What Do You Want to Learn This Year?
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 2022!)
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 3rd year I’ve done this with my readers, and y’all always have the best suggestions.
In 2021, you helped me write this epic list of beginner’s guides, and thus far, I’ve worked through more than 50 of them…plus another 100 or so recipes and smaller things that don’t exactly count as full-on “Beginner’s Guides.”
It’s been a busy year, and I have so much good stuff for you coming in 2023.
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
How to set up a cheese cave (cheesemaking in warmer climates)
Beginners Guide to Charcuterie
How to make Ham and Bacon
How to Make Sausage at Home
Beginners Guide to Dehydrating Food
Understanding Botulism in for Food Preservation
Fermentation
Brewing & Winemaking
How to Make Country Wine (Fruit Wine)
How to Make Wine from Grapes
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 Render Tallow
How to use a Bread Machine
How to Cook On Cast Iron
Homemade Meals in a Jar (Dehydrated, Canned & pressure canned)
How to Grow Sprouts
Cooking with Organ Meats
Gardening
Gardening in Raised Beds
Season Extension in Raised Beds ~ Row Covers, Shade Cloths, Cold Frames, and Cloches
Basics of Seed Saving
Beginners Guide to Seed Starting
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 & 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
DIY & Crafts
3D Printing for Beginners
How to Make Beeswax Candles
Working with Natural Fibers ~ Milkweed, Nettle, Linen, etc.
Beginners Guide to Natural Dyes
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 Maintenence
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 2023? 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
gOSH THANKs. I learned this year: more about biology and vaxxinations than I wanted, and learned that our Department of Defense (DOD) is literally trying to kill us, they made and own the deadly injections. I learned that I have a limit to the amount of sadness and rejection and cogdis I can take before I blow my stack, and that blowing my stack is an appropriate, if not desirable, response when someone is literally trying to kill me.
This year? I hope to learn how to walk away from all this clicking, and return to some of my former skill base in rough and fine woodworking, making pipes (that look like branches still with bark) and getting better at bushcamping by bushcamping....these English folks are helpful and have fun vids
https://www.youtube.com/@TAOutdoors
This is a little different. We are over 70 and getting a bit creaky. Its getting harder to grow the crops and tend the chickens. Any advice on making things easier? We have over 50 different fruit trees and try to grow as many vegetables as we can. Thanks Ashley!