My mistakes are your free lessons in this article: Learn how you can actually make money as a small farmer, based on my experiences.
It's often one of the most labor-intensive steps in hide tanning, but fleshing a deer hide (or any other animal hide) doesn't have to be so hard.
Rare and endangered sheep are a great choice for small farmers who are preservation-minded. In this article, I recommend five breeds that do well on hobby farms.
If you're a small-scale grower, use these four tips to make your experience selling at farmers' markets more enjoyable and profitable.
Your cloth diapers can come out of the laundry clean, without stains, and smelling fresh even if you have hard water—just follow this advice, from one cloth-diapering parent to another!
Rotational grazing is good for your animals and good for your land. Learn how to use an electric netting fence for your sheep, goats, pigs, and more.
Here's an easy guide from a market gardener to help you start selling your garden produce or homemade goods at a farmers market!
You don't need a greenhouse or a plant room to start plants for your garden. Learn how I use minimal space in my home to start plants from seed indoors!
Want to honor the whole rabbit and save its beautiful fur? Here's how to master the art of preserving and tanning the pelts of rabbits and other animals.
What can you learn from my failed small-scale farming experience?
In this article I explain how to make your own Castile soap, using both the hot and cold process methods, for bars or liquid soap!
Here's how to calculate how much hay to buy each winter for your goats, sheep, horse, or other livestock to avoid buying too much or too little.
For next to no money and almost no effort (yay!), you can make your own all-natural liquid laundry soap and say bye to expensive, harsh commercial laundry detergent forever.
Cage-free, free-roaming, and free-ranging rabbits for meat—does it work? Here's how I made it work.
Discover crucial information that could save the life of a lamb that is cold, chilled, or has hypothermia. Hypoglycemia and starvation are addressed, as well.
Here are my top five picks of sheep breeds for the small (or hobby) farm, plus bonus material!
An easy-to-use, novice-friendly guide to setting up and energizing an electric net fence for the purpose of containing livestock animals.
Stock-piling cash, moving halfway across the country, shopping for, and finally deciding to purchase, a small farm. (Or, why has Farmer Rachel been away from Hubpages for so long?)
Raising animals for the purpose of human consumption appears to be something of a moral and ethical dilemma, and here's why: Animals including cattle, sheep, chickens, hogs, geese, ducks, goats, and all others are living, thinking, feeling beings...
Five chickens breeds that are weird-looking, interesting, uncommon and downright different.
Whether you're planning on breeding your pet sheep or are interested in trying to earn some extra money getting into the markets for lamb, mutton, or wool, this article will provide you with the information that you'll need to get started breeding sheep.
Split fence rails were used in the past to protect their crop fields, their property boundaries, or to contain their livestock. It's still useful in some cases to know how to build this type of fence today.
What's so great about chopping wood? How about more self-confidence, stronger and tighter abdominal muscles, and relief from stress and frustrations.
Hot-process soap making is one way to make all-natural soap at home. But what can you add to it to make it more interesting? Here's an account of some of my recent adventures in hot-process soap making.
Looking to achieve a little more self-sufficiency in terms of raising meat livestock? Here's what you need to know about producing your own chicken and pork.
Everything you need to know to get started raising your own chickens for eggs, meat, or both.
This article shares info about scythes and explains why I like mowing with one, and why you might like it, too.
My top five picks for egg-laying chicken breeds.
If no one has suggested that you consider farming as a career, then let me be the first. Within the next 20 years, more than half of all the farmers in the United States will be too old to work, retired, or deceased.
A hard apple cider recipe with a twist of pear! Simple, easy-to-follow instructions for making apple pear cider.
Country wines are so much fun and perfect for those of us who aren't brewing or wine-making experts! Here's a simple recipe with easy-to-follow instructions for making peach wine from whole peaches.
There's so much to do in Lancaster County, PA! Discover local markets, horse-and-buggy rides, an amazing buffet, and more in this photo tour of my visit to Amish country.
This is my simple, easy-to-follow recipe for delicious homemade ginger beer.
Raising geese is a lot easier than you may think. The effort is well worth it, especially if you use the natural tendencies of the geese to benefit you. Read on to learn about weeder geese, pet geese, and security alarm geese!
Why use artificial ingredients to color your all-natural homemade soap? Check out these easy-to-use natural ingredients that will give your soap the beautiful colors you're looking for!
How to go from no garden to new garden using simple methods and only hand tools. Here's how to prepare your soil for planting.
What's so great about working with horses? Learn about utilizing the horse as a source of power, based on my personal farming experiences using them to perform agricultural labor and other tasks.
Learn how to make simple, natural, authentic soap at home using ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen. Soap making does not have to be a costly hobby—in fact, you may find that it's ultimately cheaper than buying soap!
Who doesn't love oak trees? They're big, beautiful, useful, and can live for hundreds of years. Here's a list of some common oak species in the US with detailed descriptions and photos of bark and leaves to aid in identification. Happy oak hunting!
Chopping firewood is fun, and it's great exercise. Here's a guide to just about everything you need to know to get choppin'.
If you want to try soap making, this is a very simple, easy-to-use cold process recipe with only three ingredients: lard, lye, and water.
Aside from being an important agricultural commodity, sheep are often kept as pets. This article offers tips on caring for pet sheep, whether you already have them or would like to know what it takes to look after sheep as pets.
Splitting firewood by hand can be really fun, and it's a great source of exercise. Read on to learn about five different types of hardwood trees and how they stack up to one another in terms of heating, "split-ability," and more.
A simple recipe for fermenting apple cider.
This article contains a simple, easy-to-follow recipe with instructions for making homemade raspberry wine from whole raspberries.