8 Homesteading Activities When You’re Trapped Indoors This Winter

Word is out that homesteading isn’t just for rural living anymore. These days people are converting their suburban lawns into edible landscapes, and city-dwellers are using their balconies and patios as portals of food production. It’s an exciting time to be involved in gardening.

Consequently, folks are also realizing that homesteading— be it rural, suburban, or urban— isn’t just about the summertime garden. First of all, lots of crops are better suited for growing in cool weather and can even survive the winter to provide fresh produce year-round. Secondly, there are tons of tasks to tackle when being outside isn’t so inviting.

For those budding homesteaders out there, it’s the perfect time to stay warm and do the stuff there’s never time to do during the growing season. And, this is a great list to get things moving in the right direction this winter.

1. Cooking, Canning, Dehydration and Fermentation

The winter is an awesome time to be in the kitchen. For one, the incidental heat from the stovetop and/or oven helps to keep the house warm. Cooking up sauces, plant-based sausages, and similar stuff beforehand makes life easier when life gets busier. Dehydrating and fermenting harvests will make them last long enough to get back to fresh food in next year’s harvest.

2. Herbal Potions for Good Health

Since colds and cases of flu seem to be at their wildest during the winter, it’s the perfect time to concoct all those medicinal potions that’ll help ward off illness. Get out all those herbs, spices, and dehydrated fruits to make great tea mixes, tinctures, and other powerful blends.

3. Plan the Spring Garden

Winter is the ideal time to plot out the upcoming spring garden, check for what seeds are leftover and saved from last year then make the order for this year. Taking the time to consider companion planting and plant sequencing can help have even more successful harvests this spring.

4. Repot/Fertilize Indoor Plants

Indoor plants and container-grown plants need some serious TLC from time to time. This should involve repotting them into larger containers when necessary, giving them some fresh potting mix every so often, and providing a bit of organic fertilizer to keep them healthy and striving for more.

5. Deep Clean the House/Garage/Shed

For gardeners, spring is not necessarily the best time for deep cleaning because there is a lot of sowing and tending to the garden that has to take place during that time. Instead, using the winter months to cut the grease and grime is a much more efficient way to go about those annual deep cleans.

6. Make or Mend Clothes, Rugs, and Blankets

Chased in by the frigid frosts and freezes, a homesteader will inevitably choose to watch videos. For those who struggle with idle hands, this is the perfect set-up for making or mending clothes, rugs, and blankets so that it isn’t time wasted but rather something to do while getting these tedious winter tasks done.

7. Clean, Repair & Maintain Tools

Cleaning garden tools, repairing broken handles, and sharpening blades are chores that get put off time and time again. It’s difficult to clean a shovel and get it tip-top when you know it’s going to be shoved in the soil the next day. That makes early winter when the tools are getting set for long rest, the textbook time to give them a buff.

8. Tackle Home Repair Tasks

Most of us put off those quick home repairs just long enough for them to become serious home repair projects. For example, that dripping faucet suddenly becomes a kitchen geyser. Instead, the winter—when we often get a bit of cabin fever—is perfect for dwindling that to-do list into a memory.

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