2025: What Do You Want to Learn This Year?
And what did you already learn in 2024?
Every year, we commit to learning a few new skills and helping you to learn them at the same time. My favorite posts to write are detailed DIY articles and beginner’s guides, to spark your interest and imagination, with the hopes that you’ll add new skills to your own self-reliance tool kit.
Help me decide what to write this year!
Leave me a comment below and let me know what you’d like to learn. (I’d also love to know what you did learn in this past year in 2024!)
I love teaching, and I’m happy to share what I know. What I don’t know, I’m usually happy to learn, so I can teach that too!
This is the 5th year I’ve done this with my readers, and y’all always have the best ideas!
In 2024, I published over 100 new articles on Practical Self Reliance (and about 100 new posts on Creative Canning, too), and many of them were topics you specifically asked for last year.
It’s been a busy year, and I have so much good stuff for you coming in 2025…but I really want to know how I can help you in the coming year.
I’m still working on the rest of the list below, and adding to it, of course…if there’s something you are particularly interested in, let me know, and I’ll try to get to it sooner rather than later:
Food Preservation
Beginners Guide to Charcuterie
How to make Ham and Bacon
How to Make Sausage at Home
Understanding Botulism in for Food Preservation
Fermentation
Brewing & Winemaking
How to Make Homemade Wine (From any flower, vegetable or fruit)
Canning
How to Make Jelly
Making Jam and Jelly without Added Pectin
Canning without Sugar
Retort Canning (Make your own MREs)
Scratch Cooking
How to Make Bread
How to Make Butter
How to Make Yogurt
How to use a Bread Machine
How to Cook On Cast Iron
Homemade Meals in a Jar (Dehydrated, Canned & pressure canned)
Cooking with Organ Meats
Gardening
Gardening in Raised Beds
Season Extension in Raised Beds ~ Row Covers, Shade Cloths, Cold Frames, and Cloches
Beginners Guide to Composting
Companion Planting for Beginners
Permaculture for Beginners
How to Build a Raised Bed Garden
How to Grow Mushrooms
Humanure for Beginners
How to Prune Fruit Trees
Small Space Gardening or Small Space Raised Beds
Cold Frame Construction and Use
Homemade Pesticides and Herbicides (organic/plant-based)
How to Make and Use Biochar
Growing Plants from Cuttings
Mushroom Cultivation
Herbalism & Natural Health
Herbal Medicine For Beginners
How to Dry and Preserve Herbs
How to Make Lotion
Beginners Guide to Medicinal Herb Gardening (Herbs to Plant for Medicine)
Medicinal Broths
Foraging & Wild Food
Beginners Guide to Mushroom Foraging
How to Eat A Tree (Edible Trees)
50+ Edible Weeds in Your Lawn
100+ Edible Wild Plants ~ A foragers Bucket List
Seasonal Foraging
50+ Things to Forage in Winter
Mushroom Foraging Tutorials and Lists
Specific Mushroom Foraging Guides
DIY & Crafts
3D Printing for Beginners
How to Make Beeswax Candles
Working with Natural Fibers ~ Milkweed, Nettle, Linen, etc.
Homesteading & Animal Husbandry
Beginners Guide to Beekeeping
Beginners Guide to Raising Chickens (for eggs and meat)
How to Butcher a Chicken (Start to Finish)
Beginners Guide to Chainsaws
How to Season Firewood
DIY Maintenance
How to Care for Cast Iron
How to Restore Cast Iron
How to Restore Knives
How to Sharpen Knives, Axes, and Tools (whetstone)
How to Repair and Refurbish Garden Tools
How to use basic tools (Saw, Drill, etc.)
Natural, Zero Waste & Frugal Living
What to buy well and once
X Things You Should Stop Buying and Start Making
Homemade Natural Cleaners
Off-Grid Living
How to Live without a Refrigerator and Freezer
How to Make a Solar Oven
Solar Backup for Well Pumps (and Off-Grid Water Pump Options)
How to Cook on a Wood Stove
How to Build a Bread Oven
How to Build a Smokehouse
Hunting, Fishing & Survival Skills
How to Butcher a Deer
How to Tie a Fishing Hook to a Line
How to Clean a Fish
Salmon Skin Leather
How to Make Lye From Wood Ash (and Wood Ash Soap)
Basic Tanning for Beginners
Pine Needle Basket Weaving
Weaving Natural Baskets (Willow, Grape Vine, Ash Tree, etc)
How to Distill Water
Preparedness
How to Stitch a Wound
How to Reload Ammunition
How to Choose a Firearm for You
Beginners Guide to Food Storage
Basic Knot Tying
Water sourcing, storage, purity, usability
Intro to Buying Gold and Silver
Other Reskilling Topics
Computing Programming for Non-Programmers
How to Make Charcoal (and Activated Charcoal)
What did you learn this year? And, what do you want to learn in 2025? How can I help?
Leave me a note in the comments!
(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and everyone, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)
Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance
Via email, so I'm sharing it anonymously. This is actually a really interesting topic, and I know so many of you are out there going it alone happily, but others would rather not be. How do you find a like-minded partner with whom to share this life? From a reader:
Want to get into giving match-making advice? Trying to find a like-minded, healthy single man in his 60s is impossible. I just turned 65 and finally realized with my body slowing down- it's become an issue to do this lifestyle alone. How do I find a nonlazy man to show up at my door? 🤔
Ashley, Keep up what you do, and be grateful for the team you have supporting and helping you. Happy New Year!
Topics I received from y'all via email (so I can keep everything in one place here):
- Growing fruit trees, especially trimming, pest management, and winter care.
- How to propagate roses from cuttings
- Soapmaking, Tinctures and Teas, Pressure Canning and Fermenting
- Making Hard Cheeses
- Growing Mushrooms
- Better Time Management
- Beverages to Replace Coffee (without sugar)