4 Seasonal Tasks for the Autumn Homestead
Prepare your homestead for fall and winter with these 4 seasonal tasks for homesteading and health…
One aspect of living sustainably is living seasonally: eating and living according to the seasons that direct the natural world. Homesteaders and gardeners the world over understand the importance of seasonal planning, and making an effort to plan ahead according to the seasons can make a big difference in the success of your homesteading endeavors. (For example, you wouldn’t want to hatch a batch of new chicks right before winter if you live in a cold climate!)
In this homesteading podcast from MelissaKNorris.com, you’ll learn some tips for seasonal living that will come in handy this fall and throughout the winter and the year ahead. Listen in below to learn about seasonal tasks to do in the autumn, such as home food preservation, preparing natural medicines for cold and flu season, harvesting, and more.
Food Preservation
Food preservation is the ultimate fall season homesteading task! Options for preserving:
- Canning
- Dehydrating
- Pressure can
- Pickling
- Fermenting
How to make things fast and efficient when preserving carrots (or other vegetables).
- Harvest.
- Chop the tops off and toss those to the chickens, because they love to get fresh greens, or put it in the compost pile if you don’t have any livestock.
- Wash and peel. The extra peelings go in my bone broth bag. (I save onion skins, garlic skins, the end, odd and ends from celery, carrots, peppers, anything like that and put in the freezer to make bone broth at a later time).
- Decide how I want to use these carrots (or other veggies) throughout the year in different meals…
- Preserve them keeping in mind what recipes and meals you want to use them for, as well as what space and resources you have available.
Make Bone Broth
Bone broth is a great natural remedy especially going into fall and typically cold and flu season. Now, I’m not a medical professional. I’m not a certified herbalist. I’m not giving you medical advice. This is just for informational purposes…
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I highly recommend, when making homemade bone broth:
1. Cook it for a really long time so you get the gelatin and collagen in (unless you’re using the Instant Pot, then it’s only 2 hours).
2. Make sure that it is from animals that were raised ethically, and organically, and pasture-raised, if at all possible.I can have bone broth going within 5 minutes by using my prep tips of having your broth bags. When I roast our chickens I will then freeze the bones and the carcasses of them after we have cooked them. So I take out those carcasses, and with my bag of frozen vegetable scraps and I can have bone broth going in as much time as it takes me to dump them in the pot.
Dry Herbs
Fall is the time for harvesting herbs as well, and you want to knowing how you’re going to be using them in the end. I’m drying them for cooking and I’m also restocking all of my natural remedies in our natural medicine cabinet this time of year too. Drying herbs is what most people do.
You can do them in the dehydrator at 95 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Or you can do it the old-fashioned method where you pick them, tie them together and hang them upside down until they’re totally dry.
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Make Homemade Herbal Infused Oils & Herbal Tinctures
Fresh herbs can be used to make a tincture. See our video here on how to Make Herbal Infused Oils & Tinctures
Typically in the fall is when I will make up a whole bunch of our soap, then I usually only have to make soap once or twice a year we’ve got all of our bars of our homemade soap to take us all the way through the year.
Soap and salve making also coincides very well with butcher time if you’re going to be using tallow and/or lard from your own animals.
Listen to the full episode here:
