October 2025 Homesteading Update: Fall Is In The Air . . . Maybe?!

Come see what semi homesteading is like during October 2025 here in the Midwest with this update. I’ll show you what is going on with the garden, in the kitchen, with the chickens, and with life in general.

While I love to incorporate basic homesteading practices into our family’s everyday life, I also know what it’s like to be practical with two teenage kids. These monthly articles help to show you a snippet of some “homesteading” things I try to incorporate.

With these updates, I hope to do more of a “journal” type of post at least once a month to keep you updated on life here. Hopefully, it will allow you to get to know the person behind these articles (me!) and how we run our semi homestead a bit more.

This will allow me to share the loads of photos I take on my phone instead of having them collect dust in my camera gallery. (You can also look for updates on Instagram if you want to follow along with me there, too.) I’ll also try to link to posts that might be relevant to what happened during that timeframe.

Hopefully, you enjoy getting to know a bit more about our life here in Illinois and how the homestead is going – Both the good and the bad!

Our October 2025 Update For The Semi Homesteading Life

While the garden was still pumping out produce by the pound in September, harvesting really started to slow down this month. Even though this year we had an overly warm October, the shorter daylight hours brought about a slowdown.

For the most part, I did my last harvest of 2025 on October 17th. Mostly, it was a few tomatoes, some carrots, green onions, and loads of peppers. It takes bell peppers a long time to grow here in Illinois (at least in my experience). We have to be extremely patient and not rush the harvest. Thankfully, we ended up with plenty to freeze for winter use.

Then, on October 22nd, I planted my garlic cloves into the ground into one of our new in-ground raised beds. Traditionally, I like to do this early to mid-October. However, since we were still having lots of days in the 80s, I didn’t want to plant it too early. I ended up planting 160 cloves of our saved garlic.

On October 30, I did one last harvest and pulled almost all of the plants to get the rows ready for the winter. Normally, I plant a cover crop for winter. However, since I was still harvesting produce late into October, the cover crop wouldn’t have enough time to germinate and grow a bit before winter sets in. So I decided to skip it this year and will cover the rows with mulched leaves instead. Keeping the ground covered is the main goal.

Chicken Coop & Run

The feathered ladies had a few updates that happened during October. First, we added more sand to their run. We use sand as their litter in both the coop and the covered run. Since we expanded the run in October 2024, the sand was getting stretched pretty thin.

We ended up ordering one ton of sand and got that added to both sides of the run as well as in the coop. When you order it in bulk, it is so much cheaper than bagged! The one ton was the perfect amount for what we needed. I just love to see the little chicken footprints in freshly laid sand like that!

We also added an additional automatic coop door onto their run. We already have one that closes at night for their actual coop, but I wanted to add something for their covered run as well. (These doors are expensive, but so worth it in my opinion! Watch for them to occasionally go on sale – Product Link: Omlet Automatic Chicken Coop Door Opener.)

Normally, to allow the hens to go out into the fenced-in area, I just prop open the human door. However, this allows a ton of cold air as well as snow, leaves, etc., blowing in. In addition, we kept having issues with raccoons eating the chicken feed out of our trundel feeder during the night.

So instead of having to go out each night to close the door and open it in the morning, the auto door does it for me. Call me lazy, but it makes raising chickens so much easier! (And it gives me peace of mind!)

Lastly, we got the plastic up surrounding the enclosed run. We do this every fall and winter to keep the chickens warm, dry, and snow-free. Not only do they appreciate it, but so do I when I have to do chicken chores!

Dehydrating – October 2025 Homesteading Update

Besides canning salsa, chili base, and pepperoncini peppers, I was also busy dehydrating a bunch of different products. First up was apple slices. While we didn’t have hardly any apples on our semi homestead, my parents had several on their trees.

We did make some old fashinoed apple cider using my late Grandpa’s cider press, but that still left us with a few apples left. It wasn’t enough to make applesauce, so I decided to make apple slices. They turned out super yummy! I made some sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and some plain.

In addition to the apple slices, I also dehydrated some mushrooms. One of my goals this fall and beyond is to get away from using condensed cream of XYZ soups. I had the base cream of chicken mix, but wanted mushrooms as well. Thankfully, you can dehydrate mushrooms and then grind them into a powder. To make cream of mushroom soup, just throw the mushrooms into the mix when making.

Next were green onions. While supposedly you can dehydrate the entire plant – white part and all – I found that it never dried out, despite running the dehydrator for over 24 hours. So I stuck with just the greens. It will be nice to have these to sprinkle in recipes as I need them.

And it wouldn’t be fall if we didn’t roast pumpkin seeds. Normally, I just roast the seeds in the oven after gathering them, but this year I tried dehydrating them. It worked well, and we were able to enjoy a nice fall snack after carving our pumpkins.

Beautiful Blooms – October 2025 Homesteading Update

Early in the month, we still had some of our garden flowers blooming strongly. This included the zinnias and the strawflowers. The bees and butterflies all seemed to really appreciate the late blooms in the garden.

We also had a surprise blooming plant this month, my lilacs! Normally, lilacs only bloom in the spring. However, stressed-out plants can also bloom a second time in the fall. I think due to our warmer weather and lack of rainfall, my lilac plants were all sorts of confused. The unfortunate part is that my spring blooms will likely be reduced, but I still enjoyed smelling the lilac blooms on my kitchen counter!

Lastly, there’s the fall mums. I didn’t really go overboard purchasing mums this year and only got two smaller ones. However, they are looking beautiful and producing loads of blooms. (If you want to see tips on caring for mums, just search for “mums” above. I have several articles on the subject.)

Miscellaneous Pictures

As usual, I’ll leave you with some miscellaneous homesteading pictures. I take so many different pictures throughout the month that it’s hard to get them all on just one post, so I like to do a photo dump at the end of my updates.

Toward the end of the month, I replenished a lot of my dry seasoning mixes. It’s been nice ot make them in bulk to have on hand whenever I need them. I had taco seasoning, ranch dressing mix, and cream of XYZ soup mix.

I don’t usually go real overboard with decorating for Halloween, but I do like putting up a few items here and there. This year, I purchased a few pillow covers for my tiny front porch.

I’ve carved pumpkins in October since I was a little kid. In fact, I even announced my first pregnancy by carving “I’m Pregnant” into a pumpkin and showing it to our family! It’s a fun tradition that I like to do with the kids. I used a bit of online inspiration for mine this year!

Lastly, I just attached a photo of what my kitchen island looked like for the majority of October: Lots of canned goods and harvested produce. While I’ll miss seeing this on my counter, I won’t miss the clutter and fruit flies, that’s for sure!

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!
– Chelsea

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