Urban Homestead is a relatively new term. Or is it?
The word homestead can suggest various things – a large property where people farm, raise crops and run cattle: or early homesteaders, pioneers taming new land to make a living.
Whatever homesteading means, I believe homesteading is a way of life and a mindset.
Everyone can’t live on large properties. Everyone can’t be self-sufficient and in these times a lot of homesteaders need to work away from the homestead to earn an income.
But everyone can adopt a homesteading mindset no matter where they live. To steward the land we occupy as best we can, to live simply and often frugally, reusing and recycling where we can. To grow food if possible and to preserve the abundance.
Enter Urban Homesteading – homesteading on a standard block of land.
It is not a new way to live. It was only a few generations ago that most people grew vegetables and preserved food. They kept chickens, and sometimes other animals.
Homesteading on any scale is much more than growing a vegetable garden. For many reasons, people, like Dan and I, seek a simpler lifestyle where we have more control over our time, and the food we eat and are more self-sufficient.
And like us, lots of people don’t live on acreage.
Many may scoff, saying this is not possible, that all Urban Homesteading means is growing veggies in your backyard.
To some degree, they are right. But apart from raising your meat, mostly everything else can be achieved, albeit on a smaller scale. And if motivated, you can raise animals for meat on an urban block.
In a society where so many people are struggling mentally and financially, Urban Homesteading could be a lifestyle choice to explore.
Households are struggling to survive financially without two incomes. What am I saying?! Most households are struggling financially even with two incomes.
Everyone is busy. Mum and Dad at work, kids at school, childcare, activities, and sports. Everything costs.
People work more to pay for more.
The cost of living continues to rise.
But that’s life, right? That’s just how it is.
No, it doesn’t have to be. There are choices. Perhaps not easy choices, but choices, nonetheless.
Self-sufficiency, off-grid living, and homesteading lifestyles are rapidly growing in popularity spurred on by the rapidly increasing cost of living, people wanting a simpler and less chaotic life for themselves and their families and freedom to live life on their terms.
What is Homesteading?
Homesteading can mean different things depending on where you live in the world. In broad terms, Homesteading has several key factors:
Mindset, a willingness to live a simpler, more sustainable life and Self-sufficiency, Sustainability, and Food Security.
Homesteading can include (but doesn’t have to):
- Growing and preserving food
- Cooking from scratch
- Raising animals for meat or egg production
- Growing crops
- Foraging
- Reusing and recycling where possible
- Composting waste
- Harvesting and using sustainable energy, water, and resources
- Making your own soaps and personal care products
- Sewing, crocheting, knitting, and other useful crafts
- Knowledge and Use of Herbal Medicines
- Living frugally, being intentional about how you spend money
Of course, there are more practices and ideals relevant to homesteading depending on the beliefs and needs of each person like permaculture, regenerative farming and off-grid living.
Homesteading usually entails going back to a more traditional way of living – slowing down and learning traditional skills.
What I don’t believe homesteading (and self-sufficiency) to be is “all or nothing”. We live in a modern world. As far as I am concerned, we can have the best of both.
We are big on technology – it is Dan’s livelihood after all.
But I am also big on going back to basics and learning traditional skills like cooking, gardening, and preserving. That doesn’t mean we can’t buy an expensive kitchen appliance to make life easier and more efficient if that is how we choose to spend our money.
Our version of a simple life may be very different from someone else’s. And that’s OK.
Urban Homesteading
Urban Homesteading is taking the activities listed above and the mindset and making them relatable to a backyard setting.
It is living as simply and as sustainably as possible on a suburban block. Not everyone can afford or even wants, acreage.
With urban homesteading, you may not be able to raise sheep or cattle for meat, but raising rabbits, chickens, or quail may be an option.
We choose to buy our meat from local farmers (and friends), making us more community-sufficient than self-sufficient. We also choose to buy locally whatever I cannot grow or grow enough of. Or we simply do without.
There are many people successfully living the homesteading lifestyle in an urban setting. Some people successfully manage to grow food living in apartments, in pots on their balconies.
Urban Homesteading makes the dream of homesteading attainable to more people. It is also a great way to learn the skills required before purchasing land. We occasionally entertain the idea of purchasing acreage. I am not sure if that is in our future or not. We’ll see.
For now, Quiamong is more than enough for us. Quiamong is the name of our house by the way.
Although, I would love to have a milking goat!
And bee hives!
And ….
What does our Urban Homesteading Lifestyle look like?
Firstly, I will share some information about us to put things in context, and then I will explain how we make this lifestyle work for us.
Dan and I are 55 with no children living at home. We have a mortgage. We live in a country town in the Northern Tablelands of NSW, Australia; our house is 116 years old and needs lots of love. Our block is 1000sqm (1/4 acre).
I am the one who takes responsibility for the homesteading side of things. I love it.
Dan works from home running a web development business he has owned and operated for 24 years, and he loves it.
Dan supports us financially.
I look after the day-to-day of the home, garden, maintenance (I am currently painting the inside of our home), food preservation, cooking, cleaning, and more.
Together we do major projects either working early mornings or on weekends – things like creating new garden infrastructure and building stuff (ha-ha we need to improve those skills).
It works well for us. But it took us a while to be comfortable with our roles. Stepping outside of societal norms took a long time. We realised we had gone back to a traditional way of living with me not working outside the home or running a business like I used to. It was a huge decision that both of us struggled with in different ways.
Our vision for this home, Quiamong, is to maximize as much as we can of our land for food production including medicinal plants and herbs. It is also important to me to grow organically.
It is going to take some time. We are at our second anniversary of living here and things are slowly moving forward. I am impatient by nature, but it has been hugely beneficial for us to take our time to determine exactly what we want both in our home and gardens.
We are also keenly aware of the importance of “live and rest”. By that I mean, not burning ourselves out working every spare minute in the house or the garden, and taking time to relax and enjoy ourselves.
We have found a good balance.
This has not been a quick transition for us. It has been a journey of over 10 years to become cleaner in terms of our eating, the products we use in our home and on our bodies and to determine our values and goals. The journey is ongoing as we learn and try new things.
There have been many sacrifices but none of them have felt too big.
I save a lot of money by op-shopping and buying second hand which I love to do. This also aligns with our values to recycle and reuse and be as intentional as possible about our spending.
We made a conscious decision to only eat the vegetables I grew. We rarely buy additional, occasionally splurging on bags of frozen fruit or buying from a local farmgate. I am currently working on increasing fruit production in the garden.
We will be adding chickens to the homestead, hopefully soon, which will provide both eggs and manure for the garden.
More fruit trees will be planted this winter.
I preserve A LOT of food. I bought a Pressure Canner (NOT a cooker) several years ago so I could preserve meats and vegetables. I also preserve using the water bathing method, freezing, dehydrating, and fermenting.
Our preserved food sustains us through winter providing variety to our diet when the garden typically produces less. I take a break from preserving and cooking from scratch every day. It is also our “convenience” food. It is very easy to make a healthy meal by opening a jar of meat, jars of vegetables, maybe a sauce to simmer in, or a delicious condiment to top it with.
I suffer from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and there are a lot of foods that affect me – mainly gluten, processed foods, and unfortunately quite a lot of vegetables. By preserving, I know our food has no preservatives or other additives.
We buy most of our other ingredients in bulk a few times a year, and every few months do a bulk shop at Aldi and/or Costco. I have learned to cook more recipes with fewer ingredients.
I grow more than enough vegetables for us to eat fresh, preserve and share with friends and neighbours. When my kids visit, I load them up with their favourite preserved foods and we love to give some of our favourite preserves like Cowboy Candy and Rhubarb BBQ sauce as Christmas gifts.
I make our soap, deodorant, salves as well as household cleaning products. I am learning to crochet and learnt to sew when I was a kid which comes in handy.
I have always been creative and have loved making and cooking everything from scratch for as long as I remember.
I love this lifestyle. I feel like I have finally come home after a lifetime of searching for what I wanted to do.
I read somewhere if you are looking for your passion, think back to what you loved doing as a kid. I think there is some truth in that.
Last Thoughts
Homesteading, wherever you are, inevitably means more work, even with modern-day conveniences like kitchen appliances.
I think this is what confuses so many people. Why choose a life filled with more to do, when food and conveniences are just a short drive away?
For us, this lifestyle is far more rewarding.
I work for us, not for someone else. When this lifestyle is your “job”, working a lot is ok. I don’t have to work for someone else to then come home and try and do it all.
Our health is better. Our relationship is amazing. We are happier and more content than we have ever been. We don’t have many stressors in our lives.
The simplicity of this life means we have been able to make good financial decisions and major life changes we only dreamed of previously.
We have so much pride in our home and our small patch of land even though it is a work in progress.
Our time is our own. Yes, there are a lot of “chores” to be done, but I do them in my own time, there is no 9 – 5.
Our mindset has shifted. Instead of always thinking of ways to bring in more money, we see the food growing in our garden as the money we save.
As a friend pointed out, the food in my garden and on my shelves is like money in the bank.
We are not just surviving, we are thriving.
This lifestyle suits us.