Bees, bread and backyard farming: Hear about it all at Homestead-a-polooza in Ferryland
Learn to live off of the land this Sunday with homesteading workshops
Homesteading and backyard farming is beginning to catch on across the province, and now there's an event to celebrate it.
Homestead-a-palooza is happening in Ferryland at the Colony of Avalon on Sunday, a full day of homesteading workshops ranging from bee keeping, bread making, healing herbs, lots of food and much more.
"We're trying to take control of our entire food supply as best we can. So that means doing a little bit of everything," Steve McBride, co-organizer of Homestead-a-palooza and member of Backyard Farming and Homesteading NL told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show.
"We go through the whole cycle according to the seasons. We grow food in the summer, we go foraging for fruit and fungus this time of year, and of course we keep honeybees. They're the ones really providing for us right now because it's the end of the summer."
Co-organizer Lisa McBride said homesteading is more of an umbrella over things such as farming, where they focus on everything as opposed to zeroing in on one or two particular crops.
"We take care of all of our own needs as much as possible at home, and where we don't really sell what we produce we actually use it to make sure that other things don't cost as much money, and the food that we're getting we know where it comes from and it's healthier for us," she said.
An education in nature
Lisa said there's a lot to learn at the homesteading event on Sunday, including cultivating a year-round garden, hydroponic growing, spinning fibre to create yarn, sea salt panning, an introduction to beekeeping, caring for goats and chickens, soap making and a lengthy list of much more.
"I'll be teaching basic tanning skills, so how to tan your own leather and fur ... There's small space gardening, creating of food forests, tiny houses and minimalism and then foraging," she said.
"So it's a pretty big roster, and time management, there will be that too."
One question about homesteading remains: how does that goat's milk taste, versus the cow's milk most of us pick up at the grocery store?
"The biggest improvement in that is that it's fresh," Steve said, pointing out that milk is often a week or two old by the time it's purchased in store.
"The only difference is if you have a buck goat in with the does it tastes what people say is 'goaty.' But the reality is, if you have a clean barn, you have a goat that you milk every day, and you drink the milk fresh it's delicious. It's much better than anything you can buy from the store."
With files from the St. John's Morning Show