The Hunt & Forage Edition of Homestead Kitchen Magazine is Here!

As homesteaders, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we can produce. We tend gardens, care for animals, stock our pantry shelves with home preserves. But more and more I’m paying attention to the abundance all around us. 

Wild mushrooms, berries, medicinal herbs, game…treasures that exist without us needing to do anything. This month's Hunt & Forage Edition of Homestead Kitchen is designed to help you make the most of the beautiful bounty right in front of you. 

If you’re new to foraging, Lisa Rose gives you a great place to begin, while Heather Levin shares fall foods you can forage for your chickens. Lauren Landers takes something most of us have walked over thousands of times - acorns - and teaches you how to turn them into flour. And Judson Carroll looks back at the long history of fall hunting and foraging.

There’s plenty to bring into the kitchen, too. Mary Peed teaches how to make fruit butter, and Cook From the Pantry is all about making the most of unexpected food. We’re also looking at The Cost of Convenience in Traditional Cooking, which is a good reminder that learning to do something ourselves can often give us more options in the kitchen.

Since fall is also butchering season for many homesteaders, I’m sharing some of my tips for butchering meat at home, along with the tools we use for the job. And if your attention is turning toward putting the garden to bed, Dianne Hadorn walks you through preparing it for the off-season.

You’ll also find articles from Dr. Patrick Jones and Dr. Torrie Thompson, encouragement from Danae Hutchinson on teaching our children, a harvest meal to help you gather people around the table, and a look at the favorite hobbies of 12-year-old Rose.

In Heart of the Homestead, I’m talking about something I think many of us need at one time or another: what to do when rest doesn’t seem to be enough.

I hope you’ll find a few things in these pages that you can actually put to work this fall—maybe trying your hand at foraging, making your first batch of fruit butter, getting more confident with home butchering, or simply dealing with the garden before winter arrives.

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