A Week in the Life of an Off-Grid Mom: September 5 – September 11th, 2026

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy.

This Week at a Glance:

• Canning is slowing down.
• Company this week!
• Worked on prepping the garden for the first frost.

Around the Homestead

What I Preserved

This week we had company all week so all I did was 18 pints of spaghetti sauce. I used the “meatless spaghetti sauce” recipe from Putting Food By. It wasn’t much, but it will be nice to have these for easy lunches for the kids this winter.

In the Garden

We had some patchy frost this week and we are preparing for a hard freeze within the next few days. We spent some time out in the garden picking anything that was mostly finished and being ready to cover anything else.

We also made the low tunnels for the fall veggies. These are made from electrical conduit and 6ml plastic from Menards. We’ve made these at our last several homes and they’ve worked really well! I made them taller this time so we can put a second layer of protection in as needed.

We also picked all of the drying bean plants (in case it freezes hard) and hung them to dry inside the greenhouse, which will be heated with our little propane heater if we have to, until more of the tomatoes ripen. This should give them a good chance to dry out.

I cleaned out two of the garden beds that are done for the season, so all of the raised beds are now cleaned out or replanted. I will use one of these for garlic planting next month.

Off Grid Life

This week, we hauled in all of the bags of concrete to make the floor for the barn (6 pallets!), which took several days. We also laid gravel over what will be the barn’s foundation. We should be able to start pouring concrete after Monday, when we have another temperature dip.

My husband also spent many days this past week cutting lumber for the barn with our sawmill. We have a nice collection of boards and beams to get started now!

From the Kitchen and Pantry

This week was the annual case lot sale at a grocery store near us so it was time for me to stock up on some things that I don’t can.

I picked up mandarin oranges, mushrooms, green chilies, pineapple, and some apple juice for future apple pie filling canning. My husband also got some canned sauerkraut so I can make my kraut and cranberry meatballs again this winter. We bought butter as well, which I put in the freezer. The butter was $2.50/lb, the oranges $1/can, and green chilies and mushrooms were $0.79/can. I think the kraut was $0.69/can and the juice was $1.69/bottle. Good prices to fill in the gaps in my root cellar for winter!

I did finally finish cleaning out the root cellar this week. Now it’s organized, and I cleaned out all the fly parts and anything else that doesn’t need to be in there. We still can’t find where the mice are getting in, but we haven’t seen any in there in about a month, so hopefully that is a good thing, and we blocked their hole last time we tried (with steel wool).

Family Life

We had a visit from family all of this last week so that was fun for the kids. We took lots of little drives and walks.

We found a huge patch of wild mint on one of our hikes this week, and I was really excited by this discovery. I’ll be utilizing this in the future!

Homemaking This Week

We didn’t do much cleaning this week since we had company but we worked on resetting everything on Friday to prepare for the week (and the winter!) to come.

I’m mostly finished with getting out the kids’ winter clothes; we just need a handful of things yet, all for the baby.

I found a used record/cd/cassette/radio player this week, which we are so excited to have! We always see cheap records, cassettes, and CDs at the thrift store, so now we can utilize all of them. We picked up a few records for $1 each at one of the thrift stores while out this week, and we are really enjoying them. The favorite right now is Lawrence Welk’s Polkas!

Behind Little House Living

We are thankful for Beth this week as she sent us some cotton clothesline and wool socks for the kids from our family wishlist. Both incredibly useful things for us!

I didn’t work much on the blog again this week since we had company all week.

A Few Things I’m Enjoying This Week

I loved all of our fall walks this week. It’s so nice to be out and about in the crisp air! We discovered some fun new places very close to us, and I know the kids, and I will enjoy all of these for many years to come.

Reflections

This week, I was thinking about comparison and how it truly is a thief of joy. I watched a YouTube video of someone that was going to stop making any homesteading content because it’s a rediculous cycle of projects and showing something new in every video. This resonated with me, not only for personal reasons but also because of a conversation I had with one of my neighbors not long ago. She talked about enjoying homesteading content and magazines, but in reality, who is building infrastructure and creating all these huge projects so fast?

Isn’t it funny that those of us who live a homesteading life want to live simpler and slower, and yet most of the time, when it’s portrayed on YouTube or other places, you see one video of something that was created so fast that you aren’t even sure how they did it. A perfect garden, a greenhouse build, a full pantry, etc.

It makes those of us observing compare our lives to theirs and feel like we fall short, like we aren’t doing enough, as our homesteads will never “get there”.

If you’ve ever thought this, I want to encourage you this week. Most of the time, what you see in a video or magazine doesn’t happen in a week (unless a lot of money is involved or someone isn’t working full-time off the homestead). It takes time. It happens slowly. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to the half-truths that we see online because we aren’t making our lives for content; we are living them out as most people do. Doing things well, on a budget, without debt… takes time.

Talk to you again soon,

Merissa 🥰

Support Little House Living by Sharing This