This article was originally published at Tess Pennington’s ReadyNutrition.com
Tess is the author of The Prepper’s Blueprint: How To Survive ANY Disaster
Natural living, homesteading, and those interested in living more sustainably is increasing every year. Perhaps it is because people are finding that the ever-changing technologies of today are overwhelming and they feel more at peace living more naturally. Or, families have found that frugality really helps the pocketbook. One thing is for sure, homesteading and natural living places more value on practicality rather than expensive gadgets. Some of these practical Christmas gifts may be just what your favorite ‘steadie is wishing for.
10 Holiday Gift Ideas for the Happy Homesteader
1. Coffee Bean Roasting Machine
If you’ve been interested in making fresh soap for the family, this is a great starter kit! This kit includes everything you need to make a batch of soap and can be reused for later soap making adventures. What I love about this kit is it was Made in the USA and is handcrafted in a sustainable manner.
It’s hard for homesteaders to find time to get everything done; so taking shortcuts is always an option. Breadmaking can take a while to make, so using a breadmaker machine can cut the task in half. Developed with nutrition in mind, there are 12 settings – including a gluten-free setting. In addition to bread, you can make pizza dough, cakes, jams, flatbreads, and croissants.
All it takes to get started is one Ready Nutrition Brand Homestead Vegetable Garden-In-A-Can, some good dirt, clean water, a healthy dose of sunshine and a little TLC every day! Before you know it, you’ll be up to your ears in fresh food — enough to feed up to a family of eight for a whole year!
This solar kit comes with the tools necessary for a new system: two Renogy 100W 12V Poly/ Mono Solar Panels, one 30A PWM Wanderer Charge Controller, one 20ft 10AWG MC4 Adaptor Kit, one 8ft 10AWG Tray Cable, one set of MC4Y connectors and two sets of Z-brackets. Start your solar adventure with a Renogy Starter Kit.
Merry Christmas and Happy Shopping to all of you!
Tess and the Ready Nutrition Writers
Tess Pennington is the author of The Prepper’s Blueprint, a comprehensive guide that uses real-life scenarios to help you prepare for any disaster. Because a crisis rarely stops with a triggering event the aftermath can spiral, having the capacity to cripple our normal ways of life. The well-rounded, multi-layered approach outlined in the Blueprint helps you make sense of a wide array of preparedness concepts through easily digestible action items and supply lists.
Tess is also the author of the highly rated Prepper’s Cookbook, which helps you to create a plan for stocking, organizing and maintaining a proper emergency food supply and includes over 300 recipes for nutritious, delicious, life-saving meals.
Visit her website at ReadyNutrition.com for an extensive compilation of free information on preparedness, homesteading, and healthy living.
Great ideas Tess! Thanks for not posting amazon links. A simple search will find all of these products elsewhere. High 5 for you! 🙂
She did. Click on the name of the item and it is hyperlinked.
By the way, bread machines are total crap, don’t waste your money on them.
I’m starting to think there is no ‘Tess POS Pennington’ and that it’s just a made up name used by an Amazon employee to sell shit to dumbass ‘preppers’.
What a complete fucking joke.
Really?? Why you gotta be insulting? There are a lot of people who use online shopping (i.e., Amazon) to find gifts, and many love the gift guides we put out every year. If you don’t like it, move on! No need to insult people.
Mine works fine, although round loaves are sorta goofy. Therefore I just use the machine to kneed and rest the dough then I bake it in a regular oven and a rectangular pan. Using the machine eliminates the pain-in-the-ass portion of bread making. Try it John, you might like it.
To add to this great list:
1: Silver eagles
2: Ammo
3: 72 hour kit
4: polypropheleyne underwear/ baclava
5: Basic reloading kit
6: Roadside emergency kit
7: tabletop water filter
8: Wine/beer making kit
9: Baofeng 2 way radios
10: Shortwave radio
11: Rechargeable batteries and charger
12: Some luvin’ 🙂
13. Big ass bottle of bourbon.
14. 100.00 gift card to Aldi
15. Shitload of Charmin
16. ?
Did you know that the two standard units of measurement in Texas is “Big Ass” and “Shit Load”?
Now that it is cold out, maybe time to break out the cast iron dutch oven and try cooking over the fire in the fireplace.
It is good to practice alternative cooking methods.
Meh, we cook on the woodstove a lot in winter. Not much practice needed lol. I bought a new breadmaker for 5 bux at a yard sale years ago. I love that thing, makes dough a hell of a lot easier than by hand! If people can’t cook I guess they will starve?
I recently read an article that said tuna fish sales were dragging because most people in their 20s and 30s don’t own can openers.
Here’s a recipe for you ‘ol boy. RYE Whiskey. Needed: 7 lbs of Rye, 2 lbs. of Barley, 1lb. of Malt, 6gal. of water, 1oz.baker’s yeast, 1 gram of Ammonium fluoride. Heat water to 70 degrees, add malt and grains, stir mixture while slowly increasing temperature (about five degrees every two minutes) and maintain temp at 160 degrees. Continue to stir for two-three hours to start converting the starches to fermentable sugar. Screen the mixture and dump the liquid into the fermentation container and let cool to 70-80 degrees. Add the yeast, Ammonium fluoride (to avoid contamination and secondary fermentation). stir liquid for about a minute, seal. Takes about 5-7 days to ferment. Distill.
reper, Thanks for the recipe. I have never heard of a’ammonium flouride”. Contamination and secondary fermentation? Can you explain that? I noticed there is no sugar added or yeast nutrient. Anyway here is the recipe I use for super smooth rye whiskey:
1lb. rye malt extract
2lbs. dark barley malt extract
18 cups sugar
7 teaspoons fermax yeast nutrient
4 teaspoons distillers yeast
2 cups burnt white oak chips
In a steel pot heat 1.5 gallons of clean water and dissolve the sugar and malts and yeast nutrient. Pour into a food grade 5 gallon bucket and add cold water to the 4 gallon mark temp should be 95 degrees. Pitch the yeast in and put the lid on with airlock. Takes about 12-14 days to work off and should be about 16-18% abv. Distill. Run first 1 cup (8oz.) of heads off then stop the run when the proof out of the pipe reaches 60. Take the booze and put it in a pot that will leave about 2-3 inches of headspace. Stir in the burnt oak chips. Heat the pot with lid on good to about 160 then let it cool overnight. Put the pot in the freezer and let it freeze all day then at night take it out and heat it again. Do this heat/freeze cycle 5-6 times then strain it through coffee filters. Smooth as a babies butt! It is a little powerful for doing shots but great sipping and over ice. Should be about 100 proof. Enjoy!
Some loving! Ain’t you married Mr. Genius? Mrs. Genius needs to get up to speed!
I would love a set of Baofengs! Nice!
Yes I’m married, you misunderstood me. Why is your mind in the gutter lol.
Busted! hehehe 🙂
Better get more than 2 Baofenfgs, because they are CRAPPY!!!
All from Amazon you fucking piece of shit phony. Tess the piece of shit phony along with doucebag Mac Salvo, you two are a couple of hypocritical assclowns. You just can’t kiss the corporate ass enough it would seem. Fuck you Tess and your BS prepper lifestyle.
Yeah, it’s all good for Tess and Mac as long as Master Bezos is paying the bills and selling cheap Chinese crap to the masses.
What a complete pile of shit this site is and the entire prepper movement has become.
What happened to being self sufficient?? Yeah, well, cough cough, I can be self sufficient as long as Amazon delivers everything I need to my fucking doorstep.
You phony fucking pricks.
Bye Bye Mr. FA!
Wow, FA sure got something sideways stuck up in his haunches for sure. Must be an entire Amazon warehouse.
But yet you are here…
Really?? Why you gotta be insulting? There are a lot of people who use online shopping (i.e., Amazon) to find gifts, and many love the gift guides we put out every year. If you don’t like it, move on! No need to insult people.
Christmas means Christ Mass and is about the nativity of Jesus (Yeshua ha Mashiach). Don’t reduce it to paganism and commercialism and turn it into a Saturnalia.
We give gifts because the Magi came and offered three gifts that had layers of meaning that both celebrated his birth and pointed to his sacrifice and death.
If you need these things, then they are tools to improve the quality of your family’s life. Offer these up, not as gifts to people, but as important new household items. Would you give your father an axe or just buy it? And if they are practical,then buying them AFTER Christmas when on sale, makes far more sense.
If you are celebrating the relationship you have with your children or wife, give them something which validates them and shows them how you appreciate them. Gifts for your wife should be romantic…never utilitarian. Please tell me you wouldn’t buy her a vaccuum cleaner!
For a husband, sometimes buying him an expensive knife or firearm he would never buy because of the cost, will deeply please him. These are things we want but cannot justify like a sword.
Some ladies make many crafts or their own clothing. And there may be fabrics she could never justify due to expense, so buying these exceptional cloths may be appreciated. Dedicating and refurbishing a whole room to her craft is something you can do as well.
My grandmother made dresses for my aunt and mother out of flour sacks. As I recall, they had floral prints that varied. Amazing Mainer family that never quit and never complained!
Most people don’t know I am a prepper. Would I use any of that stuff? The waffle iron looks interesting but I don’t really eat waffles (or carbs), these days.
The coffee grinder? Nope. I drink I instant coffee. That grinder has zero reviews. I don’t buy anything that is brand new with no reviews from a brand I haven’t heard of before. Sounds like some cheap Chinese junk. I’ll pass. As for grinding animal feed? Sure, if the only pet you own is a hamster! Good luck grinding oats, or other grains, for a horse / mule / or other large animals with that little bitty thing! Hahaha!
US Mint at dot gov still has proof 2018 silver eagles and 90/10 quarters and national park sets. You can buy online with a credit card and they have ecent service, but the price is $$$$.
Those proof sets are very nice, in sealed acrylic cases (clear on both sides with good quality) and super, super shiny! Shows the metal content, and weight, and shows the metal content for the US currency set (only the quarter and half-dollar are 90/10 in that set). Super, super shiny if you get the proof set! Untouched! Next grade down is uncirculated, depends on your budget and what you want.
You can also buy sets / proof coins going back a few years, too.
I am an adult but this would be a great gift to get kids interested in coins and metal content, etc.
Why in the world would a person grossly over pay for crappy government mint “art”? And what are you teaching the kids?
An absolutely worthless pretend “investment”. Might as well get them to buy those “collectible” plates with shitty scenes on them to hang on the wall.
… but then again, you drink instant coffee.
Awww someone missed my point!
I never said those little sets were an investment. This was a story about gifts. People collect all kinds of things for amusement and entertainment and, sometimes, for their educational value. I stand by my previous comment that these items, especially the US Mint Silver Proof Set, for $49.95. People buy all kinds of crap for kids.
At least this will not fall apart and, as I previously stated, the insert cards are very informative with excellent information about the weight of the coins, the metal content, more. I could certainly have a number of conversations, including research projects, based on that little card. From math, to weights and measures, to what constitutes pure metal versus an alloy, to how to forge metal from raw materials, to how coins are minted.
That being said, my choice of what to drink as a hot beverage, in the morning, isn’t relevent to the topic at hand. But you simply thought you could show up and sling mud? Be careful. You might end up being the one covered in fifth.
this is your live eyewitness news reporter Bill McGill reporting from the holiday battlefield
light to heavy fighting broke out at Walmart when hood rat insurgents gathered in the lektronics department .
At least one eye gouging and one hair pulling incident was reported late Monday when Shanika rebels clashed with Demetrious saggers.
casualties are unknown at this time but authorities remain hopeful.
in a unrelated incident early Tuesday morning a camo clad man described only as bubba was arrested for urinating in the “smokers pole” located outside best buy.
no injuries were reported.
this is your eyewitness reporter Bill McGill reporting from way way way out on the parking lot -> clear
casualties are unknown at this time but authorities remain hopeful.
Head over to McDonalds, I hear there is some action there lol.
All b.s. aside
A couple good articles @ 7pod
Short and sweet the way I like em
http://sevenpod.com/
Jack Daniels. Makes it easier to slice up the family dog for dinner if things got really bad.
I would never eat my dog!!!!!
I don’t have any moral objection, it is just that my dog is a lice and flea infested mange covered POS. HAHAHAHAH
By the way, check out this video about super cheap alternative to the flea treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwm1BoalD48&t=271s
Gift Idea:
Leather Satchel (briefcase/bag)
Fill it with medical supplies.
Include a bottle of Vodka.
Bandages, neosporin, bandaids, bactine, Vick’s Vapo Rub
Aspirin, cough drops, thermometer
First Aid Manual
Number for poison control, number for hospital and your personal physician(s)
Blood types of family, allergies, medical histories
Extra medicine
Include smaller leather bags
Include bottle of Lavender Oil
_
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This is a rather expensive gift if the bag is expensive.
But you could give just the first aid book and Vodka; or,
a book on herbal remedies and a bottle of Lavender Oil.
There are so many ways to do this
_
I sear by Lavender Oil. Put it on a cut or burn and it will be healed in 48 hours.
You can buy 5% topical lidocane on Amazon now.
Great for when the kids skin their knees or minor cuts and scrapes.
Really? That’s good news!
You were talking about scrapes, infowars dot com/store has some super silver cream, for use as an external topical agent. They say it is the strongest you can buy without a prescription and it is based on a formula they use in hospitals.
I hate hospitals. If they are using something like this, in a hospital it is because it is cheap and because it works. For anyone with diabetes, I am guessing this would be a great item for people that have sores or problems with their feet.
Tess,thank you for some great ideas, I may look up a few of them. I don’t have my little homestead now,but hopefully next year. Have a Happy Holiday season.
http://www.classicreader.com/book/593/1/
The Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Wise_Man