10 Homesteading Skills for the Suburbs

Are you like me?  Despite the fact that we’ve left the country to move back to the ‘burbs, that doesn’t mean that I’ve given up my dream of homesteading.   If anything, my dreams are both more realistic and bigger than before.  What about you?  Even if at the moment there’s no way you could live out in the country either because of your job or because you just couldn’t afford that three or more acre spread?  Yet, you long to be more self-sufficient and to be able to live a simpler life?  Yea…..some days I just want to curl up with a cup of coffee and daydream about a country home.

Well for some, unfortunately, a country home is nowhere on the horizon, so we have to make do with what we can.  Living in the suburbs, we can still live a fairly self-sufficient life.  These ten homesteading skills for the suburbs can greatly change your dependent lifestyle into a much more independent one.

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Homesteading Skills #1 – Gardening

Whether you live in an apartment with a balcony, on a farm or anywhere in between, gardening is a wonderful way to be more self-sufficient.  Gardening on a balcony or in an apartment will look different than living in the suburbs.

During the 2018 Homesteading Summit, I watched a video class on permaculture.  Permaculture, according to Dictionary.com, is:  “The development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient.”  It was my favorite of all the presentations.  Amy Stross runs the blog called 10th Acre Farm.  Their last farm was on 1/10 of an acre!  I have a fairly small yard here in central Illinois, but I have just over 1/3 an acre.  If you are looking for a great place to learn how to garden successfully on a small plot of land, I would start there.

Homesteading Skills #2 -Composting

There are so many variations of how to compost.  From a countertop compost bin to an electric countertop composter to a tumbling composter.  But if you want to build one for yourself I found an article on Amy Stross’s 10th Acre Farm about building the right compost bin.  I also found another website that was really helpful on the actual making of compost at learn.eartheasy.com.  Both of these could get you started off on the right foot.

Homesteading Skills #3 -Aquaponics

Aquaponics is a symbiotic system whereby you keep fish and grow food.  The fish waste in their water is pumped into a food production area.  The plants feed on the fish waste and clean the water, returning the clean water to the fish again.

Aquaponics is something that we may consider in the future as our experience grows.  My husband has had the ability to visit aquaponics systems.  You get a dual benefit from it.  First off, you get meat because you can eat the fish.  Secondly, you get fresh vegetables from the system.

If you are just wanting to dabble in aquaponics so that you can get a feel for it before graduating to a larger system, I would HIGHLY recommend reading this article on building your own system here. It walks you through the whole process step by step.  This is something you could EASILY put in your basement.  It would give you a great chance to get your feet wet by dabbling in an affordable aquaponics system.

Homesteading Skills #4 -Woodstove cooking

Just because you don’t live in the country doesn’t mean that you can’t have a woodstove.  But cooking on a woodstove is NOT like cooking in a regular oven.  Dampers have to be regulated to create the right temperature to bake your foods.  You get different results by cooking in different areas of the stove, and you don’t necessarily know which areas heat the best until you work through it on your own stove.  How do you get food to cook faster?  How do you get foods to only do a slow simmer?

Woodstove cooking can be a complicated process, but there are so many advantages to it.  I have a book called “Woodstove Cookery – At Home on the Range,” which I highly recommend.  It was really eye-opening and instructive reading through the book.  There was a lot more to woodstove cooking than I realized.

Homesteading Skills #5 -Canning

I’ve been canning for more than ten years.  Canning fruit butters and jams are such an easy way to start your canning journey.  High acid foods can be canned using a water-bath canner.  It’s so super simple!  I’ll have to do my own post on it at some point, but for the moment, here’s a great Youtube video of how to water bath can high acid foods.

But I have a confession to make.  I had purchased a pressure canner about fifteen years ago, and for eight years, it sat in its box! Have you heard those stories that some people would tell about pressure canners exploding all over and destroying “Great-Aunt Agnes’s” house?  Yea, I had heard those stories more often than I wanted to think about.  I was seriously terrified that it would explode on me!

I had gotten a free mini canning course from Melissa K Norris through a different summit I had watched years ago.  And while the mini-course is no longer available, Melissa has a “Home Canning with Confidence” course which includes so much more information than even my free class did.  If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to use your pressure canner, let Melissa show you how!

Homesteading Skills #6 -Dehydrating

Dehydrating makes so much sense if you have a small space to store your foods.  By dehydrating your foods, you cut down on the space the food takes so that you can store more.

Dehydrating is so simple to do, and can be done in locations from your car, to an oven on warm, or a dehydrator.  For most foods, you slice them into 1/8 in or smaller slices, place them on your dehydrator racks (if using an actual dehydrator) and for fruits, most go between 7 and 16 hours.  Vegetables go for an even shorter time. On the whole, veggies will need to be dehydrated for between 4 and 10 hours.  Here’s a great chart with dehydrating times.  Katie over at Kitchen Stewardship has a wonderful article on dehydrating foods.  Want more?  Wardee from Traditional Cooking School has a whole class on dehydrating.

Homesteading Skills #7 -Fermenting

Fermenting is a food preservation technique which has been around almost as long as time.  You read about wine in the Bible.  What is wine, but fermented grape juice?  Fermenting has so many different forms that it can take!  Yogurt is a fermented dairy.  Sourdough is a fermented grain.  Kombucha is a fermented beverage made from tea.  Pickles can be fermented.  Sauerkraut is definitely fermented.

Fermenting (overly simplified) is as easy as picking good produce, adding brine to it, keeping the food submerged in the brine for a period of time until it is adequately fermented or pickled.  I have an article on a simple beginning ferment – pickles!  If you are interested in learning more about fermenting, Wardee over at Traditional Cooking School has a whole class just on fermentation!

Homesteading Skills #8 -Maple syrup production

We use a lot of maple syrup in our house.  It’s my children’s favorite go-to sweetener if they have a choice.  When we lived on the farm, we tapped our own maple trees and made maple syrup!  It was easier than I thought it would be, but aren’t most things?

At our new house, we have a very vast ravine as well as a bunch of trees on the property.  I’m sure we’ll be able to tap maple trees here too.   If you have sugar maple trees in your yard, why not tap your own trees?  This is the simplest article I could find on maple tapping.  It walks you through the steps of making your own maple syrup.

Homesteading Skills #9 -Soapmaking

I have dabbled in soapmaking.  Originally, I learned how to make soap in a video and blog post that Wardee from GNOWFGLINS.com and TraditionalCookingSchool.com posted as a “Thank you” video for subscribing to her site.  In the video, Wardeh taught us how to make hot process soaps, and it really wasn’t hard!  It was more nerve-wracking than anything else because you’re working with some very caustic chemicals.

This is something I’d like to pick up again.  There are two types of soaps.  The first is hot processed soaps which are basically cooked so that the lye is cooked off quickly.  These only need to sit overnight before being able to use them.  The second type of soap is a cold process soap.  This soap is not ‘cooked’ so they need to sit for six to eight weeks after you make the bars in order for the soaps to cure and not burn your skin with the lye chemical.

I enjoyed making soap, but I am eager to make shampoo bars!  I’ve purchased shampoo bars from Azure Standard before.  I LOVE shampoo bars.  They are made just like soap because they are just a different kind of soap.

Homesteading Skills #10 -Animals

I live in central Illinois outside of a not-so-conservative city.   Fortunately for us, we live outside the city and we can have animals here at our new house.  We already have a chicken coop, so we’d like to go ahead next year and start with chickens.

If however, you are not allowed to have chickens, in Illinois everyone is allowed to have bees (go figure) and quail.  Quail also provide your family with meat and eggs though.  Check into your local laws to see what’s allowed in your area, but many places (even cities) are allowing people to own chickens or other small animals.

If you live in an area where it’s legal, I would highly recommend raising rabbits.  They grow quickly and reproduce even faster!  If you are looking more for eggs than meat, then chickens or quail are the way to go.

No matter which animal you decide to start within your suburban garden, please do make sure you check out your municipality’s laws governing animals.

What About You?

What other skills can you think of that suburbanites can do to be more self-sufficient?  Is there anything on this list that you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t?  Is there something from this list that you’ve already mastered?  I’d love to hear!  Let me know in the comments.

Don’t forget when you’re working on your suburban homestead,

You’ve got this, Mama!