The Prairie Homestead

Homesteading | Self Sufficient Living | Living off the Land

Jill Winger

140 Comments | |    Last Updated: March 17, 2018

How to Feed Eggshells to Chickens

It's been rather egg-y around The Prairie Homestead lately. We've talked about whether or not to wash farm fresh eggs and how to go about freezing them for later.  Another egg-related question that has recently come up is: What to do with with leftover eggshells? Composting them is definitely one option, but did you know you can feed them back to your chicken flock? Like anything else, there seems to be lots of different ...Continue Reading

55 Comments | |    Last Updated: December 4, 2022

How to be a Suburban (or Urban) Homesteader

One thing I love about homesteading is that it is a completely flexible lifestyle... Sometimes I think people get caught up in the old-fashioned idea that you have to have acres of property to be considered a homesteader. Today that is simply not the case, you can begin your homesteading journey no matter where you are.  To help those that wish to live the homesteading lifestyle but are confined to smaller spaces I have created ...Continue Reading

217 Comments | |    Last Updated: April 16, 2021

How to Freeze Eggs

It's either feast or famine when it comes to eggs around our homestead... After the long, egg-less wait while our chicks matured, we are currently slammed with eggs. Blue ones, brown ones, little ones, big ones, double yolkers... Eggs everywhere. (Want some egg recipes? Check out my post of 50+ egg-heavy recipes here) But eventually our chickens will molt and we will be hard pressed to find enough eggs to make breakfast on a ...Continue Reading

43 Comments | |    Last Updated: December 4, 2022

How to be an Apartment Homesteader

One of my favorite things about the modern homesteading movement is that it is flexible. I use to think that the only way a person could ever be considered a farmer or rancher was to have thousands upon thousands of acres and make a full-time living off of their land. But, definitions are changing... In the past, I've talked about the idea of being a modern-day homesteader, no matter where you may live, and in more recent ...Continue Reading

253 Comments | |    Last Updated: March 17, 2018

Eggs: To Wash or Not to Wash?

I'm pretty laid-back when it comes to my home-grown foods. I'll eat unwashed veggies from my garden (we're 100% organic, of course), raw milk straight from Oakley the cow, and raw eggs from our chickens. Buuut, some people aren't quite so, shall we say, accepting. And sometimes when you give people a carton of chicken eggs to take home that have bits of shavings and feathers stuck to them, it kinda grosses them out. But no big ...Continue Reading

47 Comments | |    Last Updated: June 13, 2023

How to Make Peach Pie Filling for the Freezer

The Great Dilemma: You are asked to bring a dessert to a potluck, BBQ, or dinner party. Do you stick to your real food convictions and bring something "healthy", or cave in and bring a standard dessert loaded with white sugar...? I will confess that I've done both. Depending on the crowd, sometimes it's not worth it to use all my expensive, healthy sweeteners when they won't eat it anyway. Thankfully, fruit pies are a great ...Continue Reading

Nice to Meet You

I’m Jill. I’ve never been very good at following prescribed paths.

For the last 15 years, that instinct has led me through homesteading, entrepreneurship, and creating a life my younger self could have only dreamed of.

These days, I’m less interested in living the perfect "old-fashioned life" and more interested in knowing which ideas are worth carrying forward. The first half of this story was about building a homestead. The next part is about building a life that actually fits.
Read My Story