4 Things You Need to Start Your Homestead and Homeschool This Summer

Summer is a perfect time to start a homestead, plan a homeschool, or create ways to pay for it all. In this post, you will find many resources created just for the homesteading, homeschooling family. We hope you enjoy these resources!

This post may contain affiliate links. When you shop through them, it blesses our family in a small way at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

The garden is in full bloom, and the homeschool books are put away. Learning and exploring never stop, but the structure of summer is just different. The kids are splashing in water, we try to keep livestock alive, and we enjoy the fruits of summer in new recipes. It’s all part of a new rhythm welcomed with open arms each year.

However, as relaxed and laid back as Summer can feel, it’s also a perfect time to start your homestead, plan homeschool, or create ways to pay for it if you have already started. So, we compiled some resources in this post to help you on your adventure!

Hi, I’m Priscilla!

As a young, growing family facing job loss in 2013, with a toddler and a newborn baby, I wanted to learn how to grow food to supplement our rising grocery bill, but I had no experience. So, I called on my mom to help me start my first garden as cheap as possible. I remember her stewarding a small garden from time to time when I was growing up. We started one with blocks, soil, seeds, and a few starters that she helped me invest in. And that’s how I started!

Before I was a homesteading, homeschooling mom I was a professional musician and music teacher. I carried over my teaching experience into homeschooling my children, but I learned it was much different teaching your own children. And, when I started homesteading, I started with NO experience. It was something I never imagined doing. I had to do a lot of researching and learning each season. So, I know how hard it is to start homeschooling and homesteading with no experience! 

After 2020

After the events of 2020, we saw the vital need to learn to grow, raise, and store real God-given food in abundance, and continue homeschooling all of our children. We felt God had a new call and season for us. So in 2021, we left everything behind, and moved from northwest Indiana to southern Georgia. And we just got started!

How we can help you

Now, I’ve homeschooled for 11 years and have 6 children of homeschool age with 1 more in waiting. And, we established our homestead in 2021 with lots of research and no experience. We built up gardens and livestock and had a small farmstead business within 2 years. We stewarded a small farmstead by selling fresh eggs and healthy chickens to many happy customers! 

Also, we started taking and completing several homesteading courses by experts at the School of Traditional Skills, and we continue our education every year. And, I’m always looking for ways to make things more time efficient by making them simpler to do and sustainable. When things are simpler, they are more sustainable in our already full lives.

But, an unexpected turn of events landed us in a rental home in an HOA neighborhood while we search for land. We proved to ourselves that we could still homestead even with all the restrictions. We knew if we could do it, others could do it too! So, we started this blog and our newsletter to equip modern families to live abundantly in their homesteads and homeschools no matter where they live and with no overwhelm or burn out. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY! We offer simple and affordable solutions, free printables, resources, and encouragement for your Christ-centered beginner homesteading, homeschooling journey.

1. Free Resources for Planning

The very first thing to start your homestead or homeschool is to plan. And the very first step to a good plan is to know your overall vision for your family, homestead, and homeschool. Why are you living this lifestyle in the first place? What short and long term goals does your family have?

Well, we won’t go too in depth here about vision and planning. So, here is a previous post that we did on vision and goal setting. It includes a free downloadable vision board.

Where are you starting with your homestead? Will it be learning kitchen skills, raising livestock, or starting a garden? We have created a Free Resource Library with several FREEBIES ready for download to help you get started in some of these areas. It is password protected, exclusively for our community, so get the password here. Just a few things in our FREE library are:

• Garden Plan Pack
• Garden brainstorming pages
• Homeschool Plan Starter Pack
• Chicken Chores List
• Vision board
• Goals worksheets

and more! Moreover, we will be adding several more resources to our Free library! In addition, some other resources we recommend are:

Homesteading:

• You can find US planting zones at https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov
• You can read canning information at https://nchfp.uga.edu
• Anyone can learn a wide variety of skills and information from https://homesteadingfamily.com
• And, you can start in sourdough today by reading here https://www.farmhouseonboone.com, or by taking the Simple Sourdough course with Lisa Bass (paid resource)
• You can learn to start sewing by taking the Simple Sewing Series with Lisa Bass (paid resource)

Homeschooling:

• You can learn about U.S. homeschooling laws at https://hslda.org/legal/
• You can find FREE Christian-based curriculum at https://www.goodandbeautiful.com/free/
• Also, for Charlotte Mason style education there are many free resources as well as purchasable curriculum at https://simplycharlottemason.com

Looking for something else?

The list above is not exhaustive. If you are looking for a resource to start another skill not listed, comment below and we will respond with some resource ideas for you!

2. Homeschool Planner

So, as we listed above, we have a FREE homeschool planner pack available in our Free Resource Library. But, it is a pack that just helps you get started in your planning. It is not a full planner. Therefore, if you are looking for a FULL homeschool planner that carries you from the stages of brainstorming to planning to homeschooling, we have just the thing!

You can check out the full description and contents of our FULL Homeschool Printable Planner here. Additionally, you can view some pages that are included in the planner, and see a list of BONUSES included. Moreover, our planner is currently at its lowest price ever! We want to help get it in the hands of more homeschool families that need an affordable planner option.

3. Fun Activity for Kids to Fight Summer Boredom

Even though summer is full of wonder and endless opportunities for playing and exploring, kids can get “bored”. Or so they say. If you are in planning mode while you start your homestead, you may not be able to entertain or keep kids busy as much as usual. I actually started facing this issue when my kids were waiting for me for a homeschool lesson. So, I had the idea of getting a blank piece of paper and using a horizontal and vertical line to create four boxes. In each box, I wrote a word or phrase as a drawing prompt. This gave them something to do, meanwhile it sparked their creativity and gave them an opportunity to practice their drawing skills.

This activity quickly became constantly requested of me. I would have to think of ideas for prompts on the spot which took up a little more time rather than saving time. So, one day I decided I was going to think of as many ideas as I could in one block of time. Then, every time one of my kids wanted to do this activity, I would have an arsenal!

I, and my children, came up with over 200 ideas! The ideas ranged in level of creativity and skill, so I gathered the ideas into similar sections. This made it easier to find the right level activity for each of my children. This activity became loved not just for homeschool or waiting, but for car rides, “boredom”, summer, art time, and more. I compiled it all into a PDF printable that can be easily downloaded and printed for use. It can be printed one page at a time, or the whole thing! You can find it here.

For more ideas to fight summer boredom and keep the learning going through the summer, check out our post 80+ Ideas for Homeschool Learning without Textbooks.

4. Create an income while you start your homestead

Do you already have an established homestead or homeschool and want to make a little money to help pay for it? Or, are you just starting and already thinking of how you’re going to pay for it? Well, this is a wise move. It is really important whenever you are going to start your homestead, or build anything, that you think of how it is going to get paid for. Most of us don’t have a bunch of extra money lying around to start new adventures. This will not be an exhaustive list (that will be a separate post), so we wanted to just give you a few ideas to help you get started.

Homestead Income Examples

The main thing to think about is your vision and your biggest goals. If you are starting with raising chickens, you may want to raise a few more than you need for your family so that you can sell a few extra dozen eggs a week. We have 15 chickens currently and need to sell 4 dozen a week to fully cover the cost of one bag of feed a week. So, if we only sell 2 or 3, we are still only paying 1/2 to 1/4 of the cost of feed per week. However, that cost will be greatly offset when we move on land and are able to pasture-raise our chickens.

Another option is to raise chicks to about only 8 weeks old to sell for other people to start their flocks. We’ve had really good success with this endeavor! You can sell an 8 week old pullet (young hen) anywhere from $10-$30 depending on the breed and your area. Colorful egg layers and rarer breeds cost more. And frankly, it is really easy to raise chicks. If you sell one chicken, that chicken can pay for 1-2 bags of feed for your homestead chickens. If you pasture-raise, that’s mostly profit!

Gardening can also bring profit to your homestead! It is very easy to germinate a few extra seeds of each crop you are growing for yourself to sell as seedlings at a higher price in your community. People will pay anywhere from $2-$6 on average for small plants that you have already started for them. It will gain even more if you grow the seedlings organically/NON-GMO. Moreover, selling ONE seedling plant can pretty much pay for a whole packet of seeds! This is definitely a fruitful option if there is a market in your area for it.

Quick list of other homestead and homeschool income ideas:

• sell organic/non-gmo produce
• save and sell seeds
• sell flowers
• raise meat chickens
• sell bone broth
• sell sourdough products
• sell other homemade food items
• sell sewing/knitting/crocheting
• sell printable homeschool worksheets
• create and sell homeschool curriculum
• write and sell homeschool stories/reading books
• create and sell planners or templates for homeschooling
• sell printables for homesteading, homeschooling, or anything else!
• become an influencer
• start a blog or vlog

Start a blog or vlog to start your homestead or homeschool

We have already talked about the need for income besides your main income to start a homestead or homeschool. Sustainability is not just achieved through homesteading and homeschooling, but it is also achieved through sustainable family income. Have you ever thought about making a stream of income through blogging or YouTube? I’m sure you have heard about the possibilities. Furthermore, you can literally use your homestead or homeschool to do it! We chose this route as just one way to create income for our homestead because of the limitless possibilities. Check out these amazing courses by Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone: (This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

• ​Create Your Blog Dream: This course is about everything from building your website and blog, gaining traffic, making products, creating graphics, and SO MUCH MORE! This is THE course we took that helped us get started in everything! (Hurry, doors close temporarily in 2025)

• ​YouTube Success Academy: Maybe blogging isn’t for you. Maybe you would love to create videos doing something you love, or following your journey, and earn money. Then this course is for YOU! (Doors staying open!)

Start your homestead or homeschool

Summer is in full swing and is a perfect time for adventures! We really hope that these resources will be helpful to you as you start building your homestead and homeschool, or furthermore, the income to start them. We have a passion to help families live abundantly through homesteading and homeschooling, so we are working to create even more free and affordable resources. Make sure you don’t miss out on any resources we launch by signing up for our newsletter below, and checking back on the blog.

Build a life you love by building up your home, and live abundantly!

More resources for you:

• School of Traditional Skills – where we learned almost EVERY homesteading skill from experts, and keep learning from!
• Interested in dehydrating peaches or other foods? This is our recommended dehydrator brand
• Our quality mixer that can handle 4-5 loaves of bread dough!
• Our quality grain mill $20 off!
• Learn how to mill your own grains with Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone
• Other Select NutriMill products $20 off!
• Our favorite enameled cast iron dutch oven and bread pan for sourdough
• Sourdough Starter Kit
• Learn Simple Sourdough with Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone
• Best Large Kitchen Scale with Measurement Conversions
• Learn how to ferment food with Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone
• Simple Sewing Series with Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone
• Make a side income for your homestead with affiliate marketing and branding
• Make a side income for your homestead by creating a YouTube channel

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