The New Homesteader: How to Create a Self-sufficient Home Farm, Grow your own Produce and Raise Livestock

The New Homesteader provides all the knowledge necessary for anyone thinking of embracing a self-sustaining lifestyle and starting their own homestead or urban farm – or even just tending their own plot to provide fresh ingredients throughout the year.

Starting with the Kitchen Garden, Nick and Bella Ivins discuss designing and planning their plot then move on to choosing and planting fruit and vegetable crops. Next, in The Orchard, they explain how to plant and tend an orchard as well as different varieties of soft fruit. Animals covers the topic of livestock, including bees, chickens and other small poultry, and rearing lambs and pigs. The Garden shows how to make any additional outside space productive by planting a wildflower meadow, a small woodland, and even a nuttery. Following on, The Outbuildings takes a closer look at the places at the heart of a successful homestead - the barn, the woodyard, the workshop, and the store, where summer produce is stored to keep the homestead going during the lean winter months. Finally, in The Farmhouse, Nick and Bella move on to the hub of the homestead, the backdrop for day-to-day farm life. The farmhouse kitchen is the place where produce is preserved, bread is baked, and dairy products are produced. Other sections address homestead housekeeping with natural cleaning products.

Whether you dream of starting a homestead in the city, the country, or the suburbs to become fully or partially self sufficent, The New Homesteader puts the dream within reach.

About the Authors:

Bella and Nick Ivins have spent the last ten years restoring Walnuts Farm and its surrounding five acres into a beautiful, productive modern homestead. Here, the couple have embraced the 'good life' along with their two daughters, Flora and Peggy. Walnuts Farm is also a location house for the film and photographic industry, with clients including John Lewis, Net a Porter and Neal's Yard.