I live in the Bronx and rent from a family member who has a backyard. Last year she dug up the lawn for 2 years planted vegetables and a fruit tree.

It was great exercise and stress reduction for a working retiree. Add to that she was able to have an organic salad pretty much any time she liked. I hope to introduce her to canning so she can preserve things for the winter.

Creating community gardens out of vacant lots is a project our Parks Department has been working on. That means people who don’t have backyards can still benefit from a garden. This is a wonderful thing especially in food deserts. It’s easy to assume everyone can drive/ride to a store and pick up some organic produce. The reality is that many people in my city cannot afford the transportation on a regular basis to places where those products are sold(far beyond their neighborhoods). Furthermore, some companies(like Fresh Direct) just will not deliver to certain areas. Finally, what is available in some stores in poorer areas looks barely good enough to sell. This is a more frightening prospect in some places. Ever heard of exploding watermelons in China? Some Chinese people have turned to CSAs because they feel they cannot trust the agricultural industry to put quality over quantity.

To me, homesteading is an opportunity for us to take control and make better foods and products available for ourselves rather than rely on what others think is good enough.

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[...] An introduction to homesteading, a guest post from Phelan of A Homesteading Neophyte [...]

I started canning a few years ago and while we do not have much of a yard we are able to do “square foot gardening” and have quite a haul to process for the shelves and freezer. Canning is more than just saving a buck or two it is about growing healthy foods that you know have been grown to your standards.

We live in town and have a 13 year old daughter. While she doesn’t like to garden herself, but does help, she tastes the difference between what we eat and what she eats at her friends houses. We also hunt and fish and never have a shotr supply of healthy foods that just can’t be bought without paying a huge price at the grocery.

I purchased some of my canning jars new and some at yard sales. The seals are the only thing I buy new. It costs me less than a dollar to make fresh jams and jellies verses over three dollars to buy at the store. That is a big savings for us. Sauces, wow! I save a bundle each year.

What do I do for a living? I am a photographer and I schedule my gardening around my work and other household chores. I am not “crafty” but I do recycle and use what we have to redecorate. We tend to refurbish a lot. I guess that there are those that will always be content to live in big cities but I have done that. I’ve lived all over the world and was happiest in places that were rural. We will get our land in the next few years, How? By living our homesteading lifestyle in the city and putting our money into land and being good fruigle. Don’t get me wrong, there are somethings that we will splurge on but it usually comes from a really good sale or it might be second hand.

In a nation driven by consumerism we really need to take a step back and realize what we are teaching our children. We need to be more healthy and we need to be able to sustain.

Mother Earth News has some great articles on homesteading and even better articles on gardening without working yourself to death – try row crop covers to protect your gardens. Just make sure you uncover your plants when the bees are pollinating.

Canning – keep your glass jars, use them and paraffin wax for sealing jelly.

Find a farmer if you’re looking for advice. They are a fount of knowledge, and you should take advantage of it. They can tell you the growing dates for the vegetables you plant.

Find a freecycle group. More than likely, you will eventually find someone who will be glad to part with stuff you need or want.

See you at the livestock auction!

There are things you should just buy instead of making yourself. and budget your time to things that really save you money or make you money. spend time making money on your homestead and items that are easy for you to do should be done and buy the rest. Time is short live life and enjoy it.

If you’re safe and spending time learning and working with your family and friends to produce healthy foods for the future, and you’re mentally figuring your $avings/hour worked, then I think you need to re-evaluate.

I played some touch football with my friends last weekend … had a great time … our team made four touchdowns! …but I don’t understand it … my return on investment was negative. How can that be?

On the other hand, if you need money for your mother’s surgery, making your own pasta is probably not the way to go

Gardening and raising chickens are the easiest, or so I am still discovering. Those two items are what I started with. From there my garden grew larger and so did my goals. Now we have milking cows and will have bees shortly.

Reading everything you get your hands on is important. The books and blogs can help you understand some of the things that go into each project.

Try to go slowly, baby steps if you will. Each new project will be time intensive, until you get it down. You don’t want to get overwhelmed with too many things. Sit down and discuss what your long terms goal is, then your short goals that can help you get there. Try to stick with those plans, but don’t pass up good deals if you happen to stumble upon them, just be sure to rearrange your goals.

Adding children into the mix is a whole new experince. With infants you have to learn to rearange your day around them and your livestock. If you don’t have any yet, then chickens or other poultry will be the simplest with infants. As your children get older, more things can happen.

I have no idea if I answered your question. Feel free to continue to ask questions here or on my blog. I will do my best to help. And congrats on your family addition.

I can’t really tell you how many cans I keep, we add more every year, depending on harvest.

It has been a year since I first wrote this. I have learned so many new things in that time.

To me, homesteading it isn’t about the money, we make more than most. Personally I don’t really like to garden but I am pretty good at it and my husband is a horticulturist so we should do splendidly. And Joe, yes homesteading information is in books all over, however, it sure would have been nice if I didn’t have to do the research because I was taught by my parents then I could spend my time getting my garden and such ready and running. There will eventually be another culling of people and I don’t intend on being one of them. And besides, I used to run an apple orchard and homegrown food has no comparison to what is offered in the store. I have eaten 1/2 of an apple since I left he orchard(16 years ago) and it had absolutely no flavor. I also have 2 growing children who are developing way faster than they should because of all of the hormones that are fed to our cows and chickens. We have gone to fresh goat milk, fresh eggs (we’re getting our own chickens soon) and heading towards getting our beef from a local farm. Thinking back on it, since we started doing this, no one in my family has made a trip to the doctor (over 2 years ago). There is a difference between being a farmer who supplies to the local grocier or nationally and one that is doing it to be self sufficient. It isn’t a full time job. I have too many other things I like to do. I will be checking back for more information. Your article is greatly appreciated. Thanks!! Larisa, Charleston, SC

If you’re doing this because you enjoy gardening, then great! Your hobby is also producing something you can eat. Also if you’re doing this because you gain a certain satisfaction in producing your own food, thats also great!

I just don’t think that “saving money” should be one of the main selling points here.

Second, I find it funny that one of the posters on here thinks it’s ok for someone to do this if they are doing it for fun, but not ok if you are doing it because you are poor and need to grow food. Hmm… WHAT? It’s sad that such a good article cause this kind of reaction.

This country would benefit immensely from a similar program to Hitler’s “Luddite/agrarian back-to-the-land” philosophy. The majority of farmers in the USA are over the age of 55, and failing miserably in an industrialized food production model that keeps them miserably in debt trying to make a living from 10 sections of land, which is more than any man can manage properly. It’s unhealthy, unsustainable, and just plain produces inferior food.

When the cities go down in flames, Joe Murphy will be one of the first to run for the country. He’ll probably be shot by a homesteader for trying to steal food. But that’s okay. To each his own.

SECOND – When someone says they are “canning” their food, it means they’re using glass jars, not aluminum cans.

I was one of 4, raised on a farm. We raised our own vegetables, our own livestock for meat, chickens for eggs. My mother did not work. We never lacked for anything and we lived in a beautiful 12 room brick home my father built with his own hands. We were not “poor.” We never went hungry, or without clothing.

THIRD – and this is for the smurf – what makes you the authority figure here to insult anyone’s way of life? You’re living in the big city – and you think it’s healthy to eat store bought food – that is loaded with chemicals, processed in a plant crawling with rats, where the fresh vegetables you pick up are shipped to that store green and has been gassed to make it ripen up. Phelan did NOT suggest that YOU, PERSONALLY, take up homesteading. What ht/she suggested was “Modern homesteading is a great way to save some of your hard-earned cash. That is if you are not afraid of a little hard work and waking before the rooster…Modern homesteading is not for everyone. Yet taking a few of these suggestions and applying them to your own life will make a significant difference on the way you view the world, and the impact on your wallet.”

Thank you Phelan. This was an excellent article and I applaude your efforts!