Abbot Public Library and Ashland Public Library are pleased to welcome modern day homesteader, blogger, and author Victoria Pruett in a virtual talk about her book, "Creating a Modern Homestead: Traditional Skills for Real, Everyday Life!" Pruett will walk us through various aspects of homesteading, including cooking from scratch, food preservation, backyard chickens, backyard gardening and natural pest control, to give a broad overview of simple life changes that you could make to get closer to nature and less dependent on large, commercial organizations. Hopefully, you'll find a tidbit or two that you can practice in your daily life.

Registration is required to attend via Zoom - please register HERE. After registering for Zoom, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting online.

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.

As our modern lives demand more and more from us, many people long for a slower pace of life. While picking up and moving to the country may not be an option for everyone, it is possible to embrace simple living and more traditional skills no matter where you live. Learn the lost art of from-scratch cooking, practice food security by keeping a deep pantry, find out how easy it is to raise backyard chickens, experience the joy of growing your own food (even in a small space), and preserve your own harvest through a variety of methods.

For the last ten years, Victoria Pruett of A Modern Homestead has guided her readers through the process of discovering that they truly can incorporate traditional skills into their everyday routines while they also juggle work, children, and social lives. Though the idea of including traditional skills may conjure images of spending eight hours a day in the kitchen, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, Pruett teaches you how to deepen your skillset and understanding of self-reliance and how to easily fit simple living into your life in a way that works for you.

Victoria Pruett is the writer and homesteader behind the website, A Modern Homestead at amodernhomestead.com, where she posts from-scratch recipes from her Southern kitchen, homesteading skills that you can pursue from anywhere in the world, and tried-and-true einkorn flour recipes your whole family will love.

In 2014, she was living in a subdivision house with no yard, dreaming of life on a homestead. She had grown up with grandparents on both sides who loved gardening, canning, and scratch-cooking and knew she wanted to stay connected to those roots.

Doing everything she could to homestead in the city became her passion project. She bought food in bulk on sale at the grocery store and canned it in her tiny kitchen. She grew herbs and tomatoes on a small deck in the backyard, and worked hard to cook all of her food from scratch, even on a tight budget.

Soon, her passion grew to the point that she knew she wanted to help others learn how to live a more traditional life, even in the city. So, A Modern Homestead was born and she began sharing her journey online with the world.

Today, millions of people visit this site every year to make her recipes and use her gardening tips to turn their homesteading dreams into a reality. “It’s both incredibly humbling and a responsibility that I take very seriously!”

This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Ashland Public Library and in partnership with a multitude of MA Libraries.

For more events, please visit abbotlibrary.org/events.