Start Homesteading

Chainsaws are essential to our homestead life!

Learning how to live your life as self-sufficient as possible in this crazy world is not easy. So many people write to me and say they are stuck in the city. Stuck in a job. Stuck in a relationship with someone who does not want to live this way at all. I mean, some people have no desire to take on this life. Especially if they have never been exposed to it at all. If you are wanting to get started though, there are ways to do that without moving or divorcing your spouse and children.

The heart of our homestead!

Do you believe you must buy a home in the country to start the homesteading lifestyle? No! Absolutely not! I have met many homesteaders who live right dab in the middle of the city. Two blogging and homesteading friends who are currently urban homesteaders, thirtyfivebyninety and Viggie Veggies do an awesome job of homesteading in the city. As long as you have some kind of a backyard that you can plant a garden in, you should be able to get started. Starting small is always the best way anyway.

Our food supply at Peaceful Forest!

I have written about beginning homesteading skills many times on this blog.  Learn Your Homesteading Skills Slowly, is one. But I still see when I go to my favorite homesteading forum that many "wannabees" do not, or think they cannot, start until they buy their property. That is not the way to do it. You must start now, wherever you are, whatever situation you are in. Learn and research. Discover exactly how you want to live. You do not need to live like the Nearings or Jackie Clay. Pick your own road. It is your homesteading journey, this is My Homesteading Journey!

Canning my garden produce every year builds our food supply!

With the internet you can learn all the skills you need very easily. Put the term in the search engine and find your directions. What could be easier? So many things I do now, I had never done before. You sharpen your skills the more you do them. So get started!

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole

My Grandmother Was An Urban Homesteader!

My mother and grandmother

I have written many times on this blog about my grandmother, Anna Leonard Neer. She was born on a farm but ended up living in the city of Binghamton, NY. My grandfather was not reliable as the breadwinner in the house. He'd work a job, but the day he got paid, he didn't come home. So my grandmother always worked. She raised 6 children and was a the most self-reliant woman I have ever known.

Living in the city, in the downstairs of her parent's duplex, she turned the lawn into a garden. She grew everything possible, canned it all and worked all day at The Endicott Johnson shoe factory. She came home from work, fed her family and worked in the garden. Raised chickens right there in the city along with rabbits. She knew how to butcher everything, from living on the farm where she grew up. When her father traded his job of hauling coal out of the coal mines in PA, he moved his family to Binghamton. There he used his work horses to help build the Endicott Johnson shoe factories.

My grandfather loved horses and animals in general. He frequented the various livestock auctions and would bring home all kinds of critters. In the city back then, there weren't all these laws about what animals you could keep in the city. I guess because there were a lot more urban homesteaders back in those days than there are now.

My grandmother was a survivor and she did what she had to in order to care for her family. She took good care of them, loved them and taught them to work and be independent. The kids went to work when they were old enough and handed their whole pay over to her. She gave them some cash out of it, bought whatever they needed and used the rest to run their home and pay the bills. She didn't believe that they should have not been contributing to their home when they lived there. Even my uncles sent their money home when they were in the service.

All during the depression, they ate well, dressed well and were better off than most others. My grandmother had a cellar and a pantry full of food. Even later when she moved out into the country on a 99 acre farm, her pantry and root cellar was full of food. She grew everything possible. Now she was a true urban homesteader!

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole

Just Start Now!

What made me decide to become a homesteader? That is a question we are asked often. It is not so much that people see me coming and say, "Wow, here comes a homesteader!" It is more like people learn about this lifestyle through my writing or when they hear from someone else we live off-the-grid. Let me clear up any misconceptions about the off-the-grid part. You do not have to be generating your own power or living off-the-grid to be a homesteader. I will say over and over.................there are NO rules! (Did you read that Donna? My friend Donna is in all ways a homesteader, she just doesn't think she is.)

I think what did it for me was that we were living in St. Petersburg, FL and there was a lot of crime around us. Yet if we had opened our eyes to homesteading then, we could have done urban homesteading right there on our little lot in the middle of a big city. Our courtyard was fenced in with one of those high fences and had a red brick floor. It would get so hot in there. My stepdaughter, Hollie, would try to lay out there to sunbathe, but it was even more than she could take. We could have put up solar panels and had raise beds right there in that little area. Our yard was all shaded but the sunlight would flood that little courtyard for hours.

At that time we had a cruise only travel agency and ran it out of our garage which we had converted into a home office. We had a lot of contacts down there as far as home based businesses go and was part of The Home Based Business Association. That was the wrong direction. I know that now. Too late for me.

But if you are into homesteading and living in a city.............and anxiously waiting for the day you can move into your homestead.....Don't! Don't wait, just start now:

• Just start a garden this spring. 
• Or shop from your local farms and can or freeze or dehydrate food all season. 
• Learn to bake bread or whatever it is you buy in the store. 
• Learn to make your own condiments. 
• Learn to make your own sauces and can them. 
• Make your own salad dressings. 
• Buy in bulk and process the foods in your own kitchen. 
• Research your local area and find sources of locally produced foods. 
• Study the wild medicinal and edible foods growing around you in your forests and parks. Make sure it is not sprayed or on a main route where it can be contaminated by motor vehicles. 

I am sure there is something you are dying to start doing. What is it? Can you figure out a way to do it without living in the country? Start doing it now and it will lead to other things. That is the way I started doing it. Little by little.

Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole