For many years, my IG bio has read something like this:
“Wild, woolly, and wonderful. Knitter, sewist, crafter, and homestead wannabe.”
It took me a long time before I even could put it out there that I wanted to create a homestead for my family. (You know the feeling?) The idea felt so distant and out of reach at the time when my husband and I were renting a tiny house that we knew we would move from in a year, in a shaded yard unsuitable for growing any sort of food, and with full-time jobs and school commitments. But the desire was so very real and over the years, I’ve had to figure out what it means to homestead in each season of where we live.
Of course, my own journey has been guided and inspired by folks who I have watched on their own paths towards sustainability and building a vibrant home. From our friend whose small suburban house backs up to big woods and who grows tons of food to preserve in a tenth of an acre, to folks learning homestead skills in their tiny apartments in Oakland, and stories of families who just started where they were and didn’t wait for permission or a big parcel of land or a lot of free time. I’m so glad that a spirit of industriousness and do-it-yourself and a love of sustainability and local community manifest themselves in many ways around the world.
Currently, B and I own our home and have lived here for the past 2.5 years. The house is on a really great sized lot, but is sandwiched between a highway to our back, and a thoroughfare on our front. It’s in a spot not too far from downtown but apart from the road noise, walking to the backmost part of our space you wouldn’t quite believe it. We still don’t think that this space is our “forever” home but we are making our home here for the foreseeable future and that has led to a lot of different dreams on my part to learn as much as I can and grow as much as I can while we are here. We’ve done all of the good homeowner things of settling in, painting walls, decluttering closets, and making each space work for us, and have also had the opportunity to do some more involved “homestead” things:
- We built our first raised bed. Unfortunately, even the sunniest part of our backyard gets only partial sunlight thanks to some 15 foot shrubs that we will need to hire someone to cut down significantly, and our neighbors have a few trees that shade the best parts of our yard from sunlight during the day. I am doing more research in the meantime on low-light vegetables and herbs to grow this fall.
- I just finished a trio of “mushroom beds” on the shadiest part of our yard behind our home. I purchased sawdust mushroom spawn and used the lasagna method of alternating sawdust, wood bark, and spawn to cultivate shiitake, wine cap, and morel mushrooms. Now all we have to do is wait!
- We started shopping more locally, visiting the farmer’s market, and canning seasonal fruits and veggies. It’s taught me so much about our food, the changing seasons, and our community.
- I started dyeing more and more with natural, foraged dyes and kitchen scraps. This has long been a love of mine, but it has been fun to explore it more in our kitchen.
- We cleared significant brush and started dreaming about what each small space can be. Our side yard? Future home to blueberries, if we’re lucky. The giant shed that needs to be demolished? Perfect spot for a future chicken coop.
- Learning about sustainable and human animal processing. This hasn’t been done in our home, but B has learned so much about sustainable hunting, fishing, and animal processing in the past few years.
I also consider knitting, mending, sewing, and stitching to absolutely be homestead skills, and also look forward to diving more deeply into soap and candle making and natural housekeeping. While I still dream often of a quiet few acres and the space to spread out and grow, I am learning every day and building my own kind of wannabe homestead all the time, which is more than enough for now.