About

No matter what your personal living-off-the-land dream looks like right now, and whether you have 100 acres all to yourself or you live in a city apartment, Pioneering Skills for Everyone: Modern Homesteading will bring you closer to that dream than you ever thought possible. In 24 exciting lessons with in-field demonstrations, you will learn how to grow a wide variety of produce in raised bed gardens or in back porch containers, the basics of soapmaking, how to pickle or ferment vegetables, the fundamental hand tools you will need for any project, and so much more.

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Episodes

1. What Is Modern Homesteading?

27m

Explore the many ways modern homesteading can bring some of the spirit and benefits of traditional homesteading into your life. Once you identify your own goals and skills-both the skills you bring and the ones you want to learn-you're ready to get started. Even with a tiny garden, you can begin your own version of modern homesteading.

2. Keeping Bees and Harvesting Honey

25m

There are many benefits of apiculture, but you'll have a bit to learn if you want to stay safe. Discover your options for building or buying the hive itself, how to recognize bees in various stages of development, and see the best way to harvest the honey. With just a few hives, you'll have plenty of honey for yourself, family, and friends, and your garden will be pollinated.

3. Raising Goats on Your Homestead

23m

Goats are relatively easy and inexpensive to maintain as livestock. But you'll need to build your goat shelter before the animals arrive! With step-by-step directions, you'll learn how to shelter, feed, and breed your goats to develop a healthy herd that's the appropriate size for your homestead.

4. Milking Goats and Making Cheese

24m

Examine the nutritional relationship between nannies and their kids, and learn the "when, why, and how" of milking goats. Discover how to make paneer, chevre, ricotta, and mozzarella cheese, fresh from the milk of your own livestock.

5. Processing and Butchering Goats for Meat

22m

If you do keep goats and want to use some for meat, you'll need to know the most humane and the safest ways to kill and butcher the animals. Following this detailed visual guide, you could produce about many pounds of meat from each goat, including loins, roasts, stew meat, and burgers.

6. Raising Chickens on Your Homestead

25m

In this lesson, you'll learn how to choose the variety of chickens that best meet your specific needs. With detailed guidance, you'll discover how to build the appropriate housing for chicks and older chickens, as well as nest boxes and perches. And should you decide to eat your chickens, this lesson will also teach you how to kill and butcher them.

7. Fencing for Livestock and Gardens

33m

Inadequate fencing can cause the loss of plants and animals and make it impossible to regulate the growth of your livestock herd. With step-by-step guidance, you'll discover how to build the most effective fencing to keep female goats, male goats, and chickens in (and separate from each other), and deer and rabbits out.

8. Grapevines and Small Vineyards

21m

Learn how to start from the ground up to grow grapevines that produce a maximum yield of large sugary fruit. With these easy-to-learn planting, trellising, pruning, and harvesting techniques, each of your homestead grapevines could produce 100 pounds of fruit per year, possibly for decades.

9. How to Make Homemade Wine

23m

If you do plant a vineyard on your homestead, you can easily make your own basic wine following these step-by-step instructions. You can also take your process to the next level to create a consistent, high-quality wine by using a hydrometer and understanding specific gravity. With those tools, you can develop just the taste you're looking for.

10. Fundamentals of Gardening and Soil

30m

Compare the pros and cons of various types of gardening-tillage, mulch, container, and raised bed-to determine which is best for your homestead. You'll also learn about the five main components of soil, how to determine which macro- and micronutrients your plants need, and how to supply those with the appropriate fertilizer.

Extended Details

SeriesPioneering Skills for Everyone: Modern Homesteading

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

The Great CoursesDirector

The Great CoursesProducer

Greg PryorActor