Homestead Living: May/June 2026

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What’s Inside?

From Anna Sakawsky, Editor-in-Chief:

“This issue of Homestead Living is all about finding that balance and learning to hold two things at once: responsibility and freedom, effort and ease, labor and enjoyment, the pursuit of individualism and self-reliance and the personal sacrifice of serving others and answering a higher calling.”

From vertical gardening to the return of “home ec” and being too stubborn to quit, the March/April 2026 issue of Homestead Living will inspire you to find true balance in your homesteading life!

Here are the articles waiting for you inside this stunning issue …

If I Were a Bureaucrat by Joel Salatin
Joel Salatin imagines stepping into the role of a government bureaucrat and outlines how he would operate differently … never defaulting to “no,” actively seeking private-sector solutions, helping petitioners navigate paperwork, and courageously bucking rigid rules that don’t fit real-life contexts. With his signature wit and frustration at overly cautious or dysfunctional systems, he challenges the status quo by showing what could happen if bureaucrats prioritized freedom, innovation, common sense, and actually helping people succeed instead of simply protecting their own positions.

Bringing Home Your First Dairy Cow by Robyn Jackson
Robyn Jackson walks first-time milkmaids through the realities of adding a family milk cow, emphasizing the need for careful planning around infrastructure, feed requirements, daily time commitment, and ongoing costs before making the purchase. She stresses buying from a reputable source rather than an auction, choosing a healthy, tested, preferably bred-back cow that matches your resources and goals, and preparing a solid first-aid kit and milking setup, reminding readers that a dairy cow is a lifestyle commitment that rewards thoughtful preparation with nourishing milk and an even deeper connection to the land.

Fermenting Chicken Feed by Lisa Steele
Lisa Steele shares how fermenting chicken feed is an easy, old-fashioned practice that boosts nutrient absorption, supports gut health, strengthens immunity, and can even reduce overall feed costs while making the grains more palatable for the flock. With straightforward instructions using simple ingredients, she shows how any backyard chicken keeper can quickly add this beneficial step to their routine for glossier feathers, firmer droppings, better laying, and healthier birds overall.

Getting Started With Goats by Kelsey Wulf
Kelsey Wulf offers a practical beginner’s guide to bringing goats home, covering everything from finding a large-animal vet and buying healthy animals (at least two, since goats are herd animals) to secure fencing, proper housing, feeding with quality hay and minerals, hoof trimming, parasite management, and breeding basics. With straightforward advice on common challenges and realistic expectations, she helps homesteaders understand how goats can provide milk, meat, fiber, or simply entertainment and weed control, but they require knowledgeable, responsible care to thrive and become a true asset to the homestead.

The Return of Home Economics by Jessica Spiers
Jessica Spiers explains how traditional home economics skills (once central to education) have largely disappeared from schools, leaving many families without practical knowledge for managing a household, and shows how modern homesteading can be used to fill that role by teaching planning, production, prevention, price comparison, and resourcefulness through real daily life. With a focus on stewardship, intentional choices, and raising capable children who learn to cook, grow, preserve, repair, and manage resources well, she reminds us that homesteading isn’t about going backward but moving forward with the timeless wisdom of the past to build stronger, more resilient families.

Vertical Gardening by Jill McSheehy

Jill McSheehy shares how training crops to grow upward instead of outward can dramatically increase harvests, improve airflow, reduce disease, simplify picking, and free up ground for companion planting or succession crops. With practical advice on the best vertical crops (including pole beans, peas, cucumbers, indeterminate tomatoes, luffa, vining squash, and small melons) and strong support options like arch trellises, cattle panels, A-frames, and bean teepees, she shows how strategic vertical growing can turn any garden into a more productive, manageable, and beautiful space.

Grow Your Own Medicine by Bevin Cohen
Bevin Cohen shows how to turn your garden into a personal pharmacy by growing beautiful, medicinal plants that provide natural remedies for common ailments. With practical growing tips and medicinal uses for favorites like calendula (skin salve), comfrey (wound healing and fertilizer), echinacea (immune support), horehound (coughs), and yarrow (wounds and bleeding), he encourages homesteaders to plant these easy, rewarding herbs so they can create teas, tinctures, salves, and syrups straight from the garden.

Tomato Growing Secrets by Anna Sakawsky
Anna Sakawsky shares practical secrets for growing healthier tomato plants and reaping bigger harvests by focusing on warm-weather planting, deep transplanting to encourage strong roots, consistent calcium and watering to prevent blossom end rot, pruning lower branches and suckers for better airflow, and keeping foliage dry to reduce disease. With clear tips on choosing determinate or indeterminate varieties, mulching, and providing proper support, she shows how small, consistent practices can turn even challenging tomato seasons into rewarding ones filled with abundant, flavorful homegrown fruit.

A Seasoned Gardener’s Guide to Less Stress by Carolyn Thomas
Carolyn Thomas shares how the garden can quietly become a source of pressure through big dreams, comparison, and unrealistic expectations, and offers gentle wisdom on simplifying by focusing on crops that fit your family’s needs, preservation routines, and real-life capacity. With practical habits like spending a few minutes in the garden daily, working in small increments, planning with the harvest in mind, and choosing contentment over constant expansion, she shows how to grow with less stress, more joy, and a garden that truly serves your household instead of overwhelming it.

The Power of the Family Table by RuthAnn Zimmerman
RuthAnn Zimmerman shares how the simple daily habit of gathering around the family table builds strong family culture, deep relationships, and lasting spiritual connection, drawing from her Old Order Mennonite upbringing where meals were central to connection and order. With practical tips like family-style dining, assigned seating, positive routines, prayer, and encouraging meaningful conversation, she shows that even humble meals become powerful tools for teaching values, strengthening bonds, and creating the kind of legacy every family longs for.

Old-Fashioned Homemade Sodas by CeAnne Kosel
CeAnne Kosel revives the simple, nostalgic art of making real homemade sodas using flavorful syrups crafted from fresh herbs, fruits, and pantry staples, showing how a quick simmer of sugar, water, and real-food ingredients creates versatile bases that far surpass store-bought versions in both taste and quality. With easy recipes for classic vanilla cream soda, fresh orange soda, and bright lemon-lime soda, she demonstrates how anyone can mix up refreshing, customizable fizzy drinks at home using raw ingredients and sparkling water, bringing back the joy of old-fashioned soda without synthetic dyes or corn syrup.

What to Do Next On Your Homestead Journey by Melissa K. Norris

Melissa K. Norris explains how homesteading demands both long-range vision and short-term focus, showing readers how to break big goals into manageable 90-day sprints so they stop stalling and actually move forward without burning out. With a simple framework of choosing one main focus per season, two supporting goals, and keeping everything else in maintenance mode (plus honest questions about what truly serves your family right now) she helps homesteaders take the next right step with clarity, confidence, and realistic expectations.

Honey Fermentation by Kaylee Richardson

Kaylee Richardson shares the ancient tradition of preserving herbs, roots, and berries in raw honey, turning simple ingredients like ginger, elderberries, garlic, and rosehips into living ferments that support immune health, digestion, and overall vitality while honoring the medicinal gifts of both plants and the hive. With practical guidance on using raw honey’s natural enzymes and antimicrobial properties to safely ferment and extract plant compounds, she shows how these sweet, versatile preserves become everyday staples in the kitchen and apothecary … delicious, shelf-stable, and deeply nourishing.

Natural Protocols for Stress Management by Dr. Patrick Jones

Adapt and reset with herbs and lifestyle. Dr. Patrick Jones explains how chronic stress keeps the body stuck in sympathetic “fight-or-flight” mode, suppressing essential parasympathetic functions like digestion, healing, immunity, and rest, and offers practical ways to reset the nervous system through nutrition, exercise, deep breathing, rest, and adaptogenic herbs. With clear guidance on using nutrient-dense weeds, moderate movement, calm breathing, and powerful adaptogens like ashwagandha, ginseng, oat straw, and medicinal mushrooms, he shows how small, consistent changes can bring the body back into balance, reduce overwhelm, and support steady energy and calm on the homestead.

A Life Worth Keeping by Eve Kilcher

Prioritizing presence over production and enjoying the journey. Eve Kilcher opens up about the exhaustion that hits during the manic summer season and shares how she learned to shift from relentless production to prioritizing presence, letting go of perfection, and making peace with doing less so her family can actually enjoy the homestead life. With honest reflections and practical advice on realistic planning, community support, healthy boundaries, and embedding children into daily chores, she reminds us that true homesteading success isn’t about doing it all … it’s about sustaining what matters most and creating a life worth keeping.

Too Stubborn to Quit by Joel Salatin

In our brand new column, “Lessons From the Homestead,” Joel Salatin shares some of his biggest homesteading blunders (from building with PVC and failed winter worm beds to hotshot genetics and cheap off-brand equipment) and the hard lessons each one taught him about durability, realistic expectations, and the true cost of “bargains.” With humor and wit, he reminds us that success isn’t about never failing; it’s about being too stubborn to quit, getting up one more time, and letting every mistake turn into the kind of experience and wisdom you can’t Google.

*NOTE: Purchase of this single issue will NOT start a monthly subscription to Homestead Living. You can do that right here 😉