How to start an urban homestead

Starting an urban homestead is a lot easier than you think. But first you need to know your why. Is it your health? Knowing where your food comes from? Quality of food? Financial freedom?

So, you are looking to start an urban homestead.  Many people are.  My husband and I have been living the urban homesteading life for many years, 7 to be specific.  Starting an urban homestead is a lot easier than you think.  But first you need to know your why.  Is it your health?  Knowing where your food comes from? Quality of food?  Financial freedom? 

For us, our why, had to do with knowing where our food came from, and separating ourselves from the food systems that are in place, AKA the grocery stores.  I was very fortunate that I knew how to garden, thanks to my grandfather who taught me before he died.  He was a farmer and owned over 10 acres of land in Tulsa Ok.  Here are a few of my tips before you get started.

Observe and learn.

The first and probably the most natural step into starting a homestead is gardening.  When you decide to start gardening, watch, and learn your property.  This is likely going to mean your front yard and back yard.  Learn what your property does when it rains.  Does the rain pool up in a certain area?   Do you live in an area where it is hot?  Do you live in a high wind area?  Do you need shade cloth? Do you need to really stake your plants well because of high winds?  Do you have a big shade tree that blocks out your yard?  Remember, most gardens need at least 8 hours of sunshine.

Consider and follow the city and local laws.  Do you live in a homeowner’s association?  Some cities have poultry ordinances, that may limit you from having backyard chickens, or limit the number of birds you can have, or where they may be placed in your yard.  Where we lived, our city required that a chicken coup must be 20 feet away from your neighbors back door, and you could not have more that 20 chickens.  So, it is wise to check on these ordinances prior to getting any livestock.

Mentality.

Preparing yourself mentally can be the most challenging thing.  I must admit that for me, this was most challenging part.  When you determined to make this drastic change in your life, you start to share it with family and friends.  Frankly, your family and friends may start to think that you have lost your mind.  “Farming, why would you want to do that, when you can just go to the grocery store and get what you need.” Some may say. 

So be prepared that your friends, family and neighbors may give you a hard time.

Having a tough mentality is important when you start to homestead.  Let’s face it, you are going against the tide.  Most people have settled down nicely into the consumer driven world that we all find ourselves in today.  Many complain about the rat-race of life but feel most comfortable going to work to put fuel in the tank and told what food they will eat, just to be sold on what debt they need to create, so that they can go to work outside of the home, just to start the whole cycle over again.  That is what society at large considers normal.  Any variance from the norm, is seen as too hard, not worth it, and weird.

Homesteaders, however, have a different mind-set.  To really start homesteading you must start with your mind.  Homesteaders think, “if I eat lots of salad, how can I grow it myself instead of buying it?” To have the homestead mentality you must first be a producer and not a consumer. 

The second way of thinking like a homesteader is what I like to call the work method.  It goes like this:

“Work, yes, but that doesn’t scare me.”  What you see as work a homesteader see’s value.   Yes, it takes work to wake up early everyday and milk this animal.  It takes work to store the hay for my milking animal for the year.  Animals need care, they need hooves trimmed, deworming, moving of paddocks, fencing, etc.  Yes, all of this is work, but the homesteader sees the end product.  The milk.  The homesteader thinks, from the milk of this animal, I can drink it, make cheese, make butter, yogurt, soap, and most importantly cream for my coffee.

As homesteaders we are not oblivious to the work, but they see the value that said work bring to their lives.  What happens is something so fantastically nuanced and symbiotic, that through this working relationship bonds are formed.  Relationships are created that bond the homesteader to the land, animals, and most importantly to people, he or she finds themselves homesteading with.

All homesteaders, whether urban or rural share so many things in common, but one of them is the mentality of making do with you have, and making it work.  Nothing needs to be perfect but homestead perfect.  What is homestead perfect?  Not Pinterest worthy, but functional.  This does not mean that you homestead shouldn’t be esthetically pleasing, but you should try to make do with what you have, as you don’t want to go into debt to pursue this lifestyle.

Get out and stay out of debt!

If you have existing debt, you need to figure out how to get out of debt, immediately.  Debt is the number one killer of dreams.  Let’s be honest here, as of the writing of this blog, our economy in the U.S. is going through a major recession and everything is extremely expensive.  Many people are using credit cards just to pay for basic things.  Try to pay for things using money that you saved.  Try.  I know its hard.  We even struggle with that.  This world has everyone trained on instant everything that we have forgotten what it means to patiently save.

Something that we have done recently is switching over to using cast for all of our purchases. When we were getting ourselves out of debt years ago, that’s what did. We used cash. The only thing we used our debit cards for was to pay bills. Ultimately you need to use whatever method works for you. The important thing is finding a method and sticking with it.

Make your kitchen work.

When you start to homestead, you will quickly realize that you are going to be in desperate need of working kitchen.  What do I mean by a working kitchen?  Growing and preserving food (which is the next step) is a large job.  As any homesteader and they will tell you that by mid-autumn the desire to garden has died off, just to revive again in Spring.

You need to be able to process the food coming in when it is harvest season.  You need to have the ability to preserve and store your food.  Let’s face it, you can’t put everything in the freezer. 

Then there is the cooking from scratch aspect of homesteading.  Now on our farm, I cook three meals a day. This means there are always dishes. Always.  And don’t get me started with the mysterious dishes that come out of my sons’ rooms.  Anyway, I digress.

You need to be able to function in your kitchen sometimes for long periods of time.  This is not to scare you, but it is reality.  You worked hard to produce the food, and you need to preserve it.  This means, your kitchen is going to get dirty. 

So if have one of those Pinterest worthy kitchens that looks perfect, you will want to know, its not going to look like that every day.

Grow a garden.

News flash, you’re not going to grow everything you eat, but why not try.  Nope.  That’s not a good idea.  When we first started homesteading, that is exactly what I did.  The result was burn out.  Thankfully at that time, we did not have children.  I think we had kids at that time, we might have considered giving up.  But alas, we kept going.

Make a note of what you and your family eat on the regular.  Then ask yourself, is this something I grow instead.  You will be surprised.

Get to know your growing seasons.  Each area has its own growing season.  The best resource I have for you is the Farmer Almanac.  I am in no way affiliated with them but find this link to their website to be most affective in knowing your zone.  All you do is simply put in your zip code, and it will tell you your growing zone, when to plant either by seed, transplant or directly sowing into the ground.

Learn to cook from scratch.

Knowing how to cook from scratch is important because every decision you make on the homestead, is going to affect what you cook in the kitchen.  For example, you decide to start raising rabbits in your backyard for food.  You need to not only know how to processes and butcher them, but also to cook and preserve said food.  If you don’t know how to cook the food, how are you going to eat it. 

The deeper and deeper you get into homesteading you are going to see and interesting shift in your diet.  You will start to eat more whole, real foods rather than food that has been changed in one way or the other.

When you start cooking from scratch you start to save money.  You save even more money if you grow and preserve the food yourself.  What if you don’t know how to cook.  Then this should be the first thing you start to learn.

Learn to preserve.

            There are many ways to preserve food.  However, if you are looking to learn quickly so that you can start to homesteading, then these are the three area of food preservation that I highly recommend.

Lean to freeze.  Would believe that many people do not know how to properly freeze food?  Yes, its true.  Certain foods like carrots, broccoli, leafy greens, and peppers of all kinds need to be blanched first before you put them in the freezer.  What is blanching you ask?  Blanching is placing the food in boiling water for one minute and then placing it into ice water right after taking it out.  The reason you want to blanch certain foods, is so that it not only maintains its food coloring, but also its nutritional value longer.

 Dehydrate.  This is one my favorite ways to preserve food.  Now, word of caution here:  get a food dehydrator that has a temperature dial on it.  When I first started out I did not do this.  In hindsight it scares me to think of the things that I was attempting to dehydrate, and completely ruined the nutritional value of said foods. Each food groups require different temperatures.

You can make spices, fruit leathers, jerky, and powders from your dehydrator.

https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/dry.html#gsc.tab=0

 Water-bath can

https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html#gsc.tab=0

Learn how to water bath can. Now I am an avid canner I use my pressure canner least once a week, especially this time of year, at least once a week, I'm canning something all the time..  Water bath canning is a little bit different. I know a lot of people get really scared of pressure canning. And to be frank with you. There's nothing to be afraid of.  I've been pressure canning for years, and we're still here.  But water bath canning is a good skill. Because it's a little less scary for people then pressure canning. But water bath canning will help ease you into the world of canning. And for most people. I know for myself, this happened to me too. When you start growing a lot of tomatoes, inevitably you're going to have to learn to water bath can because you've got to preserve those tomatoes somehow. And, and making jams and jellies is another way to start water bath canning but it's very simple process.

I hope that you succeed in pursing your homesteading dreams. It can seem overwhelming, but trust me, it’s better go slow, than burning yourself out trying to do all the things. The tips that I shared with you will help you accomplish just that.

Until next time…Happy homesteading

Lisa M.