Handbook

Every registration comes with a digital version of the handbook sent to your email. Attendees can purchase a physical, high-quality 3-ring binder handbook for $30 during registration or at the event. 

What's in the Modern Homesteading Handbook?

The Modern Homesteading Handbook is a practical, hands-on resource designed to help you build a homesteading lifestyle that fits your goals, property, budget, and everyday life. Whether you are just getting started or already raising animals, growing food, preserving your harvest, or managing land, this handbook brings together the information and planning tools you need in one place.

Organized into 11 chapters, the handbook includes practical factsheets, worksheets, planning tools, and reusable laminated pages covering:

• Vision & Goals — Understanding modern homesteading, common misconceptions, fitting homesteading into your life, and setting goals.

• Budget & Business — Balancing a homesteading budget, understanding taxes, and evaluating enterprises.

• Land — Making the most of your property, buying land, understanding regulations, and using Web Soil Survey.

• Emergency Preparedness — First-aid supplies, important paperwork, and emergency contact information.

• Utilities & Maintenance — Wells, septic systems, generators, solar, heating systems, and small-engine maintenance.

• Gardening — Soil, indoor and outdoor growing, perennial crops, fertilizer, garden planning, planting schedules, and planting records.

• Livestock — Eggs and meat production; sheep, goats, beef, dairy, horses, swine, and beekeeping; plus fencing, grazing, livestock records, hay needs, and biosecurity.

• Woodlands & Foraging — Tree planting, timber harvest, woodland management, foraging, and a phenology tracker.

• Food Preservation & Cooking — Food safety, water-bath and pressure canning, fermentation, dehydrating, smoking and curing, freezing, cooking meat, inventory management, sourdough, and fish.

• Homemade Products — Leatherwork, soaps, tinctures, and other homemade goods.

• Next Steps & Revenue — Exploring ways to turn your skills and resources into income through farmers markets and other opportunities, along with additional resources to keep learning.

With factsheets to build your knowledge, worksheets to help you plan, and laminated pages for reusable planning and recordkeeping, the Modern Homesteading Handbook is designed to be something you can actually use—not just read.

It is a resource for turning the idea of homesteading into a realistic, organized plan that works for your life, your land, and your goals.