Urban Homesteaders

[operationindigo]

I thought I would start a forum for those of us interested in the idea of self sufficiency but live in an urban area. I live in Jacksonville, FL and live about 5 minutes from the center of downtown. I currently have chickens and a set of large raised garden beds which I have begun to use to grow vegetables and herbs. It's a slow process, but it's been really worthwhile and interesting to slowly continue to add on to our "urban" homestead project.

Current Gardening:
tomatoes
peppers (bell and chili)
kale
beets
carrots
spinach
ginger
dill
fennell
cilantro
rosemary

Current Chicken Flock:
(only two for right now : / )
1 Barred Rock
1 Brown Leghorn
(searching for 3 more chickens! Our local ordinance allows up to 5 chickens)

Other animals:
1 Dog
6 Cats

Any other "urban" homesteaders?

 

[Nardo]

Hey,
We did this once at another house. Just pour concrete into the rings and leave them be until it hardens and then move on down the line. You can get as plain or as fancy as you want. Add designs or colored rock or leaf imprints or paw prints or whatever. Fill in with gravel or smaller rocks and it makes a pretty good flooring for raw ground.

 

[Diannastarr]

just a few ideas i made from stuff i found around , 1st. is a door i made from crates i get free from the store,were i sell my free range eggs , this crate i cracked the side by mistake so its was my first choice to experiment on it making a door for my rooster Elwood & 2nd pic is a nesting box i made from an old kitchen draw & some stiff plastic stuff called door skin but Formica may be the same for that use..? and this idea turned out great , i can just pull off the top to clean it and can also vacuum it or carry it around & over to the hose to wash it out..and the hens just love that curved top..! its become the favorite nest box HA

some thing called door skin that was hanging around but maybe Formica would be good to..!!

 

[Dharmachick]

Guess what!! I just got a 8 foot tall, 4 foot by 4 foot crate made out of 1" plywood for free!!! I'm going to make a coop, but first I have to figure out how to get it over the fence into the back yard, lol.

 

[Diannastarr]

i raise chickens & my love of chickens has turned into an eggs business, well so my husband of 30 years died a wile back very suddenly , so im on my own here with my 75 chickens 2 wild cats and my 42 year old parrot, i like to invent stuff from other stuff i find , so here is the latest , the store that buys my eggs gives me crates & i take as many as they will give me , i make nest boxes & other stuff out of them & my BR roo needed a new sturdy door with some ventilation for the summer, so i cut off the bottom of a crate , & it came out good..! gotta love those crates..!!!

 

[nayeli]

Congrats on your ducks. You might consider doing a soil floor coop, with a skirt. Given your climate, you could put up a cattle panel hoop coop that would meet your needs nicely, and provide some awesome duck compoost.

Awesome buy on the berry bushes. I am a bottom feeder. I rarely pay full price for a plant, unless i want it really, really, really bad. You might do some posts on your state thread to see if you can do some bartering to get some blackberry/raspberry canes from someone there.

Soil floor with a skirt?

Bottom feeder? Lol. Actually 3/$21 that I paid a month ago was them on sale. $2 is their clearance price which is amazing! I got so many now though (9 bushes) that I have to figure out a spot for the other raspberry bushes I want to get in the spring as the space is taken up, and the other space I wanted to put them has an electric line running under it...

 

[Diannastarr]

i found a good use for some of the half size cement blocks i found , they make great oyster shell dispensers ..! they dont rust or rot or get turned over and rain water goes right out the bottom..!!! so they get my vote for those free good things that are really useful..!!!

 

[Nardo]

Y'all take a look at my coop. It is completely built from old shipping crates and connected to the greenhouse which is built using pallets. The windows came from Habitat for Humanity Restore. I don't know if those resale stores are found where you are. . .

 

[lazy gardener]

Excellent build, excellent repurposing of materials. You are blessed by a moderate climate. Your set up is an excellent visual pic of one of my "mantra's" If every one who could, would: do a bit of gardening, keep a few chickens, use, reuse, repurpose instead of spend, spend, spend, we would turn the economy of this country around. Our government would not know how to handle a country full of citizens who were self sufficient.

 

[biga]

i'm in small town Alabama USA. i live on about 1/3 acre. i have been doing gardens for 5-6 years now. it's funny how the garden keeps expanding and my grass/yard keeps shrinking. i started with planting a few herbs and some peppers around my patio. then i built a 8'x8' raised bed. that went to 8'x16' the next year and it was up to 16'x16' this year. i plan on doing away with the raised bed and tilling all of that top soil down into the yard to make a 16'x32' garden this spring. i bought my first chickens about 5 months ago. GOT MY FIRST EGG THIS MORNING!!! my Barred rock had the honors of first egg. i have 1 barred rock, 1 white leghorn, 1 brown chicken of some sort. then i bought 4 silkie chicks about 3 weeks ago for the fun of it. the garden for spring will have a large amount of heirloom and roma tomatoes, squash, green beans, zucchini, zipper cream peas, english cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, and whatever else my wife wants to throw in there.

i've gotten a LOT of entertainment out fo the gardens and now even more with the chickens. i have 3 kids under 8 so they enjoy those birds. the wife HATES dogs and won't let me get one.... so one day i saw an article in the paper talking about how it was legal to have chickens in the city... jokingly i said "well if you won't let me have a dog, how about some chickens?" she jokingly replied "well chickens would be better than a DOG". too bad she went out of town for a week after that b/c she came home to 3 chickens and a coop. hahahhahahahaha.