From a recent post, most of you know we moved. We were living in a cute duplex apartment in Erie (in the country, south Monroe Co.), and moved to a large house in south Toledo. This is taking some getting used to - I’ve never been a city girl and my time living in a city prior to this was not for a long period of time! We moved for a lot of reasons - first of all rent on this house is much less than what we were paying on the apartment in Michigan. Plus, the cost of gas and car insurance is less in Ohio. With the option of public transportation now, we will be buying a bus pass and trying to avoid fueling our own vehicle as much as possible. The move isn’t permanent, but hopefully it’ll get us by until (if ever?) the economy improves.
Anyway, I’m bringing some of the country home with me. I’ve put a garden in that spans about 3/4 of the length of our yard and about 1/3 the width of the yard. I’m hoping this garden will provide for our family’s needs until next harvest, with the exception of eating fresh vegetables which I’ll have to buy some over the winter (but I’ll also be keeping a supply of vegetables growing indoors over the winter to reduce what we’ll have to buy). But anything to put in meals I should have in my freezer or home canned in my pantry. I want to give away any excess that we have (maybe make a little stand on my front yard), and grew more watermelons and pumpkins than we’ll ever need, and I have plans of just giving them away also to those in need. Maybe next year I can sell or give away my extra seedlings to help encourage other families to garden because I have yet to see another garden in a backyard around here.
My husband is on the fence about chickens, but I’m totally for it. The plan is to build a chicken tractor (a movable coop) or two (or three) to raise chicks in as babies and butcher when they’re mature (keep enough for our yearly supply plus a few extra for company, giving to those in need, and unplanned needs) and butcher all at once, or at least all during a certain time period and not year-round), then keep one tractor around with a few hens for eggs year-round. The tractors, when not in use, can be stored on their side somewhere in the yard. I think raising chickens might actually be a little better on the wallet than meat rabbits, which are our next option. However, rabbits are quiet and chickens aren’t totally silent…
My husband and I are building a fence for my garden today with spare wood we have laying around. My dogs (3 of them) are thrilled with having a backyard to run and play in (my Vizsla actually sprained a leg from all of the stair climbing and free running he’s suddenly had access to! he’s fine now!) and the garden is fair game to them. If I want to harvest anything this year I need to keep them out!
We’re also going to build a compost bin. I brought my compost from the apartment which I kept in a rubbermaid tote. Currently the pile is still in the tote until we get the bin built in the back corner of our yard.
I’m looking for a container to collect rainwater in, so I can use that to water my garden instead of city water. I’ll connect that to my downspouts. I’m also going to find a way to drain my washer water into a container to use outside, once we use up the detergent we first bought for our new washer (high efficiency washer - we had laundry piling up to do and grabbed the cheapest detergent we could find to get us by). Then I’m going to mix up a batch of my home made detergent which is environmentally safe, and use the washer water to water my garden and lawn also. I have to find a way to be able to easily connect and disconnect from the collection bin though, because I don’t want to use the dirty water from when I wash cloth diapers.
Now that we are living in a house with a backyard, there is so much more we can do. but, we are renting and that does put a damper on some things. I have ideas popping into my head every day. Solar panels are another thing we’re interested in, but I admit to knowing nothing about them… Can they be easily removed? We’re renting and don’t want to put the expense into buying them unless we can take them to our next residence. Our landlord will not pay to have them put on, so if we did something like solar panels we’d need to be able to take them with us and restore regular electricity to the house before leaving.
I’ve started a blog about our adjustment to city life, and how we’re homesteading in the middle of the city. If you’re interested, feel free to check it out. It’s taken us a full month to move (my husband has injured himself a few times and had a hospital visit or two… I’m pregnant while also chasing after three young children but ended up taking on the brunt of the move… Needless to say, things didn’t move as quickly as we had hoped. We’re still unpacking!).
So there has been a lot to do, not to mention the backyard is/was (we are spending hours outside each day cleaning the backyard up) overgrown with vines, bushes and small trees, my garden is the first garden that has been there in years at the very least so I had a lot of work to get it ready. Don’t forget about usual house cleaning, caring for my three children 4 and under, homeschooling AND running my business from home (I have my own office now! YAY!), that’s left me with very little free time to blog. I’m working on it though. I have a vision and each day we’re a little bit closer.
