Time For A Front Yard Facelift

I know it's cliche, but spring is a time of rebirth. Every single spring, I look out the window, walk around our property and visualize ways we might improve it. Or, come up with new ideas around the garden - new crops to try, new places to plant, and so on. 

This spring, I've been looking out the bank of windows on the south side of our earth-sheltered house and thinking, not for the first time, that it's too green. Walking around the area in front of our house, I've been appreciating the native flowers that come up every spring, but also wondering if we couldn't add more color to them. Especially given that, in our front yard, the native summer-growing flowers are sparse. 

I'll talk more about my grand plan for the entire front yard in a future post. Right now, I want to focus on the area right outside the two windows by our kitchen. 

Here's what it looks like from one of the windows (which has a screen on it):

Here's what it looks like when I step outside and photograph the same area:

J had already pulled up a bunch of about-to-flower prickly lettuce plants before I took this pictures. Otherwise, note how high and lush the area is. That's because there used to be a pomegranate tree there, which was heavily mulched in wood chips. They've composted quite a bit, providing a lot of nutrition to this particular patch of soil.

Nutrition for green, not particularly attractive foliage. Might I add.

When I look out those windows, I want to see color. All. Summer. Long.

Here's a similar photo, showing what our yard currently looks like on the other side of the path from the area in question. That part of the yard will also be going through a transformation next year.

 Here's the same area, as viewed toward the house:

This area needs a serious facelift, in my opinion. I spent a few days bouncing some ideas around in my head.

And then, I got out my bag of seeds to find the packets of wildflower seeds I'd acquired for free several years ago with the purchase of some vegetable seeds. In the process, I discovered I still have a few zinnia and alyssum seeds. On the back of each packet is a sample garden design which includes alyssum, nasturtium, marigolds, and zinnias.

I just happened to have been researching flowers that rabbits and deer won't eat. And, guess what? 

Rabbits and deer won't eat any of those four types of flowers. 

I know from past experience that they won't touch kale with a ten-foot pole, either. In addition, nasturtium and marigolds repel pests. This may include aphids, which are notorious for attacking my kale as soon as the weather gets consistently above eighty-five degrees (F).

Three guesses as to what I plan to do with this little nook right outside the kitchen windows. 

You're so smart! You guessed it on the first try. 😉 I'm going to turn it into a rabbit- and deer-resistant flower garden, leaving space in between the flower plants for kale. 

Alas, not this year. It's already May, and I know from experience that no one sells nasturtiums around here. It's also too late to start kale. Besides, I want to dig up all the existing weeds in that little patch, leave them on the ground, and cover them with a tarp or black plastic to improve the soil even more. That will take a few months. 

Next winter, I'll start the four flowers and some kale from seed, and turn the spot into a flower-kale garden in about a year. 

Follow this blog to see the final results.😊

Might a wayward deer eventually trample the garden? Perhaps. But I'm willing to take the risk to have a prettier view outside my window.

One Of My Favorite Spring Delights: The Hummingbird Moth!

 "Hummingbird moth."

That's what I said to myself when I first saw this most peculiar insect that I'd never seen before. Initially, I thought the thing was actually a hummingbird. It hovered and zoomed from flower to flower, its wings going a thousand miles a second. But as small as hummingbirds are, this creature was even smaller. And the coloring wasn't right.

And, wait a minute, that's not a beak. That's a proboscis, like what butterflies have! Except, it's body is large and furry, like a moth.

After watching not one, but several of them, enjoy the nectar of some wildflowers, I went inside and searched online for "hummingbird moth." Of course, that couldn't be the actual name of the insect. But since it made sense, I was sure I wasn't the first person to so dub it as such. Thus, I was sure that someone would have used the term in an article that revealed its proper name.

Lo and behold, I was wrong. 

I mean, I was right. I was wrong that I wasn't right about its name. Because - drum roll, please - "hummingbird moth" is the common name for that interesting critter! 

Though I was raised in a rural area, I'd never seen or heard of one until we moved onto our rural property eight years ago. That year, there seemed to be plenty, though we only saw them for about a week. Every year since, they've proven to be a rare sighting. I've seen up to three on separate days during the first week of April. The past year or two, I didn't see any at all.

Then came this year. Are hummingbird moths like cicadas, having a major hatch-out every so many years? Or have we seen so many because of our relatively new cherry tree, one of the moth's favorite place to lay eggs?

Whatever the case, this entire month (April 2022) we've seen numerous of these fascinating insects every day. Only now, as May quickly approaches, is their population decreasing. 

They've been a delight, and I'll miss seeing them around. But I can always watch the following video if I get to missing them too painfully.

If you've never seen a hummingbird moth, or rarely, you might like to watch the video, too. :)

(Interesting side note: in the video, the wings don't blur nearly as much as they do when you're watching them in real life.)

Easy To Grow Vegetables For First Time Gardener, Part Two

 In part one of Easy To Grow Vegetables For First Time Gardener, I explain how to grow lettuce, kale, and potatoes (grown in mulch). A beginning gardener should start slowly and small if they want success, if they want to feel competent in their gardening endeavors. And those three crops make success with growing your own food an easy achievement.

Which vegetables should you try growing once you've got those three down? How about beans, cherry tomatoes, Egyptian (walking) onions, squash, and cucumbers?

Remember that the soil should be enriched with organic material before you begin. And, except for the onions, all of the crops I'm going to discuss in this article require six hours of sun per day.

Also except for the onions, they will be killed by even a slight freeze (frost tender), so plant them out a week or two after the last average frost date for your area.

Beans.

Bush beans. Pole beans. Chinese long beans. Dried beans.

There is a variety of bean for everyone, and none of them require much more than proper watering, correct spacing, and a little pest control to get them producing so much that you risk getting tired of picking beans! They also are beneficial to the garden soil, as well. Legume plants – namely, beans, peas and lentils – fix nitrogen into the soil, helping feed the other plants growing near them.

I'm going to focus on green beans here, though the principles of growing them generally apply to all types of beans.

First of all, in my experience it's easier to grow bush beans in the north, and pole beans in the South. Pole beans seem to take the heat a little better, and I haven't had the pest problems on my pole beans as I have with bush beans.

Pole bean growing up PVC pipe in raised bed.

That said, I've read that you can prevent the Mexican bean beetle on bush beans and the Colorado potato beetle on potatoes if you interplant bush beans and potatoes together. That's an experiment I might try one day.

If  you're using the Square Foot Garden method of spacing, the SFG gurus will tell you that you can plant nine bush beans in a square foot. In my experience, that's too many. Four or five per square foot allows the plants much more room to breathe, and diminishes their risk of getting a fungal disease (which, by the way, I don't think I've ever seen on my pole beans).

If you're planting pole beans, they need something at least six feet long to climb up. A cheap and easy thing to do would be to push short sticks into the ground, three or four inches apart, then on each stick, tie one end of a six-foot long piece of string. Pull the string tightly at an upward slope and tie the other end to the top of a fence post, tree branch, or trellis that you're using to support other vegetables. The pole beans will wind themselves around the string as they grow.

Otherwise, stick some kind of six-foot-tall pole in the ground, one per bean. Space the poles three to four inches apart and plant each bean seed right next to the pole.

Most beans require regular watering. When the top two inches of soil are dry, they need water. This isn't true for all beans, however. For example, I know from personal experience that both mung beans and Chinese long beans are highly drought-tolerant. When we have several weeks of 95+-degree temperatures (that's Fahrenheit) and no rain, I've only needed to give these kinds of plants about a half gallon of water each once a week (even once every other week).

Cherry tomatoes.

It might surprise you to see tomatoes in a list of easy to grow vegetables for beginners in the garden. Some expert growers say they're a more advanced crop, probably because of all the diseases and pests that can take them down.

Others claim, if you have healthy soil, growing tomatoes is a snap.

The truth is somewhere in between. However, if you want to reduce the risk of disease on your tomato crop, have a crazy prolific harvest – even in temperatures above 90 degrees (F), when the blossoms of many tomatoes turn sterile and fall off – and reduce the risk of tomatoes cracking (and thus rotting) before they get ripe, cherry tomatoes are what you're looking for.

Cluster of cherry tomatoes within plant.

Start the seeds indoors two months before the last average frost date plus two weeks, or buy cherry tomato seedlings from your local nursery.

Tomatoes are fairly heavy feeders, so even though you're planting your veggies into rich soil, throw a couple of banana peels into the hole where you're going to plant a tomato.

Most gardening experts advise you to keep tomatoes pruned down to one or two main stems. Instead, you could plant your tomatoes every three feet, and either tie them to a trellis every vertical foot or so as they grow, or have them grow in a sturdy cage where they spread out as much as they want. I've done this before, but tell you what: you end up with this huge mass with tons of tomatoes hidden inside that end up rotting. So you might as well take the bit of time to prune your tomato plants every week or two.

If you want to keep the plants pruned to one or two stems, inserting a stake about a foot into the ground, and at least five feet above ground, then tying the plants to it as they grow will be sufficient support for the plants.

In the beginning, tomato plants appreciate a decent amount of water (like the beans), but as they grow and get established you may be able to get away with giving each plant a gallon of water every other week.

Cucumbers.

Cucumber plant growing over cardboard mulch in high raised bed.

Cucumbers are another controversial crop. Are they an easy vegetable to grow for first time gardeners? Many say no, because they are so prone to fungi in humid climates.

So, buy varieties that are resistant to powdery and downy mildew. Or, plan to plant a new cucumber plant every three to four weeks, up until two months before your area's first average frost date in the fall. That way, when one plant succumbs to a disease, you've got another one ready to go.

Pick off, or spray with orange oil or diluted liquid castile soap, any cucumber beetles you see before they have a chance to spread disease.

Finally, cucumbers are thirsty plants, and would prefer that the soil around the roots stay moist at all times. They would appreciate a gallon of water every other day, perhaps every day, during the hottest time of the summer. The exception would be if the plants are surrounded by six inches or more of wood chip mulch. In that case, they won't need to be watered as often.

Either way, cucumber plants let you know if they're not getting enough water by turning the fruit bitter.

Squash.

Butternut squash fruit lying on a very long vine.

Both winter squash and summer squash are generally easy to grow vegetables for beginners. They need the average amount of water, and the average amount of fertilizer.

HOWEVER.

The big caveat with squash being an easy vegetable is that it has two major predators: the squash bug, and the squash vine borer.

The squash bug isn't found everywhere (for example, Minnesota gardeners have never heard of the squash bug), so you may not have to worry about it.

But if you do live in a place where squash bugs abound, they can take down a zucchini plant pretty quickly. Some people take a hand-held vacuum out to their garden and regularly vacuum them up. Peppermint essential oil repels them, so you might try spraying the plants once or twice a week, either with peppermint oil diluted in water, or with peppermint liquid castile soap.

Be aware, however, that both peppermint oil and soap will kill beneficial insects, so spray early in the morning or just before sunset you don't kill anybody you don't want to kill.

One year I planted a borage next to a zucchini, and didn't have any squash bugs that year. So you might try growing a variety of aromatic herbs around whatever kind of squash plant you decide to grow.

The squash vine borer is a bit trickier, as the mama moth lays its eggs on the stem of the squash vine when you're not looking. When the larvae hatch out, they eat their way in and through the stem, quickly killing the plant.

Squash vine borers don't bother butternut squash plants, which is why it's the only winter squash I grow now. For other varieties of winter squash, bury a few inches of the vines for every foot they grow to discourage the moths from laying eggs.

And just like with the squash bug (or any insect pest, for that matter), surrounding the plants with a variety of herbs and flowers will make it harder for the moth to detect the scent of the squash vine.

Egyptian, or walking, onions.

Walking onions gone to flower in late May, southern Oklahoma.

Walking onions have to be number one on the list of easy to grow vegetables for a first time gardener. Why am I writing about it last, then? Who knows? Probably because I don't use them that often, and so they stand around in my garden, bored out of their little onion minds.

If you like cooking with onions, and you don't grow anything else, grow these. Plant the bulbs once, and you'll never plant them again. Not only that, but they'll also slowly spread into other parts of your garden of their own volition, and without asking permission.

You can cut the tall, green stalks off any time before they develop flower heads (when the temperatures head up toward 80 degrees F in the spring or summer) and use them raw in salads, or cooked in any dish that you want to add onion flavor to. When the onions go to flower, the stalks get tough and are only good to use as flavoring in broth or soup.

You can also harvest the little bulbs that form once the flowers go to seed. But hurry! The stalks are going to bend to the ground in order to plant the bulbs to produce new green stalks. This is why they're called "walking" onions. They seem to change locations all by themselves, when really they're just replanting themselves. Cool, huh?

Seed head of Egyptian onion, or walking onion. The tiny bulbs have already started growing new green shoots.

Ready to grow?

Now you know the eight easy to grow vegetables for a first time gardener. So, what are you waiting for? Get your garden plot ready, and get growing!

Three Gardening Hurdles That Are Easier To Jump Over Than You Think!

Search online for "how to start a vegetable garden," and you'll find an abundance of advice. You'll be told to start a compost pile, build a raised bed in an area of your yard that's in full sun, set up a watering system.

All that advice is well and good, but it largely ignores one thing: not everyone has the perfect circumstances to build a perfect garden (which doesn't exist, by the way, no matter what Instagram leads you to believe!). In fact, many people who truly want to grow their own food, at least a portion of their vegetables, run into snags early on in their endeavors. 

I'm going to address three of the most common hurdles that keep enthusiastic would-be gardeners from getting started, and show you how they're not as difficult to overcome as they may seem at first glance.

First hurdle: Not enough space.

Perhaps you rent a house, and your landlord/lady has forbidden you from digging up the yard. Or you live in an apartment. Or both your front and back yards are the proverbial postage stamp-size. 

For the last one, check out my post about gardening ideas for tiny backyards. For the others, container gardening is the way to go. Even if you live in an apartment that has no deck or balcony, you can set up a few pots in the bathroom, the corner of the living room, or the closet with grow lights hanging above them. When I lived in a condo, I had a few pots outside on my balcony, and against my dining room wall I had a plastic utility shelf with fluorescent light fixtures attached to the bottom of a couple of the shelves and grew herbs in pots underneath the lights. 

It would be fifteen years before I'd learn that one can be self-sufficient in lettuce by growing it in a similar way, semi-hydroponically.

Second hurdle: Not enough money.

Watch a dozen random videos about growing your own food, and you'll come away thinking that gardening is an expensive endeavor. While it can be, it certainly doesn't have to be, especially if you're not in a hurry.

You can find garden tools at a discounted price, or even free, on places like craigslist or freecycle. There, you can also find cast-off lumber to use to build raised beds. 

But raised bed borders are a convenience, not a necessity. You can build up a borderless raised bed simply by gathering and piling up leaves and other organic matter until you have a good eighteen-inch pile, then placing broken-down cardboard boxes on top of it all and weighting the cardboard down with rocks or bricks. Wait a year - two is even better - and you'll have rich, nutritious soil in which to plant seeds and seedlings. 

Speaking of seeds, if you don't even dare shell out to purchase those, ask your gardening neighbors or your social media acquaintances to give/send you some. 

Gardening will cost you some money, at least in watching your water bill go up in the summer. But it certainly can be done on a budget.

Third hurdle: Not enough time.

If you're reading this blog post, you have enough time to garden. 

Seriously. 

Because, if you worked sixteen hours a day, you wouldn't have time to mess around with researching vegetable gardening online, or fiddle around with social media, or watch Netflix. I must therefore conclude that you work the typical eight- to ten-hour day, and typically have two days off per week. 

You. Have. Time. To. Garden.

It's a matter of priority.

Ever heard of Nora Roberts? The author who cranks out four number-one bestselling novels every single year? She writes Monday through Friday, about eight hours per day. And when the weather warms up, she gardens.

On the weekend. Only.

It's a hobby she enjoys, so she makes time for it on the days she's not committed to working on her next blockbuster novel.

Whether you want to take up gardening as a hobby, or save money on your grocery bill by growing some of your own produce, or even make supplemental income with a market garden, you have plenty of time to do it.

As long as you prioritize. 

A basic backyard garden requires fifteen to thirty minutes a day of maintenance. That's it. If you can't carve out that much time, or dedicate a few hours on the weekend, for weeding, mulching, watering, harvesting, and pest control, you really don't want to garden. 

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There you have it: the three most common hurdles to growing a vegetable garden. Now you know that they aren't nearly as high as you originally thought.

Get out there, and get growing!

Yes, I'm A Homesteader. Let Me Count The Ways.

 In my previous post, I explained why, for a few months, I backed away from the label "homesteader." I also wrote that I have re-embraced it.

Why? What is a homesteader, really? Definitions and opinions vary, but I believe most modern homesteaders can agree that a homesteader is a person who endeavors to live as simply as possible, conserving as much of the Earth's resources as possible, and working to turn one's place of abode into as much of an asset as possible. 

That said, let me count the ways that my husband and I are homesteaders.

*1. We collect and use rainwater for all of our water needs, both household and garden. 

*2. Having a limited amount of water has taught us to be very conservative with this precious resource.

*3. We live in the most energy-efficient type of house available, an earth-sheltered house. Though we're on the energy grid, this choice of dwelling significantly reduces the electricity we need to heat and cool the place.

*4. Concrete houses, especially ones buried underground, require much less maintenance than conventional houses (for example, we'll never need to replace the roof).

*5. The south side of our house is lined with windows, so the sun helps heat the house during the winter.

*6. Our house isn't plumbed, so we are forever forced to get some level of exercise with such chores as doing laundry by hand, lugging jugs of water from the water storage tanks into the house, and burying the waste from our composting toilet. 

*7. Most years, sometimes into the winter, I grow a decent portion of the amount of vegetables we eat. I'm still learning how to flow with the challenges the climate brings, and this summer (of 2022) I'm taking a break from my garden. But one day, we might actually break even monetarily with my food-growing endeavors. 

Maybe in thirty or forty years. ;)

*8. Back to the house. It's only 576 square feet, which means it saves me a lot of time and energy in keeping it clean. The less housecleaning I have to do, the more relaxed I am, which leads to better health. 

*9. We do our best to repurpose items/think outside of the box before going out an buying new materials for any given project. 

*10. We use things (from clothing to electronics) until they wear out.

*11. When certain things wear out, I try to think of ways to repurpose them before trashing them. For instance, washcloths which develop holes can be used for cleaning, old cotton clothes can be used as mulch in the garden.

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We are not nearly where I'd hoped we'd be by now when we first set out on our rural homesteading adventure eight years ago. But the desire to garden, to enjoy and conserve nature, and to lighten my footprint on the planet is so ingrained in me that I have to admit to being a homesteader. 

Even on days that I desperately miss my old washing machine, and when powdery mildew takes out a cucumber plant prematurely.

Yes, I am a homesteader. And I embrace the fact with joy.

Why I Quit Calling Myself A Homesteader

I decided to quit calling myself a homesteader earlier this year, 2022. (Don't freak - keep reading to discover why I was merely temporarily insane.) I actually announced on my YouTube channel that I was no longer going to call myself a homesteader. (Don't look for the video; I have since deleted it.)

The first reason I gave was that where we live, the average annual humidity is seventy-four percent. Our winters tend to be mild, meaning that diseases don't die off easily during that season. Most of our rain comes in April, May, and June, when people around here typically plant out their frost-tender crops: cucumber, peppers, tomatoes, and the like. 

But those crops are not just vulnerable to frost. They are vulnerable to fungi such as powdery mildew, blight, and anthracnose. 

If you're smart, you are right now figuring out the correct equation that high humidity + ample rain + mild winters = an abundance of fungal disease. Even the native vegetation in our area, including many species of deciduous trees, show signs of disease for much of the year.

Which means, harvests only last so long. And, as I hinted above, the diseases persist in the soil over the winter. 

It's not really a huge deal for the vegetable-fruit crops (those mentioned above). By the time the diseases are killing the plant and fruit, I'm tired of eating/harvesting them anyway. 

But we've spent about $1,000 learning that no kind of fruit plant, save the goumis, will ever produce much, and will often eventually be killed by some fungus or other. 

So one reason I gave in the video as to why I could no longer call myself a homesteader was that we can't produce more than a small fraction of our own food. (This is in large part due to the food sensitivities that my son and I have.) A second one was that, at the time I made the video, I was beyond tired of doing laundry by hand and having to carry my urine outside to dispose of it. 

Of course, most modern homesteaders have indoor plumbing and don't have to deal with such issues. But when we first got started on our homesteading journey, we wanted to be off-grid with water, and we didn't want to deal with the inevitable (and inevitably expensive!) plumbing repairs. And off-grid being a big part of the modern homesteading movement, well, it seemed like the right thing to do. 

Especially since we, unlike a lot of our homesteading peers, remain on the energy grid.

I got teary-eyed while making the video mentioned above, and was quite whiny and petulant. But while I was trying desperately to explain to my audience the reasons I could no longer, in good conscience, call myself a homesteader, I was ignoring the root of the problem.

Anxiety. 

I've suffered with it all my adult life, particularly at the time of the month when my estrogen levels were low. Well, I'm post-menopausal now, so my estrogen levels are low all. The. Time.

I'm working on that, and will blog about what I've found to help me. In general, I'm doing much better now than I was a year ago. 

But if you've ever dealt with anxiety (depression is an outcropping of it, so if you've been diagnosed with depression, anxiety is the root), you know that when you get into a funk, nothing is right with the world, seems like it will never be right again. You think negatively, speak negatively, and want to shut down and do nothing because nothing seems worthwhile.

And when external circumstances are actually going wrong, it feeds the anxiety, exacerbating the feelings of hopelessness, dread, and worthlessness. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. All is dark, and getting darker. The only thing ahead is a black hole.

As a result, you might do stupid things, like get on your YouTube channel and cry over spilled milk.

I am back to calling myself a homesteader. Why? That will be the subject of my next blog post.

What Is Homesteading? The Basic Elements

What is homesteading? I looked in my husband's old Webster unabridged dictionary and was surprised to find that it lacks this word! It defines homestead as "a dwelling with its land and buildings, occupied by the owner as a home and exempted by a homestead law from seizure or sale for debt," or, "any dwelling with its land and buildings." The definition for the verb to homestead is "to settle on a property." 

The modern definition of homesteading arises from back in the 1800s, perhaps even earlier, when pioneers in the United States traveled to unsettled land in order to settle it. Back then, residential use of electricity was uncommon, and there were no agricultural conglomerates to produce food or large, multi-purpose factories to manufacture clothing, furniture, and other essentials. So the settlers had to be self-sufficient, growing their own food, making their own clothing, etc.

So today, while the word "homesteading" can technically refer to a person in the city becoming an owner of a small lot with a house, it almost always refers to a lifestyle of becoming as self-sufficient as possible. Within this self-sufficiency, homesteaders endeavor to transform their home and property from liabilities to assets as much as possible. I'll get into that in a bit. Bottom line: homesteading is a return to a simpler life of less consumption. 

But remember, the early settlers had community

Usually when you come across the topic of homesteading online, the concept of self-sufficiency is tossed about like a hot potato. "The sh*t is going to hit the fan! You must become self-sufficient!"

What these people miss is the fact that the early settlers of the United States did not live independently from one another, as the term "self-sufficient" implies. Rather, they lived as human beings are supposed to live - interdependently. If somebody's barn burned down, for example, the community would gather together and build them a new barn. When a woman had a baby, other women in the community would make themselves available to help her for the first few weeks.

So if when you think about homesteading, don't think about a life led in isolation. Think, instead, about a community where the members share their skills and knowledge as needed.

The benefits of homesteading

High raised beds with summer crops in June.

I need to say this right up front: contrary to the popular belief of the self-sufficient/prepper community, not everyone needs to be a homesteader. Not everyone is called to that lifestyle – at least, not to the extent of the maxims the "gurus" want to hold people to: "you must produce at least 20% or your own food," "you must be off the energy grid," etc.

If at this moment in your life you have to work at a job, and you come home exhausted at the end of the day and barely have the energy to spare to stop at the grocery store on your way home, let alone try to garden, there's no need to feel guilty or bad about that. In fact, in a future post I'll be writing about the myths of homesteading where I'll help wannabe homesteaders in that nine-to-five situation to get rid of their guilt.

All that said, there are definite benefits to the homesteading lifestyle.

Benefit #1: A healthier planet.

When you choose to life a simpler life, a life that steps away from consumerism and unnecessary waste, you automatically reduce pollution.

Benefit #2: A healthier you.

Whether you're making a meal from scratch, planting out tomatoes, or cutting down weeds to make compost tea, the homesteading lifestyle gets you moving more than the mainstream convenience-based lifestyle. I don't have to tell you that getting more exercise reduces your risk of developing many kinds of diseases.

In addition, food that you grow yourself is more nutritious – and less toxic – than food you buy from a supermarket. Yes, that includes produce in health food stores. Just like with exercise, we could all use more nutrients, and when we are nutrient-sufficient, we are healthier.

Benefit #3: Less stress.

This might go under the "healthier you" category, but it's so important I want to give it its own heading.

Also, I'm going to push vegan homesteading here, because the more animals you have on a homestead, the more stress you're going to have. Plain and simple. Animals require a lot of maintenance and extra expense. 

Be that as it may, in general, a person who homesteads is going to be more frugal. Living frugally equates to the ability to save more money, which leads to less financial stress. 

Many skills that have become attached to the homesteading lifestyle – such as gardening, sewing, and making crafts – are relaxing. The more you can relax, obviously, the less stress you're going to experience.

Benefit #4: Save money.

I alluded to that above. It's almost a given that if you make choices that enhance Planet Earth's health as well as your health, you're going to end up saving money. 

If you choose to do with what you have, and repair and repurpose items as much as you can, you're going to save money. 

There are more benefits to homesteading, but those are the major ones. 

And now you may be hanging your head, tears dripping down your cheeks because alas, you can't possibly homestead because of where you live. 

Chin up! And keep reading. Because you can homestead no matter what kind of dwelling you call home.

Red malabar spinach climbing up a post in a suburban backyard.

Where can a person homestead?

If you ask the average person on the street where the homesteading lifestyle happens, they are likely to answer, "Out in the country," or "In rural communities."

But go back to how I defined homesteading above. It's a choice to become more self-sufficient, to turn home and property into productive investments. Given that definition, a person can homestead with any kind of dwelling. Sure, some dwellings are limited in the extent of self-sufficiency you can develop. But any attempt to live a simpler life comes under the umbrella of homesteading.

Apartment homesteading

If you live in an apartment, do you utilize ways to save water? Do you work on cutting back on your electricity usage? Are you learning to reduce your consumption and be happy with what you have right now? 

If so, you can consider yourself an apartment homesteader!

What about growing food? You can produce a non-stop crop of lettuce with a metal shelf and inexpensive blue-and-red LED grow lights. Inthis video-post I explain how. Note that we own five acres in the country, yet I grow our lettuce indoors. The reason is that where we live, it gets so warm so fast in the spring, and so cold so fast in the fall, it's hard to grow lettuce that either isn't bitter, or doesn't need some kind of protection.

So, some tenets of apartment homesteading work well for us country bumpkins, too!

You can grow sprouts in jars or on trays in your kitchen. Do you have a balcony? There are all sorts of videos and blog posts online explaining how to make the most of your tiny outdoor space in order to grow food crops. 

In some apartment buildings in some cities, residents are allowed to have rooftop gardens, growing in containers or raised beds on top of the building.

Yes, you can homestead in an apartment!

Urban homesteading

The phrase "urban homesteading" – or, suburban homesteading, if  you will – typically refers to houses on city lots in which the owners endeavor to reduce their carbon footprint and work toward more self-sufficiency. If you own a house, you own some yard space, so you can grow a lot more food than the apartment homesteader. 

You can grow much more than you think, if you plan your garden out right. When we lived in a suburb, we had what is commonly known as a "postage stamp-sized" backyard. We had way less than a fourth of an acre, even combined with the front yard. Yet, it was enough space to keep us in fresh vegetables almost all year (we lived in north Texas, so we could grow greens for most of the winter). 

We also made moves to reduce our electricity and water usage, and we didn't try to "keep up with Joneses." Though I don't think we had any neighbors by that name. 

If you rent a house and your landperson won't give you permission to dig up the yard to build gardens, you can container garden.

Some urban homesteaders, if their city allows, keep backyard chickens for eggs, or rabbits for meat. Although, as a vegan, I'm not going to encourage either. ;)

Rural homesteading

Ah, space, space, and more space! When you live in the country, you can have a huge garden and a variety of fruit-producing trees and bushes. If you're not vegan, there is, of course, much more space for keeping animals. In many states once you get outside city limits, codes go bye-bye so that you can get as extreme in your lifestyle as you want, building a tiny cabin for your home, using a composting toilet, collecting rainwater into tanks, and building a solar panel array to collect electricity.

No matter where you live, you can choose to live a simpler life and produce at least a small fraction of your own food. And thus, you will be homesteading.

So now you understand the where's and why's of the lifestyle. The big question is, what does it look like? How does a person live out the lifestyle of a homesteader?

How to homestead

From what I wrote about above, you could infer a lot about the how-to's of homesteading. While I'm not going to go into any kind of depth about beekeeping or growing a tomato from seed to harvest in this post, I do want to give you the ten-thousand foot view about the lifestyle.

Being a homesteader is about:

#1. Having a frugal mindset.

You endeavor to live as simply as you can in order to both save money and avoid unnecessary purchases that will eventually contribute to the landfills. It means you own many fewer machines of convenience, such as dishwashers and food processors, than the average person. It means that you don't buy anything on impulse. It means that you're good with purchasing from thrift and consignment stores, and from yard sales, whenever possible.

It means you ask for discounts, use coupons, and stock up when there's a sale. It means you aim not to own anything that doesn't either have significance and/or use.

This frugal attitude is the root of all the other homesteading how-to's. 

#2. Doing it yourself whenever possible.

You make your own meals. If you eat bread, you bake your own bread to go with those meals. You grow as much of your own food as you can. You learn how to make basic repairs around the property and do them yourself rather than hiring out the jobs. You might sew your own clothes, or create your own household accessories. 

And of course, the more things you do yourself, the more frugally you live.

#3. Respecting the planet's resources.

No one enters the homesteading lifestyle thinking, "You know, I'm going to do this so I can use as much energy as possible and waste all the water that I dare!" Rather, they set up their home so that it will use less energy. They figure out ways to conserve water usage, and collect and use rainwater. 

Homesteaders try to work with nature, rather than against it. This includes endeavoring to use as few synthetic chemicals as possible, both for household use and outside, so as to reduce their "pollution footprint."

Along with that, they recycle, reuse and repurposes materials whenever possible. Instead of mindlessly collecting piles and piles of plastic shopping bags from the grocery store, they bring their own canvas bags to tote their wares – or reuse plastic shopping bags from other visits. 

#4. Transforming the home from a liability to an asset.

This facet of homesteading actually ties into the others above, but it's important enough to earn its own mention.

Most homes – including house and property – are liabilities to their owners rather than assets. Even if the owners have paid off the mortgages, the houses and land consume much more than they give back in the way of money, energy, and other resources. 

When we lived in our suburban Dallas home, there wasn't a single front yard in the neighborhood that was xeriscaped. Know why? It wasn't allowed! The city property standards required residents to have grass on at least half their front yards! 

And the bushes and trees? Purely ornamental. Despite the thousands of gallons of water poured at the trees' bases every summer, few produced fruit or nuts. Most people paid a landscaping service to cut their grass and trim their hedges once every two weeks.  

The houses weren't well-insulated and so were energy hogs. Many – like ours – had a twenty-foot ceiling in the living room. Can you say, "heat sink"? Can you say, "a 50% higher electric bill in the winter"?

When homesteading, on the other hand, people take measures to turn their homes into assets. They use the roof of their houses to collect water. If they have a new house built, they make sure it's energy-efficient. They only build (or buy) as much house as they need. 

And, of course, as much of the property as possible is used for food production. Often, sections of land are set aside for other kinds of production, like using the woods to grow trees for firewood. Or creating a flower garden in order to sell bouquets. 

The homesteading how-to's come down to living more simply, and living more frugally. And you can take steps in those directions no matter where you live, no matter your career. 

You can be like my family and take things to extreme, using coolers instead of a refrigerator, having no running water inside the house, and washing laundry by hand. But homesteading doesn't require extremes.

It simply requires the attitude of simplicity. 

Happy homesteading.