Apartment Homesteading- How to be Self Sufficient

Share!

Apartment homesteading is a great way to become more self sufficient. Lets dive in to some creative ways to develop new skills towards becoming a homesteader!

When I was first married and my husband and I were still going to school, we were living in someone’s basement. We didn’t have any sunny windows, porches or outdoor spaces to grow food on. But I still found myself wanting to grow food.

One day I went upstairs to pay rent to the owners of the home and noticed that they had started seeds for a vegetable garden and the plants were sitting on their kitchen table. I asked the woman about them and she said they had a garden plot down the road! Trying to hold in my excitement and not weird her out, I asked casually if she needed any help with her garden.

She said yes and we both went out the following Saturday to prep the garden plot. We created rows, ran hoses to each row and pulled weeds. Then the next Saturday we planted the seedlings. It was so refreshing to get my hands in the dirt! After that she said to come whenever I could, to weed and tend to the garden. She said that I could harvest whatever I wanted. And that was the beginning of my journey of becoming an apartment homesteader.

Apartment homesteading

You don’t have have to live in a rural area to learn new skills and become a homesteader. That is the wonderful thing about homesteading in general. You can be rural or become an urban homesteader. In fact there are many urban areas that have developed a community garden for local people who live in a small space, making it possible for them to be able to grow their own food.

What does it mean to live the homesteading lifestyle?

Homesteading is a term that differs from farming. Farming is when you raise some type of livestock, produce, hay, etc to then sell. A farmer usually makes money by selling what they produce on their property. A homesteader is someone who has the desire to become more self sufficient and to provide as many resources for themselves as they can within their limits.

Usually someone finds themselves attracted to the homesteading lifestyle to become healthier, grow more organic food or to connect with the earth and nature. A lot of times people are attracted and satisfied with ability to create something themselves. Or another way to say it is to be attracted to the hard and old fashioned way of doing things.

I personally love a variety of these things but am also very attracted to living a simpler life. Whatever your reason, you can get started on your apartment homesteading journey today. Let’s dive in to the ways that you can become a homesteader!

How to grow your own food

Lets start with growing your own food. This can look very different for each person. What you need to figure out first is what resources or spaces you have available to you. For some this may look like a sunny south facing window, for others they may have a little balcony or patio that receives enough sun.

There may be some who, like me in my college days, have none of these and found a friend to garden with. If you don’t know anyone who you can share a garden with, look into community gardens. I know that the university I was attending had a community garden where students could rent part of the garden (I think it was like 20 dollars for the season for a sizable pot – very reasonable!).

You may have a neighbor who has a large yard that they aren’t utilizing a section of. Ask them if you can garden on their plot. Offer some produce as a thank you. What I am saying is that you first need to evaluate what your options are. If you do have a sunny place to garden, check out my post on how to do container gardens.

This post is filled with all you need to know in order to grow fresh produce in not much space. Even if you can grow one plant, that is going to bring you more satisfaction than you could ever know. Make good use of your time and write down what options you have available. Check out this post for gardening in pots and get started.

Motivation for apartment gardening

Something that motivated me over the years of gardening in small spaces (we later moved to an apartment that had a balcony and I gardened there for three years) was that I didn’t want to use the excuse of not having a yard to keep me from gardening.

I knew that someday we would live somewhere bigger and I wanted to be ready for that day. I wanted to gain as much experience as I could growing in our apartment balcony garden so that when I did have the chance to grow more food in a bigger yard, I wouldn’t be a newbie.

How to grow an herb garden

If you are wanting to start your apartment homesteading journey with herbs then you are in the right place. Herbs are very diverse in what you can use them for. There are medicinal herbs, culinary herbs, and herbs for making tea!

I have this post that goes into great detail for growing herbs. Herb gardens are a great option for if you don’t have a outdoor space to grow, but do have a sunny window. They do thrive outdoors, but can be grown indoors as well. Start small with a few herbs on your window-sill. You will want to harvest from your plants regularly to keep them producing and not growing too big.

Some herbs like basil can become quite large. Growing herbs will help improve your from scratch cooking as well as your tea making. If your herbs become more productive than you have the ability to eat or drink then they are very simple to preserve! We will go more into food preservation later.

Shopping at your local farmers market

Say you weren’t able to find a way to grow your own food this year, or what you have grown isn’t enough. That is okay, there are always local farmers markets where you can get fresh produce during early spring through fall. When you buy local produce you are getting fresh organic food that just can’t be bought at the grocery store.

You are also supporting local farmers and that is a win! I am always looking for ways that I can support a fellow farmer or homesteader. That is another wonderful thing about apartment homesteading. You find yourself surrounded by a great community of people!

There are lots of different things you can purchase at the farmers market. You can get meat, produce, flowers, seeds, and homemade goods. All from local farms. If you are interested, you can talk to the local farmers about ordering a half, or quarter of a cow to get meat. You can buy whole organic chickens. This is a much more affordable way to get meat.

Buying in bulk is a great bang for your buck too. Just make sure you have a place to store this meat. Another tip for buying in bulk at a farmers market is when you find a great deal on produce buy a large amount for preserving. Preserving is a great way to make your food last longer and keep your trips to the grocery store down.

How to preserve food:

Food preservation takes on many different forms. It is also a perfect thing that you can do with apartment homesteading. As I mentioned before, you can buy fresh food in bulk and preserve it for later. You don’t need acres of land and can live in an urban environment to preserve food. First things first, decide what you have the ability to preserve.

Fermentation

If you want to start with a cheap and simple option, start with fermenting your food. In my post about fermenting I go into the details on the health benefits and the formula I use to ensure proper fermentation takes place. It really is an easy and cheap option that I would suggest trying first.

Freezing

The next cheapest option is to freeze your food. There are a lot of free resources out there that can help you decide what you can or cannot freeze and how long they can be frozen for. Things I like to freeze are berries. Our family likes to make smoothies and we find yourself in need of frozen fruit throughout the year and that has helped us to save money on frozen fruit.

Dehydration

Another food preservation option for apartment homesteading is to dehydrate your food. This requires buying a dehydrator. There is an up front cost, but in the end you will save money on dehydrated foods later. This is the best way to preserve herbs as well. Herbs can be dehydrated easily and used through the winter months or even the rest of the year! It is worth having in my opinion.

Canning

Canning is the next way to preserve food and probably the one you think of first. Jill from the Prairie Homestead has great resources for canning. Canning does take more specific supplies and can cost a bit up front. It also takes some practice.

There are different ways to can different foods, just make sure you are following the canning guidelines to make sure you keep your food safe.

Freeze drying

The last option is a freeze dryer. A freeze dryer is a very expensive product but once you use it to preserve your food, it will last you up to 25 years! Talk about a way to become self sustainable.

The process for freeze drying is pretty simple. You cut up your produce and place it on the trays. You slide the trays into the freeze dryer and click start. The downside is that it can take up to 48 hours for some things to freeze dry, but once it is done and properly packaged, you will have it for 25 years.

Pick one way to preserve food and make a plan on how you can try it today!

How to start cooking from scratch

Now that you are growing your own food, let’s put that food in your recipes. Cooking from scratch is one thing, then learning to cook with the produce you are growing is a step above. It is a wonderful thing that helps you come up with creative ways to feed you and your family.

Most homesteaders have some desire to cook their food from scratch. This is to help them become more self reliant and also to improve health. Cooking from scratch helps you avoid many preservatives that are in processed foods.

The grocery store has to keep their food on the shelves for long periods of time and the only way they can is by adding preservatives. You can avoid this by buying the ingredients and making it yourself. If the idea of growing your own food seems daunting to you, start small.

Look up one recipe of a food that you like. Focus on that recipe until you have mastered it. The more recipes that you read and practice, the more you will become familiar with cooking terms. And lucky for you, we live in a day where a lot of recipes come with instructional videos.

Resources for cooking from scratch

Look online for recipes that come with video. Another great idea is to take a snack you eat regularly like say, a granola bar, and find a way to make a similar thing to it using whole ingredients. Once you feel more confident you can start diving into making your own bread or yogurt!

That being said, just because you want to do apartment homesteading, that doesn’t mean you have to home cook from scratch every single thing you eat. That is a lot to maintain and sometimes life doesn’t flow like that.

For example, whenever I am pregnant, there is very little healthy eating and from scratch cooking that goes on. It is all I have in me to heat up a frozen pizza some days and that is okay. So don’t get down on yourself if you aren’t perfect at this every single day. Just pick it back up when life provides the opportunity.

How to bake with sourdough

Sourdough is a mysterious thing to someone who has never done it before. But I promise you, that once you start diving into the world of sourdough and sourdough starter you can’t go back. It becomes a way of cooking and isn’t daunting at all.

Someone who helped me on my sourdough journey was Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone. She has a super chill approach to sourdough and makes it feel way less intimidating, and way less structured. Some of my favorite sourdough recipes are sourdough bagels, pizza, cinnamon rolls, english muffins, and pancakes.

Get your sourdough starter established and pick a recipe above and make it. So delicious! I don’t actually make the fancy sourdough artisan bread very often because I find it to be less practical. Our family eats bagels more often than we need a fancy bread. You may find that you feel the same way, so start with some simple recipes and give it a try!

How to make bone broth

Bones are something that you will acquire a lot of when you are shopping local, cooking from scratch, or buying parts of an animal for meat. Don’t throw away those bones! They can be made into some delicious and very nutritious broth. The benefits of bone broth are amazing.

Check out this post for making bone broth. It is so easy! That post talks about using chicken bones, but you really can use chicken, rabbit, cow, or pig bones and follow the same instructions and it will come out beautifully gelled and ready to use. Why make bone broth? Well for one, it is way more nutritious than the broth (salt water) that you buy at the store.

Second, it is being much more resourceful and self sufficient to make it yourself using the bones you already have, and third it can be used in so many different meals that will level up your cooking from scratch game!

Apartment homesteading changed my life and I know that it can change yours. Don’t wait until you have more land, and don’t be discouraged if you are going to live in an apartment building long term. It doesn’t matter! You can create your own homestead today. Comment below on how you plan on starting you very own homestead today!