Below are detailed presentation descriptions. For the schedule overview and locations please visit this page (you will receive a printed program with the speaker schedule in it when you arrive at conference). Schedule is subject to change.
Friday 9:00 to 10:30 am
Carolyn Thomas Preserving on the Fly: Efficient Preservation for Real Life (Demo)
You are preserving the wrong way and you are paying for your mistakes in time, frustration and a less than full pantry! In this presentation, Carolyn from Homesteading Family will show you where you are going wrong with your preserving, how to stop wasting your time during harvest season and how to remake your preserving plan to easily serve your family. You will learn:
- Your #1 food preservation mistake, and how to avoid it!
- The mindset shift you need to make to drastically increase your efficiency during harvest season
- How mixing traditional, off-grid, food preservation and modern machines can drastically reduce your work and time in the kitchen
- The top 6 fastest preservation methods to put up a lot of great food
Lisa Steele – How to Raise Your Chickens Naturally
Learn from a 5th generation chicken keeper how to holistically care for your flock, from best feed choices, prepping your coop for winter and summer, and herbal options for common diseases and maladies.
Anne of All Trades – Creating a Sustainable Homestead Business
Successfully monetize your homestead in a way that gets you closer to, rather than distracting you, from bigger priorities like family, friends, and community members is tricky… business. Anne will share thoughts on common pitfalls homestead business owners face, time and priority management, getting creative with regard to unconventional forms of farm-based businesses, and successful product marketing.
Mary Shrader – Top 10 Foods to Stock in Your Pantry
Create a recession proof pantry that allows you to provide your family no matter what happens with the economy and supply chains.
Tammy Merril – How to Make Homemade Soap (Demo)
In this engaging presentation, participants will delve into the art of crafting cold process soap using readily available materials commonly found on the homestead. From lard and tallow to herbs and essential oils, attendees will discover the diverse array of ingredients that can be harnessed to create luxurious and nourishing soaps. The presentation will feature a dedicated segment on the complex process of rendering tallow, providing insights into this traditional technique. Participants will not only gain practical knowledge on soap-making but also a deeper understanding of utilizing homestead resources for sustainable and personalized skincare solutions.
Kevin Trosclair – How to Butcher/Bone out Small Game (Demo)
In this demo you'll learn how to bone out and break down an animal. You'll learn animal cleanliness, meat science, and watch the step-by-step breaking down of an animal into different cuts of meat, including sausage making.
Daniel Salatin – How to Butcher a Chicken (Demo)
In this demo, you'll learn how to process a chicken from start to finish. Includes equipment tips, slaughtering, plucking, gutting, and cleaning so you can successfully provide a protein source from start to finish for your family at home.
Friday 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Joel Salatin -Building a Homestead Legacy
Many if not most homesteaders are almost afraid to entertain notions of full-time employment and multi-generational sustainability. Using his own
family’s incremental development from homestead and off-farm employment to full-time multi-salaried and multi-generational platform, Joel explains the principles that create legacy outcomes.
Jessica Sowards- Choosing the Right Livestock & Gardening for the Space You Have
Don't make the costly mistakes of choosing the wrong type of livestock and gardens for the space you have. This presentation includes:
- Discussing breeds (heritage vs hybrid)
- Management practices (mobile vs static coops, rotational grazing and permaculture principles of closed loops)
- Gardening Approaches (raised beds, in ground, back to Eden, containers)
- Discussing goals (good, better, best is always best to keep in mind but mindfully working towards an end goal)
Robyn Jackson – Caring for Your Cow throughout Her Lactation
Learn what you need to know to be prepared with your dairy cow through birth all the way to the drying off process. This presentation will discuss health concerns throughout the phases, lactation expectations, common health problems, plus how to support your cow.
Lisa Bass – How to Get From-Scratch Meals on the Table 3 Times a Day W/out Losing Your Sanity
Mom of 8, and from-scratch cook of 16 + years, teaches you how to stock your pantry and freezer with the essentials, create a repertoire of go-to staple meals to build your menu around, the basic skills you need to cook anything and minimize waste, and how to get a family meal on the table when you have 30 minutes or less!
Trevor Hollenback – Sheep Shearing (Demo)
Learn how to employ methods that limit stress to both the sheep and the shearer.
Kevin Trosclair – How to Butcher/Bone out Small Game (Demo) repeat from earlier
In this demo you'll learn how to bone out and break down an animal. You'll learn animal cleanliness, meat science, and watch the step-by-step breaking down of an animal into different cuts of meat, including sausage making.
Daaren Hamilton – How to Trim Cow Hooves -Demo
Friday 2:00 to 3:00 pm
Josh Thomas – Successful Livestock in Winter
Northern climates do not allow for year round grazing, but there are ways to economically feed your livestock throughout the non-growing months. Learn how to optimize your pastures and feed bill without sacrificing the health of your animals. Explore the benefits of housing multi-species as well as systems for managing livestock in the winter months.
Dr. Patrick Jones -Turn Your Garden into a Pharmacy With Ten Must-Have Medicinal Plants
Join Dr. Patrick Jones, veterinarian and traditional naturopath, for a detailed discussion on how to turn your garden into a living medicine cabinet. Doc will teach you how to successfully grow ten amazing herbs and how you can use them for health and healing.
Esther Munroe -From Bush To Bottle: Elderberry Syrup (Demo)
In this presentation I will cover everything you need to know about elderberry. You will leave this class equip with the information to grow, harvest and preserve elderberries of your very own. Bonus! I am giving you my tried and true elderberry syrup recipe! This is the best tasting Elderberry syrup you will not find on any market. You will be an expert on elderberry by the end.
Kristen Stinson- Bake Sourdough Like a Pro: Troubleshooting and Tips for a Perfect Loaf
If you have tried and failed to achieve the picture perfect sourdough boule, don't toss your sourdough starter in the trash! We are going to walk through all of the most common issues we face in our sourdough baking. We will troubleshoot over-proofing and under-proofing dough, avoiding dense flat loaves, adjusting fermenting time for the seasons, flavor, and better digestion, proper scoring tips and tricks, adding in various whole grain flours for a more nutrient dense loaf, proper crumb formation, and more!
Jerry Miller (Amish) – How to Build Community like the Amish
Join Jerry Miller as he shares how his community (the Amish) develop communities that support themselves and how you can use these principals in your own neighbourhood.
Daniel Salatin – How to Butcher a Chicken (Demo)
In this demo, you'll learn how to process a chicken from start to finish. Includes equipment tips, slaughtering, plucking, gutting, and cleaning so you can successfully provide a protein source from start to finish for your family at home.
Friday 3:30 to 4:30 pm
Q&A Round Table
Bring your questions for a question and answer session with Joel & Daniel Salatin, Jessica Sowards, Robyn Jackson, Dr. Patrick Jones, Lisa Steele & Melissa K. Norris
Dr. Corinne Allen – How to Safeguard Life in Our Modern EMF Saturated World
What are the issues with EMF? Is it a problem? How to live with the challenges of EMF. The connection of EMF to chronic health, heart, sugar imbalances, and severe immune challenges. How EMF is affecting our children's learning and behavior. How to effectively protect your body, home, car, and environment from the harmful effects of EMF. How to know if EMF is affecting your health. What is EMF hypersensitivity, and Electrical Illness. How to recognize and correct the health issues that arise from our Electrical world.
Bevin Cohen – How to Make Oil at Home: Nut and Seed Oil Pressing (Demo)
Learn the truth about seed oils (not all are unhealthy) and can be an excellent way to have a sustainable oil source that isn't dependant upon livestock. You'll learn how oil is processed and produced plays a huge role in the health of the actual oil itself and why doing it at home is not only easy, but ensures the quality.
Melody Haege- Field to Table: The Art of Sustainable Hunting
Hunting can be more than just a hobby! As a viable option for putting meat in the freezer while also being the key to a successful conservation model, hunting brings humans back to the basics of taking food from field to table without fences and feed bills. Hear the journey of a former non-hunter turned traditional archer and the successes, failures, and lessons from the field.
Crystal McDonough – Essential Legal Tools & What You Can't Afford to Ignore
Crystal McDonough, the Homesteading Lawyer, will discuss safeguarding your homesteading venture, navigating the unique legal issues of homesteaders, and preserving your future through strategic succession planning. Don't miss this opportunity to learn more about the legal issues facing modern homesteaders and how to protect not only your homestead but also your family and their future.
Saturday 9:00 to 10:00 am
Jessica Sowards – Advanced Succession Planting for Year Round Bounty
How to use advanced succession planting for a year round bounty to maximize your harvest. In this presentation you'll discover:
- Understanding the growing season
- Average frost dates and hard frost dates
- Consulting weather records to know what grows seasonally in your area
- Defining succession sowing through the frost free season vs frost hardy gardening
- Varieties for succession sowing
- Planning backwards (working a preservation plan alongside your succession sowing)
- Seed starting throughout the year
- Greenhouses, and other season extension
Shawn & Beth Doughtery – Homesteading on a Budget
Ever wonder why, if farms are where food comes from, you’re spending so much money on livestock feed, purchased garden fertility, expensive
equipment and infrastructure, and frequent veterinary bills? And even with all the work you’re doing, you’re probably still buying lots of groceries!
Good news: It doesn’t have to be that way. Farms used to feed the farmers and feed themselves, and they still can. Grass-powered, solar-powered,
animal-powered farming follows natural patterns to help the farm feed the farm – without paying for food, feed, or fertility. In this presentation you'll learn how to farm without expensive inputs and feed yourself into the bargain, with more, better, tastier, healthier food than you’ve ever known before.
Dr. Shanon Brooks- Natural Beekeeping: Let the Bees Lead
Dr. Shanon Brooks shares the natural processes of bees, housing (Russian Layens hive), and extraction in this presentation.
In the world of sustainability and even more so-regenerative living-the 3-decade decline of the US and global honeybee population is a serious concern. All of agriculture and the global ecosystem in general, are absolutely dependent on the existence of hundreds of millions of vibrant, thriving, bustling honeybee colonies. This presentation shows you how to keep bees in a way that is so simple you may have trouble believing it. Keeping bees naturally is easy, non-technical, calming to the soul, and harmonious with man's second best friend-the honeybee. The Natural Beekeeping Philosophy we use is an approach to beekeeping that encourages minimal manipulation and as hands-off an approach as possible.
You'll discover beekeeping with:
- No chemicals
- No medications
- Use local bees
- Very little human contact (2 hive visits per year)
- Natural hands-off propagation
- Use proper hive for the climate
Dr. Patrick Jones- Herbal First Aid For Man & Beast
Veterinarian and traditional naturopath Dr. Patrick Jones shares years of clinical experience on how to use common medicinal plants for first aid scenarios ranging from simple bee stings to shock and serious wounds.
Trevor Hollenback – Sheep Hoof Trimming – Demo
Learn how to trim your sheep's hooves with emphasis on the health of the sheep and limiting stress for both of you.
Jessica Burhenn/Grainmaker – Getting Started with Fresh Ground Flour & Baking for Better Nutrition – Demo
In this demonstration you'll learn the health benefits of fresh ground flour, how to grind your own at home, and successful tips to baking with fresh ground flour (hint, it's not as simple as swapping it out one for one in a recipe). During the last twenty minutes of this presentation join in the round table Q&A with Jessica as well as the engineer and inventor of the GrainMaker, shop manager and main assembly, and founder Bonnie to ask questions surrounding grinding and milling your own flour at home!
Melody Haege- Finding Your Aim: Exploring Hunting Methods and Equipment Selection
In this hunting how to we'll be discussing methods, equipment, and tradition.Learn the different methods of hunting and how to choose which is the best for you. Tips on equipment based upon each method and the barriers you need to be aware of. Learn from Melody, an adult onset hunter, who shares how you can feed your family healthy wild meat, regardless if you own land or were raised in a hunting family.
Saturday 10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Melissa K. Norris – Stocking the Pantry: Creating Healthy Meals w/ Pressure Canning (Demo)
Your pressure canner is the answer to healthy shelf-stable homemade meals whether you're short on time for making dinner, the power is out, or in unstable times. In this presentation, Melissa of Pioneering Today, will show you how to prioritize the harvest so you're not burn out during harvest season, dispel common myths about pressure canning, and enable you to preserve meats and vegetables to feed your family year round. You will learn:
- How to confidently and safely can at home so you can fully stock your pantry
- Conquer your fear of pressure canners
- The #1 thing you must know about canning to stay safe that even seasoned canners miss
Sally Fallon Morell – Traditional Foods Diet
Learn the truth about our food and what returning to a traditional foods diet means for our health. Sally Fallon Morell is founding president of The Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org), a non-profit nutrition education foundation dedicated to returning nutrient-dense food to American tables, and editor of the Foundation’s quarterly journal. She is also the founder of A Campaign for Real Milk (realmilk.com), which has as its goal universal access to clean raw milk from pasture-fed animals. She has extensive experience in the testing and production of unpasteurized milk and milk products.
Lisa Steele Raising Poultry in Cold Climates
Learn the best types of poultry for cold climates, specific breeds for cold climates within the poultry varieties, prepping your coop for winter, and overall winter/cool climate care tips.
Anne of All Trades – How to Produce a Ton of Food in the Garden In Less Time
Learn Anne's method of “lazy gardening” that ties in permaculture practices where soil health is improved, weeding isn't needed, and you'll drastically reduce the need to water.
Bevin Cohen- Best Varieties for Seed Saving Nuts & Seeds for Home Oil Pressing
Grow your own nuts and seeds at home. Learn how to chose the best varieties as well as how to seed save these crops so you never have to purchase them from the store!
CeAnne Kosel- D.I.Y. Kombucha at Home – Capture the Fizz for Pennies – Demo
You can make kombucha at home for less than three cents per ounce. Stop spending $5-7 a bottle on store-bought kombucha that may not even be properly fermented and contain unwanted ingredients. Is kombucha safe to make at home? YES! Do I need expensive supplies? NO! What is a SCOBY? We'll tell you! How do I make it fizzy? Your cups will be bubbling over. You will learn step-by-step how to:
- Health benefits of kombucha
- Brew basic small-batch kombucha
- Brew large-batch kombucha (continuous brew)
- Add flavor & Capture Fizz
- Keep Your Scoby Fresh (no mold!)
- The best type of ingredients to use & more
Kevin Trosclair & Dr. Phil Bass – Unveiling the Truth: Navigating the Maze of Meat Misconceptions
You don't know the truth about the meat being sold in the stores. Find out the difference between grass and grain fed, false labelling (the loop hole being used right now), and what you really need to know about nitrates in the preservation of meat.
Daaren Hamilton – How to Trim Cow Hooves -Demo
Saturday 1:00 to 2:30 pm
Noah Sanders – Sustainable Soil Solutions: Mastering Homestead-Scale Compost Production (Demo)
Do you have more than enough compost for your homestead? As we look at our fragile food system in America, many of us are relying on our gardens for a resilient source of food for our family. But for that to be a long term solution we have to produce our own soil fertility. Most homesteaders know that compost is the secret to growing our own fruits and vegetables without dependency on chemical fertilizers. But the average backyard compost systems don't produce enough volume of compost consistently to rely on it for your family's food production. In this workshop Noah Sanders is going to demonstrate a simple, powerful, and proven composting technique that will enable you to create living soil and produce abundant crops. With only a few simple supplies and materials you can find on your own homestead, you can master the art of homestead-scale compost production to ensure your homestead feeds you and your family no matter what comes in the future.
Saturday 1:30 to 2:30 pm
Joel Salatin -From Billionaires to Bunkers: Lessons on True Prosperity
In the last couple of years, several billionaires contacted Joel seeking advice on what he calls “agrarian bunkers.” These conversations lead to profound conclusions: true wealth isn’t money; resilience is more about creativity than cash; proximity to people who know how to grow things, fix things, and build things is the ultimate 401(k).
Robyn Jackson- How to Make Cheese at Home- Demo
Learn how to make cheese at home. Not only is it doable, but cheese making is a natural way to preserve milk for the dry season. Robyn will walk you through how to make both soft and hard cheese with a step-by-step demo. You'll learn how to make cheese including:
- supplies needed
- cultures & rennet (types & purpose)
- how to test the curd
- cutting the curd and stirring
- pressing/draining
Mary Shrader – Tips from the Great Depression for Your Homestead
Mary's parents lived through The Great Depression of the 1930s when money, food, medicine, and other needed resources were in short supply. But during those tough times, they and their families learned how to survive and thrive. Growing up, her parents raised her using the same skills they developed during the Depression, many of which she still implement in her own home when feeding and caring for her family.
Learn these invaluable skills to navigate the difficult times we often find ourselves living through now, no matter where we are creating our homestead-the city, the suburbs, or the country.
Michele Pryse- Advanced Heirloom Seed Saving
With GMO seeds now entering backyard gardens, it's more important than ever to learn how to seed save, especially what you need to know when it comes to keeping strain purity. Michelle shares what you need to know about seed saving, including her system for easy organization and implementation.
Kay & Jordyn Clark- Planning & Planting Your First Vegetable Garden
Brand new to vegetable gardening, Kay & Jordyn from Portage View Farms will walk you through what you need to know as a first time gardener. You'll learn:
- Garden Placement
- What are you growing in?
- Filling your garden beds
- Soil and it's role in the garden
- When to plant– Frost dates and growing season
- Plan your garden (and how to do it)
- Caring for your garden
- When and how to harvest your produce
- Putting the garden to bed for winter
- Waking Up your garden in spring
Nikki Conley – How to Prune Fruit Trees
Want to provide your family with homegrown fruit? Nikki Conley from Athol Orchards will walk you through how to properly prune your fruit trees for both health and also vigour (aka more fruit!).
AJ Richards – How to Earn an Income From Your Homestead with Farm to Table
Want to earn an income from your homestead providing local food to your community? Bypass having to learn & implement marketing, no more Facebook taking down your posts, no need to create a shopping cart and custom website, instead tap into a marketplace that connects customers to producers for true resilience and local food supply chain that allows you to earn an income without all the headache. This talk will share how AJ and From the Farm has built a platform like no other, offering comprehensive services for producers selling directly, including marketing and sales support so you can focus on raising excellent food and getting it to the people who want it in your area.
Saturday 3:00 to 4:30
Daniel Salatin – Multi Specie (Mob Grazing) – How to Increase Soil Fertility & Profit
Turning a homestead from a hobby into a profit center can mean the difference of loving and keeping it or disliking and losing it.
In this talk, Daniel from Polyface Farm, will cover how to not just graze your herbivores (cows, sheep, etc) on your pasture but how to add other livestock in “layers” for health and growth of the livestock, soil, pasture and ultamitely profit!
With over 50 of these practices being applied to Polyface land, Daniel will show you what's possible for your land. Knowing that “it” is possible a key to staying motivated when it looks like change is not happening. This talk will give you a vision and the steps to get there.
Q&A Round Table
Bring your questions for a question and answer session with Joel Salatin, Sally Fallon Morell, Shawn & Beth Dougherty, Josh & Carolyn Thomas, Anne Briggs (aka Anne of All Trades), & Mary Shrader
Lisa Bass -Cultivating Health: Exploring Fermented Foods
Fermenting not only is a way of preserving food, but has incredible health benefits. Fermenting is not just limited to vegetables, but is how cultures have preserved their dairy, vegetables, and even grains for centuries. Discover how Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone, incorporates fermented foods into her families diet but also her routine, and you can too! In this presentation you'll learn fermenting:
- vegetables
- yogurt
- milk and water kefir
- sourdough (beyond bread)
Anna Sakawsky – Homesteading on a Suburban Lot – Growing in Small Spaces
There's a common misconception that in order to homestead, you need 10 acres and a milk cow, but that couldn't be further from the truth! There
are so many ways to get creative with the space you have in order to grow more food, produce more of what you need at home and turn your
property into a productive and prosperous homestead, no matter how much land you have.
Anna Sakawsky is a former city girl turned modern homesteader who lives with her family (human, furry and feathered) on ¼-acre property on
Vancouver Island. Here they produce and preserve hundreds of pounds of their own food each year, build and DIY much of what they need from
scratch, generate multiple streams of income from home and are slowly putting every square inch of their property to productive use! Anna will
be sharing how she and her husband are making the most of their small, semi-suburban lot, and helping you re-imagine your own property so you
can transform it into a thriving homestead, no matter where you live!
Ivan Keim (Amish) – Creating Infrastructure with Minimal input
Ivan Keim shares his Amish skills to help you learn how to repurpose salvaged items to create essential elements for your homestead. Resourcefulness is key to success and Ivan will show you how to create shelters, pluckers, water troughs and more from salvaged items!
Rachel Costenbader- Homestead Preparedness – How to Thrive No Matter What Comes
Don't leave this to chance, learn how to have these items in place long before you need them. In this class you'll learn:
- Family/Homestead Disaster Plan
- Assessing your level of preparedness/preparedness mindset
- Emergency Supply Kits
- Preparing/managing your homestead during severe weather/natural disasters/difficult times
- Water collection and management
- Sustainable food sources
- Back up supplies
- Building your skill sets
- Community Preparedness
DeAnne Converse – Sustainable Feed Alternatives
In this presentation learn about alternative sustainable feeds and innovative farming techniques! In this session, we will delve deep into the cultivation and utilization of various alternative feeds such as duckweed, azolla, purslane, kangkong, sweet potato, mangel beets, and amaranth.
In addition to alternative feeds, we'll explore advanced farming techniques aimed at maximizing resource efficiency and sustainability. Dive into the world of tree hay, coppicing, pollarding, tree forage blocks, and living fencing, discovering how these practices can provide supplementary feed, shelter, and environmental benefits for your farm or homestead. While we'll touch briefly on vermicomposting and black soldier fly as valuable components of sustainable farming systems, our primary focus will remain on the cultivation and utilization of alternative feeds and innovative farming techniques mentioned earlier.