Urban homesteading and homesteading generally are enjoying 15 minutes of fame right now (this seems to happen every 30 years) and so there are a plethora of books about homesteading, many of them written by people who got their information from other books about homesteading. Occasionally a book turns up that was written by people who have actually walked the walk, not for a year or two but for decades, and this is such a book. It is much more about rural homesteading and small farming than about urban/suburban issues, but there are urban-oriented sidebars that have some useful information. The section on choosing a property is exceptional, and I strongly recommend that anybody who is thinking about buying a rural property read it carefully. Alas, it is packed with exactly the sort of useful advice that most of us don’t take when the time comes. Instead, we fall in love with a property, buy it, and then learn what the problems are and spend years and dollars sorting them out. But if you read this first, you will at least have your eyes opened about where the problems might lie before they actually smack you in the face. The section on vegetable gardening has good information about how to calculate realistically how much of each veggie you might actually use, as well as a lot of practical growing information. The sections on keeping animals deserve a careful and attentive reading BEFORE you actually purchase any animals. The material on maintaining animals in a healthy condition is excellent. If you are planning to raise meat animals, be aware that there is a good sidebar about going from sustainable/humane fantasy to blood-spattered reality, but there is little information about how to do that, so if you are planning to do your own butchering you will need other sources of information about the process. There is also a good piece of advice about discussing your self-sufficient fantasies with your partner, in detail, before embarking, because one person’s rural idyll can be the other person’s isolated nightmare. Sometimes even full disclosure doesn’t help. I can say from personal experience that my very truthful husband told me in a straightforward way, before we moved to a bigger property, that he didn’t want to do any garden or yard work, and it turned out that what he meant was this: he didn’t want to do any garden or yard work. I had the nerve to act surprised when I realized this. Now I arrange things so that I can manage the garden myself, and we’re both happy with the arrangement.
Writing about a new homesteading book makes me think of old homesteading books, and some of them are too good to be forgotten. The Complete Manual of practical Homesteading by John Vivian stands out. I first read it when I was 17, and when in my twenties I acquired an actual working farm, I used a lot of his information. I don’t agree with some of it, but I am very grateful that he started me on the path to thinking about how to do farm tasks as well as possible. I don’t think it’s in print any longer, but used copies turn up here and there, and it’s worth a read for anyone who has a larger or rural property. And if anybody knows where John Vivian is these days, let me know so that I can thank him. By scrupulously writing about only what he knew for himself and had done himself, he saved me a lot of time that I would otherwise have spent sorting out real information from the second-hand kind.
Archive for the ‘sustainable’ Category
2 May
Books Worth Reading: Homesteading then and now
17 Apr
Meet Magnolia
One of the biggest steps in making an urban homestead is adding animals. Chickens are the easiest, and you can get Brett Markham’s book Mini Farming for info about how he integrates layers and meat chickens into a small operation. I have wanted for a while to add a dairy animal, and based on my past experiences with goats here are the pros and cons:
Pro: goats are small and easy to handle compared to a cow. They tend to be hardy. They will eat brush (they love Siberian elms.) They are intelligent and affectionate. They produce a lot of milk relative to body size, and the milk is easy to digest.
Con:they are unbelievable escape artists and require excellent fencing. They will eat all your shrubs and trees unless well fenced. You need to know their health and nutrition needs. Contrary to popular belief, they won’t “eat anything;” they are actually picky eaters who need very specific kinds of food. They need to be bred, and I do not recommend keeping a buck in a suburban area, so you will need to take them somewhere to be bred. If bred or in milk, they need supplemental food and it can get expensive. You need to have a plan for how to handle the milk and what to do with it, keeping in mind that unless you pasteurize it you may not be able to sell it legally (check your local ordinances, but it is illegal in many areas to sell raw milk.)
Get a good book on dairy goat raising and actually read it before deciding to get a goat. That said, they are lovely animals and I’m very happy to have one again. Magnolia is a yearling doe, purportedly bred. We’ll see. Meanwhile, she participates in homestead life by standing on top of her goat-house commenting on all yard activity and eating all the siberian elm cutting I bring her.
19 Mar
Green Gadgets: the Naturemill Composter
When I first saw this composter in an upscale catalog, I thought of it as a symbol of our shortcomings as a nation. Why, I thought, would any sane person spend hundreds of dollars to contain and electrify a natural process and pretend it’s “sustainable?”
Well, I was wrong. This is a neat solution for people with no room for a compost pile, but even for people like me who have a large yard and a compost pile, the Naturemill can become an irreplaceable link in efforts to live more sustainably. Here’s why:
1. The Naturemill is compact and energy-efficient. The maker estimates that it draws the same amount of power as a small lightbulb.
2. The compost reaches high temperatures, with the aid of thermophilic bacteria. That means that you can compost meat, cheese, bread, and other things that I would never put in my outdoor pile. Yes, I know that an outdoor thermophilic pile can compost these items, but I can assure you that in the time before it composts completely, it will draw rodents and roaches, even in an off-the-ground tumbler. I consider it unfair to yourself, neighbors, and the groundwater to try to compost these items outdoors in a suburban area.
3. Virtually any food waste item except citrus rinds and bones can be composted quickly and neatly in any quantity that a home kitchen is likely to produce. People with back pain or other problems that preclude managing a large compost heap can compost with almost no effort. It’s as easy as scraping plates into the garbage, and all you do is add some wood pellets (included when you buy it, and then you can use the wood pellets sold cheaply for fuel) and some baking soda. A concise booklet comes with the machine that’s full of good info about how to avoid problems.
4. Pay close attention here: it can compost pet waste at temperatures that make the finished compost safe. Nationwide, enormous quantities of dog and cat droppings are going into landfills or sitting around endangering the quality of water. There are communities where it’s illegal to put them in the garbage. So what do you do with them? I have been looking for a household solution for a while, and have constructed pet septic systems and every other damn thing, and this is the best solution I’ve found. I hope it goes without saying that you don’t keep it in the house if you are going to do this. The unit is well sealed and under most circumstances you don’t notice any odor when it’s closed, but if you are composting pet waste, there is an odor when it’s opened that is nothing like fresh droppings but which I certainly wouldn’t describe as pleasant. The finished compost smells earthy and like other compost.
The best commendation that I can make is that someone as frugal, thrifty, and outright cheap as me spent $400 for the Pro XE model and considers it money well spent. Read more about it at Naturemill. If you buy one, please let them know that Heather at My Urban Homestead sent you.
12 Feb
Choosing a CSA
If you don’t want to garden yourself, or don’t have room, a CSA is a great local-food option. You share in the season of a local farmer/gardener, and receive truly seasonal vegetables. Using a CSA for a season is also great preparation for starting your own garden, since it trains you to cook with what is in season and grows well in your area. We have several CSAs in our area, but recently I was contacted by Jill, a HIgh Desert yoga instructor who has a small CSA and is ready to take a few more customers. I have not used her CSA myself, but this is exactly the sort of Earth-friendly mini-farm that we need more of, so I’m reproducing her ad below.
Whenever you are considering a CSA, I suggest a discussion with the farmer by phone or email about growing practices (most mini-farms can’t afford the organic certification process, even if they use organic methods,) the variety of vegetables that you can expect, whether fruits and/or flowers are ever included, roughly when the season will start and end, and how many family members each box can be expected to feed.
After one or two CSA seasons, you might be ready to grow your own!
Vegetables by the box.
Mama’s Garden is a Northeast heights backyard garden CSA providing a fresh and delicious variety of seasonal vegetables, herbs, flowers and melons. Mama’s Garden is run by Jill Palmer and her son Narayan and has been selling its pesticide-free produce at local grower’s markets since 2009. Sign up by May 5th for your weekly box throughout the growing season and pay weekly. Free deliveries to the NE heights and Nob Hill. Contact Jill at growinluv@gmail.com
Jill adds in her email: ” I am happy to provide you references of my previous CSA members or any
> other info. you might like to know about us. Having just a backyard,
> I am not cert. organic, yet I use no pesticides and prep. the soil
> with yummy compost I make at home and from Soilutions as well as horse
> manure. I have enough variety to keep the box fun…as every few
> weeks a few more veggies begin to fruit. I sell a 1-2 person amount
> as a $15/box and 3-5 person amount as a $30/box. Yet amounts/prices
> can be tailored for more persons than that with discounts.”

My urban homestead 