The Weekend Homesteader Review

The Weekend Homesteader Review

Are you interested in suburban homesteading but aren’t quite sure where to start?  Anna Hess’ book The Weekend Homesteader may be just what you’re looking for!

The Weekend Homesteader Overview

The Weekend Homesteader is an interesting book because it is broken out into monthly chapters with each month having many little sub-projects.  Interestingly, the chapters start in April and conclude in (yup, you guessed it) March.  The idea is that, if you follow the book, you’ll have a project lined up for every weekend and they’ll be specific to that point in the year.  For instance, the projects for August (February in Australia) include:

  • Seeding Saving
  • Food Drying
  • Build A Chicken Coop or Tractor
  • Install A Rain Barrel System

Not all these projects can be completed in one weekend – creating and managing a budget in July is an on-going activity – while others can be completed in a few hours – mulching your garden is fairly simple if you have enough material.

The Weekend Homesteader – The Good

Anna obviously put a lot of thought into The Weekend Homesteader.  There is a large attention to detail in this book shown by the continuity of projects – there’s instruction on soil management one month and planting the next – to the simple but aesthetically pleasing way it is laid out.  To me, the pictures are what really make the book.

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The Weekend Homesteader - Building A Chicken Coop

The Weekend Homesteader – Building A Chicken Coop

The Weekend Homesteader - Planting Trees

The Weekend Homesteader – Planting Trees

Anna also spent a good amount of time upfront defining the estimated cost, time, difficulty and ‘kid-friendliness’ of each project.  This information is quite useful to those of us with families who might require a bit more up-front planning when beginning projects.

The Weekend Homesteader – The Bad

Well, these aren’t really bad, but the heading goes with the theme (spoiler alert: we won’t have a section title The Ugly).

My first disappointment with The Weekend Homesteader is that the monthly tasks don’t really line up with my area of the country.  Anna and her husband live in southwest Virginia (according to her website).  Let’s just say that southwest Virigina and Long Island have very different weather patterns and some of the timing she suggests doesn’t line up with what’s feasible where I live.  I imagine many others will find the same problem.

Second, Anna and her husband are full time homesteaders.  They bought their 58-acre homestead in 2006 and have been working the land ever since.  The fact that a full time homesteader is giving advice to weekend homesteaders is a bit odd.  I don’t believe the information is necessarily bad, but the general impression of “look, we did it, you can too with only a few hours every weekend” seems a bit misleading to me.

The Weekend Homesteader Wrap-Up

Overall, I recommend The Weekend Homesteader to anyone, especially suburban homesteading newbies, who are looking to set a course of action for their first year.  The general timeline may need to be tweaked for your hardiness zone (you can read more about that topic in our previous article) but the overall message is solid.  There are good projects – some simple, some not simple – that will bring you from scratch up to a good level of self-sufficiency in a short amount of time.

Click Here To Buy The Weekend Homesteader

The Weekend Homesteader

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A chronicle of improvements on the Suburban Homestead based upon the book The Weekend Homesteader by Anna Hess

  1. The Weekend Homesteader Review
  2. Project TWH – Overview
  3. April Preview – Project TWH
  4. Finding Room To Homestead
  5. Suburban Homestead Site Survey
  6. Plan Your Summer Garden
  7. Kill Mulch – Finally Getting Your Hands Dirty!
  8. May Preview – Project TWH
  9. Plant Your Summer Garden
  10. Nutrition For The Suburban Homesteader
  11. Mulch and Your Suburban Homestead
  12. Teamwork On The Suburban Homestead
  13. June Preview – Project TWH
  14. Compost On Your Suburban Homestead
  15. How To Build A Worm Bin
  16. Seasonings: Stepping Up Your Culinary Preps
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Dan
Founder/Owner at Suburban Steader
I am a middle-age guy with a wife, two young kids and a crazy dog. We live on Long Island, NY and had an interesting experience with Hurricane Sandy. That experience led me towards the self-sufficiency movement and eventually led to the founding of SuburbanSteader.com. I aim to provide suburbanites with the confidence and know-how to become more self-reliant by providing content on topics such as gardening, personal health, financial responsibility, cooking, self-preparedness and self-protection.
3 Comments:
  1. I love this book, too! I agree that you have to be somewhat familiar with homesteading/gardening tasks to take her suggestions and make them applicable to your own climate. That would be tricky for folks who are new to all this.

    On an interesting note, in real life I doubt Anna is a full-time homesteader, as writing magazine articles, maintaining a blog, and authoring several books are certainly more indicative of full-time writer who homesteads on the side. This just got me thinking that my bio on my own blog is now out of date, because as I near publishing my first book, I realize that I’ve become an author as my “real” job, and the homesteading has definitely become a weekend activity.

    Anyway, sorry for rambling. You got me thinking 🙂

    • Hi Amy –

      No need to apologize for rambling. I’ve often wondered myself how people who write books and/or blogs have time to both author their works and do the thing they’re talking about – especially something as labor intensive as homesteading. I know I’ve had issues with it in the past and have come to realize that I tend to write about things I’ve done more than things I’m doing…if that makes sense.

      Anyway, I appreciate you reading and commenting. By the way, tell your husband I miss his podcast. I thought he did a really great job on it!

      • It totally makes sense to write about things that are done–it’s hard to write about things as they are happening because you’re too busy doing them! And in some ways, it takes away from the experience. It’s hard to find that balance as a blogger. Documenting a process can be rewarding, but sometimes you just want to be in the moment.

        I will pass along your compliments to Mr. TAF 🙂

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