If there's one lesson that I've learned since we started on our homesteading venture, it's that setting up a 'stead doesn't come cheap. While we focus on reusing and re-purposing items as well as searching for inexpensive alternatives, one area we've found can cause considerable cost is amassing a resource library. Research and information is vital to us as neither myself nor Mr. Newbie come from agricultural backgrounds and as anyone who's gone looking for information at places like Amazon or Barnes & Nobel knows those books aren't inexpensive. Local libraries and online sites can be a wealth of useful and much appreciated information but sometimes you just want to know where to go without looking through pages and pages of search results (or at least I do)...
Well, look no further! I stumbled across a wonderful resource for free farm and homesteading information and want to share it with you: USDA Farm Bulletins! Now I realize that these are older publications but the information in them is still very relevant to today's aspiring 'steader community. You can find these to buy in paper form on eBay and other places but my favorite is a free online option for reading them via the digital library at the University of North Texas. I'm in the process of saving links to those that are most interesting to us in our Library section as I discover them. The University lists over 1800 results in the Farm Bulletin Serial so go ahead and check them out, I'm sure you'll find something that will be helpful to you, I sure did.
If you'd like a bit more hands-on and personal experience you can do as my southern granny does and visit or call up your local county agent or county extension office. These folks are a storehouse of knowledge for the home gardener and homesteader alike. If (like me) you have no idea how to locate your extension officer you can do so by searching you're state on the "Pick Your Own" website here.
I've already found some very interesting and useful information on our specific locality via my local extension office's website (which is found with the office's contact details at the link above) and I'm sure we will be making even more extensive use of these guys once we make the full-time move to our property and start building up our homestead.
I'd love to hear your ideas and resources as well, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.
this post may have been shared at one (or all) of these wonderful blog hops!
This is really a great idea for folks just beginning their homestead journey. Some twenty years ago we used our Agricultural Extension Office for our county to get free info on farming and appreciated what they had to offer at the time. They have been helpful in the past, but since we've become more responsible about not using pesticides, fertilizers, etc. we have to raise our eyebrows at some of their methods. The internet is actually a great source with so many youtube videos - on just about anything you need or want to know.
ReplyDeleteHave a great week!
Hi there Magnolia, thanks for stopping by and sharing your experiences with us and for the caution to organic growers to use the given advice judiciously.
DeleteThanks for the information inspiration! The more the better I say. I do like to maintain a home library as well because sometimes our internet is not trustworthy on the farm. All you need are about 3 basic books and you have the knowledge of a lifetime! Some of our favorites are the Carla Emory book and Back to Basics. Thank you for sharing with us on the Art of Home-Making Mondays! :) Have a lovely week!
ReplyDeleteHi JES, thanks for leaving your great suggestions. We own and like the Back to Basics book as well. I hope you have a great week ahead.
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