Learn to make homemade stuff. DIY, crafts, cooking, gardening, chickens, and small homestead projects.
Oh my, how far she’s come! When we first bought this home back in the summer of 2013, she was a blank slate. A couple of mature trees, a few useless mismatched shrubs in odd locations, a front and back yard full of crabgrass “lawn”, and side yards with bare dirt. We were essentially blank slates ourselves too. I have an education in sustainability and environmental studies, and we’d casually puttered with a couple small raised garden beds in rental homes in the past, but aside from that – we had little to no knowledge or experience with building, landscaping, or homesteading! I don’t think either of us even knew what that concept was when we started this journey. Nor did we intentionally set out to do it. Yet with minds full of ideas, (home)bodies that don’t like to sit still, and a passion for being outside, we consequently have poured most of our free time, energy, love, and very modest disposable income in to transforming all of our outdoor spaces, little by little, from lifeless “yards” into flourishing and purposeful edible and medicinal gardens… …an urban food forest, I like to call it. Before we knew it, our home had become a homestead – a living thing that feeds not only our bodies, but our minds and souls too. Here, we grow and preserve about 85% of the produce we consume, raise chickens (as dear friends who happen to also provide eggs!), and pursue sustainable living practices like rain water capture and several methods of composting. We share our indoor space with 33 house plants and 3 kitties – Quincy, Dalai, and Bodhi Moon. We dream, sweat, collaborate, compromise, relax, laugh, and love here. Most times, there is no where we’d rather be. In essence, we have created our own paradise, and it’s a paradise for local wildlife too! In 2018, our property became an official Monarch Waystation as well as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. You can find a full video of the property to follow. Located just about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, we reside in a small beach town in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast of California. Known as “SLO Cal”, not SoCal. There is big difference between here and there! This area is fairly rural, with a handful of modest-sized towns surrounded by vineyards, beaches, farmland, and open rolling hills. We are right on the border of USDA gardening zone 9b and 10a. But unlike most similarly-numbered zones, it is very temperate and doesn’t get hot here often. This area is considered a Mediterranean climate, though being only one mile inland from the ocean, our summers are quite foggy. We actually struggle (or don’t even attempt!) to grow certain heat-loving crops like corn, melons, or fat heirloom tomatoes. Frost and freezing is also very rare here. I know, I know… we are spoiled rotten. Though an ideal climate sure does help, it is not necessary to have a thriving garden! The gardens aren’t the only thing that makes our homestead special. Our town isn’t quite “urban”, and we definitely are not in suburbia, but we are surrounded by neighbors. However, our property is tucked back away from the street, located behind another property and only accessed by a long private driveway – leading to our little secret garden. A decent yard was a MUST when we were house shopping. You can image how absolutely giddy and blessed we felt when we came across this property that virtually had two private yards, the front yard doubling like a second backyard. With a very tight budget in an extremely competitive market, this was a shining diamond in the rough for us! I knew where I wanted the chicken coop right away, and the rest transpired and evolved with time. Before you go getting too heart-eyed, overwhelmed, or green with envy (please, don’t!) over photos of our garden, remember to keep scrolling and take a peek at the collection of before and after photos at the very bottom of this page also! These are some of my favorite things to share on Instagram; they help people to see how – with a little time, energy, and love – a perfectly average, even boring space can be completely transformed into something magical. Also keep in mind that this did NOT happen overnight! We have tackled one or two large projects per year, over the last five years. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it! If you haven’t yet started creating your dream garden, you may enjoy this read ~ “How to Start a Garden: 101” If you desire to, you can do this too! I believe in you. Homestead Specs: Our property itself is a modest .2 acres – approximately 9,000 square feet – but that number also includes our long driveway. The house itself is fairly small, at just under 1300 square feet, and that’s perfectly okay for us. Less house means more outdoor space! We had never really measured and taken inventory of our individual yard spaces, so we just popped outside to do so! Here is the verdict: The front yard garden is 2,430 square feet. A couple hundred square feet of planting space was just added here in the fall of 2018, when we removed a portion of the driveway, and a whole mountain of useless pest-infested ice plant, expanding the yard into its place. In terms of edibles, the current residents of the front yard include: two avocado trees, a fuyu persimmon tree, two pineapple guavas, a strawberry and lemon guava, a dwarf weeping mulberry tree, four fig trees, a loquat tree, three passionfruit vines, two blueberry bushes, and various rotating veggie crops amongst the five raised beds and handful of wine barrels used for planting. That doesn’t include the plethora of other perennials, herbs, and annuals – some for medicinal purposes, some for the pollinators, a few simply there for the pretty. A 140-gallon rain barrel is hooked up on the front porch to collect a small portion of our captured rain water, with the monarch enclosure nearby. The L-shaped backyard garden is 1,780 sq feet. Here resides the patio garden: our concrete patio that is now surrounded by five raised beds, fully enclosed with trellises attached to the yard-side of the beds designed to keep the otherwise free-ranging chickens excluded from this space. The archway leading to the rest of the back yard is covered with evergreen passionfruit vines, creating even more of a verdant courtyard vibe. On the patio, we use dozens of containers to grow everything from cacti to pineapple guava to cannabis and a dwarf Fuji espalier apple tree. Heading out through the passionfruit arch, you find yourself in the “chicken yard”. Basically, the spoiled-you-know-what chickens get free range of the backyard all day, while instead we strategically fence off and protect certain areas of it, like the stone raised pollinator island. We call it “Stoney Island”. In this backyard area, we were fortunate enough to have several mature fruit trees in place when we moved in: a Meyer lemon, an Anna apple, a mandarin orange, and a pomelo – like a white grapefruit. We have also added a fig, lime, kumquat, finger lime, and second meyer lemon tree to this space. Turning left from the pollinator island into the next section of the L-shape backyard, you’ll find what we call the “coop garden” area – four large raised beds near our chicken coop. As you can see, it is also strategically fenced to prevent access from the winged monsters, err… I mean sweet dear beloved chickens. This garden space is along a south-facing wall – maximizing sun exposure along with radiant heat – an ideal orientation for gardening if you live in the Northern Hemisphere like we do. Beyond the chicken coop to the left is a long, narrow, 550 square foot side yard. This once all-dirt barren space now houses so many productive and important things: the chicken run, a 6×8’ greenhouse in which we start all of our garden seedlings in, a milkweed nursery to support our monarch butterfly fostering passion, a large compost bin that can be used passively or turned into an active hot pile, a massive passionfruit vine that doubles as a privacy screen, and two large 530-gallon slimline rain capture tanks, bringing our total rainwater capacity to 1200 gallons! On the opposite side of the house, there is another smaller side yard where a few homestead essentials are stored – a couple modest storage sheds, a homemade potting bench, and the small-but-mighty worm bin. So, as you can probably gather, we try to make good use of every single inch! Every space, no matter how small, holds unlimited potential ~ you just need to look past what is already there and think outside the box. One day we hope to have a larger property and even more space to grow and play – I want goats, and bees! And a yurt for you all to come visit! A place to hold workshops! – but for now, we are more than fulfilled… and plenty busy! Welcome to our home! Quick overview video tour via Instagram Full video tour via YouTube Before and After Photos *I will work on writing posts about the details of all of these projects, including the steps we took, materials used, and lessons learned! The Evolution of the Front Yard Garden The Evolution of the Backyard Garden
If hanging out in a greenhouse and garden all summer is your vibe — hit the follow button. Our greenhouse that we built ourselves on the homestead is one of our favorite DIY builds. It’s a...
My name is Allison Vallin Kostovick, and I’ve been an organic gardener in Maine for the past 20 years. Over that time, I’ve slowly been on a quest to create my very own secret garden nestled among the woods.
In step 2 of Your Custom Homestead Jill Winger (www.ThePrairieHomestead.com) urges you to consider your reasons and motivation for wanting a homestead. This is something that I have thought about for years, and something that keeps growing as I learn more about myself. My personal motivations and aspirations have also evolved as a result of meeting and marrying my husband, and more recently, after having a daughter. The vision I have of our creative life on a homestead is rooted in my longing for a simple life living close to the earth. I want to live in beauty and create beauty. In the quiet of nature, I find peace. I want to share that peace with my family, friends, and those who need the tonic of nature. I want to wake up and start my day outside, breathing fresh air and wiggling my toes in soil and grass. I want to sleep to the gentle sounds of peepers, birds, and barn animals. I want to grow food to nourish myself and my family. I want homegrown and handmade feasts outdoors under a big tree. I want to rely on money less and my two hands more. I want our daughter to develop a relationship with mother earth through direct experiences like sleeping in a meadow and scanning the sky for shooting stars until she can't keep her eyes open anymore. I want to create beautiful useful things that will be employed in our daily lives, like clothes, candles, soap, art, and pottery and then teach others to tap into their own creative energies to bring authenticity and meaning into their own lives too. I want to celebrate every day. I want a home to pass down to our daughter. I could go on and on, but one more simple reason to have a homestead is that it will be so much FUN. Why do YOU want a homestead? Tell me here. Let's create a community of inspiration and encouragement. I will cheer you on with each step you take. "Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive." Living a creative life on a homestead makes me come alive.
We are excited to bring you along for the journey. On this blog you will find a ton of posts about goats, gardening and homesteading. We wanted to let other people know that you don't have to have hundreds of acres, tons of livestock or even generations of knowledge. We wanted our blog to be
a beautiful solution to keep pests out of our lettuce
3 reasons our chickens love dandelions 🌼🐔 1️⃣ They’re a great source of calcium which is important for your chickens to lay strong eggs 🥚 2️⃣ The carotenoids in the dandelion plant improve...
Oh my, how far she’s come! When we first bought this home back in the summer of 2013, she was a blank slate. A couple of mature trees, a few useless mismatched shrubs in odd locations, a front and back yard full of crabgrass “lawn”, and side yards with bare dirt. We were essentially blank slates ourselves too. I have an education in sustainability and environmental studies, and we’d casually puttered with a couple small raised garden beds in rental homes in the past, but aside from that – we had little to no knowledge or experience with building, landscaping, or homesteading! I don’t think either of us even knew what that concept was when we started this journey. Nor did we intentionally set out to do it. Yet with minds full of ideas, (home)bodies that don’t like to sit still, and a passion for being outside, we consequently have poured most of our free time, energy, love, and very modest disposable income in to transforming all of our outdoor spaces, little by little, from lifeless “yards” into flourishing and purposeful edible and medicinal gardens… …an urban food forest, I like to call it. Before we knew it, our home had become a homestead – a living thing that feeds not only our bodies, but our minds and souls too. Here, we grow and preserve about 85% of the produce we consume, raise chickens (as dear friends who happen to also provide eggs!), and pursue sustainable living practices like rain water capture and several methods of composting. We share our indoor space with 33 house plants and 3 kitties – Quincy, Dalai, and Bodhi Moon. We dream, sweat, collaborate, compromise, relax, laugh, and love here. Most times, there is no where we’d rather be. In essence, we have created our own paradise, and it’s a paradise for local wildlife too! In 2018, our property became an official Monarch Waystation as well as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. You can find a full video of the property to follow. Located just about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, we reside in a small beach town in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast of California. Known as “SLO Cal”, not SoCal. There is big difference between here and there! This area is fairly rural, with a handful of modest-sized towns surrounded by vineyards, beaches, farmland, and open rolling hills. We are right on the border of USDA gardening zone 9b and 10a. But unlike most similarly-numbered zones, it is very temperate and doesn’t get hot here often. This area is considered a Mediterranean climate, though being only one mile inland from the ocean, our summers are quite foggy. We actually struggle (or don’t even attempt!) to grow certain heat-loving crops like corn, melons, or fat heirloom tomatoes. Frost and freezing is also very rare here. I know, I know… we are spoiled rotten. Though an ideal climate sure does help, it is not necessary to have a thriving garden! The gardens aren’t the only thing that makes our homestead special. Our town isn’t quite “urban”, and we definitely are not in suburbia, but we are surrounded by neighbors. However, our property is tucked back away from the street, located behind another property and only accessed by a long private driveway – leading to our little secret garden. A decent yard was a MUST when we were house shopping. You can image how absolutely giddy and blessed we felt when we came across this property that virtually had two private yards, the front yard doubling like a second backyard. With a very tight budget in an extremely competitive market, this was a shining diamond in the rough for us! I knew where I wanted the chicken coop right away, and the rest transpired and evolved with time. Before you go getting too heart-eyed, overwhelmed, or green with envy (please, don’t!) over photos of our garden, remember to keep scrolling and take a peek at the collection of before and after photos at the very bottom of this page also! These are some of my favorite things to share on Instagram; they help people to see how – with a little time, energy, and love – a perfectly average, even boring space can be completely transformed into something magical. Also keep in mind that this did NOT happen overnight! We have tackled one or two large projects per year, over the last five years. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it! If you haven’t yet started creating your dream garden, you may enjoy this read ~ “How to Start a Garden: 101” If you desire to, you can do this too! I believe in you. Homestead Specs: Our property itself is a modest .2 acres – approximately 9,000 square feet – but that number also includes our long driveway. The house itself is fairly small, at just under 1300 square feet, and that’s perfectly okay for us. Less house means more outdoor space! We had never really measured and taken inventory of our individual yard spaces, so we just popped outside to do so! Here is the verdict: The front yard garden is 2,430 square feet. A couple hundred square feet of planting space was just added here in the fall of 2018, when we removed a portion of the driveway, and a whole mountain of useless pest-infested ice plant, expanding the yard into its place. In terms of edibles, the current residents of the front yard include: two avocado trees, a fuyu persimmon tree, two pineapple guavas, a strawberry and lemon guava, a dwarf weeping mulberry tree, four fig trees, a loquat tree, three passionfruit vines, two blueberry bushes, and various rotating veggie crops amongst the five raised beds and handful of wine barrels used for planting. That doesn’t include the plethora of other perennials, herbs, and annuals – some for medicinal purposes, some for the pollinators, a few simply there for the pretty. A 140-gallon rain barrel is hooked up on the front porch to collect a small portion of our captured rain water, with the monarch enclosure nearby. The L-shaped backyard garden is 1,780 sq feet. Here resides the patio garden: our concrete patio that is now surrounded by five raised beds, fully enclosed with trellises attached to the yard-side of the beds designed to keep the otherwise free-ranging chickens excluded from this space. The archway leading to the rest of the back yard is covered with evergreen passionfruit vines, creating even more of a verdant courtyard vibe. On the patio, we use dozens of containers to grow everything from cacti to pineapple guava to cannabis and a dwarf Fuji espalier apple tree. Heading out through the passionfruit arch, you find yourself in the “chicken yard”. Basically, the spoiled-you-know-what chickens get free range of the backyard all day, while instead we strategically fence off and protect certain areas of it, like the stone raised pollinator island. We call it “Stoney Island”. In this backyard area, we were fortunate enough to have several mature fruit trees in place when we moved in: a Meyer lemon, an Anna apple, a mandarin orange, and a pomelo – like a white grapefruit. We have also added a fig, lime, kumquat, finger lime, and second meyer lemon tree to this space. Turning left from the pollinator island into the next section of the L-shape backyard, you’ll find what we call the “coop garden” area – four large raised beds near our chicken coop. As you can see, it is also strategically fenced to prevent access from the winged monsters, err… I mean sweet dear beloved chickens. This garden space is along a south-facing wall – maximizing sun exposure along with radiant heat – an ideal orientation for gardening if you live in the Northern Hemisphere like we do. Beyond the chicken coop to the left is a long, narrow, 550 square foot side yard. This once all-dirt barren space now houses so many productive and important things: the chicken run, a 6×8’ greenhouse in which we start all of our garden seedlings in, a milkweed nursery to support our monarch butterfly fostering passion, a large compost bin that can be used passively or turned into an active hot pile, a massive passionfruit vine that doubles as a privacy screen, and two large 530-gallon slimline rain capture tanks, bringing our total rainwater capacity to 1200 gallons! On the opposite side of the house, there is another smaller side yard where a few homestead essentials are stored – a couple modest storage sheds, a homemade potting bench, and the small-but-mighty worm bin. So, as you can probably gather, we try to make good use of every single inch! Every space, no matter how small, holds unlimited potential ~ you just need to look past what is already there and think outside the box. One day we hope to have a larger property and even more space to grow and play – I want goats, and bees! And a yurt for you all to come visit! A place to hold workshops! – but for now, we are more than fulfilled… and plenty busy! Welcome to our home! Quick overview video tour via Instagram Full video tour via YouTube Before and After Photos *I will work on writing posts about the details of all of these projects, including the steps we took, materials used, and lessons learned! The Evolution of the Front Yard Garden The Evolution of the Backyard Garden
Yearning for a deeper connection to your food, the environment, and yourself? Homesteading might be your answer. This guide explores self-sufficiency through gardening, raising chickens, DIY projects, and more.
One of my promises last June was to share more of my experiences as an urban homesteader and today I’d like to extend an invitation to take a virtual walk around our city lot. Yes, we are indeed urban; we don’t own a ranch or sprawling acreage. We have neighbours on two sides, and a street in front...
Garden Rehab Phase 3- As part of our garden rehab we went shopping last weekend at Edwards Nursery, which has an amazing assortment of plants. While we do buy some plants at big box stores I really like to go to smaller nurseries that have more variety. I like to mix and match! We went through their perennial section of shade loving plants that can also take some sun. The part of the garden were rehabbing is under our maple tree but does get some filtered light. We decided to go with some different colored flowering and non-flowering plants- "Lemon Frost" Nettle, a "Orchid Frost" Lamium, Pulmonaria "Trevi Fountain", "Bowles Garden" Gold Sedge, a Masterwort "Star of Beauty" a fern Dryopteris filix-mas "Parsley", a "Stained Glass" Hosta. We also found a beautiful small "Ruslyn Pink" Japanese maple tree. Dave planted the dwarf Alberta spruce first. I posted about the 3 large Arbovitae we got from Costco, those went first! We already had some Feather Grasses, 2 Boxwoods and the large Bamboo, we Dave moved. Luckily I worked 4 hours of overtime last weekend and brought in a little extra pay for this, which I don't mind. Will help offset some of the costs of what we've been buying. Leftover hardscaping is going to one of our girls this weekend. Dave will move the boxwood near the coop to the right corner after it's gone. We'll add some bulbs in the fall, I put out some markers, circles cut from a mild jug and stakes- I may choose some Irises and we'll bark dust soon. For a reminder, here's the "before" photos- We moved the listing solar lights Dave will fit the flagstone soon Thrilled the bamboo survived the move! Dave also moved boxwood to the right That's it so far and we love it! I will be building a small fairy house since they requested one! I got idea here one morning channel surfing- High Lumber Prices = Coop Rehab- We thought about rebuilding our Coop and moving it to a different location in our backyard. The coop is over 10 years old and needed some help. Original post here Coop Re-Do 2013 Dave started pricing lumber and talk about sticker shock! I have been hearing on the news that lumber is up about 35%, which is huge! Previously Dave worked in some jobs where he was able to get free lumber but not so much now. We decided to look at what the coop really needed to be repaired. One thing was the floor, an elevated section when you first walk in. The wood was sagging and it was obvious it was time to replace it. I was talking to Dave and thought instead of buying a sheet of plywood what if he could get some kind of scrap wood in short pieces and use it for the floor. Wouldn't you know it! He found free (at work) 2 pallets that are made for shipping very, very, very heavy electric motors. These are not your typical pallets, more like 2" x6"s! He was able to get two free from work! He basically disassembled them using a Sawzall to cut the nails- Dave cutting nails Recently I INSISTED he buy some new sawhorses, much safer, they fold up nicely Nice wood pile Big crack in floor New elevated floor goes in All done! The second part of the rehab of the coop was doing the rest of the floor. We had just had a dirt floor in the coop with the chickens digging in it constantly. One of the problems is they have dug under the edge of the walls, which is weakening the whole structure. Since we had so much hardscaping left form various projects I mentioned to Dave maybe we could just use some of that for the for the coop? The pine shavings would go on top of that. Since the chickens have access to the Garden run year-round there's plenty of dirt for them to dig in there and take dust baths. So Dave started digging out the coop floor including the pine shavings. It was time to clean the coop and add fresh pine shavings anyway so he did it all the same time- Uneven is ok, will be under a thick layer of pine shavings! Chickens had to help dig! I should clarify that Dave is not being coerced into doing projects. Dave loves projects! It was Saturday 8:30 am in the morning and Dave was out digging in the coop! The bricks were free, they came from the edging of our front yard, that came with the house. We replaced with river stone that we got free. I'm just not a fan of brick garden edging. Over the years we've been able to get free river stone from various sources (legally) so we've been replacing the edging around both yards with those. I love the look, very natural. The last thing for the coop was the wood door. When we built the coop I found the old wood door for $10, but now it was really, really warped. I asked Dave what he thought about buying a used storm door that we could use instead. Something aluminum/lightweight that could either be opened or closed depending on the weather. Dave found the door for $15.00 at the Habitat store. The glass panel comes out for the summer, back in the winter. I'll replace the screen soon. We may have to tinker with the glass panel locks and I may paint it later- So the coop re-do TOTAL was $15.00 and a box of nails, pretty good! A lot less that $500.00+ for a new coop! Pond Fun! The ducks have been coming and going, mostly later in the day. I put out some extra wild bird food. They love the small pond! They flew in fast and low over my head 2 days ago before landing in the yard. About gave me a heart attack! So cute though, love them. Nap time
Oh my, how far she’s come! When we first bought this home back in the summer of 2013, she was a blank slate. A couple of mature trees, a few useless mismatched shrubs in odd locations, a front and back yard full of crabgrass “lawn”, and side yards with bare dirt. We were essentially blank slates ourselves too. I have an education in sustainability and environmental studies, and we’d casually puttered with a couple small raised garden beds in rental homes in the past, but aside from that – we had little to no knowledge or experience with building, landscaping, or homesteading! I don’t think either of us even knew what that concept was when we started this journey. Nor did we intentionally set out to do it. Yet with minds full of ideas, (home)bodies that don’t like to sit still, and a passion for being outside, we consequently have poured most of our free time, energy, love, and very modest disposable income in to transforming all of our outdoor spaces, little by little, from lifeless “yards” into flourishing and purposeful edible and medicinal gardens… …an urban food forest, I like to call it. Before we knew it, our home had become a homestead – a living thing that feeds not only our bodies, but our minds and souls too. Here, we grow and preserve about 85% of the produce we consume, raise chickens (as dear friends who happen to also provide eggs!), and pursue sustainable living practices like rain water capture and several methods of composting. We share our indoor space with 33 house plants and 3 kitties – Quincy, Dalai, and Bodhi Moon. We dream, sweat, collaborate, compromise, relax, laugh, and love here. Most times, there is no where we’d rather be. In essence, we have created our own paradise, and it’s a paradise for local wildlife too! In 2018, our property became an official Monarch Waystation as well as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. You can find a full video of the property to follow. Located just about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, we reside in a small beach town in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast of California. Known as “SLO Cal”, not SoCal. There is big difference between here and there! This area is fairly rural, with a handful of modest-sized towns surrounded by vineyards, beaches, farmland, and open rolling hills. We are right on the border of USDA gardening zone 9b and 10a. But unlike most similarly-numbered zones, it is very temperate and doesn’t get hot here often. This area is considered a Mediterranean climate, though being only one mile inland from the ocean, our summers are quite foggy. We actually struggle (or don’t even attempt!) to grow certain heat-loving crops like corn, melons, or fat heirloom tomatoes. Frost and freezing is also very rare here. I know, I know… we are spoiled rotten. Though an ideal climate sure does help, it is not necessary to have a thriving garden! The gardens aren’t the only thing that makes our homestead special. Our town isn’t quite “urban”, and we definitely are not in suburbia, but we are surrounded by neighbors. However, our property is tucked back away from the street, located behind another property and only accessed by a long private driveway – leading to our little secret garden. A decent yard was a MUST when we were house shopping. You can image how absolutely giddy and blessed we felt when we came across this property that virtually had two private yards, the front yard doubling like a second backyard. With a very tight budget in an extremely competitive market, this was a shining diamond in the rough for us! I knew where I wanted the chicken coop right away, and the rest transpired and evolved with time. Before you go getting too heart-eyed, overwhelmed, or green with envy (please, don’t!) over photos of our garden, remember to keep scrolling and take a peek at the collection of before and after photos at the very bottom of this page also! These are some of my favorite things to share on Instagram; they help people to see how – with a little time, energy, and love – a perfectly average, even boring space can be completely transformed into something magical. Also keep in mind that this did NOT happen overnight! We have tackled one or two large projects per year, over the last five years. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it! If you haven’t yet started creating your dream garden, you may enjoy this read ~ “How to Start a Garden: 101” If you desire to, you can do this too! I believe in you. Homestead Specs: Our property itself is a modest .2 acres – approximately 9,000 square feet – but that number also includes our long driveway. The house itself is fairly small, at just under 1300 square feet, and that’s perfectly okay for us. Less house means more outdoor space! We had never really measured and taken inventory of our individual yard spaces, so we just popped outside to do so! Here is the verdict: The front yard garden is 2,430 square feet. A couple hundred square feet of planting space was just added here in the fall of 2018, when we removed a portion of the driveway, and a whole mountain of useless pest-infested ice plant, expanding the yard into its place. In terms of edibles, the current residents of the front yard include: two avocado trees, a fuyu persimmon tree, two pineapple guavas, a strawberry and lemon guava, a dwarf weeping mulberry tree, four fig trees, a loquat tree, three passionfruit vines, two blueberry bushes, and various rotating veggie crops amongst the five raised beds and handful of wine barrels used for planting. That doesn’t include the plethora of other perennials, herbs, and annuals – some for medicinal purposes, some for the pollinators, a few simply there for the pretty. A 140-gallon rain barrel is hooked up on the front porch to collect a small portion of our captured rain water, with the monarch enclosure nearby. The L-shaped backyard garden is 1,780 sq feet. Here resides the patio garden: our concrete patio that is now surrounded by five raised beds, fully enclosed with trellises attached to the yard-side of the beds designed to keep the otherwise free-ranging chickens excluded from this space. The archway leading to the rest of the back yard is covered with evergreen passionfruit vines, creating even more of a verdant courtyard vibe. On the patio, we use dozens of containers to grow everything from cacti to pineapple guava to cannabis and a dwarf Fuji espalier apple tree. Heading out through the passionfruit arch, you find yourself in the “chicken yard”. Basically, the spoiled-you-know-what chickens get free range of the backyard all day, while instead we strategically fence off and protect certain areas of it, like the stone raised pollinator island. We call it “Stoney Island”. In this backyard area, we were fortunate enough to have several mature fruit trees in place when we moved in: a Meyer lemon, an Anna apple, a mandarin orange, and a pomelo – like a white grapefruit. We have also added a fig, lime, kumquat, finger lime, and second meyer lemon tree to this space. Turning left from the pollinator island into the next section of the L-shape backyard, you’ll find what we call the “coop garden” area – four large raised beds near our chicken coop. As you can see, it is also strategically fenced to prevent access from the winged monsters, err… I mean sweet dear beloved chickens. This garden space is along a south-facing wall – maximizing sun exposure along with radiant heat – an ideal orientation for gardening if you live in the Northern Hemisphere like we do. Beyond the chicken coop to the left is a long, narrow, 550 square foot side yard. This once all-dirt barren space now houses so many productive and important things: the chicken run, a 6×8’ greenhouse in which we start all of our garden seedlings in, a milkweed nursery to support our monarch butterfly fostering passion, a large compost bin that can be used passively or turned into an active hot pile, a massive passionfruit vine that doubles as a privacy screen, and two large 530-gallon slimline rain capture tanks, bringing our total rainwater capacity to 1200 gallons! On the opposite side of the house, there is another smaller side yard where a few homestead essentials are stored – a couple modest storage sheds, a homemade potting bench, and the small-but-mighty worm bin. So, as you can probably gather, we try to make good use of every single inch! Every space, no matter how small, holds unlimited potential ~ you just need to look past what is already there and think outside the box. One day we hope to have a larger property and even more space to grow and play – I want goats, and bees! And a yurt for you all to come visit! A place to hold workshops! – but for now, we are more than fulfilled… and plenty busy! Welcome to our home! Quick overview video tour via Instagram Full video tour via YouTube Before and After Photos *I will work on writing posts about the details of all of these projects, including the steps we took, materials used, and lessons learned! The Evolution of the Front Yard Garden The Evolution of the Backyard Garden
Compost pile not turning into dirt? Wondering what you can add to it to break it down faster? Try these 3 easy steps to get your own compost for your garden.
We love our chickens. They give us hours of endless entertainment. And, they give us an abundance of fresh and nutrient-dense eggs, of course! But chickens are hungry little beasts who like to pick at everything they can get to. When we first introduced chickens to our homestead, we mistakingly put our free-range hens near
Starting a homestead from scratch isn’t easy, but it can be done. You don’t even need a lot of money. Here's our story, which you can replicate!
It happens. You buy new chicks, and you buy MORE new chicks every spring. With all the new animals coming to your homestead, it takes a little time. Everyone has their routine and space they
Whether you live on a large homestead or have a small spot in a suburb, it’s essential that you feel comfortable. Privacy, keeping out intruders, and keeping pets and livestock where they belong is crucial. Fences are great, but why not grow a fedge? A fedge is a cross between a fence and a hedge....
This guide profiles the prettiest varieties of salvia plants to grow in gardens. See different salvia plants, plus their care details and other helpful info.
Oh my, how far she’s come! When we first bought this home back in the summer of 2013, she was a blank slate. A couple of mature trees, a few useless mismatched shrubs in odd locations, a front and back yard full of crabgrass “lawn”, and side yards with bare dirt. We were essentially blank slates ourselves too. I have an education in sustainability and environmental studies, and we’d casually puttered with a couple small raised garden beds in rental homes in the past, but aside from that – we had little to no knowledge or experience with building, landscaping, or homesteading! I don’t think either of us even knew what that concept was when we started this journey. Nor did we intentionally set out to do it. Yet with minds full of ideas, (home)bodies that don’t like to sit still, and a passion for being outside, we consequently have poured most of our free time, energy, love, and very modest disposable income in to transforming all of our outdoor spaces, little by little, from lifeless “yards” into flourishing and purposeful edible and medicinal gardens… …an urban food forest, I like to call it. Before we knew it, our home had become a homestead – a living thing that feeds not only our bodies, but our minds and souls too. Here, we grow and preserve about 85% of the produce we consume, raise chickens (as dear friends who happen to also provide eggs!), and pursue sustainable living practices like rain water capture and several methods of composting. We share our indoor space with 33 house plants and 3 kitties – Quincy, Dalai, and Bodhi Moon. We dream, sweat, collaborate, compromise, relax, laugh, and love here. Most times, there is no where we’d rather be. In essence, we have created our own paradise, and it’s a paradise for local wildlife too! In 2018, our property became an official Monarch Waystation as well as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. You can find a full video of the property to follow. Located just about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, we reside in a small beach town in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast of California. Known as “SLO Cal”, not SoCal. There is big difference between here and there! This area is fairly rural, with a handful of modest-sized towns surrounded by vineyards, beaches, farmland, and open rolling hills. We are right on the border of USDA gardening zone 9b and 10a. But unlike most similarly-numbered zones, it is very temperate and doesn’t get hot here often. This area is considered a Mediterranean climate, though being only one mile inland from the ocean, our summers are quite foggy. We actually struggle (or don’t even attempt!) to grow certain heat-loving crops like corn, melons, or fat heirloom tomatoes. Frost and freezing is also very rare here. I know, I know… we are spoiled rotten. Though an ideal climate sure does help, it is not necessary to have a thriving garden! The gardens aren’t the only thing that makes our homestead special. Our town isn’t quite “urban”, and we definitely are not in suburbia, but we are surrounded by neighbors. However, our property is tucked back away from the street, located behind another property and only accessed by a long private driveway – leading to our little secret garden. A decent yard was a MUST when we were house shopping. You can image how absolutely giddy and blessed we felt when we came across this property that virtually had two private yards, the front yard doubling like a second backyard. With a very tight budget in an extremely competitive market, this was a shining diamond in the rough for us! I knew where I wanted the chicken coop right away, and the rest transpired and evolved with time. Before you go getting too heart-eyed, overwhelmed, or green with envy (please, don’t!) over photos of our garden, remember to keep scrolling and take a peek at the collection of before and after photos at the very bottom of this page also! These are some of my favorite things to share on Instagram; they help people to see how – with a little time, energy, and love – a perfectly average, even boring space can be completely transformed into something magical. Also keep in mind that this did NOT happen overnight! We have tackled one or two large projects per year, over the last five years. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it! If you haven’t yet started creating your dream garden, you may enjoy this read ~ “How to Start a Garden: 101” If you desire to, you can do this too! I believe in you. Homestead Specs: Our property itself is a modest .2 acres – approximately 9,000 square feet – but that number also includes our long driveway. The house itself is fairly small, at just under 1300 square feet, and that’s perfectly okay for us. Less house means more outdoor space! We had never really measured and taken inventory of our individual yard spaces, so we just popped outside to do so! Here is the verdict: The front yard garden is 2,430 square feet. A couple hundred square feet of planting space was just added here in the fall of 2018, when we removed a portion of the driveway, and a whole mountain of useless pest-infested ice plant, expanding the yard into its place. In terms of edibles, the current residents of the front yard include: two avocado trees, a fuyu persimmon tree, two pineapple guavas, a strawberry and lemon guava, a dwarf weeping mulberry tree, four fig trees, a loquat tree, three passionfruit vines, two blueberry bushes, and various rotating veggie crops amongst the five raised beds and handful of wine barrels used for planting. That doesn’t include the plethora of other perennials, herbs, and annuals – some for medicinal purposes, some for the pollinators, a few simply there for the pretty. A 140-gallon rain barrel is hooked up on the front porch to collect a small portion of our captured rain water, with the monarch enclosure nearby. The L-shaped backyard garden is 1,780 sq feet. Here resides the patio garden: our concrete patio that is now surrounded by five raised beds, fully enclosed with trellises attached to the yard-side of the beds designed to keep the otherwise free-ranging chickens excluded from this space. The archway leading to the rest of the back yard is covered with evergreen passionfruit vines, creating even more of a verdant courtyard vibe. On the patio, we use dozens of containers to grow everything from cacti to pineapple guava to cannabis and a dwarf Fuji espalier apple tree. Heading out through the passionfruit arch, you find yourself in the “chicken yard”. Basically, the spoiled-you-know-what chickens get free range of the backyard all day, while instead we strategically fence off and protect certain areas of it, like the stone raised pollinator island. We call it “Stoney Island”. In this backyard area, we were fortunate enough to have several mature fruit trees in place when we moved in: a Meyer lemon, an Anna apple, a mandarin orange, and a pomelo – like a white grapefruit. We have also added a fig, lime, kumquat, finger lime, and second meyer lemon tree to this space. Turning left from the pollinator island into the next section of the L-shape backyard, you’ll find what we call the “coop garden” area – four large raised beds near our chicken coop. As you can see, it is also strategically fenced to prevent access from the winged monsters, err… I mean sweet dear beloved chickens. This garden space is along a south-facing wall – maximizing sun exposure along with radiant heat – an ideal orientation for gardening if you live in the Northern Hemisphere like we do. Beyond the chicken coop to the left is a long, narrow, 550 square foot side yard. This once all-dirt barren space now houses so many productive and important things: the chicken run, a 6×8’ greenhouse in which we start all of our garden seedlings in, a milkweed nursery to support our monarch butterfly fostering passion, a large compost bin that can be used passively or turned into an active hot pile, a massive passionfruit vine that doubles as a privacy screen, and two large 530-gallon slimline rain capture tanks, bringing our total rainwater capacity to 1200 gallons! On the opposite side of the house, there is another smaller side yard where a few homestead essentials are stored – a couple modest storage sheds, a homemade potting bench, and the small-but-mighty worm bin. So, as you can probably gather, we try to make good use of every single inch! Every space, no matter how small, holds unlimited potential ~ you just need to look past what is already there and think outside the box. One day we hope to have a larger property and even more space to grow and play – I want goats, and bees! And a yurt for you all to come visit! A place to hold workshops! – but for now, we are more than fulfilled… and plenty busy! Welcome to our home! Quick overview video tour via Instagram Full video tour via YouTube Before and After Photos *I will work on writing posts about the details of all of these projects, including the steps we took, materials used, and lessons learned! The Evolution of the Front Yard Garden The Evolution of the Backyard Garden
How we built our DIY raised bed garden and chicken coop for our zone 6b garden. We used recycled materials, cedar and galvanized tin.
back home from one of my favorite cities in the world :)
Whether you live on a large homestead or have a small spot in a suburb, it’s essential that you feel comfortable. Privacy, keeping out intruders, and keeping pets and livestock where they belong is crucial. Fences are great, but why not grow a fedge? A fedge is a cross between a fence and a hedge....
We live in an interdependent world. Although at one time all of humankind lived independently and self-sufficiently, group cooperation allowed for more efficient use of resources when hunting and gathering, raising young, making clothing and
Homesteading is hard! Here's my 10 must-have items to make homesteading easier - and where to buy them.
Yearning for a deeper connection to your food, the environment, and yourself? Homesteading might be your answer. This guide explores self-sufficiency through gardening, raising chickens, DIY projects, and more.
Oh my, how far she’s come! When we first bought this home back in the summer of 2013, she was a blank slate. A couple of mature trees, a few useless mismatched shrubs in odd locations, a front and back yard full of crabgrass “lawn”, and side yards with bare dirt. We were essentially blank slates ourselves too. I have an education in sustainability and environmental studies, and we’d casually puttered with a couple small raised garden beds in rental homes in the past, but aside from that – we had little to no knowledge or experience with building, landscaping, or homesteading! I don’t think either of us even knew what that concept was when we started this journey. Nor did we intentionally set out to do it. Yet with minds full of ideas, (home)bodies that don’t like to sit still, and a passion for being outside, we consequently have poured most of our free time, energy, love, and very modest disposable income in to transforming all of our outdoor spaces, little by little, from lifeless “yards” into flourishing and purposeful edible and medicinal gardens… …an urban food forest, I like to call it. Before we knew it, our home had become a homestead – a living thing that feeds not only our bodies, but our minds and souls too. Here, we grow and preserve about 85% of the produce we consume, raise chickens (as dear friends who happen to also provide eggs!), and pursue sustainable living practices like rain water capture and several methods of composting. We share our indoor space with 33 house plants and 3 kitties – Quincy, Dalai, and Bodhi Moon. We dream, sweat, collaborate, compromise, relax, laugh, and love here. Most times, there is no where we’d rather be. In essence, we have created our own paradise, and it’s a paradise for local wildlife too! In 2018, our property became an official Monarch Waystation as well as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. You can find a full video of the property to follow. Located just about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, we reside in a small beach town in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast of California. Known as “SLO Cal”, not SoCal. There is big difference between here and there! This area is fairly rural, with a handful of modest-sized towns surrounded by vineyards, beaches, farmland, and open rolling hills. We are right on the border of USDA gardening zone 9b and 10a. But unlike most similarly-numbered zones, it is very temperate and doesn’t get hot here often. This area is considered a Mediterranean climate, though being only one mile inland from the ocean, our summers are quite foggy. We actually struggle (or don’t even attempt!) to grow certain heat-loving crops like corn, melons, or fat heirloom tomatoes. Frost and freezing is also very rare here. I know, I know… we are spoiled rotten. Though an ideal climate sure does help, it is not necessary to have a thriving garden! The gardens aren’t the only thing that makes our homestead special. Our town isn’t quite “urban”, and we definitely are not in suburbia, but we are surrounded by neighbors. However, our property is tucked back away from the street, located behind another property and only accessed by a long private driveway – leading to our little secret garden. A decent yard was a MUST when we were house shopping. You can image how absolutely giddy and blessed we felt when we came across this property that virtually had two private yards, the front yard doubling like a second backyard. With a very tight budget in an extremely competitive market, this was a shining diamond in the rough for us! I knew where I wanted the chicken coop right away, and the rest transpired and evolved with time. Before you go getting too heart-eyed, overwhelmed, or green with envy (please, don’t!) over photos of our garden, remember to keep scrolling and take a peek at the collection of before and after photos at the very bottom of this page also! These are some of my favorite things to share on Instagram; they help people to see how – with a little time, energy, and love – a perfectly average, even boring space can be completely transformed into something magical. Also keep in mind that this did NOT happen overnight! We have tackled one or two large projects per year, over the last five years. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it! If you haven’t yet started creating your dream garden, you may enjoy this read ~ “How to Start a Garden: 101” If you desire to, you can do this too! I believe in you. Homestead Specs: Our property itself is a modest .2 acres – approximately 9,000 square feet – but that number also includes our long driveway. The house itself is fairly small, at just under 1300 square feet, and that’s perfectly okay for us. Less house means more outdoor space! We had never really measured and taken inventory of our individual yard spaces, so we just popped outside to do so! Here is the verdict: The front yard garden is 2,430 square feet. A couple hundred square feet of planting space was just added here in the fall of 2018, when we removed a portion of the driveway, and a whole mountain of useless pest-infested ice plant, expanding the yard into its place. In terms of edibles, the current residents of the front yard include: two avocado trees, a fuyu persimmon tree, two pineapple guavas, a strawberry and lemon guava, a dwarf weeping mulberry tree, four fig trees, a loquat tree, three passionfruit vines, two blueberry bushes, and various rotating veggie crops amongst the five raised beds and handful of wine barrels used for planting. That doesn’t include the plethora of other perennials, herbs, and annuals – some for medicinal purposes, some for the pollinators, a few simply there for the pretty. A 140-gallon rain barrel is hooked up on the front porch to collect a small portion of our captured rain water, with the monarch enclosure nearby. The L-shaped backyard garden is 1,780 sq feet. Here resides the patio garden: our concrete patio that is now surrounded by five raised beds, fully enclosed with trellises attached to the yard-side of the beds designed to keep the otherwise free-ranging chickens excluded from this space. The archway leading to the rest of the back yard is covered with evergreen passionfruit vines, creating even more of a verdant courtyard vibe. On the patio, we use dozens of containers to grow everything from cacti to pineapple guava to cannabis and a dwarf Fuji espalier apple tree. Heading out through the passionfruit arch, you find yourself in the “chicken yard”. Basically, the spoiled-you-know-what chickens get free range of the backyard all day, while instead we strategically fence off and protect certain areas of it, like the stone raised pollinator island. We call it “Stoney Island”. In this backyard area, we were fortunate enough to have several mature fruit trees in place when we moved in: a Meyer lemon, an Anna apple, a mandarin orange, and a pomelo – like a white grapefruit. We have also added a fig, lime, kumquat, finger lime, and second meyer lemon tree to this space. Turning left from the pollinator island into the next section of the L-shape backyard, you’ll find what we call the “coop garden” area – four large raised beds near our chicken coop. As you can see, it is also strategically fenced to prevent access from the winged monsters, err… I mean sweet dear beloved chickens. This garden space is along a south-facing wall – maximizing sun exposure along with radiant heat – an ideal orientation for gardening if you live in the Northern Hemisphere like we do. Beyond the chicken coop to the left is a long, narrow, 550 square foot side yard. This once all-dirt barren space now houses so many productive and important things: the chicken run, a 6×8’ greenhouse in which we start all of our garden seedlings in, a milkweed nursery to support our monarch butterfly fostering passion, a large compost bin that can be used passively or turned into an active hot pile, a massive passionfruit vine that doubles as a privacy screen, and two large 530-gallon slimline rain capture tanks, bringing our total rainwater capacity to 1200 gallons! On the opposite side of the house, there is another smaller side yard where a few homestead essentials are stored – a couple modest storage sheds, a homemade potting bench, and the small-but-mighty worm bin. So, as you can probably gather, we try to make good use of every single inch! Every space, no matter how small, holds unlimited potential ~ you just need to look past what is already there and think outside the box. One day we hope to have a larger property and even more space to grow and play – I want goats, and bees! And a yurt for you all to come visit! A place to hold workshops! – but for now, we are more than fulfilled… and plenty busy! Welcome to our home! Quick overview video tour via Instagram Full video tour via YouTube Before and After Photos *I will work on writing posts about the details of all of these projects, including the steps we took, materials used, and lessons learned! The Evolution of the Front Yard Garden The Evolution of the Backyard Garden
Perennial vegetables, or crops that are planted once and harvested year after year, are the perfect way to turn a single spring's worth of work into a lifetime's worth of vegetables for your table. Annual
If you've been following along on our homesteading journey, here are our reflections on 2023 and what we look forward to next year!
Fancy Chicken developed a poultry-based fertilizer pellet that not only rapidly boosts plant growth but also rebuilds soil nutrients over time.
Want to make your homestead more resilient? Try implementing the permaculture principle of redundancy! Here's how!
Welcome We have enjoyed more than 30 years of produce, delights, building know-how, and ethical social enterprises. Our food forest sustains our Permaculture lifestyle. Here are some of the lessons…
I was working in the garden the other day when I suddenly noticed I had an unexpected visitor. He was very patient while I chased him around with my camera trying to get shots because I thought he was just so cute! After a while I resumed my gardening and he hung around to keep me company. David and I were talking about toad houses just the other day, and after seeing "Toadie" in the garden I told David we should make a house for him. There are many expensive and elaborate toad houses for sale online, but we just used a large terra cotta pot that we found at a local thrift shop for $2. To begin, David simply chiseled out and smoothed half of the bottom of the pot to provide a back door escape hatch for the toad in case he gets chased into the house by a predator. We then buried the bottom half of the pot in a shady corner of our garden to help keep the inside of the house cool and damp. To make it look like a part of the garden, David transplanted some sedum and other plants from another location. I really like how it turned out! Since we use organic gardening methods, we welcome the toads because they will eat insects and pests that we don't want messing with our vegetables. We also feel good that we are giving the toads a place to hang out and hopefully helping to boost their population. Do you have any toad houses in your garden? ~Tammy PS - We found this post very helpful in planning our toad house. Shared with From The Farm Blog Hop, Sunny Simple Mondays, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Eco Kids Tuesday, Tuesday Muse, Tweak It Tuesday, What To Do Weekends, Clever Chicks Blog Hop
This Chicken Tower system was invented by April Sampson-Kelly in 1996. She has reillustrated it this week for our course notes. The Chickens have garden weeds for picking at, and nesting in, their …
Welcome back, fellow homesteaders. Today, we’re embarking on an exciting journey through Indy Homestead, sharing our homesteading gardens, native plant field, permaculture pasture, chicken ru…
Come on over, grab a cup of coffee, and let's chat about our quarter acre homestead and the future plans... You know goats, chickens, and bees. Oh my!
