In honor of International Homesteading Education Month (September) from Mother Earth News(one of the my very fav mags!) I thought we'd take some time to explain how one can make some changes to become more of a homesteader be it in the city or the country. :) Enjoy!
I tend to throw around the word "homesteader" without giving much thought to it's meaning and it's occurred to me in talking to a few people over the last week, that homesteaders are generally seen as "country folks" living in "rural" areas with "lots of land". This could not be further from the truth.
Up until recently in history, homesteader was defined as above. I imagine the Homestead Act of 1862 had a lot to do with this But recently, we see that homesteading is in it's essence a word used to describe self-sufficiency. And anyone can do it. Obviously, unless we want to hermit ourselves away, true self-sufficiency is not possible. One must still use the roads, the local hospitals when something bad happens, or even supply the farm or urban homestead with tools. But there's no reason even an apartment dweller cannot strive to be more self-sufficient and then support those local vendors for things they cannot produce or provide for themselves.
So here's a primer of sorts designed to help you become more self sufficient. Remember, one needs not do it all, just do as much as you can :)
1. Learn to cook. You would so surprised at how many that "cook" that really can't cook. Cooking is a life skill that's more than opening a few cans and boxes. And I'll be honest, until recently, I thought I was a great cook because I could mix a few things from the store and produce a nice tasting result. But that's not the kind of cooking I mean Cooking is about knowing how to make those things you would buy from the store. It's procuring the ingredients and knowing how to use every available thing to you, as much as you can. Lets take chicken. Every other week we have roast chicken. A whole chicken. I roast it in the oven, and we have the meat for dinner that night. I use the leftover meat for chicken salad for hubby's work lunches. I then use the carcass (bone, fat, everything) and make and can chicken stock from it. This will enable me to make from scratch soups from our garden veggies come winter, without having to run to the store to do so. So if you can learn to cook, you can grow/produce a lot of the food you'll need yourself, even on a quarter acre. Which bring us to our next point:
2. Learn to garden. One can do this, even in an apartment on a balcony. Grow what you can, what you'll eat, what you use, and visit your local pick your own farms, or farmers markets for the rest. For two people, having a balcony full of veggies can provide most of what you need if you grow vertically and use every inch of available space. There's also ways to get around this, by finding community gardens, finding relatives or friends that will "loan" you the use of some of their land, or asking your apartment complex if you can grow a garden in the back. For those of you in the city, get rid of your lawn if you have to! I mean, what does a lawn do FOR you? It's weekly mowing, fertilizing if you want it to look nice and manicured, seeding and reseeding bare spots, it's work. And you get nothing. So dig it up! Plant some things! Plant All the Things. :) We have a family of six and are going to be using about 1/3 of our quarter acre next year to garden and it will provide almost everything we need for the whole year
4. Learn how to hunt, and butcher your own meats. Now, this one is going to get some mixed reviews, I know. I know that some people wont' mind the hunting so much but the butchering! So here's the thing. You're already going to have to field dress your kill, why not learn to just butcher it too? I'll be honest, it's going to be a gross job. It's not going to be something you'll want to do in your Sunday Best and if you're squeamish at all...you might want to find a butcher locally to do it for you. But it's something I think everyone should try to learn.
5 Reduce your energy dependence. This could be getting a bicycle to use as transportation, hoofing it to and from work, line drying your clothing or even using a solar battery recharger for household use. Im not a prepper per se, but the less energy you use, the better off you'll be if that energy becomes too expensive or unavailable, which is more real than the zombies. We live in tornado alley and I've seen towns decimated in just an hour. Energy prices are constantly on the rise, at more of a rate than the wage increases as well, so this will leave you more disposable cash for other more important items in your household.
6. Find alternate water sources. Now this could be as simple as living near a creek, putting in a pond, or drilling a shallow well. This one won't be able to be utilized by everyone, but it's another way to "reduce energy dependence" as potable water isn't free. We have a well on our property and are in the process of getting a hand pump installed so that next year we can use it to irrigate the garden as well as other things. While our water bill runs about $30-$50 a month (higher in the summer from watering), and that's not a significant amount of money to be saving, it's not using clean potable water for drinking for our garden, which is in turn, less energy spent cleaning the water. Another thing you can do is to collect rainwater. (be careful, this is actually illegal in some states).Simply using a barrel under your downspouts and a sump pump or watering can, can provide a lot of your outdoor water uses. Water filters can also be made/purchased so if you needed to, you could use rainwater as drinking and cooking water.
7. Plant a medicinal herb garden. One thing that we're very dependent on is the doctor. A lot of things one really doesn't need to go to the doctor for, but we do anyway. This causes doctors to be backed up every day and honestly, just takes time from YOUR day. I have four kids and we have no shortage of sickness. Seems like every other month they come home with some kind of crap or another. Nine times of ten, you don't' need to do anything. Even if they have a fever, you can often just stay at home and nurse it. That being said, one of the things we do wrong is give Tylenol at the slightest hint of a fever. This is costly, and honestly will do nothing but mask symptoms. I let fevers run in this house because that's the body's way of fighting off something and by bringing the fever down, I am taking away the body's natural defenses and then my children stay sicker, longer. For every day things, you'd be surprised what you can do with a medicinal herb garden. This book is a good place to start. Keeping a stock on hand of medicinal supplies is always a good idea too, this will allow you to not have to travel out when someone is sick or hurt. I keep lots of gauze, tape, band aids and antibiotic cream on hand with my children :)
8. Barter and trade. This is a great way to be more self-sufficient. Lets say you have a bumper crop of strawberries and your neighbor has a bumper crop of corn. Why not trade? Or perhaps you can fix electrical items and your neighbor has extra eggs from the chickens? There's many thing you can barter and trade for. If you have a skill, or items, you can usually find someone else that has skills or items to trade. This is one of those areas that if you can't provide it on your own, find a way to procure it with your own means.
9. Go re-usable. Whether this be with batteries, mama cloth/diva cups, cloth diapers, family cloth, napkins, placemats, etc. Being able to buy or make something once, and keep it around for a long time keeps you from having to rebuy.
10. Invest and learn how to use hand tools. This can be anything from kitchen appliances to outdoor tools. Currently hubby and I own a reel mower for what little lawn we have to keep mowed. It uses no power (other than our own), and needs no special care. Is it harder than using a gas powered? No. It is a bit more time consuming though. I find it takes about 10% more time to complete the lawn with the reel mower than a gas one. But we're talking minutes here. Once a week. Totally worth it. I also use hand tools in the kitchen. Recently I bought replacement screens for my hand cranked food mill. This allows me to make sauces and what not from our garden yields. I will also be purchasing a hand cranked flour mill in the next bit so we can mill our own flour.
11. Learn some new outdoor survival skills. This could be something like learning how to start a fire, building a shelter/pitching a tent, fishing and hunting, using the sun to navigate and tell time, there's many things that one can learn. Should you get snowed in, lose power, be hit by a storm/tornado, your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, you get lost camping, you just never know :)
12. Learn some indoor skills. These would including things like baking, knitting, sewing, mending/darning, making cheeses and yogurts, candle and soap making, spinning wool, etc. For the very self sufficient, raising your own sheep for wool, dairy cow or goat for milk and bees for wax, these skills would up the amount of things you can produce yourself. Even procuring local milk, yarn and other necessities can allow you to have an end product you know what's in, and you've been able to provide yourself. :)
13. Raise animals. Depending on the codes of your city, you might be able to have chickens, goats or rabbits. Having chickens will provide you with eggs, stew meat, and manure. Rabbits will provide you with fur (angora), meat and manure and goats will provide you with meat (chevon), milk and fur (mohair).14. Pay off your debt. This mainly is about your mortgage if you have one. Owning your home free and clear not only provides you with shelter and more disposable cash every month, but most people who are self-sufficient would be able to sell or trade their wares for the cash to cough up the change for property taxes every year if they didn't have a job. This number one enables you go without a job, or at least live on one income (which provides more time and energy for homesteading chores), and if one should lose that income, and I think the last few years have shown us that nothing is guaranteed, you could still survive.
