What You Need to Know About Homesteading In the City (Urban Homesteading)

Are you interested in homesteading but worried that you don’t have enough room? Gardening, raising animals, and alternative energy systems can take up some space. However, even people living in the middle of the city can take advantage of the space they have and embrace a kind of homesteading lifestyle. It’s called Urban Homesteading and it may be just the thing you’ve been looking for.

Gardening in Small Spaces

You don’t need acres to grow produce. What you do need, whether you have a small space or not, is a plan. Think about maximizing the space you have. For example, climbing plants like beans can be placed at the back or edge of your garden space where they can use the fence or wall to climb. Steer clear of plants that require lots of space like pumpkins or watermelon and instead look for plants that produce a lot of fruits or vegetables without requiring too much space. Tomatoes are a great example of a plant that has a high yield without taking up a ton of space and soil. Herbs can be grown in windowsills and on elevated planters too.

Doubling Up

An aquaponic system that involves tilapia or perch, watercress and tomatoes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are some opportunities to double up your homesteading activities. For example, you might farm fish and embrace hydroponic or aquaponic gardening. This is something you can place either inside or outside your home. Both greens and herbs grow quite successfully this way and what’s better than fish and a salad for dinner?

Get Creative with Your Space

Take a look at the space you have. Roof tops, window sills, fencing and patios and porches all provide a perfect space for gardening and more. In fact, many urban dwellers keep chickens in their back yard. All you need is space for a small coop.

Whether you’re in the city or in the country, homesteading is an acquired skill. You’ll learn as you go. Next time we’ll take a look at a few fun ways to improve your homesteading skills, so be sure to check back Thursday!

5 Questions to Answer Before You Get Started Homesteading

Are you ready to get started with your homesteading lifestyle? It’s true, it offers numerous benefits including reduced monthly expenses, sustainable living, and a rewarding lifestyle. But before you get started there are five questions you need to answer.

1. How much space do you  have? – Homesteading doesn’t have to take up much space. Many urban homesteaders garden on their patio, roof, or in a small back yard. Take a look around you and evaluate how much space you have. Do you have enough room for what you want to grow?

2. Are animals allowed? If you’re interested in raising or keeping animals, it’s important to check your local zoning and ordinances first. Some communities don’t allow livestock to be kept. And some cities restrict the number or type of animal that you can keep. Even if you’re only interested in beekeeping, it’s important to know whether you will be able to do this where you live.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3. Sustainability and systems – How will you make the most of your resources? For example, you might install a rain barrel to collect water for your garden. Can you use lumber and items you already have to build container gardens or a chicken coop?

4. What will you grow? The best advice is to grow what you eat. Make a list of the produce you buy most often at the supermarket. Cross off the items that don’t grow well in your area and review the list. Prioritize the list according to your available space.

5. What's the most important to you to start with? The best advice is to start small – There’s no need to run out and buy a hundred acres. You can start small with a few containers or a backyard garden. You can start a small bee colony or get a few chickens. Think about where you want to start and how quickly you want to grow your homesteading lifestyle. Think about what’s most important to you and what you can reasonably manage.

Starting homesteading is a fun and exciting project, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Taking the time to answer the 5 questions above, and prioritize, will make all the difference to your success.

Be sure to stay tuned, as next week, we’ll take a look at urban homesteading and offer some tips and ideas for bringing homesteading into your neighborhood - even if you don't live in the country.

3 Ways to Make Money from Homesteading

Did you know that you can take your homesteading lifestyle and actually build a business or career out of it? It’s true. There are many different ways that you can make money from homesteading. Let’s take a look at three of them. Who knows - you might turn your hobby farm into a full-fledged business!

1. Crafting and Home Goods

Many homesteaders find that they have more than enough materials to begin crafting. For example, if they are raising alpacas they find that they have extra yarn and might begin making clothing for friends and relatives.

They could just as easily begin selling the yarn or making items to order. Herbs can be made into essential oils, lotions, and even soap. For example, lavender plants make wonderful essential oils which can then be added to body products or sold as an oil.

2. Food Preparation and Preservation

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sue had an abundance of Brussels sprouts one year from her garden. She decided to pickle them. Her recipe was so popular that Sue began selling her pickled sprouts online and at local Farmer’s Markets.

Her business expanded and she now pickles and sells many different types of veggies. Other people have had great success with homemade salsas, jams, and sauces all made from the items they’ve grown in their garden.

3. Teaching
As an experienced homesteader, you can make money teaching other people how to homestead. It’s a growing trend and lifestyle choice. Teaching, online or in local workshops or seminars, gives you an opportunity to help others and earn some extra cash at the same time.

Homesteading provides many opportunities to improve your lifestyle. Making money from it is just one extra benefit to consider. And while homesteading is profitable, environmentally sound, and it helps you save money many people homestead just because they like it. Next week we’ll take a look at the reasons why homesteading is rewarding and fulfilling.

The Many Financial Benefits of Homesteading

Homesteading may initially seem like an expensive hobby. After all, if you decide you’re going to raise chickens and begin using solar energy to power your home, both may require a significant investment. However, homesteading actually offers many financial benefits, some of which you may be quite surprised to learn.

Homestead Tax Advantages

Most states have homesteading laws and tax credits or advantages. In many cases, it’s a great way to save money on your property taxes. The homestead tax exemption essentially makes part of the value of your home exempt from property taxes. For example, if a property is worth $180,000 and is eligible for a $25,000 homestead tax exemption, then the property will only be taxed at $155,000. The amount of your homestead tax exemption varies according to state tax laws and the value of your home.

Sustainability Tax Credits and Savings

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another way that homesteading can save you money is with sustainability and alternative energy savings. For example, in many states if you install solar energy panels, a geothermal system, or other energy-saving appliances, you may receive a tax credit. You also save money on your monthly energy bills and may even get a credit from the energy company if your solar cells produce more energy than you use. There are both federal and state alternative energy tax credits to review to see what you’re eligible for.

Saving On Groceries

Depending on the scale of your garden you can save anywhere from a few dollars a week to several hundred dollars a year on groceries. A simple herb garden can save money on buying dried or fresh herbs at the store. If you have land and can plant larger crops with an abundant yield, you can save hundreds each month. A package of carrot seeds costs less than five dollars and you can grow pounds and pounds of carrots with one bag of seed.  (See our Sustainable Gardening blog for more helpful gardening tips.)

Whether you want to save money or you’re simply looking for a way to live a more natural and rewarding lifestyle, homesteading offers a number of benefits. Next time we’ll take a look at why homesteading is good for the environment, so stay tuned!

The 3 Main Elements of Homesteading - Which Appeals Most to You?

While homesteading encompasses many skills and approaches, there are three common elements that most homesteaders practice. When beginning a homesteading lifestyle, it makes sense to choose one element and make it a priority.

Focus on improving your skills, systems, and practice. Integrate that element into your lifestyle and then expand on it by adding other lifestyle changes and homesteading skills. So what are these three main elements?

Growing strawberries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Gardening – The first and perhaps most readily adopted element of homesteading is gardening. Gardening is something that you can do on a small scale or you can convert your entire back yard into a garden. Small container gardens and raised garden beds are often a good way to go if you’re not sure you’ll have the time to tend to your garden.

You can always add more containers or raised beds as you become more comfortable. The most important thing to remember about homestead gardening is to grow what you eat. If you don’t like broccoli, don’t grow it. If you love strawberries, then that’s a perfect crop to start with. Utilize sustainable gardening practices to maximize your use of space and minimize your impact on the environment.

Preserved food in Mason jars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

2. Food preservation and preparation - The next component of homesteading is a natural progression from gardening. It’s the fine art of food preservation. We’re talking about canning, pickling, and making preserves. For example, let’s say that you love strawberries and your first year of gardening you had good success with your strawberry garden.

Your crop yielded a nice collection of strawberries and you enjoyed a few tasty desserts. This year you might triple your strawberry plants and instead of eating them all right away, or giving them away, you make strawberry preserves. You’ll now be able to enjoy your strawberries all year long. Learning to cook what you grow from scratch is more of an art than a science. Enjoy the process!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3. Animal husbandry – The third element of homesteading is animal husbandry, or raising animals. You might raise goats for goat milk and cheese. You could raise chickens for their eggs.

You can also venture into fish farms and aquaponics. This is a bigger step for some and you’ll have to check your local zoning ordinances to make sure it’s okay to raise livestock in your yard.

As you might suspect, when you begin homesteading there can be some significant financial benefits. In the next post next week, we’ll take a look at those benefits and provide some guidelines to help you save more money with homesteading.

Ten “Green” Cleaning Uses for Flat Beer

Ever wonder what to do with a half empty bottle of beer?  Drinking it isn’t an option; there’s not much worse than flat beer.  So what’s a person who doesn’t like to waste anything to do with a bunch of flat beer?  Here are ten “green” cleaning uses for flat beer - just in case you have some extra left over from the holiday weekend!

Beer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

#1.  Coffee and tea stain remover.  Though you don’t really want your clothes to smell like beer, it is actually a great stain remover.  Pour the beer on the stain and let it sit for a minute.  Blot the stain and examine.  If it’s still lingering, repeat as needed. Then launder as usual.

#2.  Polish your jewelry.  Pour that leftover beer into a small glass bowl and place your gem-free jewelry into the bowl.  Let sit for a couple of minutes, remove and dry thoroughly.

#3.  Furniture cleaner.  Use your flat beer to clean your wooden tables and other wooden furniture.  Place flat beer on a clean, soft cloth and apply.  Dry with another clean, soft cloth.

#4.  Clean your garden of slugs and snails.  It’s a long-standing gardening practice to use beer to attract snails and slugs to remove them from your garden.  Pour beer into a shallow dish and place in your garden overnight.  In the morning, you’ll find it full of slugs and snails that have imbibed and drowned.  Toss and repeat as needed to rid your garden of these destructive pests.

#5.  Remove stains from carpeting.  It’s always good to test this in a low-visibility area for colorfastness first.  Then, if you have a carpet stain, pour a little beer on the stain, wait a few minutes, blot and repeat until stain is gone.  This works better on fresh stains rather than stains that have become set in the carpet.

#6.  Cleaning doesn’t just mean cleaning your home.  Flat beer makes a great hair conditioner.  Wash your hair as normal and rinse, then pour that bottle of flat beer over your head, let set for a minute and rinse out.  (Don’t take glass into the shower, but rather pour into a plastic cup to avoid potential breakage and injury.)

Ick! Fruit flies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

#7.  Trap fruit flies.  Flat beer is a good way to eliminate pesky fruit flies.  Pour the beer into a small plastic sandwich bag, filling it halfway.  Place the bag into a cup and snip the corner of the bag, not too big but large enough for fruit flies to be able to fly in.  They’ll be drawn to the beer and not be able to find their way out of the bag.

#8.  Bee bait.  Place a few dishes of flat beer on the perimeter of your home to attract them to those areas rather than where you and your family enjoy playing and hanging out. 

#9.  Copper cleaner.  Beer is great for polishing copper.  Try placing a little on a clean cloth and applying to the bottom of your copper pans to remove tarnish and add shine.

#10.  Plant food.  When watering your plants or garden, mix a few tablespoons of flat beer into the water and add to your plants. They will love the extra nutrients and vitamins. 

Flat beer may be unpleasant to drink but it has a number of valuable green cleaning uses.  In a time where we’re learning to make the most of our resources, there’s no reason to let a little flat beer go to waste. Try some of these tips whenever you have flat beer left over!

Organic Gardening for Beginners

If you enjoyed Monday's article on growing your own food, we thought we'd continue the theme today by sharing some more tips on getting started with organic gardening. If this strikes your fancy, be sure to check out our Sustainable Gardening blog for ongoing info on this subject.

If you decide to grow herbs and vegetables in your own garden, then you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have not sprayed poisonous pesticides anywhere near them. You can eat your own home grown food without worrying about what has been done to it.

The aromatic herb garden. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In fact, herbs are some of the easiest things to grow, so we strongly recommend growing some herbs when you are starting out with gardening if you're a beginner. You can either put them in a sunny spot in the garden, or have them in containers outside, or even on the windowsill indoors. Most herbs are small enough for this, and you will not need to grow large quantities because you will only use a little in cooking. It is so rewarding to be able to taste your own home grown organic herbs in the delicious dishes that you prepare in your kitchen!

So what is the first thing to do when starting your own organic garden? You will need to prepare a small garden plot. You can do this by hand digging, with the use of a machine, or use the no-dig method. If the land that you are working with is overgrown and has never been used for a garden before, you will probably need to hire a machine. Otherwise, start small by digging a manageable area. Or, if you would like to try gardening without digging, try the lasagna gardening method. This is pretty easy for beginners, and you can use it in areas that have never been gardened before.

Then you can start planting. Be sure to choose correct plants for the season. Whatever time of year it is, in most areas you can find something that can be planted right now. Choose plants whose colors or fruits you will enjoy, and don't plant them too close together.

If you have just moved to a house that already has a garden, the first thing that you should do is try to identify all the plants that are there already. You can draw a plan of your garden and write down all of the names. If you have a wireless internet connection, the easiest way to identify the plants is probably to take your laptop into the garden and call up some pictures of popular garden plants and weeds. Then you can pull out anything that is obviously a weed.

(Photo credit: RaeAllen)

The first year in your new garden, you may want to wait and see what comes up. Don't start pulling leaves as soon as you see a weed, but wait until it is large enough that you can be sure what it is. If the land has been cultivated before, there may be some valuable self-seeding annuals that will surprise you!

Of course, if you simply avoid using chemical pesticides and fertilizers then technically your garden will not be organic. For that, you would need to use organic seeds too. These are available from many online suppliers. But if you can't find them, don't worry about it too much - most of what matters is what is in your soil, and what you put in the garden yourself which the plants will absorb.

Gardening is a wonderful activity that keeps you fit, makes your home more beautiful and brings an aspect of your life into harmony with nature. Gardening for beginners the organic way can be one of the most rewarding hobbies that you could imagine.

And if you're wondering about growing other foods yourself, besides vegetables and herbs in the garden, be sure to check back next week when we're going to discuss raising your own chickens!

The Simplest Way to Go Organic: Grow Your Own

Whether you’re on a budget, aren’t sure of the authenticity of local organics or both, the surest and cheapest way to get good organic food is by growing your own.  And growing your own can be as simple or as involved as you want.

If you’re a first-time gardener, the trick is not to overwhelm yourself. Keep your garden relatively small, but leave room for expansion when you’re ready. A family of 4 can start with about 200 square feet (approximately 50 square feet per person) and have a great supply of produce. But if you don’t want to start that big, don’t. Do what you’d like and what you can.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you don't have a lot of space, containers work well. Root vegetables may not be possible but some people report great success in growing potatoes in compost bags or buckets. Other traditional container fare includes tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, carrots, peppers, strawberries, blueberries and herbs.

If you are growing directly in the ground, there are a couple of things to consider.  First, is the amount of sunlight. The second is soil quality.

For sunlight, you should find a space that gets full sun. That’s about 8 hours of sun each day. Some items may need a little less sun, but 8 hours will help you grow a large variety of crops.

For soil quality, you are looking for a pH of about 5.8 – 6.8 and you can buy an inexpensive testing kit at a garden store. You can increase pH, or correct acidity, by adding limestone. To decrease pH, or to correct alkalinity, use elemental limestone. Also, ensure that you have plenty of organic material in your soil and add leaves and compost to help. (See our sustainable gardening blog for some more tips on soil pH.)

If your soil isn't quite right, you can make raised beds and surround them with bricks or stone to contain the nutrient rich and balanced soil.

Young Calabrese broccoli plants. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you’re ready to start planting, consider planting some plant starts, instead of seeds. They may be a little more difficult to find organically, but for first time growers, they’re much easier to work with.

Make sure to water your plants regularly. Seeds should be watered daily. New plants should be watered every 2-3 days. On particularly hot days, you may need to do more. You can even collect rain water for your plants by using rain barrels or creating your own from garbage pails.

Organic herbicides don't work that well. Instead, take the time to pull weeds, ensuring you grab the weeds fully by their roots or they will continue to grow. Weeding regularly will keep them from maturing and becoming problematic...plus it makes your whole job quicker and easier.

As you go through your gardening journey, keep a record. Write down dates things are planted, how they are treated and progress. Take weather and other conditions into consideration. It will allow you figure out what worked well and help you improve your gardening techniques, year after year.

You may not feel like a green thumb now, but keep at it. It’s so worth it.

Visit http://www.newholisticliving.com/sustainablegardening.html for more info on growing your own organic and sustainable garden. And be sure to check out our Sustainable Gardening blog for all kinds of gardening tips, tricks, ideas, videos, and helpful resources!