Sustainable City Living

It seems oxy-moroninc doesn't it? How can anyone be self sufficient in the city? The plots are tiny, most homes don't have a sustainable heat source, or water source, livestock is usually regulated with a heavy municipal hand.

I know. Boy do I know. And it's why I want my 50 acres, with a cabin in the woods. I mean, that's the idea right? Dairy cows, a couple of sows for piglets, lots of land for a giant garden......its the dream most of us have, I get it. But you know what? As I've shown you in other posts, you don't have to have 50 acres and a cabin in the woods to be a homesteader. Sometimes, life gets in the way of our biggest dreams and you'll need to bloom where you're planted. Me? Im in the city right now, and that's not going to change within at least the next two years.

And believe it or not, there are some serious benefits to living in the city. When we decided to get chickens, I simply walked the 1.5 miles to our library and checked out a few books on backyard chicken keeping. When I do need to get something at the store I can't grow (like flour) then I simply walk in the other direction 1 mile and hit up our local store. Don't be shy, bike the distance if it's too far! This really saves some fuel costs, which we know are ever rising!

You actually can be quite self sustainable in the city if you plan it it right! Like, really self sustainable believe it or not. And here's how.

1. Learn everything you can about your bioregion. 

What's a bioregion you ask? Great question, I had to look it up too. It's basically your region that's separated by the environment and it's characteristics, not by manmade structures. So ours include the Rocky Mountains, the Sandhills and a couple of rivers. This puts us in a river basin right in the middle of the North Platte and South Platte Rivers, so our soil is much different from just 25 miles either north or south of us.

Not only do you want to learn about your environment, but you want to learn about local laws. Some great questions to ask are:
Can you have backyard livestock? (Chicken/Rabbits/Goats/Ducks/etc)
Can you harvest rainwater?
What do you need to do to put up outbuildings like a coop?
What restrictions on where you can plant food?

Some cities like mine are pretty lax. We have no limit on backyard fowl, but of course, I don't want a chicken farm, Im just aiming for feeding our family. We have no limits on food production, other than blocking traffic views because we live on a corner lot. We are allowed to harvest our rainwater in barrels too, and our building permits allow us to put up sheds/etc without a permit as long as it's smaller than a certain size.

Observation is going to be the key in this first step. And write it all down too! Don't be like me, and think "Hey, I can remember that!" only to forget a week later. You never know where your journey will take you, so even things you think you might not need to know now, you might want to know for later.

2. Grow your own food. 

Growing your own food, is probably one of the most important things you can do as an urban homesteader. As urbanites, we have to get creative when we grow food. Think UP. Not just OUT. Vertical containers, hanging planters, ladder boxes, anything you can come up with to grow up and not out. This year we're growing pole beans. Even though they're a bit slower than bush beans, because it allows me to trellis the beans UP and plant something under that trellis instead of taking up precious space in the garden. 

I've seen strawberries in planters, tomatoes in containers, herbs and spices in boxes and baskets on a porch. You are not limited to places you can till up. Don't use your driveway because you bike/walk everywhere? Turn it into a garden with containers and raised beds. You're going to surprise yourself with how much food you can grow in a small space. I know I did. As long as you provide adequate dirt depth, almost anything can grow well in a container. 

3. What you can't grow, buy local. 

You know have heard me say this before. "Source what you can't grow". And honestly, I can't say it enough. There's no argument that organically grown food is healthier than food grown in a hothouse with pesticides, (think winter strawberries) or that farm fresh chicken eggs are better than what you get in the store. If you have any doubts about this, Netflix, Amazon and youtube are all chock full of documentaries that will open your eyes about the nature of our food industry. 

Not only is buying local and organic better for you, but it's better for your bioregion too. There are farmers markets, local farms that open their doors to the public, CSA's, the list goes on. Local Harvest is a great place to start if you need to find food close to you. 

They say that the dollars that are spent locally have three times the impact than the dollars you spend at big chains. This means that when you buy local, you create and help sustain jobs, you help your city and it's outreach with the city tax dollars collected from those sales, and you are voting on how you want to live and eat with that dollar. 

4. Raise some backyard animals! 

You wouldn't believe the amount of help you can get from just a few chickens or rabbits. We have six chickens. They free range on about 450 sq ft of our backyard (this includes the coop footprint) and the compost pile is back there too for them to dig through. This means I don't give them feed. They eat how nature intended, which by the way is free for me. The exception to this is when the ground is completely frozen and then I do give them a homemade feed. 

Now because I love my chickens, I give them some scratch and treats. They love a good cucumber and seriously, they are pecking the seeds out before I've laid it on the ground for them. I also give them a bit of our homemade feed in the summer time, about a handful that's thrown on the ground as scratch for them, just to kind of round out the diet and make sure they get what they need. And if you haven't seen home grown eggs, let me tell you, they're superior. f

Then there is the bedding and droppings. That goes straight into a second compost pile (not the one they eat from!) to compost into some seriously rich fertilizer for the garden. Chicken and rabbit droppings are coveted to the backyard homesteader because it's abundant and perfect for the garden.  

This brings me to number 5......

5. Compost, compost and compost some more. 

I cannot express enough how much your homemade compost is going to benefit your gardening. Its a way to amend your soil (clays, etc) and it's a way to put back into the earth vital nutrients so that you can grow more in a smaller space (think intensive/square foot gardening) and do so every year without letting any land sit fallow. 

Check out our guide on how to compost and get started today! 

6. Re-discover why the kitchen is considered the hearth of the family home. 

The kitchen is the place to be in my home. There's always some magic or another going on in there. Learning to cook what you grow, eat and cook seasonally and preserve your bounty are key ingredients in self-sustainablity. If you can't cook well, or don't know how to preserve food, start by taking a class! If you can't find classes, let me tell you, the internet is your friend, or visit your local library for books on how-to. Find a friend and learn together! 

Cooking what you eat not only saves you money on food, but will save you money down the road because you'll be healthier and happier. You'll be surprised at what you can do at home. Cheese, wine, artisan breads, they're all something you CAN do at home. With the right resources you can actually achieve almost total grocery store independence, even in the city. 

Freezing, dehydrating and canning are all great methods of persevering your foods. Whether you've grown them yourself or you found a local market or CSA for them. If you have extra, don't waste it! Americans waste almost 40% of the food we buy, and most of it is fresh foods like produce.  Preserve it! What you cannot preserve, feed to your backyards animals and what you cannot feed them compost. Don't let anything go to waste!

And lastly: 

7. Take charge of your energy and water resources. 

Its a common misconception that living in the city is energy heavy because well, in the country, you have room for a clothes line, and a wood stove, and a well....

Well it's simply a myth. If you plan it right, you can really reduce your energy expenditures. And when you need less energy, you're more self-sustainable. Start by sealing up your home. Re-caulk your windows, make sure your ductwork is insulated etc. Then make sure you're insulated. By this I mean, learn to live with the heat down in the winter and the AC up in the summer (or if you can tolerate it, turn off the AC). We turn our heat on about 62° or 63° in the winter. Yes, it's chilly. But that can be fixed with a sweater. We keep our AC off in the summer and only turn on it if reaches 100°+ and then we only turn it on at night so we can sleep. 

Next, try to find some sources of energy. You can put in a passive solar hot water heater, an outdoor bread oven solar dehydrator, and use the sun to dry your clothing. 

Spending just a couple hundred on three or four 55 gallon rainwater barrels (or see if you can find free giveaways!) will go a long way to helping you achieve water independence. We're lucky enough to live with a well on our property, but just putting barrels under the chicken coop, garage and house would yield us quite a bit of rainwater for watering animals and the garden. 

All of these things will go so far in helping you become more self-sustainable and leading a more energy efficient lifestyle. And best of all they are things can be done where you are in life. Even in an apartment, you can grow food on your own balcony or windowsill, reuse gray water for watering your plants, preserve food from your container garden or farmers market, bike and walk as your main mode of transportation, and even have a small compost pile in a rotating bin if you wanted. 

It only take some time and planning to get started and then once you do, you're well on your way! 

Happy Homesteading! 

Backyard Chicken Coop

It started back in January with sneaking around town in the dead of night, foraging for pallets left out by dumpsters. I had to be quick, and tricky, because around here, its first come first serve and you better be there before the sun comes up if you want free wood.

Larger brooder box inside the actual coop. 

I managed to score about 30 pallets, and I was going to tear down our metal shed and put up a wooden chicken coop large enough to house 12 hens, though we only are starting with six. Then hubby came up with the genius idea of converting the shed! If we put enough windows/vents in it, our chickens won't roast during the day in the metal. What a lifesaver! That right there saved me hours of work. So we got right to work on the conversion!

The first thing I did was to build a bigger brooder box. As you can see I simply cut some pallets in
half to achieve this, and gave them a floor (one of the pallets had a piece of plywood attached, and I just reused that). I stapled a piece of hardware cloth over the top of it on one side the other side was left "free" so we could get in and out of the box. This worked really well and the really cold nights, I just took a blanket and covered 3/4 of the top of the box to help keep the heat in. This brooder box is going to stay outside in the coop so if we ever get more chicks, we have a place to put them.

Metal doors are off, chicken run is framed out and you can see just how
much pallet wood I managed to score. 

I took off the metal doors, mainly because they didn't work right. They had plastic slides that were "keeping them in the track at the top" which I'm using the word "keeping" loosely here. The doors had certainly seen better days. Not only that I wanted something that I could close up at night and in the summer, still give them some air. So I came up with the dutch style doors.

The run was the hardest part because figuring out exactly how big to make it, where it would go, etc. was time consuming. Once we did that, it wasn't too bad. Just screwed the wood together with big wood screws (which you can find at any home improvement store).

We took the pallets and use them lego style (just fitting them together) and basically built walls inside the metal shed. This gave us something to screw to for the nesting boxes, ladder etc, and will also give us some insulation through the winter as our winters here get pretty cold.

Chicken run extends out from the coop and also encloses the compost pile.
They use the pile to forage for scraps and bugs. 

Simple nesting boxes being held up with pallets and a single piece of plywood along the bottom. I am now using the
portion under it for 2 large containers, one for un-used bedding and one for our homemade feed. 

Next on the list was to make the nesting boxes. We needed at least one, but I made two anyway. We already have chicks using them both for just hanging out in, so apparently two was the right choice. Some people think you need one for each chicken. Well you can do that if you want, but know that they'll probably only use a few of them, depending on how many you have. Honestly, I haven't figured out why this is. But growing up, at one point we had two chickens and 8 nesting boxes in the coop. They both used the same nesting box every day.

I also made a simple ladder from the pallet wood that serves as a way up and down for them. They can get to both nesting boxes quite easily this way.

Simple window system with a wooden board for propping open. 

Windows. They definitely need some windows. In fact, I might have fabric set aside for curtains.


You can see the one here, there's a matching one on the other side, and soon we'll be putting in a vent in the top to help with the heat build up in the summer. The window was pretty simple. I just took a drill, drilled a hole in the corner, then used tin snips to go around where I'd marked the window to be. Next we used pallet wood to "frame out" the window by simply screwing two pieces together with like a sandwich with metal in the middle. This gave us something to attach the window hinges to, and also kept the sharp metal from being exposed. The window is a simple thing that's just four pieces of wood screwed together with L-brackets and then I used a piece of acrylic  as the "window" part. I got this acrylic at my local home improvement store for six dollars. Cheap and it won't break if we get any hail. Which you know we will. I also have a piece of pallet wood that we're using as a prop to open the window with. I might put in a hinge system later on, for now the wood is working.

Dutch style doors offer protection from predators at night but also give a way to add in some ventilation. 

The last thing to do was the doors. This was the most difficult for me, because I had to build two of them from scratch. So first thing I did was to frame out the sides of the coop door way with wood. This gave a bit more structure to the frame for the doors to have something to hang on to. Next I just built the doors. I first made a rectangle from 1x4's that was as tall as the doorway and half the length of the doorway. I didn't get all fancy with mitering corner or anything. i just overlapped the top middle and bottom pieces over the right and left pieces. I didn't measure the middle piece, I just put it where I thought it looked good. Then I used plywood and measured out a piece to go in the bottom portions of each door. Then I just screwed it in. I did the same thing for the top, but these pieces I used hinges and put on the outside of the door so they open. On the inside, I just stapled chicken wire to help keep out other animals. Then I just used simple hinges to attach the doors to the frame of the shed. Just used nuts and bolts and drilled a hole, and screwed it right in. Viola! We have doors.

So then I noticed, how do I shut these and keep them shut? Hubby came up with the idea of an old style latch system like you see in the picture. I just used scrap wood, screwed it together in an L shape and then attached it to the door frame. Then you can use a piece of wood long enough to go into both of them and covered the middle of the door, thusly keeping it shut!

And now we have a chicken coop! And the chickens are happy.

Grow enough to feed your family for a year!

So in our last post we discussed 5 different ways that you could homestead wherever and whenever in your life that you're currently at. These were the things that every single one of us can do. I wanted to go a bit into depth on some of the issues we talked about, because simply saying "grow your own food" yeah, that's all nice and whatnot, but it can really be overwhelming if you've not done it before, or if you're like me and had a salad garden and that's it. Going from growing a couple of heads of lettuce, some tomatoes and cukes to all out growing almost everything you eat.....well that takes time. And planning. And organization. And all those things that I wasn't good at. :) So I hope you can learn from my failures!

So lets get our hands dirty shall we? It's always a good day when you can play in the dirt!

Number One: Figure out how much space you can spare. 

We have a 1/4 acre lot. There's a large patio in the backyard, the chicken coop and run, the single detached garage and we can't plant anything in the front yard cause that's where the gas/elec/water lines run. The "front" portion of our side yard, contains a walnut tree (which nut trees give off toxins and the surrounding soils aren't fit for growing) and the other front portion houses a pine tree and no sun. That leaves us the side yard. Now you might think this isn't a lot of land to plant.

You'd be wrong! Our garden this year is 65ft x 30ft. That's over 1,900 sq ft in which to plant our food in. Now we use a very intensive growing method of sq ft gardening (where we amend the soil with homemade compost every year to help with nutrients) and so we plant everything pretty close together.

Number Two: Figure out what foods you eat and what you want to grow. 

I don't grow a thing we won't eat. I'd love to grow both cabbage and cauliflower. But we simply can't eat enough of it to make it worthwhile. So we forgo it. Instead I plant lots of beans, TONS of tomatoes, and loads of peppers and onions. We also plant potatoes, which a lot of backyard gardeners don't do because it's kind of land intensive. But we like organically grown potatoes, I feel like they're just so much better than what you get in the store, so I make that sacrifice. What you grow, will probably be changed year by year. I grew cabbage our first year until I realized we just don't eat enough to spend the space root cellaring it.

Once you figure out what you want to grow, planning the garden is easy. You'll have to have some trial and error on figuring out how much of what to plant, as it took me a season or two to figure ours out. But once you figure it out, you can then plant most of what you eat if not all of it!

Number Three: Learn how to Preserve the Bounty of your Harvest.

Photo courtesy of Mother Earth News Mag

There's a few ways to do this. Canning, Freezing, Dehydrating and Root Cellaring. Somethings will root cellar well. Like potatoes, onions, carrots, apples, beets, cabbage, leeks, parsnips, pears, turnips, radishes, dried beans, garlic, pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Almost anything can be canned. Things you don't want to can are pureed pumpkin, dairy products or mashed beans. Now there are people who do can these things, and like I tell people, you can how you want, what your comfortable with. I personally follow the guidelines given to us by the USDA so I can 100% know that my foods are safe.

Freezing is a great way to preserve things, especially things like corn and green beans that get mushy when you can them. However, this requires energy to keep them frozen and freezer space. I prefer to use the one time energy of canning these items and then simply putting them on the shelf for later. This is just a matter of preference.

One thing that I feel is underutilized is dehydrating. You can dehydrate so many things. Fruit slices, fruit leather, jerky, things like whole peppers for dried use or later rehydrated use....the list goes on. We are building a solar dehydrator this year, and I will be sharing the plans and the materials list with you so you can too, build your own for next to nothing. The only thing you'll need to use it, will be a clear sunny day.

Once you've got these three things down, you're well on your way to growing, preserving and enjoying the fruits of your labor. You'll know exactly where the food came from, what was used on it to grow it, and you'll bask in the greatness that is a 2¢ tomato seed turned into an entire plant that's produced roughly 25lbs of tomatoes that would have cost you about $100 at the store (if you purchase organic for around $4 per lb, which is how we farm here).

The savings are incredible, even though yes, it take some hard work, but the moment when you bite into that ripe, fleshy, and flavorful tomato, you'll realize the appeal of growing your own food.