The Homesteader's Achievement Checklist (aka New Year's Resolutions)

1. Grind a handful of grain coarsely for cereal. Grind finely for flour.
2. Mix, knead, raise, punch down, raise, and bake a loaf of bread.
3. Put on a bee suit and open a hive.
4. Make yogurt.
5. Start with cream and take it through every step until it has become a salted ball of butter and a glass of buttermilk.
6. Make cottage cheese.
7. Make hard cheese.
8. Milk a goat.
9. Put a cow in the stanchion and milk her.
10. Feed the poultry and gather eggs.
11. Clean out a rabbit hutch.
12. Plan and cook a meal in which the food is 100 percent home-grown.
13. Raise, catch, kill, scald, pick, singe, cut up, and cook a chicken.
14. Dry a batch of fruit or vegetables in a food dryer.
15. Take out the ashes. Build a fire in a wood stove. Adjust the dampers.
16. Freeze a batch of a fruit or vegetable.
17. Make a batch of sourdough starter. Cook a meal of sourdough pancakes using that starter.
18. Make homemade noodles and/or crackers.
19. Dry and save seeds from an annual and/or a biennial.
20. Separate milk. Ake apart, wash, dry, and reassemble the separator.
21. Make a batch of homemade ice cream using a crank freezer.
22. Harness a team of horses (or oxen). Hitch them up to an implement or wagon. Till a field with them.
23. Build housing for animals. Repair or build a fence.
24. Correctly identify 10 different herbs from sprigs laid out on a table.
25. Make a pot of herb tea from herbs you have grown and harvested.

[Adapted from the "Appendix" section. Other topics include: Chronology of This Book; Various Editions Described; World Records This Book May Have Set; A Final Exam for You; and Index.]