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Perhaps when one thinks of homesteading they have images in their mind of digging in the garden on a warm summer day or perhaps putting in fence posts while sweat runs down your brow and no doubt these scenes are common on the homestead but in the winter homesteading looks completely different. On today’s podcast episode I discuss homesteading in the wintertime, what’s different about it, and the things you can do to keep homesteading when the regular warm-weather activities just aren’t an option.

Winter Animal Care

This is one of the things that can’t stop just because it’s cold outside but rather get more difficult and urgent in the wintertime.

Shelter

Your animals absolutely must have a place they can go when it gets really bad outside. Large livestock for sure are more resilient to bad weather but smaller livestock needs to be able to escape the moisture and the wind at the very least. Make regular checks of your animal’s shelters to make sure it is doing the job and that there is plenty of bedding material for them to stay warm in.

Food

Animals need more nutrients in the winter because their body uses more trying to stay warm so they need the right food. With some livestock, this is more critical than others but make sure when feeding your animals you take this into consideration.

Water

No doubt this can be one of the biggest challenges of caring for livestock in the winter. If you have heated tanks, dishes, and bottles it’s not too big of a deal but if not then keeping ice broke and waterers thawed can be a lot of your wintertime homesteading activities.

Winter Gardening

Is there such a thing? There can be if you want it bad enough, It just takes a little planning, work, and maybe a little creativity.

Greenhouse

This of course is an option if you work on it ahead of time. This will be my first winter with a greenhouse and can already tell it’s going to be a large part of my wintertime homesteading. This doesn’t have to be an expensive option, there are several DIY inexpensive greenhouse ideas out there to get you extending your seasonal growing. Here is an article with 3 of the best DIY Greenhouse Videos to help you make this a reality on your homestead.

Cold Frames

Cold frames are an easy way to get a little winter gardening outside in the frigid temps. These are great for keeping leafy greens going through much of the winter. Building a cold frame can be as simple as squaring off a section of the garden with some straw bales and laying old windows or glass storm doors across them creating a greenhouse effect or it can be built with wood framing with an angle to maximize sunlight.

Indoor Container Gardening

If you have a few south-facing windows in your house then sitting a few pots in front of them in the winter can be a great way to continue gardening through the winter months.

Grow Lights

If you’re limited on south-facing windows then grow lights are another option for indoor gardening. Check out a previous podcast I did on everything you need to know about setting up indoor grow lights.

Winter Composting

Just because it’s cold out doesn’t mean you have to stop building soil. Wintertime is a great time to work on making compost it just has to be done a little differently than when it’s warm out.

Outdoor Compost Piles

The bacteria in compost piles do slow down when the temperatures drop but with a little help, they will continue to remain active and break down the material into rich garden compost. Your compost will need less moisture in the winter in order to let more oxygen work into the pile so tarping your compost pile is a good idea in the winter, this will also hold the heat in that is generated by the pile and have a bit of a solarization effect which will help the pile get even hotter. Having a finer shredded material in the pile also helps to heat more uniformly and will insulate it from outside temperature extremes. You may still have to turn your pile, just less often than in warmer weather.

Vermicomposting

This is a great way to compost your kitchen scraps in the winter and can be done by setting up some storage totes or bins in a basement or heated garage. Composting with worms is a slower process but the end result is some of the best garden materials that you could ever have, worm castings (waste) are pure garden gold.

Compost Tumblers

Having a compost tumbler in the garage is a great way to keep composting in the winter. Again the process will be a little slower because of the colder temperatures but it will work, just don’t tumble it quite as often.

Homesteading In The House

This is a great time of the year to focus more on those indoor homesteading activities.

Food Preparation

Cooking is no doubt one of the most important homesteading skills you can acquire and the wintertime is a great time to hone those skills. We especially love baking bread this time of year.

Making Herbal Medicines

This is also a great time to learn how to and make herbal medicines in the form of teas, syrups, oils, tinctures, and salves to have on store the entire year, especially for when you need them and you don’t have time to make them.

Make Homemade Soaps, Cleaners, and Supplies

There are many household and personal cleaning items that can be made at home that are much healthier and even cheaper than store-bought items. Wintertime again is a great time to make and stock up on these things.

Crocheting, Knitting, and Sewing

This is not something I do (not yet anyway) but many folks look at the winter months as a great opportunity to catch up on these activities.

Organizing and Minimizing

This is a great time of the year to work through closets, dressers, junk drawers, and anyplace else where clutter gathers and get it organized, and even get rid of a few things if necessary.

Homesteading In The Workshop

If you’re fortunate enough to have a heated outbuilding of some sort this can be a great place to spend some time in the winter doing some projects that may get put off during the warmer weather.

Work On Small Building Projects

This is a great time for me to fire up the old wood stove in the workshop and work on small building projects. It’s also a great time to do repairs on smaller things that can be taken into the shop to work on.

Stock Up and Organize “Hardware Store” Supplies

I like to organize tools and stock up on supplies like bolts, screws, nails, and other things this time of year. One of my pet peeves is having to stop in the middle of a project and run to the hardware store to pick up something I should already have. I wrote about some of the things it’s good to keep in the homestead shop in this article, “Build Your Own Homestead Hardware Store“

Equipment Maintenance

Wintertime is also a great time to maintain your equipment, especially if you can bring it in the shop. Tractors, lawnmowers, trimmers, and chainsaws are just a few things that need to have regular maintenance but who has time in the warmer months for that!

Work On Basic Preparedness

I’m not talking about preparing for the apocalypse here I’m just talking about being even more prepared than you already are for whatever may come your way. 

Food Storage

As much as I see the importance of healthy eating of good organically grown foods, eating, in general, is more important than having nothing to eat. So I do believe this is a great time to stock up on emergency foods such as store-bought canned foods and things like beans and lentils.

Water Storage

I keep a good amount of water stored up at all times because you never know when you’re going to need it. I save old milk jugs and wash them out and fill them with tap water for an emergency. This is a great time to take inventory of what you have and decide if you need more or not. I store things like this in the basement, under beds, and in the bottoms of closets, it’s amazing how much you can store in your house and never see them unless you’re looking for them.

Backup Power

If putting up a backup power source is on your to-do list then this is a great time to work on that. A battery bank is a great resource to have in an emergency so why not work on that while things are a little slower around the homestead.

Emergency Heat and Light

Having a way to provide these things are crucial in an emergency and there are a lot of options, so rather than discuss all those things here I’ll just say that this is a great time to work on whichever way you decide to go. For us candles, oil lamps, and kerosene heaters are a great backup.

Homestead Education and Planning

There are a million things you can learn to make your homestead better and to help you be more self-sufficient and self-reliant and this is a great time to do just that.

Great Time To Catch Up On Reading

So many great books, magazines, and blog posts and so little time to read them until now that is. Why not take advantage of this little bit of downtime to learn a few things by reading.

Take A Course

Many extension offices and local universities offer homesteading-related courses that could be taken this time of year. There is also an endless number of very good online courses that you could take on just about anything you want to know.

Homestead Layout Planning

This is a great time of the year to start next season’s homesteading plans. How are you going to lay out the garden, what will you add to the homestead in the upcoming months, what income streams will you add, what will you do differently, these are all things you can work out now.

Rest and Relaxation

Let’s not forget what may be the most important wintertime homesteading activity of all.

Kick Back In Front Of A Fire and Look At Seed Catalogs Spend Time Doing Family Things

Go Play In The Snow

What did other folks say they do on their homesteads in the winter?

Gathered from a thread in our Facebook Group the “Homestead Front Porch“

Ruth G.

Quilting. Making soups and stews. Shoveling snow. Reading seed catalogues and wishing for a few more acres.

Jessica R.

Reading up, seed saving, sheet mulching before a true freeze.

Rachel J.

Fodder and sprouts for chickens. Shovel, shovel, and shovel. Snowstorm hitting us with possibly 14 inches today! And crafts, studying, deep cleaning the house. One thing I should be doing is sharpening tools and sanding/preserving the handles.

Steve D.

I piled snow up around all the fruit trees to protect their roots from the cold, and at some point, they’ll need pruning. There always needs to be a big clean-up before things end up lost in the snow. We start lambing in a month! 

Crystal D.

Shoveling, splitting kindling, knitting, reading, switching out water for animals…

Mike B.

This winter I want to assemble my bee frames and make up some more boxes to expand our hives next year. Also, I plan to make a pair of moccasins for my newborn daughter for Christmas and may try making a pair for my wife and myself. Baking breads is on the list as well as cookies.

Crystal D.

Oh and stoking the fire at night…we’re a tiny off-grid homestead?