Apartment Homesteading : Good things come in tiny packages!

You don’t often hear the phrase “Apartment Homesteading”.Homesteading has become synonymous with a few acres and a cow, but I am truly a believer that anyone, anywhere can homestead. Homesteading, if you aren’t familiar with the term, is about sufficiency and sustainable living. I would also argue that homesteading is also about community, because no one person can achieve everything alone. Sharing knowledge and learning from other people, as well as sharing skills is vital. A lot of people have asked me how someone in an apartment can actually achieve any of this, and what our plans are for the long term. I love explaining to people what we are intent on achieving and how we have a lot of opportunity if we really want to make that change.
The rabbits are our first step towards our own Apartment Homestead.  Bringing home a pair of dwarf rabbits helped us develop our own source of fertilizer, compost and eventually worm compost for the balcony and porch gardens we want to create as well as our community garden plot. They are also pets, which is also very rewarding. Since we do not plan on any surprise kits (they are supposed to be girls, but you never know), they will be fixed. This is really important for us and for the bunnies health and wellness.
Our next step will be to arrange a worm compost bin in our garage. If you are unfamiliar with the process, worms are placed in a bin with lightly moist newspaper or cardboard and over time scraps/green waste/rabbit poo can be added in. The worms eat all of this and their leavings are the makings of nutrient dense fertilizer. Out of the sun and in an area that will not be disturbed too often, we will be able to keep an eye on the progress of worms in the garage. Worm bins can be kept inside with little smell and no insect problems if done properly. In our case, my sister is terrified of them and they will need to remain outside. Since the garage neither gets too hot nor too cold, I’m thinking they will be okay. Here’s a video on worm bins for apartments that I enjoyed:

The next part of our Apartment Homestead is the gardens.While we’re not quite there yet, the goal is to have several young dwarf fruit trees, and a lot of shade tolerant food plants that will afford us the luxury of fruit and veggies from our own container gardens. I also hope to create some biodiversity in our area, as we seldom see butterflies or beneficial insects.This involves all kinds of flowers and I’m hoping to get some nice roses.
Whatever we can harvest, we plan on eating but anything that we can’t eat due to excess will be for the bunnies or the worm bin. This helps us reduce our waste and partially closes the loop. We will need to bring in hay and food for the bunnies but we have started purchasing organic food and organic hay from Oxbow, making sure that they have healthy food and are contributing to a healthy system. Since we cannot grow the hay ourselves (space is limited) we make an effort to make sure our inputs are as healthy as we can make them.  This includes for ourselves. We purchase food at the farmers market, and our local store as consciously as possible, remembering that what we bring into the house will make it down the food chain,and around back to us.

While we begin this process and as we’re learning about the animals and critters involved, we’re finding out a lot about nature and also indirectly a lot about ourselves. We are making changes to the way we think and how we function on a day to day basis. We’re learning what we can and can’t do.Sometimes part of this process is learning that we won’t be able to make somethings work, and while we are disappointed, we know that it really is for the best. We don’t want to get over taxed and then let go. Since we are believers in permaculture, we take the concept of starting small and spreading slowly to heart. It’s important for us to make sure we are able to complete every aspect of this that we take on. So from now on there will be weekly updates about our progress and what is going on every monday. Hope to see you here!