No matter how small your property is, urban homesteading can help you become more self sufficient.

Your backyard homestead might even be able to produce an extra income for you, enabling you to pay off some debt and take that burden off your shoulders.

The amount of food your urban homestead provides will depend on how much land you have.

Carleen Madigan, author of The Backyard Homestead
estimates that the following yields are possible on a 1/4 acre plot.

50 pounds of wheat	280 pounds of pork
120 cartons of eggs	100 pounds of honey
25-75 pounds of nuts	600 pounds of fruit
2000+ pounds of vegetables

The Derveas family in Pasadena California grow Over 350 different vegetables, herbs, fruits and berries on their 1/10th of an acre urban homestead. Producing up to 6000 pounds of food each year!

You Can Have A Homestead Too

If you’ve got some outside space, it can become productive land. You just need to figure out how to put it to the best use.

Your urban homestead journey begins with making a plan. Your plan is your road map. And we all know how following a map leads us to our destination more quickly and effectively, than just blundering down any street we happen upon.

Taking the time to draw up a plan, will enable you to place your resources where they will be of most benefit to you. Growing a food garden for a couple of years could yield enough savings to allow you to invest in a small solar power system for example.

Turning you home into a homestead makes you a modern day pioneer. But instead of taming new territory like the settlers of old, you are transforming your existing territory into something new and wonderful.

A Life Support System For Your Family

It’s probably fair to assume that right now, your families needs are met pretty much by entities over which you have no control.

You have no control over the prices they charge or the reliability of their services. If you are buying non organic produce from the supermarket you don’t even have control over the safety of the food you eat.

Your home needs to be more than the roof over your head and the place where you keep your stuff. It should provide most of the basics essential to survival and an urban homestead does just that!

Shelter

Your home is already providing shelter, but it needs to have heat in the winter and may require cooling in the summer. The energy that keeps your home at a comfortable temperature must be paid for, year in, year out, as prices rise and rise and rise.

But if you invest a little now, you can ensure that your home isn’t an energy hog. The annual savings on your utility bills will be a bonus for you, but the real benefit comes from being able to switch to alternative methods of heating and cooling.

Once you have added extra insulation and sealed up the cracks your home will be warmer.

Depending on your location you could produce a significant portion of the heat your home needs with simple home built solar collectors. A small, efficient wood stove or rocket mass heater can supply the rest.

Cooling your home in the summer is fairly straight forward unless you live in an area with high humidity.

Install thermal window shades

Plant trees that will shade your home in the summer, yet drop leaves in the fall, to allow sunlight in to warm you, during the winter months.

Consider installing shade awnings over the south facing facing windows on your home.

Ceiling and desk/stand fans consume very little power, yet add enormous comfort during hot weather. They can even run off a modest solar panel set up, if you decide to go off grid.

Food

Space on an urban homestead is likely to be at a premium, so you need a gardening method that will produce high yields in a small area.

Forget about traditional row planting. The soil in most urban and suburban gardens isn’t of sufficient quality for growing food.

You will be better off if you construct some raised beds and bring in some top soil and add compost.

The most effective growing method for urban homesteaders is intensive, square foot gardening.

Using this method you will be able to squeeze every last morsel of food out of your growing area. A square foot garden measuring 16 sq ft will hold around 130 plants, producing enough tasty, highly nutritious vegetables for one person.

For fruit choose dwarf fruit trees and if space is tight, espalier them along walls and fences. Don’t forget fruit bushes. Blackberries, blue berries, raspberries and gooseberries all begin producing fruit much sooner than trees. Strawberries can be grown in your raised beds and if you transplant the suckers each year you can sell them for some extra cash.

Keep some chickens for fresh eggs and possibly meat. You must make sure they are in a secure coop and run or they will eat your vegetable garden in no time. Rabbits are another common choice for raising meat animals in small spaces.

If you have enough space think about raising a pig for meat or a pair of dwarf goats to supply you with fresh milk and cheese.

A beehive won’t take up much room and the bees take care of themselves. a hive is an excellant addition to a homestead, the bees will give you delicious honey and will pollinate your fruits and vegetables.

Power

If you decide to go “off grid” for your power then you’ll be looking at a solar installation.

In order for your system to be cost effective you need to reduce your power consumption as much as you possibly can. Modern homesteading is all about reducing consumption and energy consumption is no exception.

Once you’ve cut back on your power usage you will find that a fairly modest alternative power system will meet your needs.

You do have another option. Install a grid tied system, where you sell excess power that you have generated to the utility company. A grid tie installation doesn’t require batteries, which are a costly item.

Recently companies have emerged who will supply and install your solar panels free of charge in return for the proceeds of the power that you sell to the grid. Conditions do apply, so be sure to do your research before committing to the program

Water

Your roof can supply you with a significant amount of water, which you can use on your urban homestead in place of mains water.

The simplest way to set up rainwater harvesting, is to install some rain barrels underneath your downspouts and collect the water which would otherwise disapear down the drain.

Attach a hose to the spigot on the barrel and you have a water supply for your garden.

If you want to use the water indoors, then you’ll need to put it through a filter.

Waste water from washing can be used for sub surface irrigation outdoors.

You can save a vast amount of water if you switch to using a compost toilet. Not only do you save water, you end up with a fantastically rich compost for your garden.

A simple toilet is low cost and easy to make. Compost toilets do not smell when managed correctly and it only takes a couple of days to get used to using one. Recycling your own poo completes the nutrient cycle and replenishes the earth instead of depleting it.

Medicine

Your urban homestead garden can supply you with medicine for a surprising number of ailments.

Peppermint relieves trapped wind, Chamomile cleans and soothes skin irritation and is particularly good for eye infections. Aloe vera is an all round miracle, with it’s anti viral, anti bacterial, anti fungal and regenerative properties.

And those are just the tip of the iceberg.

If you are seriously considering setting up an urban homestead, then head over and take a look at the Derveas website for more details on their 1/10th of an acre urban homestead http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/