Homesteading Where You Are Series-Intro

Welcome to our new Series
Homesteading Where You Are.

Our 7-part series will be appearing each Wednesday. 

the suburban homestead

I'm daisy.  
I currently live in the suburbs of Central Florida.
How does a suburbanite homestead, you might ask?
Well, we can't have livestock, a huge garden or use a tractor,
but we have our own method of pushing the boundaries of home and hearth.

home-grown snap peas

For one thing, we grow what we can in our small garden plot.
I'm a newbie gardener, but practice makes progress!
Along with growing some of our table stuffs,
we support our local farmers by purchasing their goodies each week.
If you've read our Farm School posts,
you know that last year we discovered a farmer who grows his crops
pesticide-free. 
We started buying much of our produce from he & his lovely wife,
and now they are dear friends who welcome me each weekend to learn their craft.

homemade lotion

Another aspect to homesteading that we've made progress on in the past few years,
is relying less on commercial sources for items used in the home.
For instance, we make our own cleaning products like detergent, glass cleaner,
hair products, even sugar wax.
It feels good knowing that we don't need to shop for many of these everyday items
and we are assured that we are using safe, earth-friendly products.

ratatouille

Scratch cooking is a big part of the homesteading lifestyle.
We use basic ingredients in simple recipes,
and adapt them to the various preferences and sensitivities in our family.
It's real food enjoyed daily.

Our homesteading journey will soon be taking a big leap.
With the house on the market,
we'll be heading north and looking for a more rural setting.
Until then, we do what we can to make the homesteading lifestyle a daily mindset.
The dream is movin' right along...

For additional great homesteading ideas, visit these other bloggers posting to this series:

*Jackie, at Born Imaginative, grew up as an avid 4-Her, on a 50 acre hobby farm, with parents who pursued a homesteading life. Now, with a husband and two small children of her own, she is bringing an 1880s farmhouse/30acre farm back to life in Southern Coastal Maine.

*Mary, at Homegrown on the Hill, lives in Southwestern Ohio with her family on a 5 acre homestead. Their goal is to be as self sufficient as possible. In helping with this goal, they raise a big garden and keep chickens, rabbits, and cattle for food.

*Staci, at Life At Cobble Hill Farm, was bitten by the homestead bug in 2006 and although she began her homesteading ventures in a rented condo, is now homesteading on less than an acre in Upstate NY.

*Sue, at The Little Acre that Could, shares her body with an auto-immune disease, and life with her husband. They live in a once-working Victorian farm cottage now bordered by a modern subdivision. She has dreamed of homesteading as long as she can remember and continues to strive toward that goal in rural Atlantic Canada.


Five bloggers, 7 weeks,
Big Ideas!
Join us every Wednesday!