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Homesteading – Page 41 – Homesteader Depot

Homesteader Depot

Category: Homesteading

  • What Is Urban Homesteading?

    What Is Urban Homesteading?

    When most people think of homesteading, they consider a farm on vast tracts of land in a very rural setting. Most people believe that homesteading will require a couple of acres, but that’s not the case. Many who live in rural areas and homestead, can do it on relatively little land, so long as they are smart with their space. In fact, many people who live in cities have even started homesteading. Whether they live in the suburbs or the concrete jungle, there are things they can do that will help them to become more self-sufficient.

    You will find that you can grow quite a few things in the city, even with just a small garden or an indoor garden. You could grow tomatoes and herbs in the house, grow other vegetables in potted plants on the balcony, and even talk with some other like-minded people in your area about starting up a community garden.

    Depending on the amount of space you have, and the rules in your city, you might even be able to raise some livestock on your property. Some of the simplest options include chickens for eggs and perhaps a goat or two, which you can raise for milk.

    One of the nice thing about being an urban homesteader is the fact that you will still have some of the conveniences of living in the city and close to some of the nightlife you might want to enjoy. Still, you will know that you have what it takes to provide for yourself if you need. In addition, you will find that following some homesteading principles can help you to save money.

    If there is a will, there is a way. Just because you live in the city does not mean you can’t become a homesteader.

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  • The Easiest Gardening Method You’ll Ever Try

    The Easiest Gardening Method You’ll Ever Try

    A thriving garden is the beating heart of the homestead.  For many people, though, keeping a garden can be a challenge. Traditional methods require heavy machinery for soil preparation, questionable chemical fertilizers, all adding up to a prohibitive upfront cost. A great and easy method of gardening that has a very low financial demand is the “lasagna garden”.

    It was given that name because the method involves developing arable soil by composting an existing plot with layers of organic matter. You create the layers in the fall, to be ready for planting in the spring. Here’s a quick guide to get you started:

    • Select your plot: With this method, you don’t need to prepare the soil at all. That’s right, no double-digging, no weeding! Just pick an area where your garden will get the sunshine it needs that isn’t too far from your water source.
    • The first layer: The base layer of your garden will be a single layer of corrugated cardboard that smothers out even the toughest weeds. You can source this from almost anywhere, just be sure to remove packing tape if you’re recycling boxes. To prevent weeds from growing through, be sure to cover up any gaps in the cardboard with more cardboard. If your plot doesn’t have any persistent or tenacious weeds, a minimum of three layers of newspaper will work fine instead. Just before applying the next layer, thoroughly saturate your base layer with water.

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    • The compost layer: This layer will be the powerhouse of your garden. Your garden is literally a compost sheet (rather than a pile or heap). Put anything in this layer you’d put in the compost, including “browns” like fall leaves, shredded paper, pine needles, and “greens” like veggie scraps, grass clippings, garden trimmings, etc. Once you’ve piled on the compostable matter, finish this layer off with three to four inches of finished compost or topsoil to be ready to plant. 
    • The mulch layer: Your lasagna garden will be topped off with the application of a couple of inches of mulch to retain the ideal moisture and temperature for your compost to break down. The best mulch materials are the ones you can source with minimal effort from neighbors, local businesses, or even your town’s Department of Works. Tried and true materials for this layer include wood chips (aged chips are best), straw, grass clippings, leaves, even tree bark! If it’s more convenient for you to purchase mulch, opt for undyed wood chips.

    Once you have your layers prepared, let them sit for a season. It’s common to start in the fall to be ready to plant in the spring, but you could do this in the spring for early fall planting, for example.

    To plant, brush back the mulch layer a bit and plot out the spots you’d like to plant your seeds. Cut holes in the cardboard for the roots to grow once the seeds begin to sprout, plant your seeds in the compost layer, and cover lightly with the mulch (as you would were you using potting soil).

    That’s it! The layers will retain moisture, so only water if the bottom layer is dry. Happy planting!

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  • Homeschool on the Homestead

    Homeschool on the Homestead

    If you’re an avid homesteader, you already know the value of a self-sustaining lifestyle. However, you may be one of thousands of families who just isn’t sure if you’re up to the task of in-sourcing your children’s education in addition to everything else you do in your homestead. Let me challenge you on that. If you’re already bold enough to get your food from your farm or garden and not the supermarket, you’re bold enough to educate your children. If you’re intelligent enough to learn the basics of permaculture or architecture and apply them to your property, you’re intelligent enough to follow and customize a curriculum. As a homesteader, you’re uniquely and exceptionally qualified to be self-reliant in your children’s education.

    Maybe in your case, time is more the issue than confidence. After all, maintaining livestock, crops, and the home is a full-time job. But, if you have the desire to educate from home and on your terms, you are slave to nobody’s timeframe. You no longer have to arrange your life around a school’s breaks and vacations or the bus schedule. You have the liberty to fit school into your day where you wish and devote as much or as little time to it as needed. When you tailor your approach to your children’s education to that child’s needs, the job gets done more time-efficiently and you achieve the same academic goals without spending six or more hours a day at it.

    Let’s not forget the ‘S-word’ that tops every would-be homeschooler’s list of concerns: socialization. Sure, your children will miss out on the type of socialization that a public school offers: being stuck in a room with 20+ other children of the same age. But is that really the best approach to guiding children in the areas of character development? As a homeschooler, you can get quite creative with social opportunities for your children without overloading your calendar. The main thing to remember is that children can socialize with any type of person, not just someone their age. Anecdotes and studies actually suggest that children become more well-rounded when they are immersed in a mixed population to learn from adults rather than mimicking their peers in a school setting. Cooperation and networking within your local community is key to a thriving homestead. Let your children in on this and let them explore local events, groups, and community resources to satiate the socialization need. And, of course, you’re always free to have your child invite a gaggle of friends over to run around the homestead and learn how it works!

    When you adopt the homesteader lifestyle, you categorically become something of a misfit in contemporary society. Your values as a homesteader may be contradicted or ignored in a public education. You don’t need to shelter your children by any means. You just approach their education the same way you approach your homestead: do it yourself!

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  • Choosing Vegetables For Your Winter Garden

    Choosing Vegetables For Your Winter Garden

     

    Stop digging up your garden after fall harvest and start planning your winter crop! If you’re blessed enough to live in a climate where the winter months don’t come with a thick blanket of snow and sub-zero temps, you can have a successful winter gardening season. Seasonal favorites include most root vegetables such as beets, onions, turnips, and parsnips.

    Hardy leafy greens such as kale, spinach, and baby beet greens keep salad on the menu (try them in soups, too!) Spice up your winter selection with exotic veggies like gai lan or kohlrabi. Check out your favorite heirloom seed shops to see what’s available, and consider constructing a simple coldframe in case there’s a frost in the forecast. With the best varieties of veggies to suit your tastes and your region’s weather, you can stay out of the supermarket and keep fresh produce on the table year-round.

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  • Preparing Your Homestead Vehicle for Emergencies

    Preparing Your Homestead Vehicle for Emergencies

    For the average homesteader, one of the biggest and most undeniable benefits of the self-reliant lifestyle is the security of a constant, sustainable source of food and fuel, especially in our fluctuating economy. Security and preparedness around your home are incredibly important, but you could be one of many people who leave out a key location when it comes to securing yourself and your family, not just your home: the car.

    Here are a few simple points to consider when building the right travel survival kit to meet your needs:

     

    • Seating Capacity: How many people you vehicle can seat is a key factor in determining how many people to provide for in your kit. Even if you’re alone in your vehicle the majority of the time, you don’t want to have to bring along extra provisions when you have a passenger or two, and you definitely don’t want to be without provisions for them. Failing in this could mean having to share a pair of gloves or one protein bar between two or more people on a long walk into town. Plan to pack enough of each item for as many people as your vehicle can seat.
    • Seasonal Gear: Keeping your kit to a manageable size is huge, especially in a compact vehicle. Help to keep unnecessary bulk out of your kit by rotating it each summer and winter. Trade winter’s packs of socks, handwarmers, and space blankets for summer’s sun protection items and extra water. Most of your kit’s contents, especially first-aid items, will remain in the kit year-round, but you should still check these at each rotation for expiration or damage.
    • Identification: No matter the severity of the emergency, having clear and easy-to-find identification for everyone in the vehicle will make first responders jobs easier if you are unable to communicate when they arrive. Beyond just your driver ID, medical information such as blood type or medication allergies are crucial information. If you will be traveling with children, it’s a great idea to print this information on a label to stick on their car seat. Keeping this information on an index card in the glove box is another good option.

    Even if you only make a trip into town once a week, once a month, or only travel a few times each year, it behooves you not to overlook your vehicle as part of the homestead and equip it for disaster preparedness. Just as you’d perform regular maintenance to keep your car or truck in good working order, you should see to it that it is stocked with a good emergency kit to be prepared for any roadside emergency situation.

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  • How To Convert the Homesteading Skeptics In Your Life

    How To Convert the Homesteading Skeptics In Your Life

     

    Have you ever gotten a confused stare in response to mentioning your homesteader lifestyle? Maybe even a disapproving scoff or an insult? You’re definitely not alone. While the revival of the homestead lifestyle is definitely gaining steam, the minds of many people in our modern world boggle at the thought of working toward self-reliance and living off the land.

    For those of us still attached in one way or another to contemporary society via work, church, or family, justifying something even as small as keeping a compost heap or a dozen chickens is a source of constant frustration.

    My advice? Stop trying to justify your choices. Stop explaining yourself to people who don’t understand. Keep your chin up each time you’re the butt of a joke. You have value independent of anyone’s opinion, and as a homesteader, you can wear the proud title of a producer, rather than just a consumer.

    Rather than blowing hot air in yet another futile attempt to convince your friends and relatives of the merits of homesteading, here’s my simple solution:

    Feed them!

    Bring your skeptical in-laws a dozen eggs and a few fresh tomatoes. The next time your cynical coworker takes a sick day, bring him some immune system-boosting homemade kefir or kvass. Be sure to bring a growler of home-brewed beer or a bottle of sweet dandelion wine to the next holiday get-together.

    Rather than explain all the ideological reasons to homestead or get frustrated with the skeptics in your life, share the fruits of your labor, literally! A slice of fresh, authentic sourdough bread with a smear of raw butter will go a lot further to convince someone than a red-faced tirade on the virtues of the self-sustaining lifestyle.

    You never know; they just might ask you for some spare sourdough starter someday and start their own homesteading adventure.

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  • Common Mistakes When Going Off-Grid

    Common Mistakes When Going Off-Grid

    Getting off-grid and energy independent is really appealing, but can also be pretty intimidating. It’s hard to know where to start when you’ve lived your whole life reliant upon a municipal grid, and as I wrote recently about homesteading in general, it’s OK to make mistakes.

    But, you can always learn from the mistakes of others! There are common mistakes a lot of people make when first getting off the grid, and here are some of those mistakes and how to avoid them.

    1. Aiming too high

    Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have goals and aim for the sky. However, when you’re thinking about going off the grid, don’t expect to have satellite TV, a dishwasher, run a crock pot, a video game console, curling iron, etc. all at once. When you get off-grid, you will have to scale down your life…drastically.

    2. Wasting energy

    This is obviously a broad category of mistakes, and there are many ways in which you can waste energy. Running a gas generator to watch a movie might be a good example, or using solar power to use a light during the day when natural light would work fine. You’ll need to conserve and constantly think about the most efficient way to use your resources.

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    3. Buying gimmicky products

    There are a ton of products out there to generate electricity off-grid, and some are really great, while others are probably a waste of your money. A lot of small solar products to charge small devices, for example, just straight don’t work unless there is direct sunlight on them for several hours at a time, so they could fail frequently. Do your research, read reviews, and again…

    4. Failure to Prioritize

    As mentioned in #1, you will need to take a cold, hard look at what you really need electricity for. We are accustomed to so many gadgets and gizmos these days, we don’t even think about how much we require electricity for the simplest of tasks. You will have to seriously reassess how much you really need an electric coffee maker or if you can make it in a percolator, if you really need a food processor or if you can mix things by hand, if you really need lights in every room or if you can use a lantern, etc.

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  • What to Do When You Can’t Raise Animals for Meat

    What to Do When You Can’t Raise Animals for Meat

    I posted earlier about a great video showing the complete process of butchering a cow. This is one of the big draws of homesteading-raising and butchering your own meat. Having a reliable source of high-calorie sustenance like animal protein is one of the cornerstones of self-reliance and sustainability.

    However, getting yourself in the position to raise animals for meat is no easy feat. It requires a lot of resources, resources you might not yet have access to, like pasture, shelter, feed, proper equipment, etc. Whether you are an urban homesteader, aspiring homesteader, or just getting started and aren’t yet in the position to be raising livestock, there are definitely still options for you to eat great pastured, sustainably-raised meat while you’re still dreaming of raising your own. Here are some tips:

    1. Find some farmers

    If you live in or near a rural area with a lot of farms, keep your ear out for farmers that sell either butchered meat or whole animals that you can yourself take to the butcher. Ask around, look on local community bulletin boards, on websites like Craigslist.com or in local Facebook groups. You can save a lot of money this way and fill your freezer up for the winter.

    2. Share a cow

    It is common for both milk and meat for a few families to pitch in and buy a cow. For meat, since cows can be pretty expensive to buy whole, you’d all pitch in and buy one when it’s ready to be butchered, you can get quite a bit of meat and share it.

    3. Find a CSA

    CSAs are not just for vegetables, a lot of farms will include fresh meat in your orders too. If you’re lucky, you can find one in your area and have a regular supply of farm fresh meat delivered to your house.

     

    Pastured meat is not only sustainable, it’s also much healthier and more nutritious for us. You don’t have to raise your own to enjoy farm-fresh meat and support a local farmer too!

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