Holiday Gift Guide: How to Buy for the Homesteader in Your Life!

 The holidays are just around the corner, and for some reason, they always surprise us (well, most of us, anyway)! In this holiday gift guide, I’ve curated some fun gift ideas for the homesteader in your life who is into canning and preserving or gardening that they will LOVE. You’ll be a Christmas gift-giving super hero!

For those of you notoriously caught by surprise by the holidays and need some quick ideas for your homestead-minded friends and family, I got you. Here’s a list of gifts they will love!

Canning and Preserving Holiday Gift Guide

For the person who wants to venture into canning: a water bath canner is a great place to start for fruits, jams, jellies, and pickles! This one comes with a jar rack inside, which makes water bathing much easier! (Ask me know I know!)

Add a set of canning tools, a Ball Blue Book, and some cute jelly/jam jars, and your homesteading loved one will be off to a great start! And who knows? You might be looking forward to a fantastic jar of homemade jam in the future!

If your person is ready to venture into canning vegetables and meat this is the pressure canner I have used for 10 years. It’s cheap, durable, tall enough for two layers of pint jars (though you will need a second canning rack to do that), and can really help a homesteader get the job done!

And don’t forget the canning jars! I am adding these here so that you can see what they look like, but let me tell you a secret—canning jars are MUCH cheaper at your local store than purchasing them online. They aren’t cheap, per se, but quart jars will run you closer to $12-13 at Walmart, and pints are a little cheaper than that, maybe $10. The savings is way worth it if you will be visiting anyway.

If you are purchasing these things for a beginning canner, please make sure to send him or her to my How to Can Food Safely for Beginners post, so that they can learn how to can the SAFE way from the get-go!

Holiday Gift Guide For the Gardening Enthusiast

Here’s a great gift for a beginning gardener. It has everything he or she would need to get started with growing their own food. Chock full of tools, this tote will help get your friend or family member on the right track for spring! And don’t forget the seeds! Each of these gold packets contain seed banks of many varieties of non-GMO open pollinated seeds for growing tons of veggies and herbs!

And for the seasoned gardener in your life? Why not a kneeler seat? Us gardeners always have the issue of having to kneel on sometimes very hard ground, or crouch down to reach areas that we need to much to our knees’ dismay! This kneeler seat would be a perfect helper to any gardener!

Here are a few more cool accessories for your gardening friend of loved one! Gardener’s soap, ratcheting gardening scissors, and–hey, why not? gardener socks!

And to go over those garden socks? Why not waterproof garden shoes? I have actually worn these very garden shoes for years, and they are fantastic for slogging around in the garden (they are even called Sloggers), or even in the chicken or goat pen! Super easy to slip on and off, and they keep your feet nice and dry. These come in many colors/patterns, but these are one of the patterns I owned. I owned a second pair as well and loved them both!

Here’s a really fun and cool gift for the cocktail lover in your family! This cocktail gardening kit is for the already established gardener who loves to also likes to use what he or she grows to make wine!

For now, please check out these creative and handmade ways to wrap gifts for your family and friends!

16 Gift Wrapping Ideas that Won’t Break the Bank by Rockin W Homestead
Easy Sew Green Gift Bags by Better Hens and Gardens

And this post for making homemade strawberry wine has a BONUS list of gifts you can make from things on YOUR homestead! Check it out!
How to Make Strawberry Wine (look for list at the end of the article)