The Weekend Homesteader Review
This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.
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:
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
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’d like ot learn more about raising animals on the Homestead.
I want to learn more about chickens, gardening, and fermenting.
I would love to learn more about to make steady progress towards homesteading. I grow a garden, but am not sure what else I could start doing (especially in the winter months)…. Thank you for this chance to win the book!
I’d love to get some experience smoking, curing an dehydrating.
Thanks for this grate offer!
I would like to find out more about everything honestly. I want chickens but where I live we are not allowed to have chickens. Thanks for this opportunity.
We continually try new methods we learn via blogs and facebook sites in order to improve things around the ol farmstead.
We do as much as we can literally afford and as time allows we hope to be more self sufficient and of course to continue to learn as we go along. thanks for the chance to win your book.
I would love to win this book!
Looks like a good resource for someone just getting started.
I really want to learn about canning and raising chickens, but all homesteading tasks are great to know!
I’m going to have chickens this spring so I really need all the help I can get! We also have a small greenhouse but it’s not used to its fullest potential, so help with that would be awesome!
This would be a great book to add to my library!
Would love to learn more about building a chicken coop and raising chickens!
Like to know more about gardening and keeping chickens.
Short term I’d love to learn more about homesteading w/o land as I currently live in an apartment. My 2-5 year plan is for a big move, home paid for, lots of land, chickens, and a massive garden for self-sufficiency, so there’s still a lot to learn!
I just started Homesteading myself. I have a little garden and a Rooster and I had 19 chickens but 2 died. I want to start incubating them but don’t know how. I also just bought a pressure canner/cooker and just started canning. I want to buy rabbits for meat and some chickens and turkeys for meat. There’s so much I need to learn!
Would love to learn more about preserving harvest.
I would like to learn absolutely everything I possibly can about how to become self-sufficient. I deplore relying on anyone for anything, especially if any government is keeping tabs on me 😛
I’m in my second year of preserving (and gardening) and I’m ready to take on more ambitious projects, which is why this book appeals to me so much. Rainwater, composting, better planning. I need help and guidance with it all, for sure.
I would love a book like that. I just recently started learning about permaculture and living off the land and it has become somewhat of an obsession. I currently rent an apartment, but have started to put away money towards buying my own piece of land in 2013 where I can grow organic fruits and veg and keep a few chickens and goats. I still have a lot to learn, but have already started educating myself in saving seeds and planting crops!
I would like to learn more about making seed oils. Specifically pomegranate seed oil.