That D.I.Y. Attitude

Last year I dove into learning about home improvement & home repair and gave our house a serious facelift. It’s a 1950s home and we’re only the second owners so understandably a lot of the interior decoration was a bit… dated.

I moved cabinets, repaired drywall, and did a whole heck of a lot of painting, all with our two-year-old in tow.

Nathan didn’t even flinch when he got home from work and found me using a crowbar to take the fake wood paneling out of our dining room one afternoon – 100% why we’re married.

Getting the Yard in Shape

The last owner of our house was an elderly woman who loved to garden, but as she got older she had a harder time keeping up with maintaining her yard.

So as part of my fixing-up-the-house crusade last year, I added flower beds along two sides of the back yard, extended the bed in the front yard, and designed and installed a rain garden to help handle a drainage issue.

I also tried not to kill her rose bushes – but that was not very successful.

We had a small veggie garden but it didn’t get as much love or attention as it wanted. I think we got about two good dinners worth of green beans, four cucumbers, and a LOT of cherry tomatoes.

(None of my bell peppers, big tomatoes, or spicy peppers made it).

While the veggies had a lackluster turnout, the rain garden flourished, and I only killed three of my houseplants! I don’t know that I have a green thumb but at least my plants aren’t shriveling at my touch.

The Best Laid Plans, etc, etc.

Originally the plan for the yard this year was to get all the flower beds filled up in the backyard, maybe add a raised bed or two for veggies, and then spruce up the front beds a bit.

We had a freak ice storm last spring that did a number on my crepe myrtles and delivered the final death blow to the rose bushes out front so those beds could use some TLC.

But then I started doing the math for when baby number two was due versus when the gardening season was going to start and I thought to myself ‘You know – maybe I’ll take it easy this year’.

Well… I tried at least!

Just Start Where You Are

The real push to start this year was money.

I know, I know, that’s not even a little bit romantic. I could just lie and say I felt the calling to be more one with nature but… let’s be real.

No one in their right mind decides to start a small-scale farm in their yard when they’re 7 months pregnant with their second child.

But here we are.

The fact of the matter is that as the inflation rate does its’ thing we’re being priced out of being able to afford groceries for a family of three, and with a fourth person on the way, something needed to change.

So to help gain a bit more food security we’re looking to some tried and tested methods from history to feed ourselves, or at least cut down on the grocery bill.

And Here We Are

The plan has always been to live somewhere with a bit of land and do some small-scale farming, eventually. We just planned to do it a bit further down the road.

But we’re here now and working with the cards we’ve been dealt and that means diving headfirst into figuring out how all this homesteading stuff works.

We may not know anything about homesteading, yet, but what we do know is that we’re willing to put the work in to figure it out (and we don’t mind looking a bit silly along the way).

So, welcome to the journey!

It’s sure to be an interesting year no matter how it turns out.

What do you think!

Have you ever considered starting an urban homestead? What made you decide yay or nay?

Comment below and let me know!

This post is a bit more getting-to-know-us than how-to-get-started but if that’s what you’re looking for check out my post How to Start an Urban Homestead for the nine rules we’re living by this year.

Or if you’d like to keep reading about our experience getting started you can check out my next post about Placing the Garden