Going off-grid is an attractive option if you want more self-sufficiency and minimum dependence on established institutions. Having a life where you do not depend on the electrical grid means you produce your own power sufficient to run all your electrical devices. Homesteading products can be the perfect way to make your homestead more self-sufficient from the grid.
Most people view life on a homestead as laid-back and romantic. However, the nice, slow, and dreamy lifestyle requires hard work and necessary tools, skills, and knowledge that you may not need beyond a homesteading existence.
If you are thinking of starting your homestead journey, or need to re-evaluate your current setup, the following are several vital homesteading products you need to attain self-sufficiency. These can also make perfect homesteading gifts for self-sufficiency.
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1. Generator
Homesteading without a source of electrical power can result to a wide range of inconveniences. With a generator, you do not have to worry about being stuck in the dark or in the freezing cold again.
Powered by natural gas or liquid propane fuel, generators offer property owners peace of mind by providing a reliable flow of power. Various generators are available on the market and they have different capabilities. Getting a whole house generator is the best decision since it can power various major appliances.
2. Aga
This is a stove with top hot plates that run at different, pre-set temperatures and enameled ovens with cast iron. Gasoline, electricity, oil, and propane gas can power the stove. Several versions of the AGA are available with two hot plates at the top, which replace burners on the modern stoves.
The hinged, insulated lids that cover the plates maintain continuous heat when a user swings them down onto the hot plates when not in use. The result is that you will use minimal resources to cook, heat, or bake food for an extended period.
3. Solar dehydrator
The system uses the same principle of ancient vegetable drying. Solar dehydrators use solar energy to dry food. The technology and capital required for this homesteading product are basic, and one can complete the operation in the comfort of their kitchen.
It helps in extending the shelf life of vegetables and fruits. The device dries substances within a short period since it is warmer inside the dryer compared to the outside. Also, a solar dehydrator is labour-saving since you can leave the food to dry overnight and protect it against pests, flies, dust, and rain.
4. Solar charger
The charger uses solar energy to provide batteries with electricity supply. A solar charge is portable and can be charged using sunlight.
Solar chargers are good in a pinch for emergency scenarios. Solar chargers are good in a pinch for emergency scenarios. A solar-powered charger will top off your phone just enough to make an emergency call.
If you find yourself in a remote area where no other power source is available, it is beneficial. Solar chargers can be a lifeline, especially in areas where blackouts are likely to occur, or in cases of natural disasters.
5. Wind turbine generator
The system is a reliable source of power that uses wind to create mechanical power. Wind energy does not cause air pollution compared to power plants that depend on the combustion of natural gas and coal.
A wind turbine generator converts the mechanical power into electricity for human use. Wind turbine generators provide users with an unlimited free and clean source of fuel. The sustainable power source is not different from solar energy.
A cost-effective renewable energy technology costs around six cents per kilowatt-hour. As long as the wind blows, the wind energy generator will provide energy for all your self-sufficiency needs.
Dyna wind turbine with generator
6. Rocket stove
The super-efficient small combustion stove is necessary for self-sufficient. The rocket stove uses small fuel sources, such as twigs, dry grass, tree branches, and pinecones.
One can build this stove within a day or two and watch it transform twigs into heat efficiently compared to most wood stoves, with much lower set-up costs.
It can cost practically nothing to create if you are good at scavenging parts, and you can get the fuel you need to cook dinner, heat your house, and enjoy a nice hot shower when you prune your fruit trees.
7. Pickling kit
Pickled vegetables provide users with a wide range of health benefits, including enhancing the intestinal flora and the immune system, as well as increased bacterial diversity. A Pickling Kit provides users with everything needed to come up with the ideal anaerobic fermentation environment.
8. Greenhouse
A greenhouse is a structure where transparent materials, like glass, are used to make the walls and roofs. The structure is mainly used to cultivate plants that require controlled weather.
Greenhouses vary in scale from small sheds to industrial-sized houses. It can provide endless hours of leisure and a constant supply of wholesome food for self-sufficiency.
When using the homestead greenhouse, the advantages of raising your own healthy plants and vegetables, extending the growing season, and even the chance of helping to heat your home are definitely possibilities.
9. Cupboard cold frame
This greenhouse like cupboard is very effective at covering plants to protect them from unfavourable weather. It is ground low and has a translucent roof, which enables easy access to light and has hinges to ensure easy access.
Cupboard cold frames assists in providing warmth for young plants and a degree of temperature control. Its main aim is to allow gardeners during winter to protect their plants from the wind, rain, snow, and other poor weather.
They are also helpful in hardening young plants, including semi-hardy annuals. In autumn, it is essential in shielding cuttings and young propagations from cooling, unsettled weather, and late frosts.
10. Cider press
The fruit press helps in separating fruit solids such as stems, leaves, skins, pulp, nuts, and detritus from fruit juice. The press grinds apples into a pulp and presses the juices out. Liquid gold flows immediately after you press.
30 seconds are enough to convert a fruit into juice in your glass. There is a wide range of different press styles, including the very basic hand press, and the conventional cider press with a grinder. The benefit of using a Cider press is that one can use it to press not only apples but also other fruits.
11. Water filter
The water filter eliminates impurities in water using either fine physical obstruction, biological process, or chemical process. Through physical filtration, water is strained to extract larger particles, often via a gauze-like membrane.
It processes water with proprietary intelligent technology to eliminate impurities using chemical filtration. Similarly, in areas where municipal water is not available, drinking water supplies should be filtered.
It is absolutely worth to install a filter that eliminates contaminants from your water source and make sure it is held properly.
Survivor water filter
12. Cheesemaking kit
Compared to the ancient techniques of making cheese, cheese making kits are a changeover since they are cost-effective, efficient, and universal.
The kits come with everything you would want in a nice box to get your cheese making journey started. Using a kit simplifies the process by eliminating the necessity of ordering a list of ingredients and is also suitable for professional cheesemakers who appreciate comfort.
13. Storage jars
A list of homesteading products is not complete without storage jars. These are rigid containers that are cylindrical or slightly conical. Typically, they are made of ceramic, glass, or plastic. They have a large, opening or mouth that can be covered with a screw cap, lid, cork stopper or lug cap, cork stopper, or roller cap.
The Mason jar is one of the most popular storage jars that can be used for storage and conservation of a wide range of products including, pickles, marmalade, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, jalapeño, chutney peppers, spiced eggs, honey, and many more.
14. Storage rack
You can use a storage rack to store various items in your home. Modern homes do not need a cellar since they now depend on the practical and good-looking storage rack in storing anything needed. Currently, there are numerous shelf unit storage racks available.
These need no attachments, you just have to buy a rack and you are ready to store all your things. Storage racks provide an advanced storage design with much-needed space and commonly assembled by bolting, clipping, or welding.
15. Composter
You can recycle food and plant products into bone meal using composters. You can achieve this by using any substances in the food and plant category in the composter. If the neighboring comparator faces away from the composter, it emits up to 8 signal strength depending on the block completeness.
Composters seem to have a vacuum inside. Entities can therefore enter and leave the composter at the top. The height of the composter’s floor depends on its fullness. The floor is just above the block below when the composter is entirely empty. When loaded completely, the upper floor is slightly dipped.
16. Water butt
It is a large barrel that harvests rainwater as it flows off from the roof. If used correctly, it can provide you with sufficient water to feed your garden during the summer months.
With a water butt, your plants can enjoy the water without chemicals or minerals added to it. Also, it decreases the demand for the main water supply and reduces the chances of rainwater runoff flowing into drains.
17. Sausage maker
A sausage maker is an essential homesteading device that helps uses to make sausages efficiently. A user only needs to feed meat at the top of the sausage maker. The appliance consists of a spinning corkscrew booster that moves meat towards the blades.
A sausage maker can stow sausages in both manual and electro-meat grinders with a stuffing hose. The grinder plates are circular, honeycomb-style metal disks. It can make sausages of different thicknesses. It is also suitable for batches of homemade sausages.
18. Bicycle
A bicycle is an essential product that comes in handy in self-sufficiency. A bicycle makes it easy to move from one point to the other cost-effectively. It also comes with a wide range of health benefits including mental well-being, weight loss, strengthening the immune system, and building muscles. Apart from the health benefits, a bicycle can get you to your destination within a brief period.
19. Kelly kettle
The mobile device used for boiling water on the outside with twigs and other small fuel. The device has a water jacket that covers the fireplace within the fire-base, producing an upward drawn chimney that guarantees effective and fast boiling, even during wet or windy days.
A Kelly kettle boils water in between 3 and 5 minutes, making it an essential and effective homesteading piece that you can use at any time regardless of the weather conditions.
20. Cauldron and fire tripod
A cauldron is the most elegant, well-designed, robust, and practical fireplaces. Manually made from solid steel sheets, a Cauldron can change your life literally. The utensil can change the lives of your children or grandchildren.
Cauldrons and fire tripods can be a major investment. The round and smooth sides of the cauldron allow free circulation of heat, while you can keep hot charcoal or coal on its cover to provide maximum thermal coverage. You can use the effective tool to bake, slow cook, as well as barbecue.
21. Jam making kit
One of the best ways to preserve both fruit and vegetables is converting them to jams and jellies for self-sufficiency. Jam-making at home is easy only with the right gear to ensure that your jams are secure for the rest of the year.
Jam-making kits are low-cost, but can be pricey if you purchase the essentials individually. The kit includes essentials such as storage equipment, jam pan, fill funnel, thermometer, spoons, and measuring jars among many others.
22. Beehives
Homesteading in a large compound requires a few beehives for self-sufficiency. Bees carry pollen from crops back to the hive for storage. In the hive, there are thousands of cells where the bee mixes honey with pollen to make bee bread to feed the young ones.
With a few beehives on your property, you can have your own supply of honey, which has a wide range of health benefits. Also, you can harvest the wax and use it for candles.
23. Compost toilet
This kind of toilet treats human waste through composting, which is a biological process. The process turns human waste into compost after the organic matter decomposes. However, it does not destroy all pathogens.
The toilet uses little or no water and does not cause any odours on the property. In addition, recycling your household waste into compost, promotes fertility in the soil, providing the opportunity to produce healthy food.
24. Fruit cage
Only for protecting fruits or very grandiose, a fruit cage can be a quite simple structure. Some gardens are decorated as a focal point with ornate fruit cages. In this situation, the use of the fruit cage is not only practical but creative.
Apart from using the fruit cage to secure the fruit, you can use it to protect vegetables vulnerable to pests. Fruit cages are ideal for protecting vegetables such as cabbages from butterflies that lay eggs and saving tender seedlings and lettuces from bunnies and birds.
25. Smoker
This outdoor cooking appliance has the potential to maintain low cooking temperatures for a long period, producing and holding smoke around the meat for absorption. A reliable smoker does this effectively and offers ample space for any amount of barbecue required.
A wide range of smokers is available, including small electric units and huge smokers, enough to feed many people. Homesteading without a smoker can lead to various self-sufficiency hiccups including food wastage. You can use the cooking appliance to smoke meat for later consumption.
26. Mushroom growing kit
A mushroom growing kit is a great and simple way of growing your own mushrooms for self-sufficiency. The kit contains everything you may need to grow your own mushrooms while homesteading. Various species of mushrooms are available. Therefore, it is essential to identify your favourite before buying the kit. The kit production lasts for around 3 months.
Some can continue to produce mushrooms after every few weeks up to a year. After that, the kit is still useful since the mycelium is still alive even after all the nutrients in the substrate are used up.
27. Tool sharpening wheel
When homesteading, you need various types of tools, and some need to be sharpened regularly so they can work effectively. For self-sufficiency, you need a tool sharpening wheel like a grinding wheel.
This abrasive, grinding, tool can be manually powered or powered by electricity. The grinding wheel has an abrasive surface that acts as the teeth on a saw that helps provide an extra-fine surface finish. This makes them ideal for sharpening knives and carving tools where minimum steel removal is desired.
28. Oil press
This is a mechanical device used to extract oil from raw food materials. Most people use it for extracting food oils from algae, seeds, and nuts. You only supply these raw materials to the press in its continuous feed.
As the oil press works on the raw material, the friction produces heat, which makes it effective in extracting oil from the raw materials. The device uses standard decantation to separate the oil from the food substances. Electricity powers most oil presses but manually powered ones are also available.
29. Homebrew kit
This kit is vital in homesteading for those who like taking a cold beer during hot months. Some homebrew kits come with various ingredients and recipes. They include all the elements one may need to brew their first beer from malt, yeast, or hops.
The kit also comes with detailed step-by-step instructions for users. If the kit does not supply the ingredients necessary to brew your unique beer, you can buy them separately and enjoy your very own homemade beer.
30. Fermentation crock
Also known as Harsch crock or gartopf crock, is an effective device meant for fermentation. The device has a gutter in its rim where the user fills water to put an airlock on the top. That helps prevent food from spoiling because of mould growth or Kham yeast from taking place on the surface.
The sealing also helps keep fermentation odours in the crock. It also prevents flies and fruit flies from getting into your water-sealed crock. You can use the device to ferment cabbages and other vegetables.
31. Air rifle
An air gun is an essential tool for self-sufficiency while homesteading. You can use the air rifle for small game hunting, recreational shooting, and for pest control. The projectile of an air rifle is usually a pellet.
It is not powerful compared to other guns but can hurt or kill animals such as rabbits. If you are in a predator-heavy area, the air rifle can come in handy. You can use it to protect yourself or scare off predators.
32. Fire steel
The fire steel is rod made ferrocerium, a synthetic alloy. The name ferrocerium is derived from its basic components, namely iron (ferrum) and cerium. Ferrocerium can ignite spontaneously in the air. It is commonly utilized in lights or as firelighters for survival.
If scraped by a special striker, it produces fiery sparks that comprise of friction-ignited, burning metal. The sparks burn at 5000 degrees F. making the fire steel effective for igniting different materials. You can use this engaging tool to light fires in a wide range of situations.
Thank you for reading our article on self-sufficiency and homesteading products and gifts. For more homesteading product and gift ideas why not visit Homestead Farm Supplies.