Gift ideas for homesteaders and would be homesteaders, for gardeners, and for those hard to shop for friends who have (almost) everything!

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I’ve been a homesteader, gardener, herbalist and fermenter for a long time. So I decided to compile a list of items that I love, that I find practical and that I feel would make great useful gifts for the homesteaders, gardeners, fermenters, foragers and possibly others in your circle of friends and family.
My Favorite Gift Ideas
I feel these would make a great gift anytime, for the holidays, birthdays, or just to spread the love when you feel like it. If you’re looking for an unusual gift for someone who has seemingly everything, consider these as well:
Here is a quick jump menu:
Fun Kits
For The Mushroom Lover:

Give an indoor mushroom kit! I’ve tried lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms with success. It’s a great introduction to mushroom growing any time of the year and it’s super fun to watch a flush of mushrooms emerge and to cook them up for dinner. Each kit gives you several flushes of mushrooms and when it’s done, you can use the material as “seed” to grow more.
So when your kit stops producing, don’t discard it. “Plant” the spawn in fresh hardwood sawdust or straw, keep it in a shady and moist spot, and you might get another flush or two in a few months. Whenever your growing material (substrate) is full of mycelium and after it fruited, just take some, add it to fresh substrate, and keep it going.
For The aspiring Home Brewer:

I highly recommend this beer making kit for an aspiring home brewer. It’s a great introduction to brewing your own beer and for learning how the process works. And here are my favorite hinged lid bottles to go with it. They are also great for making homemade ginger beer and other sodas.
For The Forager:
Mushrooming Stocking Stuffers:

This Opinel #8 mushroom knife with brush would make a great stocking stuffer for your favorite mushroom enthusiast! I highly recommend it. It is my favorite tool for picking and cleaning mushrooms in my garden or in the woods.
A nice Basket is great to have for backyard mushrooming. But when foraging in the woods, where a basket is kind of bulky and awkward to carry, consider this cool packable mushrooming bag that comes with a knife. This would make a super take-along for a mushroom hunt and it can hang out in your day pack till you need it.
A Day Pack With Survival And Foraging Gear:

Stuff a day pack with useful items for foraging and survival. Here are some ideas: A magnifying glass, compass, Morakniv Outdoor Knife, portable knife sharpener, multitool, or Swiss Army pocket knife, Sawyer water filter kit, first aid kit, binoculars, flashlight, extra batteries, cotton balls and vaseline (for starting fires), pepper spray, ferrocerium flint fire starter kit, emergency blankets (that can double as an emergency tent), pocket lighter, paracord, first aid kit, duck tape, notebook and pen, toilet paper, and some pre moistened wipes.
Consider this also for a youth who likes to explore. They should always have survival gear on them. Adjust the contents accordingly.
Foraging Books:

Add a book or two on foraging and mushroom hunting. Here are some of my favorites:
All That the Rain Promises and More: A Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms by David Arora. This is truly a nice compact pocket sized guide. I love it!
National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. All the Audubon guides are great to have for exploring and identifying plants and mushrooms. It is also a great idea to get their Guide to North American Trees: Eastern Region, or Western Region, so you’ll know where to look for which mushrooms as they prefer certain host trees.
Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora. Ok, this one is not a field guide, it is a comprehensive encyclopedia on mushroom identification that is really too big and heavy to put in a foraging pack. But it is great to have for id-ing at home or verifying pictures and trying to figure out a find. Plus it’s great for learning during a winter storm while sitting by the fire. Anyone interested in foraging mushrooms will appreciate this gift.
Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer
The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. All Samuel Thayer books are great for learning about edible wild plants. These two books do not overlap.
For the West: Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants by Scott Kloos. If you’re gifting to someone from the PNW, I highly recommend this book. It’s an absolutely awesome field guide and great fireside read. Lots of info about finding herbs in the wild and how to use them. It is very comprehensive and was super useful for me in Washington.
East and Central: Peterson Field Guide To Medicinal Plants & Herbs Of Eastern & Central N. America: This is an Eastern and Central version of medicinal plant identification. Peterson has lots of great field guides and another one that I recommend, is Edible Wild Plants: Eastern/Central North America.
For The Gardener Or Would Be Gardener:
Plants:

Give some herbs or medicinal plants in pretty pots for the window sill, such as Aloe, Thyme, or Rosemary. Spicy Thai pepper plants make an ornamental and edible house plant too. Some can be planted out into the garden in the spring.
Seeds:
Here is a collection of medicinal herb seeds. A great gift for anyone who is interested in planting a medicinal garden.
Add a seed starter kit with heat mat. The heat mat comes in very handy, even for making herbal medicine or keeping a homemade batch of yogurt warm and I love having the thermostat.
Consider also giving a gift card for Baker Creek seed company or similar.
Gardener’s Protection:
Here is a great sun protection hat from Farmer’s Defense, that would make a pretty and practical gift for your gardening friend. Get some matching gardening sleeves to go with it to prevent scratched up arms, sunburn and rashes. And add thorn resistant gardening gloves, which are great for roses, blackberries and thorny weeds. I also like them for picking stinging nettles, my favorite spring vegetable. Here is a useful harvest apron for gathering this and that when in the garden. There is room for a few tools and it even has a dump pocket for unloading! Pretty cool!
Gardening Tools:

These are some of my favorite small gardening tools, the cobra head cultivator and the hori hori digging knife. Both are super useful for planting and transplanting, especially if you’re working in tight spots.
Gardening Book:

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. I’ve had this for a long time, so the cover looks different now. But it’s a really easy to apply gardening method, especially for beginner gardeners or when starting a garden. It can be applied to gardening in raised beds, in ground, or even planting boxes.
Permaculture And Food Forest Books:

It’s hard to pick just a few books from my loaded book shelves, but I think these make great reads for someone trying to start a permaculture garden.
Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway. This is probably the only book you need if you’re getting into permaculture. It’s downscaled for backyards and small spaces, but can be used for expansive ones too, and covers all the permaculture principles and applications. Really good!
Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. This is a huge 2-volume series that is great for more serious deep diving into permaculture. Worth having!
Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture by Russel J. Smith. One of the original books on food forests and how trees can provide sustenance and abundant harvests for decades. Plant once and eat for life.
Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual by Bill Mollison. I’m including this here, because it’s the “bible” of permaculture, the thing that started the movement. Permaculture has been around for a very long time, and nature is the originator. But Bill Mollison observed, copied nature, and brought it to our conciousness with this tome. He developed the principles that apply not just to a food forest, but different areas of life and work. This is a more serious read and not something to skim through.
Tree Pruning And Brush Clearing:

My favorite pruning tool, that would make a great gift for anyone who’s planting fruit trees, nut trees, or berry bushes, are these Felco pruners. They make nice, clean cuts on smaller branches and feel really good in the hand. They are best for medium to bigger hands, and unlike most pruners I’ve ever had, they are made to last.
For larger branches I love the Fiskars long handled pruning shears. I used my old ones so much for years until I cut into an old barbed wire fence that was hidden in the brush where I was trimming and found out that it has limitations. Ugh. Took a little chunk out of the blade. But fortunately my kids gifted me another pair. I’ll be way more careful about where I’m cutting with these.
And to round out the hand pruning tools, consider gifting a hand pruning saw. I have two favorites: One is the Corona 10″ Razor Tooth, this link is for the folding saw, but they also sell them as non-folding. I do very much like my Silky Big Boy folding saw as well. My Big Boy is the fine tooth model and it is really great even for carpentry work, when a circular saw is impractical, such as in hard to reach or tight spots.
And for the bigger jobs, here is my favorite battery operated chainsaw, the Greenworks 40V 16″ Brushless Cordless Chainsaw. 4.0Ah battery and charger are included with this link. It is fairly light, quiet for a chainsaw and it turns off between cuts, so it won’t stay running when you reposition some logs. It starts right up again when you engage the trigger. I’ve been using this chainsaw for years. After almost 2 years of heavy use, as in cutting several chords of firewood and cleaning up after snow storms, including hardwood, it stopped running. I called customer service and they immediately replaced it with a new one.
In contrast, I had also purchased an 18″ Poulan gas powered chainsaw for the “heavier work”, but it gave me nothing but trouble, was hard to start, quit after just a few uses and in the end, the “Greenworks” did all the jobs that I had intended for the Poulan. It cut 2 large gorilla cart loads of rounds from tree trunks and large branches on just one battery load. It’s a workhorse that I would purchase again. They are also making a 60V version now, which I haven’t tried, but I read good reviews about it.
String Trimmer:

After going through several different battery operated string trimmers, that burnt out on me or were just way too complicated to restring, I found this EGO ST1511T 15-Inch 56-Volt Lithium-Ion Cordless String Trimmer. Wow, it’s awesome. It automatically restrings, no need to take it apart and hope to get it back together and working after, lol. Just put thestring through the hole, push a button and there it goes.
Tall grasses don’t wrap around the cutting head, so no need to keep stopping to clean it ever. It runs long enough to tire me out, I haven’t timed it to be honest, but I can do a good amount of trimming on one battery load. It is my favorite so far and I have no complaints. I use it as a mower, since I don’t own one, and also to mow a path for electric net fencing when I move my animals. And it’s powerful enough to even chop up some woody brush in my pasture. Highly recommend.
Tree Books:

Grow a Little Fruit Tree: Simple Pruning Techniques for Small-Space, Easy-Harvest Fruit Trees by Ann Ralph. This is a great book for small backyards or gardens and small scale food forests. You can grow a lot of fruit trees in a small space and this book shows you how.
Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone by Susan Poizner. A great hobby to take up. My dad was a master grafter and he had a cherry tree in the front yard with a half dozen or so varieties of cherries on it. I always thought that was awesome. This book teaches the methods.
For The Homesteader, Fermenter, Baker, And Cheesemaker:
Fermentation Or Storage Jars:

One of my favorite gifts are these super cool fermentation containers, the Bormioli Rocco Fido Jars. They are great for fermenting but they make beautiful storage jars too for salt, sugar, flour, cookies or whatever you can think of. You could add cabbage and cucumber seed packets, to make Kraut and Dills, and seeds to grow salsa ingredients, print out my salsa recipe and put it all into the Jar! And if you have a big jar, stuff it with thorn resistant gardening gloves, gardening sleeves, and this useful harvest apron.
Fermentation Crock:
For the serious large scale fermenter, consider giving this American made Ohio stoneware fermentation crock. It has a water channel that works like an airlock and comes with a ceramic weight.
Fermentation Tools:

Assemble some fermentation tools to make things easier for the fermenter in your life:
Fermentation tops or Airlocks for mason jar fermenting. Give some Redmond’s Real Salt or Himalayan pink salt in a Bormioli Fido jar. Add some Glass weights for mason jars or Ceramic weights for larger jars. This Acacia wood pickle packer is a great help for packing the ingredients like when making sauerkraut. And one super useful tool in a homestead kitchen is the wide mouth funnel. This well equipped, your recipient will be at the top of the fermentation game.
Cheesemaking Gifts:

Alright, I will say it right out that I don’t make Mozzarella this way anymore, since I prefer the more complicated, slower, and more fickle traditional way of making it. But here is the scoop. Making Mozzarella the quick way with citric acid is really fun and a great way to get started with making cheese. It’s pretty fool-proof and the result is quite good. You can make both, Mozzarella and Ricotta with the same batch of milk, first the Mozzarella and then the Ricotta with the whey. It’s nice to give a kit like this to someone who is new to cheesemaking.
This Mozzarella and Ricotta cheesemaking kit is assembled by the New England Cheesemaking Company. I’ve purchased cheesemaking equipment from them for over 30 years. They have good products and they make it easy to get started. This is a kit you can purchase to gift to someone who loves to mess around in the kitchen and likes fun, new, from scratch projects.
For the intermediate cheesemaker, who’s ready to start making hard cheeses, or a beginner who wants to dive into it head-long, I’d suggest a dutch style cheese press or my favorite, this no weight required cheese press. After trying to make some homemade presses and buying some cheap ones, I realized that getting a proper press is worth the money! Add a few cheese molds to go with it, a small, medium, or large, or all of them, and some plyban for lining the molds. I use the medium and large molds the most. for the large you’ll need about a 6-8 gallon batch of milk and it will make some big loaves! With all this you’ll you’ll set someone up to make some seriously good cheeses.
I recommend adding The Art Of Natural Cheesemaking by David Asher. It’s a great introduction to cheesemaking the traditional way. And then also, add a link to my cheesemaking posts!
Here are some more cheesemaking essentials and nice-to-haves, that would make a great “kit” if you assemble them for a would-be cheesemaker: A set of basket forms, A ricotta mold, small hard cheese mold, and a medium size (these will work in a cheese press or with a handmade weight), a skimmer, organic unbleached cotton cheesecloth, liquid rennet (this needs to be refrigerated!), or rennet tablets (no refrigeration neccessary), mesophilic and thermophilic culture*, calcium chloride (for cow’s milk only), The Art Of Natural Cheesemaking, a book, a cheese thermometer, and a cheese curd knife (this is also used as a frosting knife for cake). A cheese mat is very useful too for draining and drying cheeses. *The cultures can be very easily made at home from raw milk! Find out how in my post about natural cheesemaking.
Cheese And Fermenting Books:

The Art Of Natural Cheesemaking by David Asher. My favorite cheese making manual. He uses traditional methods and discusses the fundamentals of how milk and cheese works. Having this understanding frees you to develop your own cheeses and to not be bound to purchased cultures and complicated recipes.
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. A great book that teaches the basics of fermenting and is full of recipes.
Cooking:
The best blender, in my opinion, is the Vitamix 5200 Blender, Professional-Grade. Awesome for smoothies, soups, making butter, and so much more. If you’re looking for a powerful blender that can handle tough inputs, this is going to take care of your needs.
My favorite pans are some heavy cast iron frying pans in a few different sizes. I use my 10 inch every day, but I also use an 8 inch and a 12 inch frequently. If you know someone who likes using non-stick pans, you might help them by gifting these. Cast iron is non-stick as well, once seasoned, and they do not contain dangerous PFAS. You can gift it with a pan handle sleeve.
My favorite baking vessel for bread baking, casseroles, lard rendering, cooking in a fire pit, roasting chickens and pork or chevon roasts, is my cast iron dutch oven. I use the 5 quart for baking bread and the 7 quart for roasting big things and rendering lard. I consider them essential and I think anyone would be thrilled to own one of these veratile and beautiful heavy pots.
If you don’t enjoy the rustic look of a plain dutch oven, but want it to look beautiful, check out this enamelled dutch oven by lodge. It is just really gorgeous!
If you dislike glass lids on cooking pots as much as I do, check out stainless steel Farberware pots with heavy bottoms. I love my 3 quart Farberware sauce pot for so many things, like making cajeta.
Baking:

Here is a great stocking stuffer for the bread baker. I love my Danish dough whisk and use it whenever I make bread, as well as for mixing any doughs, like for zucchini bread here. It’s quick to pull out and easy to clean, and nice and quiet when a job doesn’t require a mixer.
For a sourdough bread making container, I like the 6 qt Cambro. This comes with a lid and it’s the perfect size for a large or 2 smaller loaves. I mix everything in it, then I put the lid on and let it rise, put it into the refrigerator for a few days and it goes from there right into the baking pot.
My favorite manual grain mill is the Country Living grain mill. I love this mill, but right now there is not enough room in my little yurt to make a space for it and keep it set up. So it’s still boxed up, but I’m planning to build a corner for it once I have a workshop built. This grain mill is very heavy, built to last and be passed down to the next generation of bread bakers. It needs to be bolted down on a sturdy table, or you can get an optional mounting assembly for it. It gives peace of mind, to have a manual grain grinding option, if you like to bake and if you’re off the grid or planning to be. To tell it true, it takes a workout and some time to grind 5 cups of flour, but it is easy to turn and works beautiful. It comes with a corn auger attachment for making corn meal too. You have the option to add an extension arm for more leverage, which is not included. But you can also hook up a motor to the large flywheel with belt groove, or connect it to a stationary bicycle rim and peddle away.
For an electric grain mill, I highly recommend the Mockmill. I’ve been using mine for a year now and am super happy with it. It grinds your whole wheat from very fine to coarse. It takes just a few minutes to have all the flour you need for a large loaf. The flour temperature stays moderate and it takes up little space on the counter and so I just leave it out and it’s ready to use any time.
If you are shopping for a hand mixer for your favorite baker, my recommendation is the KitchenAid 5 speed ultra power hand mixer. I have used many handmixers in the past and my favorite has been my KitchenAid. It actually has several speeds unlike many others and excels at doing the jobs that it is meant to do. Highly recommend. Plus it’s on sale right now. Grab it while it’s a deal!
Finally, here is my favorite cast iron dutch oven for baking big round loaves of sourdough bread. I like to preheat the heavy duty cast iron pot before adding the loaf. It gives the bread a great boost from the start, and a good oven spring. Then I cover it with the lid, which keeps the steam in the pot and makes for a nice, moist loaf and not too thick a crust.

When I slow-bake my German Rye and seed bread over several hours, it is similar to the German style pumpernickels that you can buy in a package. Stay tuned for my special recipe that I’ll be sharing soon by signing up for the Food For Life Garden Newsletter. If you want to gift this pot, I recommend the 5 quart size for most bread loaves. I also own a 7 qt version and I use it when I make my extra large loaves. I also use the 7 qt for roasting whole chickens and brasing pork or chevon (goat) roasts, rendering lard, and making casseroles. They work in a fire pit too. When I first went off grid, that is where I baked my bread and cakes. And it’s the best pot for slow cooking onions for Zwiebelkuchen and onion soup.
Get my favorite KitchenAid® 7 Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer for less right now! A great deal for a kitchen workhorse that can help with so many tasks. Great for mixing bread dough, cakes, ground meat, and more. It has lots of attachment options too, that can save you money over buying other appliances.
Food Dehydration:

My top choice for a food dryer is a Harvest Right Freeze dryer. Whether you’re gifting a prepper, or a homesteader who wants to preserve the harvest to be shelf stable, this is the way to go. The quality of the preserved food is superior. Freeze drying will retain most of the nutrients of the fresh food. Freeze drying even preserves eggs, milk and meats, soup, or chili. To rehydrate, add hot water and you’ve got a meal that tastes like you just made it from scratch. Make trail food or camping rations that are easy to prepare when you’re out in the woods. You can eat most foods right out of the jar or bag, or you can just pour some in your hot soup, or pour hot water over it to rehydrate it. Foods will keep fresh for a decade by vacuum sealing it in mason jars or mylar bags. This gift will earn you some appreciation, guaranteed!
If you want to add some extras, these are essentials: To vacuum seal canning jars full of dried foods, add a foodsaver with the mason jar attachments. This will keep them much fresher than just screwing on the lid. You can also use a Pump-N-Seal gadget, which I think is awesome, in case you don’t need the foodsaver for other uses. Your other option is to give some O2 absorber packets that will create a vacuum in a canning jar after sealing it with a lid.
For a traditional countertop electric food dehydrator, consider the Excalibur Electric Food Dehydrator Select Series 10-Tray with Adjustable Temperature Control. This will do a lot of food drying if you have a large garden. I’ve used their 4-tray model in the past and found it a little small, but if you’re limited on elecricity, it will consume less than the larger ones. I’ve also used the 9-tray traditional style and it was great! But I think if I was to purchase a new one I’d go with the 10-Tray 3900 B listed above. These units are made in America!
For something middle of the line, you might also consider the COSORI Food Dehydrator. It has a ton of great reviews but it it made in China. Dehydrating foods and herbs is a great way to preserve them without having to take up freezer space. Foods can keep for at least a year, especially when they are vacuum sealed. (See the paragraph above!)
And this Nesco FD-79 Snackmaster Pro Digital Food Dehydrator is an expandable option. It comes with 4 trays and you can add on trays as you might need them. It’s very affordable and quite popular. It’s easy to clean and includes Fruit Roll Sheets, Clean-A-Screens, and a sample of Jerky Seasoning & Cure. Most of it is manufactured in America as well.
Here is a non-electric food dryer option. I have one that comes with removable trays, that I bought about 6 years ago. Unfortunately it’s discontinued so I can’t recommend it here, but I found something similar, that might work pretty well. There are a few designs out there, but this 18″ Herb Drying Rack makes the most sense to me with the openings being a little bigger. I thought I’d bring it to your attention as a non-electric option.
Ice Cream:

If you are an ice cream lover, consider gifting this 1.5 Quart Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker Machine to your kitchen boss. It’s a hint, wink, wink, as well as a cool gift, lol. Of course you can gift it to anyone who loves ice cream. It’s so easy to use and fun, especially for the kids, who can help with the process.
Whether you’re keeping your own dairy animals, or not, I highly recommend making your own ice cream. There are so few organic ice creams out there and most of the ice creams in stores are loaded with really bad for you ingredients. The milk and cream are probably from antibiotic and growth hormone fed animals that live in confinement. Then add the GMO corn syrup, artificial flavorings, colorings and thickeners such as carrageenan, and you’ve got a mix that could cause all sorts of health problems, especially if you love ice cream and eat a lot of it.
Ice cream can be a healthy snack if you get the ingredients right though and there is nothing wrong with a cold treat during a hot spell in the summer. But it’s nearly impossible to find the healthy version. Even frozen yogurt is not a healthy substitute, unless you make it yourself. While you can make ice cream without an ice cream maker, it’s a bit of a hassle and I don’t think it comes out as good. This Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker Machine makes a family size batch of creamy, super tasty ice cream. I have made many batches of ice cream in mine. They are delicious and I know that they are good for me, because I know exactly what goes into them.
Canning:

The Boss of Pressure canners has to be the All American Pressure Canner. All the sizes are built like a tank and I’ve been using it since 30 years ago. My favorite size is the 925. You can fit 7 quart jars or up to 19 pints on 2 layers. I use it for pressure canning and water bath canning, and I’ve used it almost daily during harvesting, tuna, salmon, and butchering seasons.
There are also a couple of larger sizes, the 930 which fits 14 quarts on two levels and the 945 which fits 19 quarts. I find the smaller sizes not as practical, but they would be easier to handle. There are occasions, where I wish that I have the bigger one, but I think it would be too heavy to handle for me regularly. One thing to consider is that the two largest sizes cannot be used on a flat top stove. However the 925 mentions that it will be ok on flat tops. I think any gardener giftee will be thrilled to own one of these and they are build to last for at least another generation of canners.
Homesteading Books:

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. This is a must read for anyone who homesteads, but also for anyone who wants to cook more natural and healthy. Full of traditional wisdom, it debunks modern nutrition agendas that are often pushed by the big commercial outfits. It presents the fallacy of myths and fads and gives a solid argument for the validity of traditional culinary practices.
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 50th Anniversary Edition by Carla Emery. It’s the classic with a new look. Mine in the picture shows its years and abuse, lol. It’s about 30 years old and has been used time and again. It’s just great to have all the homesteading questions answered in one big volume. I don’t think anyone is ever right in everything, but Carla Emery has a lot of experience and it shows.
The Small-Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery. Gotta love Harvey Ussery. This is a great book for getting started with poultry. If you know someone who would love to do some small scale homesteading, this would be a great introduction to livestock keeping.
The Independent Farmstead by Shawn and Beth Dougherty. And likewise this book. It’s a bit more dairy centered, but it covers a lot of ground on starting a small farm, becoming independent and self-sufficient. And they offer a lot of common sense to someone who wants to get started with a homestead life.
Butchering Tools:
A knife for everything meat, in my book, is the Victorinox 6-Inch Curved Rosewood Boning Knife with Semi-Stiff Blade. It works for all the butchering tasks that a knife can do. For Chickens, pigs, sheep, goats and cows. Or maybe you’re a hunter, then it will work for deer and fowl as well. You can use it for skinning and boning and even quartering. I also like the Victorinox 6 Inch Curved Fibrox Pro Boning Knife with Semi-stiff Blade. Sometimes I prefer that kind of handle to the wooden one. Both work great and are interchangeable.
For sticking an animal when you’re using the humane halal or kosher method, I like a very sturdy, sharp, short knife. My favorite is the Morakniv Companion Fixed Blade Outdoor Knife. This is a great knife to take along when hiking as well. It comes in a nice hard case that can clip to your belt. And you won’t loose it easily, it’s bright orange.
The only other things needed for butchering larger animals are a wooden butcher block (this one has feet) or cutting board, a butcher bone saw and a very occasional meat cleaver. Then to display all those delicious home cured meats and cheeses consider this beautiful charcuterie board.
Helpful for meat preservation whether you’re giving to a hunter or home butcher, is a foodsaver with vacuum bags. And give some butcher paper and plastic wrap to go with it.
On meat grinding: After laboring hard, to grind a few pounds of meat on a manual meat grinder, and burning out a home-size Weston electric grinder, I decided that it’s time for a step up in the meat grinding game. Two years ago, after butchering a couple of pigs, I had to stop in the middle of it and freeze the meat and fat un-ground, because my little meat grinder burnt out and quit for good. I went online and did some research and ordered a “beefy” grinder to finish the job.
The Meat! 3/4 HP Meat Grinder is a beast. Wow, did it plow through many pounds of meat and pretty tough back fat and I decided that it was well worth the upgrade. Clean up was easy enough, no worse than my other grinders. It does take up a bit of storage space and it’s heavy, let me warn you. But I’m very happy with it. If you’re trying to find a great gift for a person who’s processing meat regularly, choose from 1/2, 3/4 or 1 hp.
Add some hog casings for a stocking stuffer :).
Butchering Book:

Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, and Pork by Adam Danforth. This book is a great reference to have on hand for any type of butchering with very clear instructions and pictures. If you want to make cuts like those you get in the butcher store, this will help you figure it out.
For The Homestead Workshop:

Here are a few of my favorite homestead workshop power tools, that I use for all sorts of projects and that I think would make great gifts for someone starting out or needs extras or add-ons:
One of my newest but most used tools is the DEWALT 20V MAX XR Brushless Cut Off/Grinder Tool with 3Ah Battery & Charger. It’s awesome for cutting off metal tubing to use for handles, to repair damaged screen tent poles, cut off broken screws, cut roofing panels, rebar and more. There are attachments for concrete and for cutting bricks, for grinding and polishing, even wood working. Add a few cutting wheels and it’ll make a fine gift for a diy person.
I like having a power drill and screwdriver ready to use separately, even if one tool could do both things. I predrill most holes before screwing to prevent cracking and stress in the wood. And it helps to get screws started in plywood. So two tools makes it much quicker than switching out the bits all the time. Here is a kit that has both a driver and a drill, plus a reciprocating saw: DEWALT 20V MAX XR Power Tools Combo Kit, Hammer Drill, Impact Driver, Reciprocating Saw, and Work Light. I use these all the time to build animal shelters, custom furniture for my yurt, shelving, sawhorses, raised beds, wood boxes for storing potatoes or firewood, and whatever else needs to be made. And I admit that I’ve used the reciprocating saw a couple of times to cut a pig in half when butchering. Don’t tell.
I’ve struggled with a couple of Ryobi saws for years, that just never could make it through a sheet of plywood, they even stalled cutting 2x4s. Really frustrating when you’re trying to make a nice clean cut and get a bunch of work done. I would usually end up having to run a long extension cord to wherever I was cutting, or make my cuts near a plug and carry pieces to the job site. Not efficient! So I recommend the DEWALT 20V MAX XR Circular Saw, 7-1/4-Inch, Brushless with plenty of power for most homestead projects.
Ok, this would not be complete without mention of my DEWALT 10-Inch Table Saw. I love this tablesaw for making furniture, ripping plywood and 2x4s and doing angle cuts. I use it for so many projects. When making furniture and chicken tractors, as well as shelving, I like to cut my 2x4s in half for most of the projects. It never complains even on long 10 ft pieces. I’ve also ripped 2x4s through the thicker part and while the blade is too small to cut through the 31/2 inches I can flip the wood after one cut and make a second cut and in the end it looks as clean as from one cut. Pretty cool. This saw is really easy to move around on its wheels and I can tuck it away in a corner when not in use. If you know someone who could benefit from owning a tablesaw, I highly recommend this 10″ DEWALT.
My favorite power sander is the Makita 3″ x 24″ Belt Sander. This one is corded. And it is awesome! If you know someone who does a lot of woodworking, I highly recommend this machine. There are several sizes, but this one is the most practical for most purposes in my opinion. I’ve sanded all sides of every piece of wood that makes up my yurt and almost all the furniture in it. The Makita is very powerful, tracks well and makes some nice, smooth finish. I usually use the medium sandpaper after cutting and planing the wood. Then I give it a quick finishing touch with fine grid paper on a hand sander. Add an assortment of belt sandpaper, and you’ll have earned someone’s appreciation.
Useful Odds and Ends I recommend:
Water Filter For The Home And Camp:
Many of us have water available that is clean enough to drink. But does it taste good? Or what if there is a power outage. What if you don’t have water available and have to catch rainwater or get it from a creek. I’m one of those who doesn’t have a well or running tap water and so I rely on my Berkey every day to make my water fit for consumption. It’s awesome to say the least. I’ve got the Royal Berkey, which makes plenty for all my needs of drinking water, for fermenting, for making coffee, tea, and sodas etc. I fill mine about once a day in the summer or every two days otherwise. It also comes in many other sizes, even a travel size for camping.
It gives peace of mind to have a reliable way to filter water, that doesn’t require electricity. Unfortunately, the original filter elements are not available anymore, but there are replacement elements available from other sources. Ones I’m using right now are ProOne Filters that fit my Berkey. Another brand, that has been recommended by many Berkey users, are the Boroux Filters. These are like the original Berkey filters, made of charcoal. I’m thinking about getting those in the future, since I like the original charcoal ones.
My Favorite Garden Cart:

Here is my most used all around the homestead tool. My gift ideas would not be complete if I didn’t include it. It is the gorilla garden cart with removable sides. Since I bought my first one, and used it once, I knew that I’d never be without one again! It’s the ultimate cart to have for lugging water buckets to the pastures, transferring feedbags from the truck to the storage area, loading haybales, hauling fresh cut wood rounds from the woodlot, or from cutting storm debris, to the wood shed. It will be handy if you have lots of small feed buckets to take to all the different animals on your rounds.
This cart can also be loaded with dirt or compost with the handy mat that it comes with and it’s great to take trays of plant starts into your garden. It can be hooked up to a 4-wheeler or garden tractor too! It’s just so versatile, you’ll never run out of uses for it. I use mine every single day at least twice. My first one lasted for three years and it was left out in the weather all the time. The only thing that needed replacing at that point was the tire bearings. But I considered taking the wheels off and making a goat milking stanchion out of the bottom.
My favorite is the 2′ wide 1000 lb Gorilla wagon, which is plenty for all I need. But there is also a 1200 lb option that is 30 inches wide. This cart does not have the mesh sides like the smaller one does. And my concern with the bigger one would be that it might be too large to fit easily through narrow pasture or garden gates.
Tip: The sides can double as curing racks for garlic! They can easily be hung from the woodshed rafters.
Laptop Computer:
I’d like to recommend a great laptop computer for anyone who’s using a computer for a lot of garden design, research, videos, classes etc. I’ve been a Mac person since I went to college for graphic design about 20 years ago. And while I use Windows quite a bit, I have come to prefer the Macs for design work, as well as any photo editing etc. Recently I had to upgrade, because my old laptops were just not cutting it for all the computer work I’ve been doing and I decided to get a 15″ MacBook Air. I have to say I’m super impressed with the speed on my 16GB Ram machine with 512GB SSD storage. And the display on this little machine, that is super light and compact, is really clear.

I wasn’t sure if the Air would be good enough for all the graphic work that I do, but it’s been processing all my designs super fast and I couldn’t be happier with the performance. If you are thinking about gifting a laptop to someone, I highly recommend the Apple 2024 MacBook Air 15-inch Laptop with M3 chip. They have lowered the price quit a bit too and that makes it a lot more affordable than a full size macBook Pro. I can’t say that it lacks anything in performance. It’s much faster than my old iMac and easy to take along when I need to work elsewhere.
Give The Gift Of Fast Internet For Remote Locations:
I can highly recommend Starlink internet service for remote locations where other options are sub-par. I’m so relieved to finally have a reliable and super fast internet after so many frustrating years of dealing with the very limited and intermittent service that I received with my Verizon hotspot. They made me upgrade each year just so I could get any service at all of 4g lte and I ended up paying a premium for sitting here waiting and waiting for pages to load. I also had another dish service in the past that was absolutely awful and I was locked in with them for two years. It was so bad I had to get out of it and I had to pay them to get out of it! How ridiculous is that!
Enter Starlink! I was hesitant to sign up because it was a bit spendy, but Starlink is month to month and the Starlink dish price came down just recently, making it quite affordable. Their monthly prices are just slightly higher than my mid-tier Verizon payments were that yielded me one bar of wifi. Now I signed up for a cheap phone service that works great and starlink for internet. I’m super pleased and happy with my new fast internet. It’s a game changer for me and I can highly recommend it for anyone remote with sporadic or slow service! No regrets so far! Click here for fast internet and get one month of service for FREE! Gift a dish and a subscription for someone you care about.
In Summary And A Gift For You!
There you have my list of favorites that I use here on the homestead and that I recommend for anyone who is interested in these topics. This list is by no means exhaustive. Needs are different for different people and they change as the size of our operation changes. But I think these basic tools and books are a great starting point and have served me well. I actually have dozens of books that I feel like recommending, and I might do a book post one day to include more, but I think the ones listed here are some great fundamental reads that I would recommend for any book shelf. I hope you find some gift ideas here for your favorite people.
Let me know in the comments below what your favorite gift ideas are, and do tell me if you like the ones that I listed here. Hope to hear from you!
My Gift For You!
In the meantime, I have a Gift For You! I’ve created some Homestead Wall Art that you can print and put in a frame for your home if you like. You might even use them as a gift. I love having a Life is better in the garden plaque hanging on my wall because it makes me feel good, especially in winter. If I’m feeling gloomy, I look at it and it makes me feel better and reminds me that spring is coming. So maybe I can do the same for you. Let me know if you like these and please feel free to download, print and use them for personal use as you wish.
Check out some of my favorite posts:
Fermented Garlic and Honey – A powerful combination of two all-star infection and sickness fighters. Make this easy remedy today and be ready for cold and flu season!
Zwiebelkuchen a German onion pie – Delicious German fall tradition. Make some today, you won’t regret it!
Fermented Onions – You’ll love these tasty, tangy onions. Try them plain or spiff up any sandwiches, salads and burgers with a ready supply of these onions sitting in your fridge.
Dutch Babies Recipe – Here is a great breakfast recipe for the holidays! A simple oven pancake with so many serving possibilities, from sweet to savory!
Cajeta – Make this ultra-delicious, uniquely flavored, goat’s milk based Mexican caramel to use as a topping for ice cream, pancakes, cheese cake, waffels and more. Or use to stuff sandwich cookies, or make frosting!
Make sourdough starter – Sourdough starter from scratch using just flour and water. Learn how sourdough works and how you can use it to bake delicious breads without yeast!
Make your own chevre cheese from scratch – How to make super versatile creamy, spreadable cheese that can be used as a dip, or spread, for baking, for savory or sweet shakes, fresh or aged. Replace store bought cream cheese with this healthy version!
Einkorn Zucchini Bread – Make this delicious zucchini bread that is moist, healthy, and doesn’t skimp on flavor! Delicious!
Fermented Chili Paste – Here is a great way to preserve your end-of-the season harvest of green peppers. This paste will last all year in your refrigerator to use as a condiment, seasoning, or topping.
Health benefits of ginger beer Learn all about the awesomeness of ginger. Health benefits you can gain for your body when you include this versatile plant into your daily health regimen. Improve your well being get healing with many chronic issues.
Best ginger beer recipe: fizzy, delicious, healthy! Create your own non-alcoholic ginger beer from scratch, using ginger bug. Customize with your favorite add-ons. Enjoy a fizzy summer drink that is so much better in taste and for your body, than grocery aisle soda.
Lacto fermented sauerkraut – Famously healthy and so tasty! Make your own from scratch.
Grow mushrooms at home in your garden This is one of the most rewarding experiences in wood chip gardening. Grow your own mushrooms intentionally. It’s easy and they taste so delicious!
Make mulch from wood chips for your garden Read about the many ways that wood chips can help you with your garden and your food forest.
How to prepare my soil to plant fruit trees How to prepare your planting hole, what to put in it and how to give your tree the best odds for growing up strong and healthy.
How to make 18-day compost The best compost for your garden beds in less than 3 weeks.
These gifts are great anytime for friends, family, or for yourself! And don’t forget, if you have any questions, you can ask me right here in the comments section and I’ll get back to you as fast as I can!