For so many people, having a homestead to call their own is a dream. But even if you own a property, the prospect of actually living that life can be overwhelming, even frightening, if you didn’t grow up that way.
Let’s face it; most of us are so used to living “in the box” that modern society puts us in that we wouldn’t know where to start.
Raising animals, growing your own food, being more self-sufficient, and generally getting back to a simpler way of life sounds easy on paper — but only on paper.
These are skills that must be learned and refined with practice. Having to do it all at once? It seems impossible, and that’s enough to deter so many from even trying.
Don’t give in to that: I’m here to tell you that not only is it possible to start micro-homesteading right now, where you are, but it’s a lot easier and less stressful than you might be thinking. And I promise you’ll have a good time doing it. Keep reading, and I’ll tell you how.
What is Micro-Homesteading, Anyway?
Micro homesteading is exactly what it sounds like: homesteading in a very small space, or if you prefer to think of it differently on a very small scale.
Micro homesteads might be typically sized suburban plots of an acre or even a half acre, or even less. Or a micro homestead might be a single backyard in a row of townhomes!
Ultimately, anywhere there is enough space to implement self-sufficiency practices there is enough room for you to make it into a micro homestead.
A Homestead Doesn’t Have to Be a Huge Hobby Farm
Social media, I think, has done a lot more harm to humanity than good…
I’ll skip the rant, but just talking about homesteading here: anytime you see viral posts or search for it on any of the big social media platforms, you’ll invariably find people who are documenting their life living on big, gorgeous, well-outfitted farm properties.
Many of these farm properties were not built over time, not made by the people that live on them. They were bought lock, stock, and barrel, including the big herds of animals. Plenty of these people even hire folks to work the land and manage the properties.
That’s fine; they can do whatever they want with their money and lives, but to me, that’s not homesteading. Homesteaders do things themselves. The whole point of it is to become more self-reliant and self-sufficient. Accordingly, you don’t need millions of dollars for a property like this.
Why Should You Try Micro-Homesteading?
Well, there are two good reasons why you should try it…
The first is that you simply don’t have the room you’d like to have, or you don’t have access to the homestead property of your dreams just yet. There’s nothing wrong with that!
Instead of waiting for “someday,” that is indeterminate, or for a perfect solution when good enough will suffice, start doing the things you would do on that property right where you are. It will make a big difference in your happiness, I promise!
Another great reason to try micro homesteading is if you aren’t 100%, and I mean completely, sure if homesteading is right for you.
Sad to say I know more than a few folks who sold everything and bet the farm, quite literally, on starting up their dreamed-about homestead from scratch, and were devastated when they found out that the lifestyle simply was not what they expected it to be – and then they were left with no way out!
Starting a micro homestead, chores and all, right where you are will allow you an exit plan to drop it and go back to the way things were in case you don’t like it.
What if You Don’t Own Property?
Here’s another big roadblock for would-be homesteaders: they rent. Whether you are renting a house, apartment, condo, or any other kind of habitation, it’s easy to feel like you are simply a cog in the machine at this point. Why even try to take radical ownership of your lifeways when you don’t even own your own home?
Newsflash: you still can if you want to. The only considerations are the guidelines in your lease or rental agreement. Obviously, you aren’t going to be raising cows in a condo, or at least I hope you weren’t. But if you rent a home with a backyard, you can still garden, right?
“Oh ho, not so fast!”, I hear you say. “There’s actually a byline that I can’t dig up the surface of the yard in my rental agreement, so I guess I’ve just got to give up on my dreams!” Not hardly.
Maybe you can’t dig up and install a garden in a yard that you don’t own, but could you put in raised beds? Before you say no, did you even ask your landlord?
And if that’s a no, you could still garden in containers without touching the ground at all. You can buy an arch or trellis for vertical gardening. Where there is a will, there is a way.
What if You Only Have a Small Property?
Then you are ready to go! I can tell you one thing: if you’ve never done it before, you truly won’t believe what’s possible on just an acre of land, or even a half-acre.
Using optimized gardening and agricultural techniques, and intensive livestock techniques, even a single acre can supply many families with all the food they will need. A half-acre can keep you, your entire extended family, and all of your neighbors well supplied.
You don’t have to do all that, of course, but it illustrates my point. You don’t need some sprawling estate to call yourself a homesteader. Heck, even a large backyard is sufficient for most families.
The Best Ways to Micro-Homestead
The following skills are something anybody can do, or learn to do, with even a little bit of spare room to work with. Each of them is a good way to start increasing your self-sufficiency and competency in various ways.
Container Gardening
One of the best and easiest ways to learn how to grow plants, of all kinds, is in containers.
These are portable, cheap, easy to reposition, and give you a host of advantages, like easier control over soil conditions and the ability to save your plants from rough weather or other incidental damage that they couldn’t avoid if planted in the ground.
A small, 10’x10’ patio is enough room to grow tomato plants and a whole lot more with the right techniques.
A great skill for micro-homesteaders because it makes growing easy and versatile. You could even do it on an apartment balcony if you wanted to!
Vertical Gardening
Vertical gardening is exactly what it sounds like: taking advantage of vertical space to grow plants. This can be done traditionally with trellises, arches, or espalier techniques (growing plants up a wall or fence), or you can use vertical racks to hold smaller containers.
A big part of homesteading is often maximizing what space you have available, and for small parcels, vertical gardening pays dividends. A linear space of 5 free feet can yield more than 35 square feet of useable growing space with this approach and the right structure.
Raised Garden Beds
Another favorite of gardeners who deal with low-quality soil or just those who don’t want to stoop over to care for their plants, raised beds basically function like huge, immobile containers.
By using raised beds you’ll have much better control over soil composition and nutritional levels and generally have an easier time dealing with pests and other chores.
Raised beds can also be a good choice for folks that, for whatever reason, cannot dig in or process the soil or ground of their property.
Backyard Chicken Coop
This is how most homesteaders, including me, got their start! If you’ve ever driven past a chicken farm and think that you can only keep chickens if you have some huge, barn-like structure for them, you are dead wrong.
A modest chicken coop will let you keep and enjoy chickens, and their eggs. It’s a great way to start learning the skills needed for their care.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money on it, either; if keeping just three or four birds, a decent coop for them will barely be bigger than a full-size shopping cart!
Backyard Rabbits
Another good choice for micro-scale livestock is rabbits. However, this is one you should think about if your family members, especially kids, will only see them as pets and not products.
Rabbits reproduce very quickly, are easy to care for once you understand their diet, and can be a dependable, ongoing source of meat and fur.
Rain Catching
Catching rainfall is the best hedge against drought or contamination of your usual water supplies, and something that can be implemented anywhere in a whole host of ways.
A simple rain collection system can easily and cheaply be retrofitted to your existing gutters on your home and then directed into one or more rain barrels or other containers.
Repair Skills
A big part of homesteading is taking care of all the problems, great and small, that we usually outsource to skilled professionals at significant cost. These are skills you can practice anytime, anywhere, when something stops working!
First, try to figure it out yourself if it can be done so safely. If not, hop on the Internet or crack open a book and seek the solution.
Most problems, even expensive ones, can be fixed far more quickly and cheaply than you would imagine! Once you start with this, there’s no going back; you’ll be saving a bundle and will be more confident than ever.
Craft Skills
Learning how to craft the things you need is the complementary skill set to repair. Make simple goods like replacement parts for furniture or fencing, leather tack and harness, knitted goods, cleaner, and anything else you can think of is something that most families had to do as a usual part of life.
If you already have a crafty skill as a hobby, you are halfway there. If you don’t, now’s the time to start.
Solar Power
Almost nothing has been a bigger boon for homesteaders than the advent of commercially viable solar power systems.
Whether you just want to get off the grid entirely or keep your home running even when civic power is out, solar is a great way to do it and very adaptable as long as your local climate supports it.
You can start small with a panel or two and a battery system that can run essential equipment and expand as you learn and want to go bigger.
Rooftop systems are the standard for convenience, appearance and maximizing space on your property, but freestanding systems or even “fold-outs” that you can set up on a porch, patio or as an awning are worth looking at, too.
Composting
Every gardener’s best friend is black, rich compost. Compost is made from organic material like yard waste and various kinds of food scraps from your own kitchen.
Adding nitrogen and carbon components in the right ratios, and keeping the pile moist and warm, means that in a few months, you’ll have some of the best all-natural fertilizer you can get.
Composting is easy once you understand the principles behind it, and can be scaled to work with any space and any size garden – even if your garden is just a few pots!
Consider that you can start a good compost bin using a common 5-gallon plastic bucket and some kitchen scraps; the perfect complement to a small patio container garden mentioned above.
Herb Gardening
Another great way to get into gardening generally is to start growing your own herbs. This is a high-payoff approach because herbs have lots of uses in your kitchen and also health-boosting and holistic treatment applications.
Herbs can be grown easily in containers, and also easily grown indoors. Basil, oregano, dill, mint and cilantro are all great, versatile herbs that are a cinch to grow in containers, even by a kitchen window.
Canning
Raising your own food is one thing. Preserving it is another. For generation upon generation, at-home canning has been the go-to method for preservation, with good reason. You can can vegetables, fruits, meat, broth, soup, juice, and more.
It’s easier than you might be thinking but requires strict adherence to proper procedure. If you’ve got a working kitchen in your home, you’ve got everything else you need once you get the canning kit and some jars.
If you are brand new, start with water-bath canning: it is a cheaper and quicker way to get going.
Acetification
Acetification is a fancy term for a simple art: that of turning alcohol into vinegar. Sure, you can buy your own vinegar at the store, but the stuff you can make yourself is healthier, tastier, and has much-improved characteristics as an all-natural, safe cleaner around the homestead.
Our great-great-grandparents used it all the time for a reason!
Most homesteaders learn to make apple cider vinegar at home because making it is pretty easy… A few extra steps and a little time are all it takes after that to make the vinegar! Once again, this is a skill that can be practiced in nearly any home.
Beekeeping
Beekeeping can be dreadfully intimidating if you’ve ever been stung before, but it’s one of the best things you can do for your property and neighboring properties.
Bees are critical pollinators, as their very presence dramatically boosts the health and productivity of all flowering plants that they can reach. Plus, keeping bees means you’ll get access to delicious, valuable honey!
A single hive box requires little in terms of investment and doesn’t require much room: about 5×5 feet at a minimum so you have room to work around it, but 7×7 is better if you can spare it.
You should also try to keep it at least 10 feet from your home to minimize “traffic” issues with bees coming and going.
But think things through before you commit: a beehive can be pretty darn scary or even dangerous to people and pets, so check your local laws and check in with nearby neighbors before you go all in.
Soapmaking
Soap has been with mankind for a very, very long time. But have you ever wondered how we got it when we couldn’t just buy it at the store? It turns out it’s just another thing we used to make ourselves.
Fat and lye are really all you need to make soap that will get you dependably clean, but learning to make moisturizing, pleasantly fragranced soap is an art form. It’s also one that homesteaders can turn into a nice side hustle or even a full-time business!
Learning to make your own soap is a wonderful way to cut down on the creepy chemicals that we constantly douse ourselves in.
Seed Saving
Seed saving is exactly what it says: the practice of keeping seeds from the plants that you grow.
Healthy, highly productive plants or lineages should be preserved and stored for future plantings and, once you are skilled enough, crossbreeding or other experimentation. It’s easy, but learning how to properly handle, prepare, and store them requires specialist know-how.
If you’re growing plants in containers, or in any other way, you should practice harvesting and preserving seeds from them as you go so you’ll be ready to replant next year.
Upcycling and Repurposing
I have no doubt you’ve heard the old saying: make do or do without. I know tons of homesteaders, myself included, that live by this mantra. Accordingly, many of us pride ourselves on repurposing, recycling, or “upcycling” – taking things that would be thrown away and making them useful once again.
For instance, instead of trashing the old tires off of your vehicle, you might put them to work as climbing toys for your goats.
An old cable spool could be saved from the landfill and turned into a useful, sturdy, and charming table. Old pallets can be turned into a good chicken coop, and so on and so forth.
This is more of a mindset change than anything else, but crafty DIY’ers can make some really amazing stuff from what other people would call junk!
Buying and Selling at Your Local Farmer’s Market
Upon reaching the end of this list, assuming you’ve picked out several skills to start implementing, it’s time to start making connections and wheeling and dealing at your local farmers’ market.
It’s a great way to connect with like-minded people, build real community with the folks that live around you, and hopefully make a little money for all of your hard work. Getting a return off of your land and your labors, even if it’s something you enjoy doing, is really the homesteader way!
Get your gift and learn things like:
- how to make this really quick pest spray
- how to prevent egg waste
- two cheap automation devices that will make your life easier
Tom has lived and worked on farms and homesteads from the Carolinas to Kentucky and beyond. He is passionate about helping people prepare for tough times by embracing lifestyles of self-sufficiency.