Homesteading has become more mainstream within the past decade as interest climbs in gardening and locally sourced products. With more than a century of experience and research, Oklahoma State University Extension is a valuable resource for homesteaders.
“People want to get back to their roots,” said Cheyenne Patrick, Osage County Extension agriculture educator and Federally-Recognized Tribes Extension Program educator for the Osage Nation, who has organized local workshops on beekeeping, backyard chickens and breadmaking. “They want to learn how their grandma cooked because there for a while, many of us got pretty far away from that.
Now we want to know what’s in our food and either make it or raise it ourselves.”
Mayes County resident Rachel Pritchett and her husband became interested in homesteading 20 years ago with a few backyard chickens. They garden, preserve fruit from their small orchard and manage a beehive.
The family enjoys a form of modern homesteading that includes hunting, fishing and raising meat goats while creating content for their Hidden Heights Farm YouTube channel.
“The pandemic has exposed a need for homesteading,” Pritchett said.
“It was a wake-up call for everybody when they couldn’t find bread and eggs were so expensive.
How were people supposed to buy meat or milk? We’ve seen an increase in farmers markets with people going straight to the source.”
Over the past two decades, the Pritchett family has relied on its local Mayes County Extension office for accurate information on homesteading. From support with tree grafting and soil testing to insight on tree diseases and other horticulture topics, OSU Extension is a trustworthy bank of information.
Rachel, her husband and their business partners, Sean and Brandi Farnsworth of the popular homesteading YouTube channel Keeping It Dutch, own and coordinate the Okie Homesteading Expo they established in 2022 at the Mayes County Fairgrounds. They invited OSU Extension to set up a booth and connect with fellow homesteaders. The following year, Extension specialists presented on pecan grafting, demonstrated a calving simulator and recruited Master Gardener volunteers to answer questions about gardening.
“Extension information is backed by research.
We’re going to trust someone who can provide the data and science behind it,” Pritchett said.