My 2022 Micro Homestead Garden
A Micro Homestead seems to be the direction my homesteading goals are headed. I have had big dreams of a big homestead for years. Possibly decades if you count the years of my childhood I spent pretending to milk cows, ride horses and gather food.
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What Is Homesteading?
Homesteading is a growing trend that is especially popular with millennials like myself. And it’s no wonder! Many of us were raised on Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, and other stories idealizing the “simpler times.” Now as adults we are living through “unprecedented times.” With a world-wide pandemic, supply chain issues, shortages of everyday grocery items we took for granted, and a recession looming on the horizon, we are looking for ways to have sustainable security.
However many millennials struggle with even buying a house, let alone acreage and infrastructure needed to support farm animals and crops. Homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. Most agree that to grow/raise food for self-sufficiency you need 5-10 acres or 2 acres per person in your family. You’ll need more if you raise animals which require a lot of space.
What Is Micro Homesteading?
The idea of Micro Homesteading is striving for that same self-sufficient lifestyle on less than 5 acres. Remember that self-sufficiency doesn’t just have to mean food! Textiles such as clothing can be made by hand. Learn the craft of food preservation so that even store bought food doesn’t go to waste. Bread making is another trend that is gaining popularity…The list goes on. A garden doesn’t have to mean just flowers and looking pretty if it’s less than the “ideal” size for sustainability. Animals are a big dream of mine: chickens, goats, alpacas…but even an apartment dweller can keep worms for a vermicompost. (I’ve been using this one from Amazon for that last 6 months) Rabbits are another option for many Micro Homesteaders. They require very little space and are quiet enough to fly under the radar of HOA.
My 2022 Micro Homestead
Really a Micro Homestead is really embracing the DIY nature and culture! Here on WhimsyRoo, that’s what we’re all about. I love to DIY and get creative, even in the garden with my girls. This year I’m committing myself to being creative about building my micro homestead and moving towards a self-sufficient life. If you’re still here, keep reading to see my epic (mis)adventures in my 2022 garden.
I had my small corner lot “side yard” for half the season, many containers for another half. Plus a whole lot of trial and error added in. Since 2022 is officially over, many are looking to plan their 2023 gardens and homesteads. Let me take you on a short trip through my crazy micro homestead in 2022.
To view the accompanying YouTube video with more visuals about my 2022 garden click here
January
There we big plans for my micro homestead. I began building new raised beds, giving me a total of 8 beds to work with. Also built an arch out of tree branches I trimmed. This would become the entry to my garden, further separating it from the front yard. I had hopes of covering it with vining plants such as wisteria and ivy as well as the morning glories and pole bean seeds I saved from the year before.
March
My micro homestead shared its space with a house built in or around 1955 which still had most of its original cast iron pipes. When we were looking at repairs and replacements for not just the pipes, but electrical issues, and insulation problems, we began throwing the idea around of moving. I was excited at the prospect of a bigger space for my micro homestead, one that would allow chickens and a bigger garden. When we listed the house for sale in March I realized we would be moving in the middle of the 2022 gardening season. I sadly changed my garden plan to be mostly containers. I did put a few things into the ground that would either produce and be done by June or I wouldn’t be sad to leave behind. Spoiler. I was still sad.
June
Skipping ahead to June in my micro homestead garden. April and May were pretty much normal except that I was growing things in containers. There’s a learning curve when you are going from in-ground to containers or vice versa. I made a lot of mistakes and was frustrated a lot, especially because the vision I had in January wasn’t coming to fruition (pun intended). But in late May and June Texas had unusually high temperatures, even for Texas. When we moved it was approaching triple digits and all my plants, containers and in-ground were struggling with the heat and drought.
To add to my disappointment, we were not moving to a “real” homestead or even a homestead of similar size. We weren’t moving into a forever home at all. Because in June of 2022, to combat the rising housing market all banks raised the loan interest rates. This made the homes we had been looking at for the last three months unaffordable and we weren’t willing to settle for something smaller. We decided to rent a house for a year and hope the market changes by then. So far, looking back from 2023, I think we made the right decision. We sold our house when the market was at its peak and look to be buying a new home this year with less competitive prices.
But all this meant that my hopes of building a bigger better garden were crushed as we moved into a space we didn’t own.
July
In July we saw more record breaking temperatures. What plants survived the move were at a standstill in their growth, putting all their energy into surviving rather than producing fruit. I hoped that building a bigger raised bed for them would help. I called them “Frankenstein Beds.” I used what little lumber I brought from my scrap pile at the old house to make these boxes that were doomed to fail from the beginning.
August
We went on vacation in early August and came home to find out that my Frankenstein Beds had totally and completely fallen apart. Of course when my retired contractor father came to visit later that month, he pointed out exactly where I went wrong. I spent a few days transplanting these poor plant babies AGAIN. This time either back into pots or into an in-ground bed I made. Damn the consequences if the landlord doesn’t like it. (So far so good)
September
My poor tomato and pepper plants limped along and my harvest was very small. I started seeds with hopes of cooler temperatures and a productive fall garden.
October
My micro homestead garden was coming back to life with bush beans blooming, green tomatoes waiting to ripen, flowers on the pepper plants, and some baby squashes on the ground. I also had a ton of sunflowers and my very first zinnias blooming! Then we got an early freeze. Not even a frost, well before veterans day (my zone’s average first frost date) we jumped straight to freeze. The frost protection blanket I bought did nothing against the sudden drop in temperature. What the 20mph winds didn’t destroy the freeze did soon after.
November
R and I did a fun experiment with our Jack-o-lanterns that I will have to wait until Spring or maybe Summer to tell you how it turns out. We put our pumpkins into 5 gallon buckets and then piled top soil on top. My theory is that the decomposing pumpkins will add nutrients to the cheap soil making it something I can use for my plants next growing season. I even cut a window into one of the buckets to watch the composition happen.
December
I had enough time before that freeze to transplant some of my peppers back into containers in hopes of overwintering them. For Christmas I got a tiny pop-up green house like this one and I set it up almost immediately.
Just before Christmas we had temperatures in the teens, but as things warmed back up to above-average-even-for-Texas I started planning what I could do with my greenhouse and sunny garage to get a Jumpstart on seedstarting in 2023.
I also gifted myself and my best friend (HopsandOpal) some sourdough starter for Christmas. As part of my micro homestead adventures I’m trying out this new trend/old skill of sourdough bread making!
Looking ahead to My 2023 Micro Homestead
Our lease on this rental house is up in June, so I’m looking at another growing season being broken up by a move. I plan to do a lot of containers again, and I think I learned enough last year to hopefully do better this time.
I plan to grow more flowers this year, both for pollinators and to use as medicines and dyed. It’s a new venture of gardening I’m really looking forward to!
Learning sourdough has been difficult, but my friend has also struggled with hers. We agreed that the dry cold weather is probably not helping and hopefully we will see better results as it warms up.
I’ve made the decision to spend this winter building marketable homesteading skills. If I can build enough inventory, I hope to test the waters of farmers markets and craft fairs!
I’ve also been learning a lot about soil health, what “good” soil composition looks like, and how I can amend the soil naturally on my micro homestead. The book The Living Soil Handbook has helped tremendously! In addition to my pumpkin experiment, I have a worm farm to create compost. If I can’t get chickens at our new property I will at least get rabbits so I can have ready manure to compost and meat if it’s ever necessary. So hopefully I will have all the ingredients needed for a healthy soil!
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot I’m working towards for 2023 in my micro homestead and I know I’m probably overreaching. But I love having ideas and dreams and being passionate about them all, even if it’s just for a season.
What are you doing this year? Growing your garden? Starting your first garden? Maybe a new venture in your homestead or micro homestead? Had you heard about the term “micro homestead” before now? Please talk to me about it in the comments or send me a dm on social media!
