Friends, it’s time to give you an update on what we’re doing here at Sunstone since moving to New Mexico last fall.
Our intention was to live rural with larger acreage as we did in New York, but after much thought, we decided to explore the urban homesteading model, settling just 11 miles outside of the city of Albuquerque in the historically agrarian South Valley.
Instead of a 100 or 20 or 5 acres, we landed on 1.5 acres in the fertile Rio Grande Valley. This is a far cry from the greenbelt we once called home, but already our smallholding has the same peaceful feel of our farmstead in the Catskills.
The urban homesteading model is one that we are excited about exploring and encourage others to experiment and learn with us. With 98% of the US population living off-farm, one of the ways to really increase local farms, local foods and local economies is for people to start their own urban jungle of fruit trees, vegetables, and healing herbs. We can’t all go “back to the land,” but we can each do our part to create greenbelts of our cities.
Some of the projects we will blog about after our period of “long and thoughtful observation” are sheet-mulching, planning an urban farmstead, harvesting rainwater and creating micro-pastures and edible fences for our goats.
To see what one enterprising family is doing with their urban homestead, check out the inspiring Path to Freedom website. Si se puede! – Jen
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