postage stamp homestead

I have a house on a town lot ( about half an acre) The wife is in school and we're stuck in the area for at least another five years. Land prices are ludicrous. I'm 30 minutes from the city I work in just so we could afford a three bedroom place with any yard at all. I hated living in the the city too, so it wasn't just economical.

We garden, using the Square foot gardening model. I'm perpetually amazed at how many different veggies we get from such a tiny area. I keep meat rabbits in the basement. ( not sure how to interpret the ordinance on that one. For now, we have "pet" rabbits) We have rasberries that the previous owner was kind enough to leave for us. Starting strawberries, grapes and asparagus beds this year. I'm planing on starting worms under the rabbits, and to winter compost. We're putting in fruit trees as we can. We're saving to put up a sunroom/greenhouse on the south side of the house. I'm hoping I can put a small (200 gallon)Tilapia tank in there to raise fish. It'll be an "indoor water feature" when we sell.The wife wants to raise some fruits and veggies that are almost hardy enough for our zone but not quite.The town banned poultry right after we moved in. Annoying, since the city we moved from passed an ordinance approving up to six hens per household around the same time. I'd like a cow, or a goat, but will have to wait on that. We buy our eggs from a local farmer, I hunt a good chunk of our meat from public land, and do a couple of highly productive fishing trips a year. The freezer is never empty.

We also buy a lot of produce from auction and farmers markets localy and put it up. One thing that is nice about being less rural is the trash picking. I find amazingly ridiculous things in the garbage on a weekly basis. Everything from garden tools to nice furniture to electric scooters to almost new gas grills. The plethera of thrift stores that are overloaded with discards is nice too. Folding aluminum garden cart for ten bucks, anyone?

I mow, but my "lawn" is a polyculture of ryegrass,fescue, clover and tons of edible weeds. The rabbits love it. It even looks spiffy enough that the neighbors don't complain. I have interesting conversations with the Tru-green/Chemlawn guy every year as he tries to convince me that I need a weed free mono culture to be as hip as the rest of the neighborhood. He gets all choked up when I tell him that we need the dandelions to make wine with.

I'm constantly looking for more things we can do here. This site has been very helpful, in that regard. There's a guy I met in the city that runs an organic produce business from his half acre lot. His entire yard is garden and greenhouse, and he actually makes a living selling to local grocery co-ops. I have no idea how he got his yard certified organic, but he did.

There's a ton of things you can do with a little bit of land. Every once in a while I start thinking about having to start all over on a bigger acreage and get bummed out, but what I do here is great practice, and we're careful to be sure that it adds to the value of the house or doesn't affect it at all.

Very small fish ponds can be super-productive.My neighbor has a pond(which I am quite envious of)that measures probably 50'x100'.Depending on rainfall,the "deep" end hovers around 8' deep.The pond stays so full of channel catfish,we just cant catch enough of them.Bream have made their way in,and it's a constant battle to try to eat 'em all.The cats average 5-7 pounds,and are extremely easy to catch.I take my 6 year old fishing there,because we cann haul 'em in,hand over fist,so she doesn't get bored.The only problem the pond has ever had was several years ago.Despite the fact that I,along with a veritable army of catfish-slayin' rednecks fished that thing hard,we just couldn't catch enough,the oxygen level was depleted,and lotsa' the fish died.
Lotsa' big turtles make their way to the pond,then make their way to my dinner plate.The snappers and softshells are delicious.Deer and other wildlife flock to the pond to drink,and it's only a 120 yard shot from the kitchen window.
I have a prime spot picked out on my place for a pond,there is a small spring,plenty of runoff,and really only needs a levee to complete it.I'd sure like a source of "fishwater" to water my veggies with during times of drought.

beorning

I am really interested in what you are doing. Can you tell more about your sunroom/aquaculture idea? You must be in a northern zone? What about blueberries (edible landscaping) and blackberries? I thought about making a greenhouse until I learned about winter seed sowing using recyclables. I can do as well with free found materials than if I built a greenhouse (which has issues with temp and air movement anyway).

I interplant edibles with my perennial flowers around the house. Peppers, onions and soon asparagus will be throughout the garden. I save the herbs for the garden spots away from the house that are inconvenient for watering and have poorer soil.

Have you thought of bees? I can't imagine that you would be prevented from putting your "pet" bunnies outdoors. Your set up reminds me of the Possum living:

http://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm

I don't waste time and money creating raised beds. I just amend in permanent beds that are not walked on. They are wide beds and they are planted intensively. Yes, if you amend like crazy, compost and mulch you can do it! Without spending.

Some people who are still dreaming of their very own homestead would be very happy with a postage stamp homestead! You can do tons with a small space!

Mid Tn Mama

The possum living link was pretty interesting. I'm a bit more addicted to my creature comforts than those folks seem to be, and not so sold on abandoning the luxury of money. Their take on the law is pretty unique I wonder how it would fly these days, vs. in the 70's?

Sunroom/greenhouse - Still very much in the planning stages, but what I've got so far is something attached to the house, lean to fashion, and functioning as a passive solar design. I'm thinking of doing a recycled red brick wall on the side that abuts the house as well as a brick floor (over a slab) it would be vented into the house to take advantage of the solar heating, and well insulated. I'd like to use as many recyclable materials as possible ( I can find double glazed used sliding patio doors here for ten bucks, for instance) but am in the process of hunting down local code so I can design it in such a way that it won't detract from the value of the house. I still need to figure out how to vent it in the summer. I might rig up some way to shade the glass to help cut temperature. I want to put a rectangular fish tank at one end. Probably made from masonry with some sort of liner or waterproofing. I haven't really gotten that far yet. I'd probably plumb it, to facilitate draining and filling, and i want to make it look nice enough that we can put some water plants in it when were ready to sell and call it an indoor pond. I haven't found a whole lot of info. on very small scale aquaculture, but I'm still hunting. Tiapia seem to show promise, but there's no way I could keep an outdoor aquaculture tank operational for their growing season in southern Wisconsin.

The rabbits are in the basement largely for the same reason the possum folks keep theirs there. It's easier for me to tend them. They are in commercial wire cages and have full spectrum lighting and an air filter running for ventilation. I'd rather that as few people know about them as possible. I could probably get away with having them outdoors, but between the winters, the dogs, and the possible neighbor hassle, I'd rather not. I would like to play around with rabbit tractors in the warmer months, and might give that a whirl, one of these days.

The wife is interested in blueberries and blackberries, but we both work full time, so it's slow going with new additions. She's also starting school in the summer for a nursing degree on top of her full time job. Between that and our daughter, and our menagerie, we are pretty busy most of the time.

Interplanting is a great idea. Our rasberries are mixed into a long bed of perrenials on our back fence. The only other existing decorative plant bed we have is in the process of being redone. The previous owners threw down about afoot of gravel, plastic, then another six inches of gravel. All this surrounded some pretty monstrous evergreen shrubs that we cut down right after we moved in. Found the gas meter and a basement window in the process We're probably going to grow tomatoes there. We had problems last year due to the neighbors black walnut trees rooting into our garden space, and the new bed is much farther away. Everything but the tomatoes seemed to do Ok with the walnut toxin.

I'm a little concerned that if we do too much here, I won't want to leave I guess I'll have to see where we end up in a few years.