Homesteading is not where you live, it is how you live. I wrote on this topic two years ago and still stand firmly on the idea that anyone can homestead. My family and I have been homesteading on less than 1/4 of an acre for many years. Are we self sufficient? Definitely not. But most folks with “land” aren’t either. Self-sufficiency isn’t the goal. The areas where you are lacking production provide a wonderful opportunity to connect with farmers who are able to do what you cannot.

Homesteading to me is about finding ways you can be a producer rather than a consumer, eating and living locally, creating productive properties and working household economies. A homesteading lifestyle can even be pursued in the city while apartment-dwelling. But today we are going to focus specifically on homesteading in the suburbs.

The reality is, most suburban homeowners have enough land to grow a significant amount of food (of course there are exceptions like the restrictions of an HOA or, say, a heavily wooded yard). Drive around the neighborhood and notice how many large yards are simply growing just grass. Now imagine them filled with a decent sized garden, a small orchard and berry patch too. It is possible with less space than you’d think. During the war era and great depression, families were even encouraged by the federal and local governments to grow victory gardens and keep backyard hens. What happened?

Things have come a long way since then. Productive properties are no longer encouraged because that makes us less dependent on the globalized food system. Market rows and potager gardens have been replaced with pristine grass and perfectly trimmed shrubs. Cancer-causing herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers are sprayed on our lawns week by week to prevent those pesky weeds! The very weeds that actually aid the body in cancer-prevention and cancer-treatment. Kind of ironic, if you ask me. A little too ironic.

This was no accident. The less we know about the medicinal properties in God’s creation and the more we make our land uninhabitable for those plants, the more dependent we have to be on the medical industry and pharmaceuticals. Suburbs went from using small yards in a productive way to sterilized, cookie-cutter environments.

While we are too far gone as a society to ever bring back an agrarian culture on a collective scale, we are not bound to the world’s ways when it comes to our own individual households. It is the call of Christian men and women everywhere to manage their households well (1 Timothy 3:4-5, Titus 2:3-5, Proverbs 31:27).

Homesteading may not be for everyone, but for those who also feel this call, there is a way forward. A way to create productive properties on very little land. A way to be fruitful right where you are planted, not just waiting for “someday”. Homesteading is sometimes the rolling hills and herds of cattle and perfect market rows of cabbage and the wildflower fields—but it’s not always. My hope for this post is to encourage my fellow suburban dwellers who have the pull on their heart to pursue this lifestyle but maybe don’t know where to start.

You don’t need “land” to homestead. Just a heart to do the work and willing hands to make it happen.

Edible landscaping and productive lawns

Using your yard to its best ability is the most obvious and most important part of suburban homesteading. We’ve been conditioned to think that perfect grass and trimmed shrubs are desirable and anything that could possibly grow a bit wild or produce a flower or fruit is “messy” and “unkempt”. We have got to get out of this mindset! My grandpa tells the story of when he was growing up, they didn’t have to pack a lunch to take to school because there were so many fruit trees around the city that were free to pick from. Over the years those have slowly been removed, because falling fruit is too “messy”. Such a shame— think of how many people could be fed if fruit trees and berry bushes were planted in public areas where they now just plant grass.

Did you know that grass lawns is America’s largest irrigated crop? And yet we are importing food grown on foreign land and selling America’s farmland to China. Why are we not growing anything in our own yards except for grass? When I was researching a bit for this post, I typed in “grass lawns” in the google search bar and the first recommendation was “are an ecological catastrophe”. Ha! But I digress…

Yes, curb appeal is common courtesy in the suburbs. But there is a way to create productive yards that look beautiful. Take our front yard for example: we always need more growing space and as much as I’d love to dig up our entire front yard and plant a garden, I’m not sure how well that would go over with the neighbors or the city. So what we did was expand our landscaping beds that were already established, just making them a bit bigger, and we began incorporating edibles into them. Instead of planting shrubs we have a vast variety of pollinator-friendly perennial flowers.

Bee balm, echinacea, lilies, larkspur, and feverfew in our front beds

Daffodils, hyacinths, irises, and peonies in the spring. Lilies, daisies, echinacea, black-eyed susans, feverfew, and bee balm in the summer. Mums in the fall. We have established herbs such as rosemary, thyme, sage, and lavender in those beds as well. We even have a peach tree in our landscaping that gives us the most delicious fruit. Each year we incorporate annuals like chamomile and calendula, cabbage and butternut squash. And this is just in our front yard! The beds have been thoughtfully curated to bloom in succession so there is always something to look forward to during each month of the growing season. This is called edible landscaping or “potager” style, where flowers, herbs, fruits, and veggies are all mixed together to create a cottage-garden type feel.

On the side of our house between the driveway and the house where there used to be a patch of grass, we have a portion dedicated to everbearing raspberry canes. That small patch has produced enough for fresh eating as well as freezing some to eat all winter long these past few years.

The raspberries on the side of our house

Consider adding edibles and perennials to your landscaping beds. If you don’t have a lot of space, this is a great way to create productive yards without having to build an actual garden and a way to grow food while still maintaining the look of an “acceptable” yard. Not only do perennials look beautiful, but they attract beneficial insects to your yard like butterflies and bees. They require very little maintenance and can be used to frugally decorate your home or sold as bouquets to earn some extra money.

One way to maintain a grass lawn rather than a garden while still making it “productive” is to allow the weeds to grow and forage them! Dandelions, clovers, purslane, purple dead nettle, plantains, etc…all are beneficial and can be foraged and used in cooking and medicine making. Look around in your grass and identify some of the weeds that grow there. Do some research on their benefits and properties. You’d be surprised all you can use them for! Lawn chemical companies have us duped. We are paying them to poison our children, our pets, our soil, and our water. (I must mention however if your lawn has been recently sprayed and you want to begin growing edibles in that area, it’s best to plant a cover crop for a few years to remove as much toxins from the soil as possible.)

Our first peach harvest a few summers ago, from the peach tree in our front landscaping.

Plant a garden

If you have the space, consider establishing gardens either in the form of raised beds or a simple no-dig method. With the right lighting you’ll really be able to yield more than you’d think! Use your backyard garden for fresh eating during the growing months and if there is excess, you can preserve it for the winter!

Check out my posts How To Plant A Spring Garden and How To Plant A Summer Garden for more gardening inspiration.

Preserve it even if you didn’t grow it

Like I mentioned previously, the gaps in your production create a great opportunity to connect with local farmers who are growing things at a scale you cannot. For example, my city ordinance does not allow backyard chickens. So we connected with a local couple that raises chickens a few towns over and we have been buying eggs from them for the past 3 years. We don’t have apple trees on our property, so each fall we head to our favorite amish orchard and purchase apples by the bushel. We turn those into applesauce that we can for the larder and put some into cold storage as well to eat throughout the fall and winter. Last summer Azure Standard had an amazing price for organic apricots, so I purchased a couple pounds and canned apricot butter and halves in light syrup. We’ve been enjoying them all winter!

Our freezer last fall, filled to the brim with local and homegrown goods.

Your few tomatoes that came out of your small garden may feel like a precious commodity and you wouldn’t sell them for 10 bucks a piece! But Farmer Susie a few towns over is completely overwhelmed with her tomato production this year and is eager to get them gone. These are the kind of people you want to know and have connections with.

You don’t have to grow it yourself to preserve it. In all of your shopping—whether it’s from the farmers market or the grocery store—focus on when certain items are in-season and on-sale and buy in bulk when your budget permits. View summer and early fall as the time to prepare for the colder months. Can, freeze, dry, pickle, ferment…and enjoy the fruit of your labor (and a lower grocery bill) come winter.

Check out my post Putting Food By for more preserving inspiration.

Stocking a pantry and cooking from scratch

Stocking a pantry isn’t hoarding and it’s not storing food away for the apocalypse. It is a storage of food that our meals are made from! Between a variety of meats, storage crops, dried goods, canned goods, and cold storage, these ingredients can be the start of a really delicious and frugal meal. Buying and storing ingredients rather than processed foods is cheaper and healthier. But that also requires the skill of turning those ingredients into a meal to eat. This is the fun part! Remember those apricots I bought in bulk and preserved in the summer? The bright orange color now lines our pantry shelves, waiting to compliment a local chicken roasted with herb salt and mashed potatoes. Hearty soups are made with bone broth and frozen vegetables from our summer garden, served with sourdough bread and applesauce we canned in the fall. Because of our summer labors of preserving in-season produce, and the stores of grains, legumes, flours, and meats we have in our pantry, we don’t need weekly trips to the grocery store and our grocery expenses in the winter months are incredibly low!

Check out my posts The Art of Pantrying and Frugal Provisions | Pantry Preparedness for more pantry inspiration!

Bake your own bread

While this kind of falls in the category of cooking from scratch, I like to highlight it on it’s own. Bread is always my favorite area to recommend people who are wanting to start homesteading. It is such a great example of becoming a producer rather than a consumer. And it really gets to the heart of stocking a pantry! If you have flour, water, and salt in your cupboards, you can make a loaf of bread!

Not to mention the fact that homemade bread is way healthier than store bought, with just a few ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. Meanwhile store bought breads can have upwards of 17 ingredients, many of which are synthetic preservative. It is also cheaper per loaf compared to buying from the store.

Homemade bread products are a great place to start in your journey. It doesn’t even have to be sourdough. Start with a simple yeast bread and grow in your skills from there.

Check out my posts Sourdough Starter Tips, Sourdough Loaf Recipe, and Yeast Loaf Recipe for more bread making inspiration.

Make your own home and beauty products

This is something I’d like to pursue more of in the coming years. A few things that we make homemade in our house are: toothpaste, laundry detergent, bar soaps, lotions and salves, lip balm, and cleaning sprays.

This is another area that gets to the heart of being a producer and not a consumer. It’s definitely not possible to do it all, but it sure feels good to see something from the store and be able to think to yourself “I can make that!” Especially in the pursuit of natural and organic products, that can get pricey! For example, a tube of nontoxic toothpaste can be as much as $12, meanwhile a tube of the leading conventional brand is less than 2 dollars. But I can avoid the toxins and the cost by making my own homemade toothpaste with just baking soda, coconut oil, and essential oils for mere pennies!

Instead of having a different spray for your kitchen, your windows, your bathroom, your furniture…make a simple citrus vinegar spray and use it as an all-purpose for all your cleaning needs. Incredibly cheaper and much safer ingredients! Find even just one or two products that you can begin making yourself instead of purchasing from the store. This will give you the momentum to make your home a place of production.

Compost food scraps

Composting is a great way to reduce food waste and provide enrichment for your garden soil. A compost can be started by creating a simple pile in a designated area, or you can purchase a compost container. Food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, weeds…anything biodegradable that you would normally throw in the trash can instead be directed to the compost pile. Once it is done breaking down, what was once viewed as “waste” provides rich nutrients for your garden soil, helping it yield large, hearty crops.

Check your city animal ordinances

Some suburbs are more agrarian-oriented than others. Check to see if you are allowed to keep a small flock of chickens for egg production, or bees for honey! Some towns may even go as far to allow mini goats for milk on larger plots of land. It’s no unheard of and it’s worth looking into!

Learn old-fashioned skills

Crochet, knitting, sewing, woodworking, candlemaking, cooking, baking, animal husbandry, gardening, cooking over the fire, herbalism…

Even if you are not in a place to put all of those skills to use, it’s still helpful to know them, read about them, watch other homesteaders doing them. I’m hoping to move to a bigger plot of land someday. I want to be prepared and knowledgeable so I don’t feel like I have to scramble to learn everything real quick when we do expand the homestead. These waiting seasons often feel frustrating but can be used fruitfully. And I think learning and practicing our skills even if on a very small scale is a worthwhile pursuit.

homesteading is not where you live, but how you live.

We can all take steps to live a more simple life. Being faithful in the little so that we can be faithful if and when much is given to us. If homesteading is a desire put on your heart, do what you can with what you have, where you’re at. It may indeed yield much more than you expect.