Fun on the Homestead

Fun on the Homestead
Food · Family · Simple Living

From garden to table, the honest way.

Canning, growing, baking and earning on a little patch of mid-Michigan. Real numbers, real messes, nothing staged.

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Vanilla glaze drizzling over homemade yeast donuts
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Jars of cowboy candy

Canning & preserving

Jars on the counter, and the recipes we actually make twice.

Canning
Homestead vegetable garden

In the garden

What grew, what died, and what we’d plant again.

Garden
Sunflower on the homestead

Ways to earn here

Side income you can run from the property, with honest math.

See what works

The thing out here that pays best

An embroidery machine in a spare room. Small footprint, works all winter, sells locally, and it doesn’t care about the weather.

  • What it costs to start, including my $600 mistake
  • What people actually earn, not dream numbers
  • What to charge so you’re not working for $4 an hour
Read the whole thing

Tomatoes ready for canning sauce

Where that path leads

Each step is a question people actually hit out here.

Is it worth it?The honest math, here
I bought a machineBeginner guide on Craftylife
Files won’t openUnzip2stitch
A customer has a logoCraftylife digitizing

Lately on the homestead

Yeast raised donuts cooling

Yeast raised donuts

The recipe we’ve made for eight years, and what I’d tell you now.

Jump to recipe →
Cowboy candy jars

Cowboy candy

Sweet pickled jalapenos, and how many jars is too many.

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Donuts and coffee

Vanilla donut glaze

The one ingredient that makes it taste like a donut shop.

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The homestead garden

Good food, brighter days

Hey, I’m Lorna.

We’re on a patch of ground in mid-Michigan, where the internet took four upgrades to get usable and the garden still surprises me every year.

I can, I garden, I fix what I can, and I run an embroidery digitizing business out of the spare room. Everything here is what actually happened, including the parts that cost me money.

Designs are permanent. Recipes are personal.

Say hello

Come say hello

Questions about canning, the garden, or making a little money from your own place? I answer every message.

Get in touch

SunflowerTomatoesDonutsCowboy candyGarden
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