Urban Homesteading

by Rachel Dunstan Muller

For years I’ve fantasized that if I ever won the lottery, I’d build a super-green home on a few sunny acres within cycling distance of school, work, shopping and all the important amenities. My family’s carbon footprint could be cut to practically nothing as we grew most of our own food, harvested rainwater for all our water needs, and used solar energy to power our efficient appliances. It’s a nice dream—but unlikely to come true since I don’t play the lottery.

As it happens, it’s not just a lack of funds that makes my fantasy impractical. While it may seem like the ideal plan, only a minority of us could actually live this way. There simply isn’t enough land to give every family a few acres near town, and we’d break the resource bank if we tore down all our existing dwellings—even if we replaced them with “super-green” ones.

But what if some of the goals of my lottery-fantasy were achievable right where we currently live? Enter the Urban Homesteading movement, people committed to living low-impact, self-sufficient lives right where they are, even in the heart of the city. The movement was pioneered by Jules Dervaes 20 years ago, after he purchased a rundown house on a small lot 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, and 100 feet from a major freeway. It’s an unlikely place for a “farm,” but today the Dervaes family grows over 350 different vegetables, herbs and fruits, and harvests up to 6,000 pounds of produce annually in an intensive garden that measures just 1/10th of an acre. They also keep chickens, rabbits, bees and a couple of pygmy goats. Solar panels produce two thirds of their electricity requirements (they use a miniscule 6 kwh per day), and they make their own biodiesel for transportation.

The Dervaes’ example is both inspiring and daunting. My almost half an acre will never produce 6,000 pounds of anything – it simply doesn’t get enough sun. Without sun, solar panels are also a write-off. Fortunately, urban homesteading isn’t about slavishly copying what other “homesteaders” are doing. It’s about taking stock of your own situation and figuring out what you can do to conserve the earth’s resources and live more self-sufficiently.

The homesteading model appeals to me for a few reasons. First, it brings together a number of things I’m already doing: trying to produce some of our food, making things from scratch, and conserving energy, water and other resources. Second, I believe that my children and/or grandchildren will have to live this way at some point in the future. We currently enjoy the highest standard of living in history, but the party can’t go on forever. We’ve reached the limits of what our planet can handle. As our family learns to become more self-sufficient, I believe we’re helping prepare our kids for what lies on the horizon. I hope we’re also demonstrating that a lower-energy, more sustainable lifestyle isn’t all drudgery. Which brings me to the final reason I like the homesteading model. Many of its projects are just plain fun!

Our homesteading efforts are painfully modest compared to the Dervaes family, but then we’ve just started exploring the possibilities. We can’t grow much on our shady property, but we’re exploiting every pocket of sun we can. It’s too early to say how successful we’ll be this season, but we have young apple, pear, peach and cherry trees, grape and kiwi vines, blueberry and raspberry bushes, barrels of strawberries, tomatoes, herbs, and half a dozen different vegetables. We also have a community garden plot, with plans to access more land next year.

Nine chickens in our backyard provide us with fresh eggs every day. We have to give them commercial feed, but we supplement it with kitchen scraps and generous helpings of dandelion greens. (I used to spend hours every year trying to dig up these stubborn weeds; now I see them as a crop.) I also grind up oyster shells from the beach around the corner, and sprinkle it over the hen’s feed to keep their eggshells hard.

An airtight, high-efficiency woodstove provides almost all our heat in the winter. A special thermometer on the stovepipe helps us keep fires in the ideal temperature zone, ensuring complete combustion and minimizing the amount of particulate (air pollution) that goes out our chimney. It also helps us avoid over-firing, which would damage our stove. In the six years that we’ve heated our house this way, we’ve only had to buy a few cords of wood. Most of our fuel comes from trees that have been cleared for development, fallen in windstorms, or been taken down as safety hazards. We’re significantly upgrading our insulation this summer, which should translate into less wood required this winter.

We’ve only scratched the surface in our journey towards self-sufficiency. When the time is right, there are all kinds of homesteading projects we’d like to explore. Canning and food preserving are definitely on the list. Soap making, beekeeping, and rain harvesting are also possibilities. There may even be a goat or two in our future (we live in a semi-rural area that makes this possible).

If you’d like to learn more about the urban homesteading movement, the Dervaes’ website (www.urbanhomestead.org/journal/) is high on inspiration. For more “how-to” details, check out The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan, or The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. Both books are available through the Vancouver Island Regional Library system.

Rachel Dunstan Muller is the mother of five, and a children’s author. She and her family are working at reducing their environmental impact, one area at a time.