There are many different terms for what we do, and there is a major reason why I use the term "urban farm" even though we don't entirely meet that definition. Let's take a look at some of the terms used for what a great podcaster calls "the farmish kind of life."
First of all, we have to define what kind of life that is. For a lot of us, this life is about sustainability, feeding our families, trying to do better for the environment, health issues, tight budgets, and more. This life revolves around gardening, raising small numbers of animals (not factory farming, in other words--I am not judging you on the number of ducks or chickens you have), preserving food, foraging for foods at certain times of the year, crafting, and more. Everyone does it differently, but these are the common threads in most discussions. I do want to say that people choosing this lifestyle come from all areas of the political spectrum and live all over the world, though there are many myths about who chooses to live off the land, buy less, and follow old traditions. Not only do we not all agree on the politics, but we don't all agree on what to call this lifestyle, either. Most people use "farm" to mean any kind of business that raises or grows foodstuffs for money. Most people mean those bigger operations with many, many acres of fields or many, many animals, but the real bottom line in the definition is that farmers are people who do it for the money and as their profession. Traditionally, that's not what it always meant, as it meant anyone who grew or raised food, even subsistence farmers (a term that isn't as much in use these days). Subsistence farming is about growing and/or raising your own food for your family and maybe selling whatever extra you have, and it's a term with a lot of poverty undertones. Then again, these days, it isn't like family farms are making that much money, but I digress. Many people use the term "homesteading" to refer to this particular lifestyle and call their home and/or land their "homestead." This particular term seems to be the most popular, but it definitely comes with a bad history here in the US. The Homestead Act was a law that saw many white families moving into First Nations territories and stealing their land, and we still live with that colonialist, genocidal history. Now, I have seen people push back against that historical reality in social media, especially those who are carrying on a family tradition of farming, saying the land was empty. The land wasn't empty. Even in the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura describes seeing Native Americans (in really racist ways, but I digress), and that's because her dad actually moved them at one point illegally onto a Native American reservation. This continent was populated by hundreds of millions of people before the Europeans came to colonize and take the land, and they were killed off through disease and planned genocide. There wasn't just one Trail of Tears, in other words. This makes using the term "homestead" problematic. While it is accurate in that almost all of us are living and growing/raising food on stolen land, it is a term that drips in blood but has been whitewashed over the many decades since. I can understand why others use the term, though, especially since it is more accurate in many ways if families are living that more traditional life but not selling their animals or crops. An older term that I remember being thrown around when I was a kid is "hobby farm." It encompasses the raising of animals and growing of food but diminishes the money aspect. It also is often used in a demeaning way: a hobby farm isn't a real farm, not really, just a bit of a hobby. Anyone who has done any level of farming knows that it's hard work, and many of us with serious hobbies know that they can take up a lot of time and resources. Connected to this term is what my stepmom used to call my dad, "gentleman farmer." It has the same feel--someone who farms for fun and isn't about making money and therefore isn't that serious about it. A newer, amalgam term I have seen used a little bit is "farmstead." It is usually used interchangeably with "homestead." The people I've seen use that tend to use it more to say that they live there, they are mostly working on feeding their own families, but they do sell a bit of their surplus or to help the family's bottom line. This one, though, still has those colonialism hints, and I really haven't seen very many use it, definitely not as much as "homestead." Personally, while I occasionally use "homesteading" to describe our lifestyle, I prefer calling our home a "mini urban farm" even though we haven't sold anything yet. I guess we're more subsistence farmers or hobby farmers, though we are quite serious about feeding our family with what we grow and raise. We have a tight budget and teens to feed, so we haven't sold any surplus, but the back garden, the ducks, the kitchen garden, what we forage on our property, our garden containers around the property, and our herb beds take up a real place in our family budget and plans. Should we be able to go forward with our plans to turn our pool into a natural pond and grow food and raise fish in it, not to mention raising more ducks for meat next summer, there is the possibility of being able to sell some extra, and the money would be very helpful. I'm not sure anyone would say we had gone beyond "hobby farm," though. While we aren't as "urban" as we would be a few streets over, we still are within the urban area of our city, and we grow and raise food for our immediate and extended family. In my eyes, it makes more sense to call our home a mini urban farm, then, given where we are and the current size of our operation, than to use the term "homestead." It also is a reference to something my 17 year old son said when asked to help with the back garden: "Mom, I don't do farming." It's become a bit of a family joke. Side note: "Permaculture" refers to a particular kind of farming/gardening, and I find this particular website is the most helpful in understanding all that that term entails and learning more. We use a lot of permaculture techniques, and we believe in their main tenets, especially that of caring for the people, all people (one of the three main tenets, the others being "fair share" and "care for the earth"). Permaculture has many facets, but the main goal is for humans to live in a sustainable way that enriches the planet. As seen in the link above, many people use "permaculture" and "homesteading" interchangeably. So, in the end, what does this lifestyle really look like, regardless of what term you use? Basically, it means that we grow as much of our own food as possible; raise animals for food and services (like pest control or weeding); preserve that food and any other food we have hunted, foraged, or bought as much as possible through canning, freezing, dehydrating, and root cellaring; and provide for as many of our own needs as possible. This means that anyone anywhere can do it. Even if you're in an apartment, you can grow herbs or have a plot in a community garden, can vegetables and fruits you buy or barter for, knit or sew as much of your own clothing as possible, and as always, support local farmers in every way possible for you and your family. For us, that means garden beds all over, plants in containers in various locations, four silly ducks, and lots of work that my husband, with his long work hours, and I, with my disability issues, do the best we can to finish in time. I'd like to say it's a cheaper way to live, and it is in the long run, but it isn't cheap. I'd like to say it's simpler, but since I'm still dealing with the harvest from this fall, I'm not so sure of that. It is an enjoyable and highly satisfying way to live, though, and in the end, it is more sustainable for our family and the planet.
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The weather has been particularly brutal for my fibromyalgia last week and this week so far. That means that I haven't been able to do half of what I've needed to get done. I've finished a couple of knitted items but not what I've needed to get done before Saturday. I've strained some herbal tinctures and oils and made a couple of things but not everything on my list. I haven't cleared the gardens and prepped them for winter, which has to be the biggest sin of all.
Next week, we might even get snow! It is almost Halloween, the leaves are already carpeting everything around on our farmstead, and I don't have all the beds prepared for winter. The garlic is planted, sure, but the old plants aren't all out, the leaves haven't been collected and spread around on the garden beds, the weeds in a few places haven't been chopped and dropped. I haven't even cut back the hibiscus. All I can do is a little bit every day, and that's just going to have to be enough, I guess. I still have more canning, too, and freezers to clean out in preparation for hunting season. Oh my, is my to-do list a mile long! What is still on your fall to-do list? Fall is decidedly here, a bit earlier than we would have liked. Last night was our first frost advisory of the fall, and there was a rush to protect and grab out of the garden what we could. Fall is one of the busiest times for any farm of any size. It's harvest season, so it's time to grab everything out of the fields or gardens and get it put up for the year. Our mini urban farm is no exception. Since late summer, we've been drying and freezing and canning everything we possibly can from the garden, and now, most of it is in (still getting some green beans). Apples are in, and I'm in the midst of putting up enough to last us through the year. My son and I went to Schultz's Fruitridge Farm in Mattawan, and we got a half bushel of honeycrisps, a half bushel of galas, a peck of mutsus, and a peck of jonagolds. This blend of apples has made for great apple pie jam, apple pie filling, and apple butter. The dried apples have survived the kids so far, but I won't bet on that staying true for long. I have hidden some deep in the deep freezer in hopes of being able to line my apple pies with them or cut them up into homemade granola. We are overrun with squash, so I have been making dried pureed squash and squash butter, and as good as the squash butter was, I have to make more of that. One pint of that plus one cup of cream and two eggs make a pumpkin pie, supposedly, which I haven't tried yet but want to. Too bad I can't can it and have to freeze it instead. Either way, we have more than enough squash to make more of that as well as pressure can some for various recipes this winter. The ducks have been very happy with the cooler weather, and Petunia is still laying an egg a day while the two Rouen ladies just haven't been laying at all. Petunia is quite the vacuum, eating constantly if she's awake, which makes sense considering how many eggs a week she's putting out. She's been skipping the pool some days, but the other day, it was cool, and I was out there long enough that she decided to take a quick dip and get cleaned up in between voraciously eating everything in sight. The rains have started really hitting, though, in a way we like to call the Michigan Monsoon Season: Fall Edition, and frosts are around the corner. The temperatures are slowly trending down, and it's already hunting season. It's time for comfort foods, more canning, and putting the gardens to bed. That's coming up this weekend, the beginning of the serious effort to put the gardens to bed for the year while building soil.
We utilize a blend of no-dig methods, and this fall, we are trying the Bokashi style of composting (in an effort to control the smell and make it easier for me to do). My husband will be creating more wood chips this fall as well as running our piles and piles of leaves through the chipper to break them down a bit before putting them on the many garden beds. Ultimately, we use a variation of the lasagna gardening method and put layers of different soil builders down, which really cuts down on weeds and gets us seriously amazing yields. The Chesnok garlic I ordered is coming in tomorrow, and that's getting planted in a new bed this weekend. It's time to get that in before the real frosts hit, and we are planting much more garlic this year so that we truly have all of our own garlic for a whole year. While we have fallen short of having a year's worth of food for the whole family this year, we have far more in storage than we did a year ago, and the kids are already happy with a lot of what we've put up. Here's hoping we at least survive the winter with two teenage boys! It can be hard for me to remember that not everyone knows how to do a lot of what I do. I've been hanging around the homesteading groups more and more online, mostly on Facebook, and sometimes, I am surprised by some of the questions or laugh at the lists of skills every homesteader needs that pop up over and over again on Pinterest. Today, it struck me, though, that I don't think my kids have the skills that I was raised with, that most people don't.
I grew up on what, these days, would be called a homestead at both homes. My parents divorced when I was very young, remarrying soon after, which was just not done in the late seventies, early eighties. Not in our rural area of Michigan, anyway. Both families, though, were homesteading types, from Dad wanting to raise our own beef cattle and hogs (just a few times each but enough to really help the food bill) to Mom having horses, from my stepmom putting in a massive garden in an effort to feed all four of us kids (my three older brothers were all in sports and growing like weeds--let's just say I would have done the exact same thing) to my ex-stepdad actually working on the big family farm. It was just how things were, not to be questioned (though all of us kids questioned it more than once, especially when weeding the massive garden). My stepmom had been a home economics teacher (what today is called Family and Consumer Science or Life Skills), and she was better than Martha Stewart. I don't say that lightly. She didn't have the money or the massive staff that Martha does, and she still managed to outshine that woman in every way except in cooking. My mom was a high school art teacher who had grown up on a chicken ranch in southern California, and not only is she still the best cook I know, but she taught me all kinds of things that, when I was a kid, I thought were normal, that everyone knew. I resented the perfection my stepmother required, and I didn't want to learn so many of the lessons she drummed into me, but these days, I thank her for all those tears and periods of sulking anger. I figured out early on that I just didn't have my mom's artistic talent, but Mom, bless her, always kept trying. Mom taught me how to draw, use inks and paints in various ways, throw a pot or make pinch pottery, do calligraphy, cook, dry herbs and apple slices, freeze sweet corn, ride and care for horses, garden, and so much more. My stepmom taught me how to do crewel embroidery (my first 4H project at the age of six), do country arts painting (of which she's a renowned teacher), iron properly, arrange flowers, sew, bake, can, freeze foods, clean things just so, garden, what so many wildflowers and trees are, the different songbirds, tin punch, and so much more. My tin punch skills are horrid, and I cannot paint in any style well at all. My mom taught me how to knit when I was twelve from what she remembered her aunt teaching her as a child, and when I quickly exhausted her knowledge, she took me to the five-and-dime in town and got me a Leisure Arts pamphlet and real knitting needles. I taught myself the rest and then taught myself how to spin yarn when I was 14. I took the required home ec class in seventh grade and signed up for it again in eighth only to find that I already had a lot of the skills and got in trouble, thanks to Eric listening to me and agreeing with me, when our group's tacos (not cooked exactly as told) were considered the best tasting and the most popular. I'm not great at sewing (hand sewn or machine), but I can and do okay. My embroidery skills are all right, and I indulge in those, mostly during the winter, even though what I produce isn't perfect. So, I put foods up from our garden, and while I always read up on things and do a lot of research, a lot of what I do is just what I learned growing up. Taking care of the ducks' bedding isn't much different than mucking the stalls in my parents' barns growing up. I can sew a little, enough to get by, and I bake our family's bread at least once a week. Every season, I change the decorations in the house, including the kitchen towels, silk flower arrangements, and door wreaths (making new ones if needed), just because that's what we did growing up and my house doesn't feel like a home if I don't. Honestly, even though I've tried to show my kids how to do all this and they've helped from time to time, I really don't think they would know how to have a small homestead or mini urban farm. They would be like so many others, turning to social media to ask questions from those of us who were taught by parents and grandparents and have been doing it for years. A lot of it is that I didn't want to force anything on them when they were young other than the most important skills, but a lot of it is that I didn't want the surly pouting or the anger at being forced to learn something they didn't want to have anything to do with. While they enjoy the jams and pies and eat entire loaves of bread in a day, they don't want to know how they're made or where they are from. Which is a bit sad. I do wonder about the future. When times get hard, and they will again because they always do, how will my children and their friends make it? Will there be a Victory Garden program to teach them how to grow their own food and preserve it? Will I still be around to help them learn how to keep a sourdough starter alive and bake their own bread or know when to pick the squash and how to pressure can it or make pumpkin butter? I do wonder, though I am heartened by so many Gen Xers like my husband and myself returning to this harder-yet-simpler life and so many Millenials jumping in feet first. Maybe I will find a way to pass along these skills yet. |
CarinaI'm a 40s something disabled mom living the life on our small urban farm. Archives
April 2022
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