The Urban Homestead

Perhaps I watched too many episodes of Little House on the Prairie or The Good Life* in my youth, but I have always been in love with the idea of self-sufficiency. Growing up in an urban environment, I was not deterred from my desire to live mainly in nature. I spent my time running around the local woods with my friend Jennifer; creating snail hotels in the garden and making rose water on summer afternoons.

Not much, it seems has changed. I’ve swapped the woods for a garden with a decent sized vegetable patch; snail hotels for a dog and fruit vinegar for ‘eau de rose’. (Of course, the rose water never worked. It was just pile of slushy petals festering in a jam jar – but one has to begin somewhere!)

Fruits of our labours Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Now I have my own home with its little patch of land, I wish to use it to create an ‘urban homestead’ where I can learn at least a little self-sufficiency. No doubt that seems perverse when everything we need is just a click away. But that is the point. When things come too easily, they lose their value and their magic. And in handing over the responsibility to others to feed and clothe and meet our every need, we also hand over a little of our independence.

Going green

One of the reasons I am embarking on this quest is an attempt, small though it is, to reduce my carbon footprint and heal the tiny piece of earth under my control.

Our garden is fully organic, which means we do have to deal with a fair amount of loss due to insects and our fruit is seldom free of ‘little friends’. Yet, sharing benefits us all in the end. Even snails, I discovered, are as likely to be pollinators as pests and if they eat my perfect young cucumbers plants to the nubbins, I will not starve.

I would gladly sacrifice a few leaves for this beauty! Image: Harald Arlander on Unsplash

Our garden is significantly enhanced by our wildlife. Pollinators like wasps swarm the rocket flowers and then our own ornamental ones. The caterpillars who nibbled our broccoli plants have now returned as beautiful cabbage white butterflies. And this abundance of insects ensures that the wide variety of garden birds are fed.

And what we eat comes without any travel miles at all.

From seed to plate

I have started trying to be a real gardener – and that means growing from seed rather than picking up plants from the nursery. It can be a very hit and miss affair, with some little seeds never making it to seedlings and others growing like Triffids.

Yet, when it works, it is truly miraculous. The minute seeds I planted in propagators and kept on the window sill are now three feet high broccoli plants. The £2 packet of summer squash seeds have yielded many, many pounds of patty pan, gem squash and courgettes.

A good day’s harvest Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

My husband is especially proud of his purple beans. They are currently plentiful and the flavour of a just picked bean is hard to surpass. We try to eat our vegetables and fruit as soon as they are ready and sometimes, of course, you have a glut. Yet, abundance provides the joy of giving. In pre-Corona days, I would invite friends over, give them a carrier bag and tell them to help themselves. Now I drop bags off on their doorsteps.

Preserving

When there is more produce ready than we can eat, I have turned to preserving. It is laborious and time-consuming, but laying the results away brings me infinite joy. These last few months, I have learned all sorts of ways to successfully preserve – largely thanks to YouTube and foodie websites. The easiest way is to freeze and my freezer drawers are now crammed with apples, squash and rainbow chard.

I’ve also attempted pickling for the first time. My cute rainbow beets are now preserved in spiced vinegar. I feel I ought to try some chutneys too. We certainly have enough apples!

Drying has proven to be an excellent method for storing items long term. I routinely dry my lavender and herbs and this year tried rose petals. You don’t need any fancy equipment or even much space for drying. Either tie in bunches and hang upside down in paper bags in a dark place or lay out on sheets of paper (this works best for flowers like rose petals and elderflowers.) Leafy items such as kale and parsley do well in a very cool oven over a long time. For tiny bunches of parsley, lay them on a cooling tray over a baking one to increase air flow. This method also works very well for apple rings.

When the children were young, I often took them to the local fruit farm to pick strawberries and then I made jam. This year, I had just enough blackcurrants to make my husband a jar and I’m planning in the next few days to make apple berry jams with our garden apples and wonky frozen fruits.

By approaching all this as a sort of science experiment/culinary adventure, the outcomes become less pressing. The process is interesting enough. If I succeed in making something delicious, that is a bonus. My favourite discovery this year is making fruit vinegars from scratch. They take about a month to mature, but the result is a sweet, milder vinegar that is perfect for salad dressings – or even as a probiotic when a teaspoon is added to water.

First batch of vinegars and preserves Image: Jeff Costello-McFeat

Lock-down has not been great for many things, but it has given me the perfect opportunity to pursue my ideal of self-sufficiency. Learning the skills needed takes oodles of time. These last months, I have been granted that.

Through all the learning and the waiting and the monotonous manual labour, I have discovered that working slowly and patiently brings its own rewards. Whatever we create from nothing – a vegetable from a seed; a meal from a newly picked squash – gives us an enormous amount of joy. Ask anyone what they are most proud of and I’m sure that 9 out of 10 times, it is something they have made.

I am endlessly grateful for the privilege of living in the modern world with its technology and comfort, but I also believe that we do well to sometimes remind ourselves that survival really is hard. When we practise self-sufficiency with all its frustrations and struggles and slowness, we remind ourselves to be grateful for all those things we take for granted. And gratitude is key to our well-being. And now, I need to stop typing and make some more apple sauce.

* The Good Life was a successful British sitcom where an idealistic middle-aged couple sought to live self-sufficiently in their home in Surbiton outside London.