WHAT IS BACKYARD HOMESTEADING

In recent years it seems as if more and more people are wanting to know about the foods they are eating and the chemicals they are unknowingly bringing into their homes. I know we do! Fresh Farmer’s Markets are a thing now and old skills that our great-grandparents knew from childhood are being rediscovered. People are wanting to live a more self-sufficient, sustainable life.  Many people who are wanting to live this lifestyle refer to themselves as “homesteaders.”

WHAT IS HOMESTEADING

In the quest to settle the west, The Homestead Act of 1862 granted land to anyone who applied for little to no cost.  They simply had to agree to build their home, improve the land and commit to being there for at least 5 years. The great thing was this Act applied to those willing to fulfill the requirements, even people who previously were unable to own lands like single women and former slaves.  This is what I love about the word “homesteader,” ANYONE can be, all you simply need is the desire and time, and begin where you are at; an apartment in the city, urban neighborhood, or in a rural area. .10 of an acre, .25 of an acre, or 5+acres it doesn’t matter.  

Homesteading isn’t just about unplugging from the grid and living like Little House on the Prairie as I grew up thinking. It’s about learning to depend more on what has been given to you & your local community and less on big grocery stores.  It’s about reusing and recycling rather than buying new.  To me, it is about reviving & keeping alive “old school” skills from our ancestors and being able to pass them down to our own children. 

NEW SKILLS

There are always new skills to be learned when one begins. Along the way, you will discover things you love and things you don’t. We came to homesteading with absolutely NO skills, we did not even know how to work together as a family (pathetic).  However, we now all have learned a few things and what we like to do. I personally love the designing, weeding, and maintenance of the yard, I have one daughter who loves to do the cooking and food preservation, and another daughter who enjoys taking care of the animals and harvesting. My husband has claimed the maintenance of the entire place. 
Even though we all have preferences in what areas of homesteading we like to do, it is always a family task to do it together as needed so everyone is learning the needed skills. 

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

So where do you start? For our family, we live on almost half an acre and are doing the whole “Urban Backyard” Homesteading thing. From the curb, we may look just like another home on the block, but if you were to enter the property you would see that there lay the beginnings of a farm and food production. We felt inspired to begin with what we have and fulfill that God-given stewardship perfectly before we took on more than we could do physically, or afford. We have learned that even in a backyard one can grow enough food for themselves and their family and to make a living if wanted… 

GARDENING

We watched videos to learn if it was even possible to grow enough food in the backyard and was amazed at how much you can and how many people were doing it in the city even. Here is the inspiration that gave us the confidence to begin.

We began with rebuilding the soil. We watched the Back to Eden video and felt this was the route we wanted to go with our homesteading in learning to heal our lands. This method of gardening is chalked full of biblical principles that made sense!  So with all the moving boxes we had, we decided to put them to good use and laid them down to smother the grass, and then spent all of our time bringing in truckloads of leaves, grass, compost, and manure for our yard. We worked long days turning our yard into different types of gardens.  They say it takes 3 years to build soil and not to focus on the plants- but spend your time focusing on the healing of the soil that will then later give you a greater yield of crops, full of nutrients. 

Our three types of gardens:

• Perennial Gardens -which will return each year with little work needed to maintain it.
• Food Forest- mimicking that of nature with its 7 layers: canopy trees, fruit trees, berries, herbs, roots, vines, and ground cover. This method gives you more food in less space. 
• Annual Garden or our Market Garden- for those vegetables we eat seasonally and will take to the Farmers Market.

ANIMALS

A homestead is never a homestead without animals! Even in a backyard, you can create a farm feel! We decided to bring one animal a year onto the Homestead starting with the chickens. We felt one year was adequate time to learn about the animal, set up housing, and figure out how to have them eat for almost next to nothing before we moved on. The schedule we decided on was year 1- chickens, year 2- rabbits, year 3- bees, year 4- birds, and year 5- goats. 

FOODS

We decided it was time for the new changes to learn how to eat what we grew. We needed the nutrients that our garden could give us, and we wanted to be more involved with where our foods came from.  

We also decided to take on 3 new recipes a year to perfect.  We started out with homemade granola, tortillas, and bread. They are now part of our kitchen staples and are now working on chips and condiments. We dropped foods with processed sugars and white flour and changed our oils and fats to things that mirrored what the Word of Wisdom taught. We also changed out our tap water for spring and well water. The key is to go slow and figure out how to let go of those things that God has not given permission for us to live on, and introduce new foods to the family straight from the garden. 

READY TO JUMP IN?

I was so excited to begin and was ready to take down my entire lawn, however, we needed to not go faster than we had the time and resources for.  We felt that for our family focusing on the soil was what we needed to do first not only healing our land but the idea of healing the family symbolically. For you, it may be different.
There are other things that constitute a homesteader that you may want to begin with. These are things we will be discussing in future posts and our experiences with them. 

• Learn how to save seeds
• Learn about preserving.  Research water bath canning, pressure canning, how to preserve herbs, freezing, drying, pickling, root cellars, vacuum sealing
• Experiment with fermenting foods
• Compost your kitchen scraps & more. 
• Learn about vermiculture
• Learn about permaculture principals 
• Learn about natural weed killers & suppressants
• Reduce waste
• Learn how to make composted tea 
• Learn about basic garden tools, how to maintain them and which ones to use for different jobs
• Learn how to capture & use rainwater
• Understand the basics of animal breeding & birthing.  Know what is normal, what you can do to help, and what to do in an emergency

It is amazing what you can do in your backyard. Just from .25 of an acre, you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of nuts. Having 10, 20, or more acres and living off the grid is not required to have a happy and productive homestead. 

So grab your family and start homesteading right where you live and on whatever size of lot God has given you. Go through the list above and decide what you will begin with this year to start healing your land and home!