The first batch of bread usually doesn’t rise.
The tomatoes get blight. The hens stop laying in November and nobody knows why. Every homestead runs on failures like these, and every one of them is a lesson, if someone writes down what happened before the next attempt erases it.
That is the whole idea behind Homesteading: A Fourfold Study for High School. Your teen is probably already doing real work: the garden, the chickens, the canning, the woodpile. This course turns that work into a semester of study with a written record behind it, built around Carla Emery’s The Encyclopedia of Country Living.
The four moves, on the homestead
The Fourfold Method fits homesteading almost too well, because a homestead tests every idea you bring to it.
- Gather: What does Carla Emery say? What does the extension office say? What did your grandmother do? Write down who said it.
- Test: Did it work here, in this soil, with these animals, this year? If not, why not?
- Connect: Who did this before us, and why? The homesteaders of 1862 and the families planting gardens today are asking some of the same questions.
- Commit: Put it in your own words, then do it with your hands.
Each unit also practices one of Lisa Nehring’s 5 Common Topics, so your student isn’t only learning to compost or can tomatoes. They are learning to define, compare, weigh circumstances, trace cause and effect, and judge which sources deserve trust.
Ten units, one semester
The course runs about 18 weeks: Why People Homestead, Planning a Homestead, Soil and Compost, The Homestead Garden, Animals on the Homestead, Food Preservation, The From-Scratch Kitchen, Water, Energy and Systems, Traditional Skills and the Homestead Business, and Community and My Homestead Plan. A Reading at a Glance page lists the Emery chapters for every unit, so you always know what to assign. It works on a farm, a suburban lot or an apartment balcony.
What’s inside
- Journal spreads, Test, Connect and Commit pages, and a hands-on project for each unit
- A skills checklist, an hours log, and vocabulary pages with room for real definitions
- A Homestead Year planner, a homestead budget and a four-page capstone plan
- A model course description for your transcript
- A QR code to a free bonus page of primary sources, food-safety guides and extension resources
138 printable pages, 8.5 by 11, black and white for a home printer. Completed at home, it is a parent-awarded 1/2 credit elective. Your family license covers every student in your household, every year.
This is a first edition, and your feedback shapes the next one. Every purchase includes free updates to future editions.
Get Homesteading: A Fourfold Study for High School
Gina Glenn Steffy
Pair it with
School of Traditional Skills: hands-on learning for the whole family
If your family loves learning by doing, the School of Traditional Skills is a natural next step. It’s an online library of homesteading classes taught by people who live it: gardening, cooking from scratch, fermenting, preserving, raising animals and more. For a homesteading student, it’s a practical way to watch a skill done well before trying it, and to log the hours toward this course.
Explore the School of Traditional Skills
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Lisa Nehring and her husband, Dr. David Nehring, a Clinical Psychologist, and Biblical Scholar speak together on a wide variety of topics, including education, classical education, vision, mission, parenting, marriage, and more.
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