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| Sometimes, I just want to play in the woods |
At one of my recent “Grow a Homestead-Style Food Garden” classes I teach at the local community college, a student asked me that very question.
I think of myself as living a “homesteady” life, yet I had to admit I wasn’t quite sure what to tell her.
On the one hand, isn’t it the concept of “homesteading” kind of obvious? For example: it’s 1) growing your own food, 2) being big on DIY, 3) maybe living more simply.
Self-reliance is a prime consideration. To me, however, homesteading is so much more…
But first, let’s consider what homesteading is *not*.
It’s not necessarily living on a large acreage out in the boonies. (We do live on 10 wooded acres out in the sticks.)
It doesn’t mean you’re off-grid. (We do have a solar array for our home, but it’s connected to the grid. When the power goes out, we’re out too. But we also have solar for our well pump, which is connected to 3 humongous batteries, and that means we’ve got plenty of water when the power does go out!)
It doesn’t mean you’ve installed a graywater system, or you collect rainwater, or you eat only what you can grow or raise. (We grow a *lot* of the fruits and veggies we eat, but far from all of them!)
A food gardener I admire greatly lives in a mid-sized Midwestern city, on about 1/2 acre, and raises lots of food for her family, and calls her life a homesteading journey. She writes eloquently:
“Homesteading is deeply tied to the seasons, and time begins to flow differently when you lean into the rhythm set by nature.” —Laura Lemon
I agree 100%! Homesteading, or as I prefer to say, “the homesteady life” is simply a mindset. A few things to ponder about this way of thinking.
~Living and raising food according to the seasons, going with the flow of nature.
~Caring for nature, being closer to the land
~Creating homes and food for pollinators and other “good garden friends” as my husband John would say.
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| The little toad house John created for one of our *friends* |
~Aiming for crop productivity. A perfect, photogenic garden? Not so much!
~Using what you have on hand…why buy something when you can make do?
Here’s a real-life example.
We’ve got some neighbors about 3 miles down the main road, a lovely young family with about 2 1/2 acres on a former clearcut. When they moved in, the property was mostly covered with young firs, 3-10 feet tall.
They bulldozed down all those lovely young firs, and cleared all the underbrush and grass. Then they graded the entire acreage, and I do mean thoroughly: back and forth, back and forth, until the land was as bare as a moonscape.
I wondered, were they going to plant a huge garden, or even put in a little farm with a pasture?
But no. They left the bare dirt, then planted about 100 little store-bought cedar saplings around the perimeter of the property. Despite lots of rain, about 90% of the saplings died within 2 or 3 months. My guess is that the soil was completely destroyed from all the grading.
Why, I wondered, didn’t they just leave a little circle of firs and brush around the borders of their property? The strip of native plants would have made a mini-habitat for birds and insects, privacy for their yard, plus a nice windbreak.
They ended up replanting with a whole new set of cedar saplings. A whole lotta money spent for both sets, when they could have just used what they had on hand, and let nature do what she does best!
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| Native red currant that popped up on our property provides oodles of food for bumblebees! |
As you see from my pic above, I used what I had on hand for gardening gear…an old shirt of John’s!
Anyway, back to cultivating a homesteading mindset…
Maybe all you have room for is a small container garden. But you can still raise food “homestead-style”! And even if it’s cold and snowy where you live, it’s not too soon to start thinking about it…I’ll chat more about this next time…
And you can get my free gardening guide, Little Farm in the Garden, plus find more about all my homesteady books at www.susancolleenbrowne.com !
Photo credits: John F. Browne
