About Us

Hi, I’m Ashley Adamant, the creator of Practical Self Reliance. I’ve spent years learning homesteading, self-sufficiency, and sustainable living alongside my family on our 30-acre off-grid property in Vermont. From gardening with my grandmother to foraging, permaculture, and herbal medicine, I’m passionate about growing and preserving food using traditional methods.

Through Practical Self Reliance, I share everything I’ve learned—blending my biology background with hands-on experience in everything from food preservation and animal husbandry to brewing and woodworking. My goal is to inspire others to embrace a self-reliant lifestyle. When I’m not on the homestead, I’m raising two children and enjoying Vermont’s natural beauty. Thanks for joining me on this journey!

If you’d like to know more about me and my history and experience, you can visit my full about page for more details.

For now though, I’m just so happy to have you along!

Why Subscribe?

Practical Self Reliance has been an online resource for foraging, preserving, gardening, and everything DIY for 8 years now. In that time it’s grown from a small hobby blog where I wrote about our homesteading adventures, to an online how-to resource seen by literally millions of people every year.

My website is a free online resource (supported by ads), and this newsletter also free. If you choose, you can also support my work with a paid subscription, but that’s completely optional.

The newsletter will always be free, and it’ll still contain the same curated seasonal content from the website, as well as notifications about new articles.

Online content creators are always scrambling to find ways to support their work, and paid substack subscriptions are just one of the ways you can support me directly (if you so choose).

Since subscribers can comment, discuss and interact with others on their own self-reliance journey, my hope is that it becomes a community of like-minded individuals as well.

As a free newsletter subscriber, you won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every week you’ll get detailed articles delivered right to your inbox.

As a paid subscriber, you’ll have my thanks, and know that you’ll also be helping push Practical Self Reliance toward a reader-supported future.

Join the crew

I hope you’ll join the Practical Self Reliance Newsletter, either as a free subscriber or paid supporter. Either way, I’d love to have you along, and I welcome you to join this community of passionate DIY enthusiasts who share your interests.