Ah! Your username makes so much more sense now! This was a very cool tour, I loved seeing the creative use of urban space. I have a few questions if you don’t mind — Are you intending to stay in that same house forever, or eventually move somewhere with a little more room?
I would like to move somewhere with at least a couple acres (though to avoid restrictions on agricultural use in my area, usually you need 5+ acres). A lot will depend on my wife's career (she is the sole earner) and how long she wants to work, on whether any of my kids would want to farm as a career, etc.
I could be happy paying off this property and staying put forever unless crime gets considerably worse but it's not my first choice.
How did you get started with this?
I built a single raised garden bed the year we started homeschooling. I thought it would be fun as part of science for them, then I got hooked and rapidly expanded.
Did you grow up around farms or is this something you picked up later?
My Dad grew up on a dairy farm but I grew up in the city. My parents had a big veg garden for many years but never animals. I think the farming gene skipped a generation, though my grandfather was dead for several years before I got hooked.
Philosophically/ethically I'm also really drawn to being participatory in growing food and taking life. I love reading folks like Joel Salatin.
Do you have any pets in the house?
I am seriously considering starting my own (much smaller) garden, likely tomatoes and peppers to start, and once we get a privacy fence up I’d be willing to consider chickens (I love rabbits but am afraid my dog would kill them and/or I don’t have it in me to slaughter them). Do you have any advice you’d give to newbies?
We have an indoor cat. We'll soon be putting one of our bunnies that's just a pet indoors. Not sure how the two will get along, so we may regret that! Plenty of dog owners raise rabbits. In fact, many of them do it for raw feeding of their dogs.
With gardening, be open to failure. There's a learning curve to everything. I've killed lots of plants in my attempts to learn. Plants want to grow if you give them the right conditions. Gardens typically fail either because of neglect or because of over-intervention. I try to do a garden walk every day.
If you know any gardeners in your area, they may be able to help. If you're willing to share approximate location/climate, I may be able to recommend some additional resources, etc.
With animals, the big thing to remember is that they're a 24/7/365 job, so travel requires arranging someone to care for them. Travel isn't a huge thing for us, though my wife's family is all 800 miles away, so we do have to be away from the homestead for a week or so a year. Thankfully we have a reliable friend that's happy to work for some cash, beer, and whiskey.
Egg laying chickens are super easy, very low time commitment per day. They're a great starter animal. They don't save money versus cheap grocery store eggs, but they're fun to watch and the eggs are very high quality on just food scraps, what they forage from the yard, and a conventional layer feed. 18 months in and our cost/dozen is $2.55 and still falling slowly. We'll see where it bottoms out.
If you want to raise and butcher your own meat, see if there's any way for you to learn to butcher from someone in your area. I learned how to do rabbits from YouTube, but before I butchered my first rabbit I'd helped a friend process a bunch of meat chickens so I'd had experience taking a life. It was gross at first, but not nearly as gross as I thought it would be. It's gotten pretty routine for me at this point, but it's never an enjoyable process.
