Category Archives for "Raising Your Own Food"

Breeding Chickens Naturally: Selective Breeding for Eggs & Chicks

By Melissa Norris | Chickens , Livestock , Podcast , Raising Your Own Food

Breeding chickens naturally using selective breeding for eggs and chicks, either to build up your own flock or to create a homestead income from your chickens, can be a great way to support yourself and keep heritage breeds alive. I recently read The Homesteader’s Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook by Amy Fewell and knew I had […]

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Crop Rotation in the Garden Based on Plant Families

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast

Crop rotation in the garden based on plant families for an easy to create system for the home vegetable garden so you have healthier soil and less disease. Today we are going to be diving into one of my favorite topics because it’s made a huge difference in my garden since I started doing it. […]

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No Till Gardening Benefit’s & Getting Started

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast , Raising Your Own Food

No till gardening pro’s and getting started using a no till method in your garden plus some fun tips for growing amazing tomatoes in containers! My guest today, Joe Lamp’l from the Joe Gardener Show Podcast as well as the Growing a Greener World TV show, is passionate about organic gardening methods and is a […]

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How to Plan Your Homestead Year with Budget & Time Restrictions

By Melissa Norris | Podcast , Raising Your Own Food

How to plan your homestead year and prioritize your food and livestock goals. I confess I have not always been a planner. In fact, for many years of my life, I was the fly by the seat of my pants type of gal. Always thinking we’d just get it done when it needs to be […]

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How Many Fruit & Berry Plants Per Person

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast

How many fruit & berry plants per person for a year’s worth of food do you need to plant? Oftentimes there isn’t a lot of focus on how many fruit trees or berry plants to put into the garden in order to feed your family for a full year. The focus is typically on annual […]

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List of Heirloom Varieties to Grow in the Garden This Year

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast

One of the most asked questions I get is what specific variety of plants we use on the homestead. So in today’s episode, we’re diving into all the varieties of plants we grow in our garden! Before I tell you the exact specific varieties that we grow here on my homestead. I do need to […]

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Where to Buy Heirloom Seeds – Heirloom, Hybrid & GMO Differences

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast , Raising Your Own Food

Where to buy heirloom seeds and what’s the real difference between an heirloom, hybrid, or GMO seed? These are questions I get asked quite a bit. I’ll cover all this and more in today’s episode as many of us are planning out our garden, figuring out what plants we’ll be seed starting, and ordering the […]

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Seed Packet Information – How to Read Seed Packets for Gardening Success

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast

Learning how to assess seed packet information and reading those seed packets can make a big difference in your gardening success. Back when we first started raising our own garden which was, *cough* 20 years ago. I didn’t really understand as much as I do now. I especially didn’t know about what seed variety that […]

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Biggest Garden Planning Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast

The biggest garden planning mistakes and how to avoid them! Planning a garden is one of my favorite subjects although I didn’t always recognize or realize how much value it has. Today I’ll be sharing my tips on planning a garden and mistakes to avoid…including one common tip that you’d find when doing a Google […]

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Top Takeaways for Vegetable Gardeners from Last Season’s Garden

By Melissa Norris | Gardening , Podcast

My top takeaways from the vegetable gardener from this past year’s garden and how you can use the same evaluation for your garden. Why do this? I think in all aspects of our lives it’s important we take time to reflect and to look back and analyze what went right (what we want to do […]

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