Hello everyone

[John16n33]

While it is impossible for us to homestead now (not only is my Dh in the Army with 4 years left in his contract, we also have two moves coming up in the next 8 months) but we do plan to homestead once he gets out.  Well I take that back, he plans to build a house in the country when he gets out and I plan to make it as much of a homestead as possible.  We have two options in land already, one is 7 acres that I will inherit as soon as I have a college degree (May 2013) and another is 7 acres his parents want to sell us for cheap.  Either way we will be near both of our families.  If we choose my land it will be a kind of family commune almost since my Aunt and Uncle live across the street and are hoping to turn their land into more of a homestead slowly over the years.  They already garden, but they want to take it further and raise their own chickens, pigs, and cattle too.

My Dh isn't really into the 'green' lifestyle and tends likes to call me a Hippie lol.  I will say he is good about tolerating all of my 'crazy ideas' and once I prove they are useful he stops complaining.

I plan to kind of start incorporating some homestead type lifestyle changes slowly once we get to our permanent duty station later this summer.  Things like a garden, line drying, etc.

I hope you don't mind if I lurk and post around here.  I love getting new ideas and opinions on different ideas and topics.

I do have one question though-

Do you have any ideas of things that I can do to homestead in a urban type setting? Thanks!

[kitchensqueen]

Originally Posted by addiluvmommy 

Do you have any ideas of things that I can do to homestead in a urban type setting? Thanks!

Yep, tons of things! I do it every day. :-)

- Raise food in whatever space you can. You can always make room for one or two pots to grow herbs or lettuce or whatever. 

- Can/preserve as much of your food as possible. You can buy it from the farmer's market, or if you get a chance to go to a you-pick farm in the summer. 

- If you enjoy arts/crafts type things, start making stuff rather than buying it - sewing a new bag or tablecloth, making clothes or toys, etc. 

- You can vermicompost (with worms in a contained bin) underneath the sink.

- Make your own cleaning products (you can do a lot with vinegar and baking soda).

- Make your own soap and hygiene products. 

- You can line dry indoors on a portable rack. 

There's a lot, I'm sure others will chime in too.

[AnkaJones]

There's a really good book "Radical Homemakers" that I like a lot... not sure if anyone else has read it.  Some of the people in the book are more urban.

Anyway, I'm just beginning, but things I do:

- cook from scratch as much as possible (bake my own bread, make our own stock)

- grow herbs (I was shocked at how easy this was... I have the brownest thumbs God ever gave a woman, and they're still alive!  It turns out herbs do better with a little neglect).  To start, see if you can find someone on your local freecycle or gardening club who can give you a chunk of their plants.  Much easier than going from seeds, and you have the memory of someone helping you get started!

- line dry clothes.  We do it indoors (bedroom, bathroom, occasionally the kitchen).  Saves a ton of money and is actually more convenient for us because we spend less time at the laundromat.

- breastfeed -- the ultimate in "locally produced" food

- cloth diaper (takes some planning when combined with line drying)

- brew our own beer

- roast our own coffee

- thrifting/freecycling/dumpster diving.  This was a big hangup of mine until yesterday, when I was walking along and literally saw Christmas morning in a pile for trash pickup.  Brand new toys, the tree with ornaments still on.   Talk about conspicuous waste.  So anyway, I got over my thing against trash.  One of the unique things about urban homesteading is the amount of waste there is around you in a relatively small number of square miles... so we take advantage of that.  So far haven't done it for food, but I don't know.  Maybe at some point will be more open to that.

I'm going to try and start canning this summer.  One of my coworkers cans, so I'm going to go to her place and learn how to do it.  From what she tells me, she calls the local farms and asks about "seconds", and gets a ton of produce for a really low rate, then cans it and puts her family in vegetables and preserves for the year.

Things that don't seem to work for us... well, I tried to learn how to sew and wandered away from it.  I didn't have enough space, so it felt like I was really fighting the whole time and got really frustrated, plus I had never done it before so I was sitting there with a pile of books.  Then I managed to break my ironing board.  I still get tense just thinking about it.  I'm going to try again at some point, but for now leaving my sewing supplies in the closet.

It's really amazing how even integrating a few things into your life really changes your outlook and way of relating to your community and such.

Best,

Anka

[laohaire]

I second the recommendation for Radical Homemaking. I think homesteading is more a state of mind than an amount of land or anything like that. It's about doing for yourself as much as you can, gaining skills and confidence as you go.

I've done similar things as Anka (right down to the sewing part being my big failure - I'm just not good at it). For me, learning how to cook was kind of the root of it all, and it led naturally into learning to garden and compost and preserve foods and so on. I'm apparently dedicating 2012 to learning about all kinds of fermentation.

[MsMKJ]

 PS accumulate tools that are small but valuable - camp stove, water filtration, hand crank appliances, etc, solar things, etc. Equipment to make an off grid move all at once can be costly, but getting a piece at a time here and there is not so bad. A lot of it you can try out camping anyway.

[John16n33]

Thanks MsMKJ I will definitely do that.  I am already trying to simplify our lives little by little here.  I accidentally set the microwave on fire the other day so there went that.

[kitchensqueen]

Originally Posted by John16n33 

Thanks MsMKJ I will definitely do that.  I am already trying to simplify our lives little by little here.  I accidentally set the microwave on fire the other day so there went that.

I have to know what happened to the microwave...
 

[John16n33]

Haha well, I was half asleep when I was making dinner one night last week and had put a bowl of leftover shredded chicken in the microwave to heat up-the problem was that I didn't think twice about the shredded chicken being in a metal bowl.  Needless to say 20 seconds later the chicken was up in flames.  Thank goodness nothing but the chicken and microwave occurred any damages.

[kitchensqueen]

Wow, that must've been scary and awful to clean up! Lucky you were able to get it under control though. 

[John16n33]

Scary yes, but with my husband laughing at my in the back ground it made me more mad than anything.  Clean up wasn't too bad since the fire went out as soon as the door opened.

[MsMKJ]

LOL!!!!   ; ) someone has a twisted sense of humor!  ; )

A family member of mine calls the microwave the "nuclear reactor." I've decided not to have one anymore, that the radiation is not worth the health risk. Of course it could always burst into flames too  ; )

[John16n33]

I would be totally happy with not having one. I already heat up most of our leftovers in the oven.  But Dh keeps asking when I am going to get one.  He has to go to another school in April and we will be apart for 3 months.  I am hoping I can  put it off until then and maybe by the time we get to our next duty station he will have forgotten his 'need' to have one.

[MsMKJ]

http://www.relfe.com/microwave.html  Show him this and other studies.

 You may have to be the commander in chief at home, and base decisions on sound science and not 20 second convenience.