"homesteading" and our family lifestyle

there are a ton of whole blogs and websites dedicated to homesteading, with a growing number dealing with urban or suburban "homesteading" and sustainable living. that being said, not every suggestion works for every family. does everyone have a porch or a window box where they can grow food? nope. i know plenty of people my age living in sad little basement apartments with no windows, and believe me, the only thing that grows down there is mold. can everyone keep cows or chickens? definitely not. my family lives in a semi-rural, semi-suburban area and we still can't have any kind of animal that would be found on a farm. not that our neighbors would complain, but our town is all up in everyone's face about stupid zoning regulations and whatnot. they regularly complain about the size of sheds, outdoor clothes drying racks, and things like that. so a greenhouse? def a no-no without expensive permits and inspections. we also tried to grow our own fruit trees down by the lake in order to make use of all of our space and produce more of what we needed...but the beavers got to them and now they're gone! so what's a girl to do?
this post from natural living mama has a lot of good suggestions for living sustainably in a small space, but not all of them are feasible for everyone. some suggestions are brilliant, others are common sense, and others are just not doable for our family at this point. i wish i could dry clothes outside (even if my neighbors don't complain, and i suspect they won't, we live in cave cricket territory and i just can't deal with jumpy spiders all up in my tank tops) or cloth diaper, but i can't. but growing our own food and preserving it for later? yeah, we can do that, to some extent at least. we also try to buy produce in season in bulk at the farmer's market when we can. we also grow a lot of our own produce. that way we can have local, mostly organic produce year-round. we usually bulk freeze, since i don't really know how to can (learning is one my to-do list, but it's been there for the past 5 years or so...), so we can have things like veggies and garden-fresh tomato sauce year-round. when the sauce thaws in a saucepan, it makes the whole house smell like summer.
another thing we started last year is a second garden at my folks' house. we had run out of space in our tiny garden and needed someplace else to plant things. they live only about a mile down the road and had a nice spot in their side yard where they used to have a horseshoe pit (it hadn't been used in years). the space they had there was easily double what we had at home. so we fenced it off and grew all of the things that we had always wanted to try. the first year was trial and error, and some things didn't grow well. we had to learn about how much sun the spot got and how the soil was. one of the most important things that i learned from joel salatin's awesome book you can farm is that lots of other people have extra space that they don't need or want to use, and would like to see it used for something but don't want tot do it themselves. all you need to do is ask but usually nobody does. sometimes, like in my case, you don't even have to pay a cent. my folks get some extra corn and tomatoes and also their neighbors all suddenly become more social because they like to see what's going on in the garden!
some other sustainable practices, like composting can be implemented anywhere. there are small, cute composting buckets that can be purchased or made and can sit on your kitchen counter. they run the gamut from cheapie to top of the line fancified but are mostly pretty affordable. at our house, we have a big plastic bin outside the front door and we just open up the door and toss everything in, which works for us because it's super easy. once it's broken down we transfer it into a compost tumbler we ended up with via the barter system, but this is by no means necessary! do what works for you and your family.
some of my favorite resources for "green" and sustainable living are grit and mother earth news magazines. however, many of their suggestions are specific to rural areas (like the articles on animal husbandry and large farm tractors). that's nice, but not for everyone. but a ton of their tips and recipes are super useful and can be used anywhere. they occasionally include articles on things like passive solar design and using scavenged/re-claimed materials to build new homes, which is especially useful if you yourself are designing a new home. they also have a ton of articles on garden planning and specific fruits and vegetables, and their online archives are excellent.
i'm also a big fan of the Your Green Resource link-up over at Sorta Crunchy blog.  it's usually chock full of things that are actually doable (i know, because real regular people do them!) like making your own homemade instant oatmeal and recipes for using all the stuff your CSA sends you. the regular, non-linky posts are pretty informative too.
here's to helping you green up your life in ways that work for you! cheers!

what i've been doing (and loving) lately, through some links

so i've been gone for a little bit. i needed some recharging. to be honest, i still do. hubs and i are still in the thick of trying to sell our house and to be honest, keeping the house spotless most of the time is exhausting. we had a showing yesterday, and came home to find our closets open, which was a real eye-opener. obviously people want to know that there's closet space, but my closet is the least organized place in the entire world, and it really freaks me out that people now know that! i mean, there are suitcases, overnight bags, a huge army bag full of unused purses, a million pairs of shoes, boxes of pictures, besides the ton of clothes...i may have to seriously tackle that area soon. i like to think that closets are the last bastion of privacy, but i guess i'll have to swap that out for my car or something.
i've also been cooking a lot lately. one recipe of note that you must try immediately is joy the baker's french onion soup sandwiches. they were amazingly delicious and i used the perfect gruyere from calkins creamery, which i picked up at the warwick valley farmer's market that just re-opened for the season (we've already been there quite a few times, and the hard cider man gives us a discount whenever we go)!
also i love joy the baker's lovely post on what she's learned in 30 years. i have 3 left to go but i doubt i'll take in all the necessary knowledge in that short time!
also, and though i know i never wear them, i've been thinking about buying a pair of jeans lately for vacation. i have like, one pair that i wear occasionally, but i HATE HATE HATE jeans shopping. it is even worse for me than bathing suit shopping. luckily, this lovely, informative post about denim from the inside out style blog has given me the proper info with which to equip myself on my journey.
we have been doing a ton of family gardening around here whenever it isn't raining (which right now seems like never, since it's currently raining AGAIN), as we have a smaller garden at home a a larger one about a mile away at my folks' house. this is super exciting and i can't wait for fresh produce and of course blue ribbons from the fair. my lettuce just started popping and we already have a little watermelon sprout, as well as some pepper and tomato plants and a bunch of herbs and whatnot. i always love the garden, and this year we could even put stenni to work helping use move rocks...truly a family affair!
anyway i'm back now and hope to post at least semi-regularly, at least until vacation!

make yourself useful and...

start planning your garden.
spring is here. i know it is. it doesn't say so on the calendar, but it's like 70 degrees out and they've started to send seed and garden catalogs. oh, and every store is selling bathing suits and flip flops. we usually start some of our seeds this weekend (St. Patrick's Day, for all you non-Irish) every year, and this year will be no different.
so what are you waiting for? start planning your garden TODAY.
if you've never had a garden, i'm talking especially to you. (if you have, you'll know what i'm talking about already.) there are literally hundreds of reasons to keep a garden, but for me, it boils down to about 3 really big ones.

1. you'll know where your food is coming from. with all the GMO's and pesticides and other assorted gross things that your food can be/come in contact with, it's more important than ever to know about your food. this could include buying local and/or organic or just from people and companies you trust, making more things yourself at home, and yes, planting a garden. you'll know exactly what goes in and what comes out, because you'll be the one in control. that is a rarity these days, folks.
2. you can get some sun and some exercise. depending on the size of your garden, you may get a lot of exercise. stooping, weeding, picking, pruning, squatting, and digging is a lot of hard work. like, skip the treadmill hard.
   
3. you can save some serious dough. have you ever bought a little package of fresh basil in the supermarket? you can buy like 3 basil plants for that same price and have it all season long. and that is just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. i make "gourmet" local, organic sauce that would cost $5-$7 bucks a jar at the supermarket or farmer's market. then i use it or freeze it to thaw out later on and make my house smell like the summer in february. you can't put a price on that.
   

so make a list of what you need to start a little garden. if you think you don't have the room, you're lying to yourself. all you need is a window. sure, a windowbox is better, a patio or balcony is better still, and a yard? well then you're a lucky duck. because you can grow enough food in a little plot in the yard to save you hundreds of bucks and keep you and another person in fresh salsa (or salads) throughout the summer. when i started gardening, i had a total black thumb. my husband (who was then my boyfriend) built me a windowbox full of fun herbs...rosemary and lemonbalm and maybe catnip for my cats. i killed it within a week and a half, and hubs was super disappointed (his family has always kept a large garden). but eventually i learned what plants were the easiest to keep alive/hardest to kill, and started off small. things like mint take over everything and are super hard to kill, so they may be easiest to start with.
anyway, my point is i started out terrible at gardening, and now as a couple we win a few blue ribbons at the state fair for our produce every year. it's not as hard as it seems.
so besides the space, what else do you need to start? seeds or small plants, which can be had from any discount, dollar, hardware, or garden store or through a number of reputable websites and catalogs, and a small seed starting kit (ditto), plus some seed starting mix or potting soil. oh, and gloves, if you've got nice nails (i don't). you can grab some basic tools (such as trowels, watering cans, etc.) for about a buck a piece at any dollar store or you can use stuff you've already got around the house (or you could go for broke and buy good ones, if you know you'll use them). then just decide what you want to plant and get to work. read the back of the seed packet to see what the proper conditions for the plant should be (full-or partial sunlight, for example, or how frequently to water), and a little research on the internet or in a gardening book about the plant in question couldn't hurt. a little time planning can save you hours of grief later.
in smaller gardens, you may just want to plant what you can fit. herbs are especially good for small spaces, as well as some kinds of lettuce. if you have a bigger space where you can fit a few pots, try tomatoes, strawberries, bell or hot peppers, or "bush" varieties of cucumbers or beans. with much larger spaces, you can use your imagination and try planting almost anything that grows in your area. we recently added onto our garden and began planting more root vegetables, corn, sunflowers, and asparagus than we could before.

anyway, here's a few links to get your research started (or you could just look at the pictures and long for spring. your choice.):
GRIT is a magazine that is full of "rural American know-how" but has immensely helped this subarbanite (who btw lives on 1/10 of an acre) learn about gardening, composting, and cooking, among other things.
herbkits.com may sound a little sketchy, but they sell very space-efficient stacking planters in which you can grow several different things at once.
hgtv actually has a pretty useful site that covers topics like container gardens and raised bed gardens, among other things.

so get outside and get moving.

also, i know it's not monday. it's thursday. oops.sorry.