i wanna be an urban homesteader!

It's Urban Homesteaders Blog like a Pirate Day!! If you haven't heard about this issue, read Crunchy Chicken's post (and the comments, which tell more of the story) about the Dervaes family trademarking the widely-used term Urban Homesteading. I am constantly reading the blogs of urban homesteaders and I am in awe of all they do. In honor of the day and in taking up the issue with my heroes, I'm reposting my i wanna be a farmer post with some Urban Homesteading changes/twists!

Do you have one of those completely unrealistic visions for yourself? A dream beyond dreams that seems so easy and yet completely unattainable?

I want to be an Urban Homesteader. Hiding the smell of manure, sweating in the garden, finding attractive rain barrels, worrying about city regulations while trying to raise chickens, fighting with the neighbors, making due. Oh it's all so romantic in my mind.

I read about it. Daily. A myriad of bloggers. I regularly read gardening and farming and urban homesteading books. I research composting and starting seeds and naturally taking care of pests and plant diseases and how-tos for everything under the farmers sun and moon. And all I've concluded is that I need some hands-on instruction. Live-in instruction, really, over the course of many many seasons. And a lot more time.

I think I could live very happily on an Urban Homestead, in the midst of all the culture and excitement of a city while coming home to fresh eggs and garden. Ha! Not at all realistic, but that's what dreams are for, eh?

I read Chile Chews and Casaubon's Book and Adventures in Urban Sustainability and APLS and arduous blog and Cage Free Family and Community for a Sustainable Future and Contemplating Change and Living the Frugal Life and The Green Phone Booth and Throwback at Trapper Creek and Tiny Choices and Towards Sustainability and Two Frog Home and so many other blogs that inspire me to want to do all these things, and show me that it is indeed possible.

Maybe one day, slowly but surely, I'll find a happy medium between my black thumb in the rural farmland and the vibrancy of a rural life surrounded by city life. But the progress is so slow, if at all, that I think this might just have to stay in the 'dream' category.

Are you an Urban Homesteader?

Much Love,

Able-Bodied Girl