What picture comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘homestead’?
Perhaps you envision a quaint little farmhouse surrounded by tall oaks and a meandering creek; complete with a grazing Jersey milk cow in the back pasture.
I think that the majority of us would love to have a homestead like the one described above, but let’s face it: those types of properties are few and far between, not to mention expensive!
So, what do you do if you are one of the millions of “other” folks? You know who you are:
- The ones with a tiny backyard, instead of countless acres.
- The ones with an apartment balcony instead of tall oak trees.
- The ones with rocky, hilly land, instead of fertile rolling prairie.
- The ones who have never owned an animal larger than a goldfish.
What are YOU supposed to do? Just write off your dreams and assume you are not one of the “lucky” ones?
Well, I’m here to tell you otherwise. It’s my opinion that ANYONE can have a piece of the homesteading dream, regardless of where you live.
Why?
Because homesteading is a fill-in-the-blank kind of venture.
For example, I live on the prairie, so my homestead is called The Prairie Homestead. I love where we live, but it’s definitely not the perfect homesteading enviroment. It’s incredibly dry, windy, and the winters are harsh. The growing season is short, and fruit trees are very difficult to grow. We are a far cry from the lush, green farms that allow for gardening year around.
Now, you fill in the blank according to your situation:
“The ____________ Homestead. “
Perhaps you have a City homestead? A Mountain homestead? A Suburban homestead? An Oceanside homestead? Maybe even an Apartment homestead?
Embrace your unique situation and make the best of it!
Having the perfect farmhouse with the white picket fence isn’t necessarily the magic formula that makes you a homesteader.
The homesteading spirit is really about returning to our roots of simplicity:
- Of hard, yet fulfilling work.
- Of an intimate relationship with our food.
- Of quality family time NOT spent around a talking box or at the mall.
- Of a life that is not dominated by STUFF.
You may not have land or barns or animals or even a garden space. No matter- it’s more about a homesteading mentality than the size of your spread.
- Live in a tiny apartment? Try growing container gardens, composting, canning, or maybe even turn your balcony into a mini organic garden.
- A member of Suburbia? Convert that corner of your backyard into a veggie growing space, and put up a clothesline!
- Own a few acres? Consider keeping a few chickens for eggs and meat, or even a dairy goat or two!
- Maybe simplifying your life is your way to return to your roots. Declutter, reorganize, re-evaluate what is truly important in your life.
- Perhaps you can fulfill your homestead longings by searching out local sources for milk, eggs, and vegetables. Get to know your farmers and understand their production practices.
Regardless of your situation, we invite you along on our journey to simple, wholesome, and sustainable living. Won’t you join us?
If this describes you, be sure to subscribe to our FREE email updates to get homesteading tips, ideas, and encouragement delivered straight to your inbox! You can also keep up on the homesteading action via Facebook and Twitter.
Hey there,
I have a 1/4 acre and we live in a good growing area in NZ, so have 35 fruit trees, lots of fruit bushes and quite often lots of vegetables.
We keep chickens but do not have enough land to keep cattle. My alternative?
I buy a beef cattle beast off farming friends each year and have it butchered.
I get a grass-fed, well cared for animal that has not been shipped off for slaughter I cant stand those trucks) and the meat is well hung instead of being cut straight away as in the supermarkets.
It is also a whole lot cheaper and I save up for it over the year.
If you do not know a farmer with cattle then why not try an ad in the paper?
All you need then is a good butcher and a big freezer!
Love your page.
Yes, that is a wonderful alternative! Thanks for sharing this helpful tip!
Thank you for sharing this! I have been wondering about homesteading and you gave me a clear definition and answered all my questions. Now I’ll have to read up on canning, gardening, etc. Thank you for the encouragement!
Thank you for this encouraging post! A great reminder to make the most
Of what we have. My husband and I just moved from a suburban home
Into an apartment home. A little discouraging because I thought before
That didn’t have the space for homesteading! I am going to take this time
To learn things like canning and quilting. If all goes well we will be moving
Into a home on 1 acre in the spring which will feel like a farm to us!
It is all in one’s perspective.
Love your mindset Meg! You are exactly what I’m talkin’ about.
Hey, I found you on kelly the kitchen kop real food wed. Maybe I can call myself the urban homesteader. I know, not original. I live in an hoa neighborhood so lots of restrictions. Since I found all the real food bloggers I am working to grow good food organically and buy meat, eggs, chicken locally. We have terrific small farms here and I enjoy getting to know the farmers. I dream of having a small homestead where I can have chickens if I want. Who knows? I think I was a farmer’s wife in a previous life. lol
Hi, I found your site from a friend’s posting on FB. I like what I see.
I always wanted a farm since I was a young child (thanks to my grandfather teaching me (by example) the love of land and animals.) For the past 15 years, I have been living that childhood dream on a 3 acre llama farm. We have taken our llamas to schools, nursing homes, parades, celebrations, besides having many visitors to our farm to see the llamas. I am also a spinner and we sell their manure. We also utilize the llama manure in our gardens.
We have always had a garden, but for the past 8 years we have specialized in heirloom tomatoes, several types of peppers, several types of greens, other vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs that we sell to restaurants that like to utilize locally grown food. 3 1/2 years ago we added chickens to our farm. Our heritage breeds of chickens are out in the pasture daily. (In the winter, I shovel paths in the pasture for them so they can get out and about and not feel so cooped up. (no pun intended) We have no problem selling their eggs. The llamas also help protect the chickens from coyotes and just their presence keeps the hawks away. We literally use every inch of our 3 acres and work hard in our retirement years…but love what we do.
I just found your site because I am looking for homemade products that I can make to save money. I have recently become disabled to the point to where I can’t go back to work at my profession of 22 years. I am able to pace myself and take care of my home. I recently had to downsize from a 4 bedroom house with huge yard and garage to a 2 bedroom apartment. With losing my income and trying to survive on my husband’s modest income is going to be a real challenge and I have to double pinch pennies. Years ago I was really into making as much from scratch as I could but lost my way somewhere along the way. I need to get back to it now out of necessity. Thanks for your assistance!
I love your philosophy so true. We used to have 100 acres of prairie land. Now we have a lot in the deep south(coastal). I can grow more food for my family here than I ever thought about growing there. I have a garden full of veggies right now IN JANUARY. Life’s funny that way. Love your blog by the way.
I am fortunate to be living on a 250 acre farm. I actually feeled a little overwhelmed with all the space. I have a fenced garden area about 40×80. I really don’t know where to begin. We have approximately 2000 apple trees that we care for and direct sell them to the community in an orchard shop on the farm. I’m wanting to be able to provide additional produce for the shop and don’t know where to begin with selecting what vegetables/fruits to grow. I do have gardening skills and am quite crafty, if I may say so about myself. I just love anything with self-sufficiency and sustainability. Also, we have a natural spring on the place, a peach tree, a pear tree, and an English walnut tree. I am very interested in starting a community garden and work with those that are apartment dwellers to help them with growing as much food as they can. I am up to any ideas. My email is meandmike1981@yahoo.com. Thanks in advance.
I have been to your web pages before, but this time it is really sinking in. I have wanted to blog my recipes and ideas for a long time. I just don’t organize my blog well. Maybe I will just read yours! Currently living in Northern Illinois but we plan to move one day closer to my family in Tennessee, and hope to be able to buy enough land to successfully homestead and retire into a B&B if the world doesnt end and “Contagion” doesn’t hit us first. LOL. Love your site.
I drive school bus, today school was closed so I had extra time to “surf the web”, which is when I found your site, “love it”. I’m a single mom living on an acre and a half. I’ve always loved the west with its wide open spaces but after reading your site, I realized I can have it great here too by working harder at putting it all together. Thank you for all your info, I’ll be checking in regularly.
Hi Rebecca! So glad you found TPH! Yes, you definitely can still partake of this lifestyle where you are now! Stay tuned for my eBook due to be released next month. It’s all about homesteading where you are right now!
I am really enjoying this blog all the way through, since I stumbled over it yesterday. My big dream is to get enough acres to have a chicken coop, a barn with some dairy goats, possibly a cow or two, and maybe some day have a bed and breakfast on site. My husband wants to be in charge of our orchards and veggie gardens (we all know what’ll really happen, since he’s the primary breadwinner, and I have the green thumb), I’m obsessed with things like composting science, soil improvement, and with a large space in my heart for any kind of animals.
(If anyone’s interested, we live north of Seattle, WA, and our gardening space on a balcony of about 5×12″ – give or take a few inches – on the north side of the house. The container garden still yielded carrots, onions, beets, tomatoes, small sweet peppers and herbs last year, despite the bad conditions. I want to add strawberries, and more nightshade family plants to the yield this year, since vertical space is readily available, and we have a very narrow strip of direct sunlight hitting our balcony… And we almost got a few tomato-stealing squirrels, since our cat thinks he’s a great hunter… My educational background is in architectural engineering, with a degree I never finished, but I grew up being a barefoot tomboy in the countryside, and firmly believe mucking stalls at a stable or poking around in a compost is soothing, and outright beats a few hours at a spa. My husband was a military brat, whose background is in IT, and he’d never dare run around barefoot outside. Poor thing.)
One thing I latched onto with this post, Jill, was that you complained about the wind. This is a very, very, very slow solution, but there are places such as the Shimane Prefecture in Japan, where you see an L-shaped hedge (often of evergreens) protecting the house and its garden from the prevailing wind directions. There are whole neighbourhoods with farmhouses protected by wedge after wedge of greenery. It’s a long, slow task to grow a wind break, but that can help create a “microclimate” that’s sheltered from the wind, where you can potentially grow plants that are one or two zones “warmer”. It’s similar to why I think I read somewhere, that English country houses often walled in their orchards with brick walls; the thermal mass of the walls helped retain solar heat and extend the growing season, to yield better harvests.
So glad you found us Penny! It sounds like you have some spectacular plans in the works!
YES, you are absolutely right about windbreaks! We actually do have over 100 trees/shrubs planted in an L shape right now, which shields us from the West and North winds (our worst). And we plan to plant even more this spring. Unfortunately, like you said, it takes a while for them to provide protection, so for now, we are still getting blasted.
Penny ~ I am so interested in your balcony garden, especially in the Pacific Northwest! I live in Coos Bay, Oregon, and rain and high wind and coldness has almost discouraged me from doing what I love soooo much! I would love to see pictures of your garden to show me how I can do it too!
Jill ~ This blog has so impressed me! I just read this post aloud to my husband and we both kinda relaxed about our “Oceanside Homestead” in a senior mobile home park!
It especially encouraged ME! Thank you so much! This is my first visit to your blog and THIS POST is so helping me to look around at what “Homesteading” I can do right here! I would really like to read and see how other homesteaders garden in little/difficult areas! Thank you for this great blog! 
Cheeryshirley
This is a great site, thank you so much for all the info
Shelly
Hiya – just found your blog and I’m a bit excited. We are a few years from our “homestead” (my husband is a military man) and still not sure what that will mean for us, but I’ll be reading up until we make it a reality. I think I’ve been imagining a mostly meat-free homestead, but one of the first posts I read was about butchering your steer. What an eye opener – a whole new perspective. Thanks for sharing all this information!
Hi Sarah,
So happy that you found me! Sounds like you have some great plans in the works- good luck with your adventure!!
I just found this site. I am loving what I have seen so far! We started as Preppers, but I would love to be totally off the grid. I call it self-sufficient. =) We do garden almost every year. This year I am wanting to make a permanent raised herb bed. I would love to have the whole garden done with raised beds.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us.
I just found your blog and am enjoying poking around a bit. We are in south GA so our growing season is long. We have 3 acres and have our first batch of chicks out in the coop:) We have a garden started and would love to learn more on self sufficiency, too!
“The Island Homestead”
I like it! So far, we raise meat chickens, and keep hens. This summer we’re going to have a garden, too. 
Hmmm… Lovin’ the “Island Homestead.” Has a nice ring to it! And sounds much more exotic than mine, ha!
Jill,
I was looking watching youtube videos on cheese making and saw the milking video you posted. I have almost 400 acres in the Ozark Mountains but I can’t convince my wife and sons to live that far away nor that secluded. Our compromise was ten acres just outside the city where we work. We are doing the same things are you all are and love it. No better way for me to start my morning milking my does, listening to them jostle for next in line to be on the stancion, hearing my roosters announce the morning. Collecting eggs in the evenings still bring some childhood thrill like I’m Easter Egg hunting. In a small county in Arkansas we are living our dream. It’s nice to know that there are other young families out there seeking the same adventure. We are students of trial and error learning what our grandparents were taught by their parents but somewhere that knowledge stopped being passed down.
Sounds like you have a wonderful start with your 10 acres Andrew! I agree, it IS a wonderful way to start the morning. It’s sad to me that the knowledge quit being passed down at some point, but I’m thankful there are folks like you who are so passionate about learning the old ways. Keep up the great work!
I’d like to think, for myself, that homesteading is a state of mind. Some of us don’t have money at hand to do the land purchase that we all wish for. My family and I live in a rental, but are able to garden on a small scale. We have access to community gardens if we want (have done in recent past). I value farmer’s markets, hand crafted goods, skill-share networks. People helping People.
I like the idea of becoming sustainable in living, but feel the importance of community interaction and cultivating unique skills amongst all of us, enjoying seeing our passions fulfilled. I am a knitting knut ; ) and about to embark on weaving. My peas are in the ground and I look forward to reading everyone’s story and learning much ; )
Hey we have a few rabbits and chickens and some ducks and we have a small “farmette” in the Ozarks. We are just starting out. I had an 18 acres farm back in the 90′s and we had it all back then. Now we’re having to start over in a very small way. But my point was gonna be that rabbits are a “small homesteader’s” dream animal. You can have most of the meat your family would want or need and you can sell some babies (buy purebreds) and have your kids do 4-H with them and SO many options. And a few chickens are good, too. That is why we have two different types of ducks (muscovies which taste like steak and are VERY prolific and great moms, and Pekins which grow fast and taste more like traditional duck meat). So we have basically 4 different types of meat animals in a VERY small space. You can put rabbits in a garage or outbuilding and they make no noise and their poo is excellent fertilizer….So a good starter animal to ME are rabbits. I like Satin’s but most people like New Zealands or California rabbits.
Oh and I also like container gardening. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that container gardening is much less work and you can grow just what you need, practically anywhere. If you just get the cheap plastic storage totes or buckets and fill them with potting or top soil from WM? You have a garden. And NO weeding. Just make sure to drill some holes in the bottom of your container…Tomatoes do VERY well in containers and so do herbs.