that can assist me as I continue to adapt to my ways of gardening to my body’s way of doing things quite differently than I used to… 🙂
I would like to learn more about organic soil preparation and weed control.
Homesteading is a great life!
I’ve been gardening, and canning for a long time, but I always enjoy reading up on what others are doing. Never to old to learn something new from someone else 🙂
I want to learn more about canning on a larger scale and I want more tips on sustainable gardening!
I am doing more learning on food preservation and gardening….. Love to learn all I can… Great little giveaway…..
I would really like to learn more about keeping animals. I was raised in a garden but sadley there was no barn present!
Gardening!
I’d like to get more out of my garden by learning preserving techniques.
Hi, I found your blog through Moving on to the past…this looks like a great tutorial for a beginner. Thank you for having the giveaway. I’d like an overall on the how to get starting point, setting up a farm homestead, raising some chickens…thank you
Making soap.
I would like to know more about growing mushrooms and I always have trouble growing any kind of melons.
I want to learn more about living off the land and being self sufficient. Thanks for this offer.
Would love to win this!!!
Looks like a great book. Hope I win!!!
This looks like a very good resource and guide to get closer to being independent.
I would like to learn about gardening and keeping chickens.
Mushrooms is something we’ve wanted to learn more about.
More on gardening.