Heads-Up On Great Deal

I just wanted to pass on this excellent deal for Permies.com's Permaculture Adventure Bundle. It was originally promoted in 2023, and has been selling for $65 for several years. This week it's on sale for $35. The lowest price ever!

It contains over 43 resources worth $514. 

• John Bush & Paul Wheaton - Simple and Affordable Permaculture: Growing Your Own Food on a Budget
• Nicole Sauce SMART homesteading webinar
• Teri Capshaw of the Homestead Larder, Homestead Building Plans Bundle
• Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Series - The Foundations
• Permaculture Design Magazine (2 issues)
• Grow Fruit Trees with Ease: Fruit Tree Fundamentals e-course by Susan Poizner
• Stockman Grass Farmer complete 2022 (12 issues)
• Handmade Natural Soaps ebook + Natural Facial Soaps ebooks from Jan Berry, Nerdy Farm Wife
• Simple Mead Making by Colleen Codekas of Grow Forage Cook Ferment
• Robin Clayfield, You Can Have Your Permaculture and Eat It Too ebook
• Weedy Gardener Down the Carrot Hole film featuring Geoff Lawton
• Harold Thornbro, Working Together: The Homestead Tree Handbook ebook
• Michael Judd, Mushroom chapter from Edible Landscaping
• Kate Downham - How to Create a Resilient Off-grid home ebook
• Tiny House Magazine (3 issues)
• Lynn Gillespie of Living Farm Preserving Fruit & Veg guide
• Leigh Tate, Goat Lovers eBook Duo: How To Get Cream From Goats' Milk & How To Make Goats' Milk Mozzarella
• Amazing elderberry presentation with John Moody
• Garden Master Course companion guide by Andres Bernal
• Tim Barker's Ram Pumps PDC presentation
• Rocket mass heater risers ebook
• Carbon Negative mass heaters webinar with Alan Booker
• Paul Wheaton Podcast gob
• Paul Wheaton's SKIP ebook
• Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-Koop - Building a Better World in your Backyard audio book
• Hugelkultur and Terracing movie from World Domination Gardening
• Microdoc: Building the Easy Bake Coffin

I'm not sure how long it will be on sale, at least this week, maybe longer (???)

You can see pictures of what's included, purchase it, or find more information here . . .

Permaculture Adventure Bundle

Tons of Milk

"Tons," of course, is a hyperbole, i.e. a figure of speech using exaggeration for emphasis. I don't actually have tons of milk, but I'm getting more at this time of year than I usually get! Between River and Saluda, I'm getting close to a gallon per day. This may not seem like much to milk producers, but for our little homestead it's a lot! The fridge fills up fast so I'm having to do something with milk about every other day.

The reason it's more than usual is because I usually share the milk with the kids. But with River's being stillborn, I'm getting all of her milk. Between the two goats I have more than enough for my regular cheeses and have started making hard, aged cheeses again. 

Straining the morning's milk and my rigged cheese press in the background.

I haven't made hard cheeses in years. 

I pretty much gave up on aged cheeses because of my cheesemaking conditions. Curing cheese requires consistent temps of between 45 and 55. In our climate, my kitchen and pantry are usually too warm, and that doesn't make for good aged cheese. I've fed more cheeses to the chickens than I care to recall. Eventually, I settled on making fresh and Mediterranean cheeses, such as mozzarella, feta, halloumi, domati, farmers, paneer, and ricotta. These aren't aged, but are typically stored in brine, olive oil, or the fridge. Some of them, like the mozzarella and halloumi, can be frozen.

With so much milk, however, I started thinking how lovely it would be to have cheese for slicing all winter. I decided maybe it was time to invest in some proper equipment for this. 

freshly pressed cheese, ready for aging

I bought a new cheese press. 

my new cheese press

It's a Roots & Harvest Cheese Press that I purchased from Pleasant Hill Grain. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know what I think after I give it a try. 

Besides cheese I continue to make kefir as a regular part of our diet. I'm also making cottage cheese, which is quite delicious.

Fresh homemade cottage cheese is hard to stop eating.

And with warm weather, ice cream!

vanilla goat milk ice cream and chocolate sourdough cookies

The cookie recipe is from Kate Downham's Sourdough Without Fail. She calls them "dark chocolate cookies," but Dan and I call them "brownie cookies," because they are like fudgey brownies. It's a perfect recipe for sourdough discard. It uses coconut sugar, but not too much, so they aren't too sweet. They're just the way we like them and perfect with vanilla ice cream. 

Between milk and planting, my days are busy. In the evenings, I'm working on getting a new warp on my big loom. That will be my summer weaving project. 

Tons of Milk © 2026 by Leigh at

https://www.5acresandadream.com

New Experiments with Sourdough

 New because I experimented with sourdough in the past and had variable success. New because I now have a book by someone I have great confidence in; enough so that I'm willing to give it another go. (See this book review post for information on that.)

My starter took about five days to take off.

I've been following Kate's instructions since. 

One of the things I'm learning is how to use the "discard," i.e. the starter that is removed at feeding time. My first baking project was Kate's Sourdough Crackers (page 208).

I've made these a couple of times (they're wonderful as a snack with sliced cheese or with soup). I've also made pancakes with some of the discard (but forgot to take a picture). 

Then I tried a loaf of bread. This one is Kate's "45% Pre-Ferment" bread (page 76)

I admit it's a little wonky, but look at how nicely it rose!

There is so much good information in Kate's book. My first read-through was overwhelming, but after a few experiments and re-reading, it's starting to make sense, i.e., I see how it applies to what I'm doing. 

I'm off to a good start. 

New Experiments with Sourdough © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Kidding News: the Good and the Bad

 I reckon I'll start with the bad news. On March 30th, my sweet River gave birth to a single stillborn doeling.

River loves babies, so it made me doubly sad. She cried for her for about a week. 

The good news is that nine days later, Willow had twin doelings.

The is the first year I've had 100% does! And I've never had this much milk this early in the kidding season. Usually I only get the leftovers from the kids, but River is in full production, so I milk her twice a day. And Saluda's production has doubled since winter. She kidded last year and I've milked her all through the winter and she continues to produce. This has been the first winter I haven't had to buy milk to make our kefir. 

I may possibly breed for a fall kidding. It's nice to have milk all winter long.

Kidding News: the Good and the Bad © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Miracle Cat

I honestly thought this was going to be a "Farewell Riley" post. He's 16 years old and has arthritis and a little hearing loss. He's also been having seizures lately, which is the most worrisome to watch.

It's been hard watching him grow old. Some days are better than others, but he gets around on his own, has a good appetite, uses his litter box, loves attention, manages to pull himself up onto our bed for his naps, and loudly shares his opinions about what he likes and what he doesn't. 

He doesn't go outside much anymore, but on sunny days he loves to nap on the front porch, so we reluctantly let him go out. Occasionally he goes down the two front steps to sit in the front yard to enjoy the sun. I always bring him in at dusk at the latest, because we have coyotes roaming around and Riley just doesn't have the ability to move quickly to get out of their way.

The other day after a seizure, he wanted to go out. I really didn't want him to, but his way of yowling loudly and persistently to get what he wants won out. He seemed disoriented and had a very difficult time walking out. For the first time, Dan and I said maybe it's time for that last visit to the vet to help him cross the Rainbow Bridge.

He settled down in his corner of the front porch for a nap. I checked on him several times but he didn't move. It seemed as if he was barely still breathing. At dusk, when it was time to come in, I couldn't find him.

We searched all over the yard, calling and calling. But no Riley. Eventually we gave up in the dark.

The next morning, still no Riley. The searching and calling were repeated several times throughout the day. But no Riley. Night came and I went out with a flashlight, calling and hunting. No Riley.

That next morning he was still nowhere to be soon, and we finally accepted that he was gone. He'd been missing for two nights. Some say animals know when they are going to die and "go off" to do it in private. We could only think that was the case with Riley. Later that morning Dan went out to hunt for his body. We wanted to give him a proper burial. 

A few minutes later I heard Dan calling me from the front yard. I opened the front door and he pointed at the cat tree next to the door. There, sitting in the kitty bed on the top of the tree, was Riley! He was alert and purring. I picked him up and he meowed for his breakfast. After three helpings of his favorite cat food for breakfast, he climbed onto our bed, took a bath, and curled up for a nap.  

He's been his usual happy self ever since. Both Dan and I think it's a miracle.

We also accept he probably won't be with us much longer. As long as he's happy to be alive, we're happy too. He's been a good mouse hunter and faithful companion, so he gets a bit of pampering in his retirement time of life. He deserves that.

Miracle Cat © 2026 by Leigh at

https://www.5acresandadream.com

Homesteading: A Dying Trend?

Nancy (Little Homestead in Boise) posted an interesting question the other day, What The Hell Happened to Homesteading??? I suggest you hit that link to read it (and the comments), because it points to a chain of people who have observed a decline in the popularity of homesteading. As a movement or trend, "homesteading" seems to have reached it's peak and is now on the downward side of popularity. 

Eighteen years ago, when Dan and I started a serious search for the place where we now live, our goal was a self-sufficient lifestyle. We weren't even familiar with the term "homesteading." And we weren't influenced in this goal by online "influencers." We were influenced by the books of Eric Sloane, Ralph Moody, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  

When I started this blog, it was as a place to share some pictures of our new property. I had been successfully fiber blogging for about three years, so this blog was a place to document what we were doing. Instead of a fiber journal, it's a homesteading journal. Over the years I've enjoyed having a popular homesteading blog and writing homesteading books (of which only 5 Acres & A Dream: The Book sold well.) During that time I resisted the advice to "monetize" my blog. I had lots of advertising requests, but I always demurred, saying that my blog was just a personal journal. In my mind, if my goal was to help people be less dependent on the system, then using that same system for profit was hypocritical. 

The problem is that our current system model is Industrialism. Previously, society had an agrarian economic system, where sustainability and self-reliance were the norm. But an industrialized system has no room for these things. Everything must be a cog in the great wheel called "progress." The only thing that makes sense to people is making money because economic growth is the goal of the System. Personal wealth is the bait. None of this facilitates personal independence. Trying to establish a homestead in an industrialized system takes a lot of work, time, and money, starting with a huge mortgage. People have to have a job. So in essence, homesteaders have two jobs, one from which they "make a living," and one by which they hope to live.

It's no surprise then that people came up with ways to make money with homesteading. Heck, I did it with my books. I just refused to go any further. To support themselves, people develop homesteading blogs, websites, books, video channels, products, product review affiliations, and subscription content. "Branding" became the trend. As I mentioned to Nancy, it seems to me that people stopped promoting homesteading and started promoting themselves.

What Dan and I have learned over the past seventeen years is that the more we can produce and do for ourselves, the less money we need. Especially once we got our mortgage paid off. But that required lifestyle changes that the System doesn't support. The System needs cogs, not independent doers. We're trained from birth to be consumers of disposable goods. We're trained to think physical work is undesirable and that convenience, entertainment, and leisure are desirable goals. This mindset isn't compatible with the lifestyle called homesteading. 

Trends and movements grow, peak, and then fad away. Lifestyles, however, are more resilient. By producing at least some of our own food and staying out of debt, we've weathered unemployment, inflation, supply chain disruptions, lockdowns, and stupidity (remember when people were boasting about buying up all the toilet paper?). And we've weathered it all quite comfortably, I might add. We've had very little lifestyle disruption.

Is homesteading dying? My conclusion is that there's a difference between homesteading as a trend and homesteading as a lifestyle. Of the trend, I think perhaps we've strangled the goose that was laying the golden eggs. As a viable lifestyle, I can only say that for Dan and me, this is the way we think we were meant to live. That is another story, however.

Thoughts?

Homesteading: A Dying Trend? © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com