Homesteading Your Home

Savvy Back-To-The-Land Tips

Techniques for Homesteading Your Home. Feeding the family from the homestead today is a simpler way of life with a modern twist.

Backyard Farming Strategies

Homestead homes are making a comeback, the country life's not just for country folk anymore. No matter where you live there are ways to rekindle the vital connection between yourself, your home and your planet.

Rooftops, patio gardens, urban yards and roomy acreages can all be successfully homesteaded to one degree or another. Evaluating the resources available in your space can uncover a surprising number of strategies for homesteading your home.

Below you'll find several aspects of homestead living and suggestions for making a few small changes in your daily life that will have great impact on your family and the way you work with th elements.

Tips For Practical Homesteading. Your Home is an Untapped Resource.

• Reduce Your Needs ~ Start with home energy and water consumption. Most of us have switched to compact fluorescent bulbs and LED lighting can be even more cost effective.
  
  Installing low flow showerheads and toilets and properly managing your water heating (wash clothes in cold water, turn the temperature down and insulate tanks) will have a huge influence on your water, power and sewer bills. Install a clothesline for even more savings... More energy conservation tips


• Recycle ~ One of the simplest ways to start homesteading your home is to recycle everything possible. Recycling facilities exist for glass, cardboard, paper, plastic, tin cans, milk cartons, tetra packs, batteries, paints, metals, almost anything you'd otherwise dispose of in the garbage. Be the middleman not the grim reaper.


• Collect Rainwater ~ Harvesting rainwater from rooftop surfaces not only reduces your water expense, your garden will love it. Rainwater can be stored in rainbarrels, underwater cisterns or watering troughs and used for watering livestock and gardens.


• Start Composting ~ A good portion of the garbage in landfills is compostable materials trapped in plastic bags. Recirculate your vegetable scraps back into the earth and be rewarded with a better crop next harvest... More about home composting.






• Grow Your Food ~ Growing your own food is such a satisfying experience and offers clean food and a connection to the eco system. Whether it's a container of salad vegetables or herbs, a fruit tree or a raised bed of organic vegetables, the garden is the focus of any homestead. Compost the parts you don't eat to make a special feast for next year's garden.
  For tiny areas, an amazing array of vegetables can be grown in almost any kind of container, climbers can be trained to grow upward and tomatoes actually like growing upside down in those hanging containers.
  More... container gardening


• Reduce Chemical Use ~ Indoors and out, keep the chemical use to a minimum. Make your own non-toxic cleaning supplies. Many can be made by using a few simple ingredients like baking soda, vinegar, lemon, and soap, and these cleaning supplies also make great gifts.
  Try vinegar for any cleaning tasks before using anything harsher, it works for mold and mildew and look no further for a great window and glass cleaner.
  Boiling water kills weeds as effectively as round-up without the nasty down side.






• Preserve Your Harvest ~ Canning, drying, pickling and freezing your harvest is an easy and satisfying way to enjoy your garden bounty year round. "Putting up" the excess crop is the age old way of ensuring year round variety at the table. Pickle the extra eggs too!


• Plant Fruit Trees, Vines and Shrubs ~ Fruit trees and vines supply apple, peach, plum, cherry, pear, orange, banana, mango, kiwi, blueberry, raspberry... I could go on and on. A single mature fruit tree can yield enough fruit to enjoy your fill while it's fresh and still have an abundance to preserve and barter for something else.
  As if that weren't enough, trees and greenery clean, air condition and oxygenate the air that surrounds them.



WARNING!

To avoid suffocation, always ensure adequate ventilation and gas monitors are installed in root cellars.

• Build a Root Cellar or Cold Room ~ Cold storage with protection from freezing is an excellent way to keep fruits and vegetables for longer durations. Root vegetables and some squash can keep for as long as 6 months in cold storage. Some homesteaders leave their root crops in the ground all winter with bales of hay or straw over them. The bales insulate the ground, preventing the vegetables from freezing and the gardener digs them up as needed. Fresh garden vegetables all winter long!


• Barter and Share ~ When you have more of something than you need, trade it for something that someone else has too much of. Organize a semi annual potluck and neighborhood exchange in the spring and fall. Have your friends bring over old clothes, toys, books, excess garden produce and other unneeded or overflow items, to be given a new home to others who can use them.


• Environmental Responsibility ~ Living on the land fosters environmental awareness. Cycling, walking, carpooling, public transport and making fewer trips for errands all save money and emissions. Adopting simpler practices means less transporting, fewer chemicals and less interference with the genetic disposition of our food... a bright spot on the environment.


• Solar Power Home Solutions ~ There's more than one way to use solar energy and some passive solar techniques cost nothing extra to include if you're building or renovating. A solar water heater can begin yielding FREE hot water in as little as 2 years.
  If you're looking for total self sufficiency, set up an off grid solar power system to take care of all your energy needs.

There are tons of simple and inexpensive places to start homesteading your home. The most important thing is to start somewhere!

Visitors to our Homesteading Your Home page may also be interested in the following pages.