Homesteaders of America Events
Meet the speakers
Discover our 2026 event speakers—leaders who teach, encourage, and equip homesteaders of every skill level.
May 2026: Learn to Homestead in a Weekend Speakers
Learn to Homestead in a Weekend
Techniques and Tools for Homestead Efficiency
VIP Farm Tour
Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson. Those who don’t like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlatan, and starvation advocate.
With 12 published books and a thriving multi-generational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming, and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. He’s as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as addressing CEOs at a Wall Street business conference.
Often receiving standing ovations, he prefers the word performance rather than presentation to describe his lectures. His favorite activity?–Q&A. “I love the interaction,” he says.
He co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.
Salatin is the editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, granddaddy catalyst for the grass farming movement. A frequent guest on radio programs and podcasts targeting preppers, homesteaders, and foodies, Salatin’s practical, can-do solutions tied to passionate soliloquies for sustainability offer everyone food for thought and plans for action.
Learn to Homestead in a Weekend
Chicken Butchering
Building Ponds and Water Systems- with a polyface farm tour
Daniel is a multi-generational farmer. He’s grown up in the farming landscape in Swoope, VA.
Farming right out of the gate has given him a lifetime of experience, mastery, and confidence that comes from a life’s work and passion. Today he leads an ever-growing team at Polyface Farm. Daniel finds the most joy in his family, teaching, team building, healing soil, farm design, a growing relationship with Jesus, working with livestock, and hunting.
Managing the day-to-day flow of the farm, he works with cattle, hogs, meat birds, layers, turkeys, rabbits, sheep, and forestry, but most importantly- People. This keeps him learning something every day in a high-energy, outdoor workplace. With over 30 years of hands-on experience in the land healing, healthy food growing world, Daniel is practical in his approach and teaching.
Shawn and Beth Dougherty have been farming together since the 1980s, for the last 26 years in eastern Ohio, where they manage 27 acres designated by the state as ‘not suitable for agriculture’, as well as a monastery farm of 100 acres.
Using intensive grazing as the primary source of food energy, they raise dairy and beef cows, sheep, farm-fed hogs, and a variety of poultry, producing most of the food, and feed, on the farm.
Concerned that farming is so often dependent upon multiple off-farm resources—from feed, fuel, and fertilizer, to water and electricity—their ongoing project is to identify and test the means by which farming was done for centuries with a minimum of off-farm inputs. Their research has led them to identify grass conversion, especially the daily conversion of grass into milk by dairy ruminants, as a key to whole-farm sustainability, feeding the whole farm community: humans, ruminants, pigs, poultry, and soil.
They write and travel on farming, dairying, farm-raised animal foods, and off-grid captured water systems. Shawn & Beth are the authors of The Independent Farmstead published by Chelsea Green Publishing and The Independent Farmstead’s Field Guides to Inputs-Free Farming and Homesteading (Lulu.com).
Jacques is firmly founded on Christ and steady, though extremely far-sighted. His deep passion for others well-being and God’s glory have spurred him on to constant learning, reading, courses, and practical application. He has been a leader and pastor for years and offers loving Biblical and health counsel seeking to always point others to Christ.
A wife, mother of 9, and follower of Christ, Kim infuses her love of life, God, and health into her teaching and consultations. With Jack’s encouragement and the support of many friends, Kim pursued certifications to become a Naturopathic Doctor. She has been offering health consultations for 10+ years and has been truly blessed to see God work wonders in hearts and lives of those she’s honored and delighted to support.
Ann Accetta-Scott is the author of The Farm Girl’s Guide to Preserving the Harvest and the face behind the brand, A Farm Girl in the Making. Her farm, Acorn Creek Farmstead located in middle Tennessee, is a teaching farm that offers hands-on workshops for those who seek to achieve a more sustainable life. The farm also provides the local community the opportunity to purchase pasture-raised meat, eggs, and real milk.
Nicole began baking with fresh-milled flour in early 2022 and owns Valley Mill Bakehouse, a home bakery in Frederick County, Virginia. What began as a New Year’s resolution to cook with more real foods became a family business and personal study in baking, history, and heritage recipes. She has written articles and taught classes on fresh flour for the Frederick County Homesteaders. At the bakery, she specializes in crafting baked goods made with 100% freshly milled flour and organic ingredients, selling them at markets and events in Virginia, including the Homesteaders of America Conference in 2025. Nicole is also a homemaker and a homeschool mom of four.
October 2026: Homesteaders of America Conference speakers
Homesteaders of America Conference
TBD
Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson. Those who don’t like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlatan, and starvation advocate.
With 12 published books and a thriving multi-generational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming, and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. He’s as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as addressing CEOs at a Wall Street business conference.
Often receiving standing ovations, he prefers the word performance rather than presentation to describe his lectures. His favorite activity?–Q&A. “I love the interaction,” he says.
He co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.
Salatin is the editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, granddaddy catalyst for the grass farming movement. A frequent guest on radio programs and podcasts targeting preppers, homesteaders, and foodies, Salatin’s practical, can-do solutions tied to passionate soliloquies for sustainability offer everyone food for thought and plans for action.
Homesteaders of America Conference
TBD
Daniel is a multi-generational farmer. He’s grown up in the farming landscape in Swoope, VA.
Farming right out of the gate has given him a lifetime of experience, mastery, and confidence that comes from a life’s work and passion. Today he leads an ever-growing team at Polyface Farm. Daniel finds the most joy in his family, teaching, team building, healing soil, farm design, a growing relationship with Jesus, working with livestock, and hunting.
Managing the day-to-day flow of the farm, he works with cattle, hogs, meat birds, layers, turkeys, rabbits, sheep, and forestry, but most importantly- People. This keeps him learning something every day in a high-energy, outdoor workplace. With over 30 years of hands-on experience in the land healing, healthy food growing world, Daniel is practical in his approach and teaching.
Homesteaders of America Conference
TBD
Nick Freitas has been married to his high school sweetheart Tina Freitas since 1999. They have 3 children, Lillyana, Luke, and Alexandria.
Immediately following high school Nick joined the Army and served with the 82nd Airborne Division and 25th Light Infantry Division as an Infantryman. After September 11th Nick volunteered for US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) and eventually served 2 tours in Iraq as a Special Forces Weapons SGT and Special Forces Intelligence SGT.
Honorably discharged in 2009, Nick moved his family to Virginia where he began working as an instructor and Program Manager. During that same time, Nick moved to Culpeper and became involved with the local Republican unit.
Nick was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2015 and currently serves on the Finance, Courts of Justice, Public Safety and Education committees. He serves as the Sub Committee Chairman for the sub committee’s on Higher Education and the Public Safety sub committee 1 where all firearms related legislation is heard.
After 11 years in the Army and living in multiple places around the country the Freitas family is very happy to call Culpeper home.
“I am first and foremost a Christian. My dedication to the belief that we all have inherent value and are entitled to liberty and equality before the law is rooted in this worldview. Principles of individual liberty, personal responsibility, respect for God and limited, constitutional government are not merely convenient political concepts, but essentials which are fundamental to our liberty, prosperity, and security.” – Nick Freitas
AJ Richards is the co-founder/CEO of From The Farm, a producer-first online marketplace that helps small farms, homesteads, and ranches sell directly while keeping 100% of the retail dollar.
Raised in a five-generation Utah ranching family, AJ grew up on cattle drives and brandings. He later launched a DTC meat business for his cousin’s ranch, ran a USDA-inspected slaughterhouse for 12 months, and started two additional DTC meat companies.
He now focuses on American food sovereignty by building an ecosystem with From The Farm that puts the needs of producers first.
About Casey
Casey Cashell is the co-owner of Mayhurst Estate, an 1859 Victorian manor where documenting her family’s real-life pursuit of land, legacy, and shared dreams unexpectedly became their greatest opportunity. What began as simple social media storytelling grew into diversified income streams, multiple family-run businesses, national features, book opportunities, and global impact—without abandoning the work happening on the ground.
Casey understands the tension many homesteaders feel: limited margins, growing dreams, and the pressure to “do social media” while staying faithful to real life. She teaches how social media is not an enemy or distraction—but a powerful tool for provision, preservation, and possibility when rooted in your unique story. Attendees walk away having overcome their biggest barriers to visibility, with a fresh understanding of their story and a clear path to show up online in a way that supports their homestead, their family business, and the future they’re building.
About Jason
In a culture facing a growing crisis of incompetence—marked by screen addiction, declining work ethic, and a loss of practical skills—Jason challenges families to see the opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Through meaningful work, hands-on skills, and intentional family culture, Jason helps parents identify the everyday opportunities within their own homes, land, and rhythms to raise capable, confident children. Alongside his wife and kids, he models a living blueprint where children learn blacksmithing, woodworking, leatherwork, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of home and legacy—offering a hopeful, practical path to restoring character, competence, and confidence in the next generation.
Ann Accetta-Scott is the author of The Farm Girl’s Guide to Preserving the Harvest and the face behind the brand, A Farm Girl in the Making. Her farm, Acorn Creek Farmstead located in middle Tennessee, is a teaching farm that offers hands-on workshops for those who seek to achieve a more sustainable life. The farm also provides the local community the opportunity to purchase pasture-raised meat, eggs, and real milk.
Shawn and Beth Dougherty have been farming together since the 1980s, for the last 26 years in eastern Ohio, where they manage 27 acres designated by the state as ‘not suitable for agriculture’, as well as a monastery farm of 100 acres.
Using intensive grazing as the primary source of food energy, they raise dairy and beef cows, sheep, farm-fed hogs, and a variety of poultry, producing most of the food, and feed, on the farm.
Concerned that farming is so often dependent upon multiple off-farm resources—from feed, fuel, and fertilizer, to water and electricity—their ongoing project is to identify and test the means by which farming was done for centuries with a minimum of off-farm inputs. Their research has led them to identify grass conversion, especially the daily conversion of grass into milk by dairy ruminants, as a key to whole-farm sustainability, feeding the whole farm community: humans, ruminants, pigs, poultry, and soil.
They write and travel on farming, dairying, farm-raised animal foods, and off-grid captured water systems. Shawn & Beth are the authors of The Independent Farmstead published by Chelsea Green Publishing and The Independent Farmstead’s Field Guides to Inputs-Free Farming and Homesteading (Lulu.com).
Jacques is firmly founded on Christ and steady, though extremely far-sighted. His deep passion for others well-being and God’s glory have spurred him on to constant learning, reading, courses, and practical application. He has been a leader and pastor for years and offers loving Biblical and health counsel seeking to always point others to Christ.
A wife, mother of 9, and follower of Christ, Kim infuses her love of life, God, and health into her teaching and consultations. With Jack’s encouragement and the support of many friends, Kim pursued certifications to become a Naturopathic Doctor. She has been offering health consultations for 10+ years and has been truly blessed to see God work wonders in hearts and lives of those she’s honored and delighted to support.
Janelle grew up in rural Wisconsin on a small family farm with every farm animal possible. The majority of her family’s protein came from their farm or by hunting, which gave her a beautiful foundation of knowing the value of hard work and how to raise, process, and consume food from the land. When Janelle married her husband Ben, they moved back to his family’s ranch in western North Dakota and started their herd of beef cattle and bred heifer operation. It was there on the ranch that God began to cultivate in thier hearts a desire to raise and grow more of their food, as well as learn new skills. In 2022, the Anderson family heeded God’s call to leave their cow-calf operation in Western ND, to start over on raw land in rural Northern Wayne County, Tennessee.
In the last sixteen months, they have been finishing their family home, setting up infrastructure for the farmstead, breaking ground and growing their first-ever garden, raising meat birds, turkeys, and pigs to sell to the neighboring communities, starting a Tennessee beef herd, building a community to fill the gaps as well as barter and trade with, and hosting in-person and online workshops/courses sharing with other the skills and knowledge they have learned over the years.
Janelle and Ben’s hearts are for their community. For teaching others what they have been privileged to grow up learning and living. Janelle looks forward to sharing that 40+ years of knowledge with the community you are bringing together and pouring into.
Angela de Krieger is a Food Freedom Advocate and the co-owner of Singing Trees’ Keep – a teaching homestead, microbakery, and artisan fermentation studio in Southern Indiana.
She is a staff writer for “The Journal, a Newspaper for Homesteaders” by Heritage Ways and has had articles featured in the Homesteaders of America Magazine. She and her family teach chicken processing workshops and raise pastured poultry and pork for the community.
Between milking cows, rotational grazing of livestock, running home-based businesses, and raising 4 children, their roots are growing deeply into their land. The mission of Singing Trees’ Keep is a dedication to producing holistically managed livestock and products to improve food security for themselves and the surrounding communities. They champion and support local and independent food sources as a keystone piece of a healthy and free nation of Americans.
Wild Sourdough 101
In this session Angela will provide an introduction to baking with wild yeast. You will learn the basics of sourdough fermentation, dough handling, and baking followed by discussion and Q&A. Perfect for the home baker interested in building traditional skills.
From Oven to Income: Building a Homestead Microbakery
In this session Angela will walk you through the steps she took to begin her own home based microbakery and made the transition from selling her first loaf to 200 cookies and 70 loaves a week by her second year – all from her 1100 sq ft home. She will share expenses and profit numbers, address scalability, audience targeting, marketing, community partnerships, mindset, and the tools needed to begin and maintain this homestead business.
Adam and his wife Leslie are full-time homesteaders at BeeStrong Homestead in middle Tennessee. After starting out using traditional methods of bee keeping and failing, Adam used his experiences and outside of the box methods to find success! Adam loves bees and teaching about them which led him to start BeeKept in January, 2019. His approach is tailored towards sustainable honey bee management for homesteaders in a more natural way. Without feeding sugar water and without treating for varroa mites while utilizing swarm catching methods and keeping bees in horizontal hives.
Simple and sustainable beekeeping for homesteaders!
In this talk, Adam will sum up what more natural and sustainable beekeeping is, why free and feral bees are the best bees to get for this model of beekeeping, why bees are great for the homestead, and how to keep bees without becoming a professional, conventional beekeeper. The talk will include some bee biology, swarm trapping, swarm catching, and the use of horizontal hives. Adam keeps colonies without feeding the bees or treating the bees for anything, and he is always excited to share what he has learned and experienced!
Trading the “American dream” for a slice of Heaven!
Adam and Leslie will share about their adventure into full-time homesteading, starting from scratch in 2019, learning hard lessons, and enjoying the bounty and beautiful life that is homesteading. They will cover their philosophy on growing and raising food, stewardship of land and livestock, sharing the abundance from the farm, sustainability, working within their strengths, and getting over the mystique and fear that comes from such a life.
Andy and Doug are farmers, teachers, and longtime friends who co-founded Hand Hewn Farm to help people reconnect with their food through the old-world crafts of butchery and curing. Based in Ohio, they travel across the country teaching whole-hog butchering, charcuterie, and food preservation in a way that’s approachable, grounded, and rooted in deep respect for the animal and the land. Their workshops and talks are known for blending practical skill with curiosity, honesty, and a sense of shared purpose.
Butchering at Home: A Creative and Practical Guide
Description: In this family-friendly demo and talk, Hand Hewn Farm will break down half a hog while sharing how you can begin doing the same in your own kitchen or backyard. Rooted in tradition but geared toward the home butcher, this talk will give you the knowledge, perspective, and confidence to take those first steps yourself—guided by what your family actually eats and enjoys.
Curing Meat at Home: Salt, Time, and Confidence
Curing meat can feel like a mystery—but it doesn’t have to. In this approachable session, Hand Hewn Farm will demystify the fundamentals of home curing, from bacon and hams to simple dry cures. You’ll learn the why behind the process, the tools you actually need (hint: not many), and how to safely and creatively bring the craft of charcuterie into your own kitchen. Expect to leave with practical steps and the confidence to begin.
About Justin
Justin Rhodes is a permaculturalist homesteader who has inspired (and taught) thousands of people to grow their own food. After 10+ years of farming experience and countless hours of training, he creates daily “edutainment” on his wildly popular YouTube Channel, Justin Rhodes. Justin Rhodes is also the owner and creator of Abundance Plus, a network providing all original shows for homesteaders. It includes a streaming platform, A+ social media site, and marketplace to buy and sell.
About Rebekah
Rebekah Rhodes is a permaculturalist homesteader who has inspired (and taught) thousands of people to grow their own food and think more naturally about health. She is found on her family’s wildly popular, daily “edutainment” YouTube Channel, The Justin Rhodes Show. She is also regularly featured on Abundance Plus, a network providing all original shows for homesteaders. It includes a streaming platform, A+ social media site, and marketplace to buy and sell.
Kaleb Hanshaw is a husband, father, entrepreneur, and certified Permaculture Designer and Educator with a background in church ministry. Guided by his faith in Yahweh, Kaleb’s passion for homesteading and permaculture has led him to teach and design land development projects, homesteads, and backyard gardens. Kaleb has a passion to help families find property in creative and affordable ways. His vision is to help others cultivate a life of simplicity and intentionality through The Wild Country community.
Finding Your Perfect Homestead Property
This talk focuses on finding creative ways to acquire land affordably-and at times, for free. By redefining what makes a property “perfect,” we can identify land to restore into the homestead of our dreams.
