Comment by Decabytes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Decabytes | Hacker News Reader

I've always had a dream to buy a plot of land and homestead. But I have family that is getting older and needs my help more often. The though of being far away from essential services like Hospitals is not ideal. Also I'm still too early in my career to make that move.

So, more recently I've been thinking of an idea I call "urban homesteading", which is just based off the idea of not waiting until the perfect circumstances to start something. Nothing about living in the suburbs prevents me from doing like 80% of what I would do homesteading. I can still...

1. Can/Preserve/Dehydrate/Vacuum seal Food

2. Build up a supply of essential non perishable food

3. Grow food I can eat in a garden

4. Build things with the materials I have instead of buying them

5. Fix and repair old stuff I have instead of buying new stuff

6. Reduce my reliance on City Water, Electricity, Gas, while still enjoying the benefits

Sure I might not have the most space or privacy having neighbors on all sides but so what. I don't have a big backyard, but I don't really need one as there is a large park 3 minutes from my front door that I can walk to. Other than enough space for a small deck and grill I can devote the rest of my backyard to a garden. I'm slowly building up towards this, but I'm starting slowly so that it isn't overwhelming

I'm all for this, and I too have been attempting this at various levels. However, the one thing that I have come to respect is that farming to be self sustainable is capital H hard. To grow enough to sustain just you and your family means a much larger plot would be required than I originally appreciated. Weather is a huge factor on whether your plants will yield enough, and it is something absolutely out of your control. After that, you have pest control from insects to animals. The more effective you want to be about those just increases the costs of everything.

I've considered turning part of my yard into a larger garden plot, but since it's a rental, it's hard to want to expend the effort. So I've stuck with container gardening with a few raised beds.

I haven't quite gone the level of canning (not enough yield for that), but I have been drying the herbs I grow. This winter was the first time that I've used them for soups, and will be doing this at a larger volume this year.

I posted this on another comment, but you might be interested in permaculture, where ease of maintenance is key within a context of sustainable living. These are two of its originators talking about how they set up their plot, in a relatively built-up part of Victoria in Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss1BjW2kSNs I find it incredibly inspiring.

Only tools a permaculturist needs are a shovel and a hammock :-)

My wife and I did something like this for a while (before moving out of town to a more traditional farmstead last year). You won't be able to grow all of your own meat or grain, but you can fit a ton of tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc. in a city lot. We're on track for our canned tomatoes to make it through to next harvest from a poorly managed ~200 square foot plot for example. We ran out of frozen peppers and onions recently, but those had a rough start since we moved in in June so they had a late start.

We were also allowed to keep up to 6 hens which were enough to keep two people in eggs and provided excellent compost.

> We were also allowed to keep up to 6 hens which were enough to keep two people in eggs and provided excellent compost.

About how many eggs per week or month was that producing? We're allowed a certain amount of chickens, and I have considered it. What was the maintenance like?

We got about 4 eggs a day ~10 months a year. Though that does drop off as birds get older.

We had a ~8'x12' fully enclosed run that they got locked in at night since we had surprisingly bad predator issues for being in town. That just meant open the door to give them the run of the (fenced) yard during the day and close it again before bed. They had enough space that they could stay in their run if we were out of town for a day or two.

We used a big PVC gravity feed system for food and poultry cups for water so just had to check that once a week or so.

Whenever the run started smelling, we'd add a layer of mulch or straw in the bottom - maybe once a month.

I had an instructor once who advised younger folks who were not ready to buy land to spend some money on really good gardening tools.

I see you mentioned gardening. You can also get a plot in a community garden in some towns, or volunteer on a CSA farm, which gives you some food growing capacity (and grows your skills).

Depending what metro you live near, are you sure you couldn’t live close enough to a few times a year hospital visit in the exurbs or a rural area not too far from a highway ?

Yes!! I love the awareness here.

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