Building A Backyard Homestead: 13 Ideas For Living Small & (Self) Sustainably
Looking to embrace a simpler, self-sufficient lifestyle?
Dig into these backyard homestead ideas. After all, there’s no place like home(stead).
Following the mass exodus from urban centers in 2021 and instability that’s plagued supply chains in recent years, a spike in self-sustainability and self-sufficiency in sprawling rural areas hit an all-time high.
While supply chains are said to be returning to normal, this hasn’t slowed the rising cost of groceries (and corporate profits) leading many to start placing their overpriced grocery store eggs in a different basket.
An answer to many of the modern world’s problems, backyard homesteading encourages saving, self-reliance, and shortening the supply chain.
So what is backyard homesteading?
Backyard homesteading—sometimes called small, self-sufficient, or suburban homesteading—aims for a portion of goods to be grown on one’s own land instead of purchased from outside sources.
It applies the zero waste philosophy on a small, individual scale, prioritizing a self-sustaining production cycle with little waste and a positive environmental impact.
But just like sustainable living in general, the backyard homestead definition of progress and success is largely determined by the individual.
Each homesteader (and homestead) comes complete with unique goals and abilities.
A backyard patio plot may not feasibly host a milk cow, but with a little ecological gardening know-how and a lot of imagination, you can grow nearly a year of food on just a quarter acre.
Whether you’re a total beginner or a seasoned small homestead expert, this list of suburban homesteading ideas will help your microfarm flourish.
The Full List Of Backyard Homesteading Ideas
- Start composting
- Better your backyard building projects
- Small gardens growing big amounts of food
- Make the most of your space
- Learn to preserve food
- Sustainable soil reigns supreme
- Save seeds for a sustainable gardening future
- Water cache to save cash
- Small animals for a small homestead
- Choose backyard homestead animals that fit your needs
- Use animals over machines
- Learn to lean on others
- Backyard homestead projects to expand your small homesteading horizons
1. Start Composting
Wondering, “How do I start a homestead with no money?”
That’s easy: start composting!
Whether you have patios or parcels of land, composting will turn your kitchen scraps into the soil for your backyard bounty to grow.
Composting comes in many forms, but whether you’re using indoor compost bins, outdoor bins, or heaping piles, the benefits of composting are undeniable.
Diverting food waste and other compostable materials from our local landfills only scratches the surface; composting is the literal foundation of your backyard sustainability cycle.
From it, you get (almost) free soil and fertilizer from which all other backyard homestead garden ideas can grow.
2. Better Your Backyard Building Projects
Still, on the road to a sustainable harvest and an edible garden, many homesteaders discover their dreams are bigger than their wallets.
Keep in mind that online blogging farmers began the same way you are: with a dream that sometimes looks like recycled materials, mismatched paint, and a lot of make-dos.
Pinterest-worthy gardens and farms rarely start out looking that way.
Don’t bug out on pricey beds; Instead, use excess building materials (Home Depot and Lowe’s will usually happily give you their scraps for free), visit thrift shops for pre-loved pots, and get creative with your backyard homestead garden design.
There are countless garden recycling ideas out there that not only prevent usable materials from going to waste, but will save money in your homestead budget.
If you plan on building a lot and have a little startup capital, consider purchasing a second-hand wood mill to use the trees cleared for raising farm animals or outbuilding projects on your own land to repopulate it with the needed structures.
3. Small Gardens Growing Big Amounts Of Food
Just because you have a smaller plot of land doesn’t mean you have to compromise on food production. There are plenty of small homestead garden ideas that will help you mimic the bounty of rural country living.
Immerse yourself in space-saving organic farm tricks like:
- Vertical gardening: Trellises, container towers, and high structures like walls or doors for support to grow up and not out. This maximizes your space without hindering the vegetable type you can grow. You can build an effective vertical garden from wooden pallets collected for free from hardware stores.
- Companion planting: Interplanting or companion planting increases yield, deters pests, and saves space.
- Season-extending design: Greenhouses, moveable containers, and covered areas can extend your growing (or seed-starting) season for the fruits and vegetables that take a little longer to mature.
- Succession planting: It can be enticing to start all seeds and transplants at once, but planting different crops in a succession maximizes all the food without requiring multiple beds. Start your crops that prefer cooler weather first (like peas) in the early season, then replace them when the time comes with those who prefer hot weather.
- Multiple plantings: Know which plants can thrive in seasons and plan your starts accordingly. For example, spinach has a very short maturation time and the savvy gardener can usually get two or even three different spinach crops per season by staggering planting times.
4. Make The Most Of Your Space
Every seed, tree, or bush planted has the potential to provide for your farmstead, which makes planning your backyard homestead layout very important.
Edible garden hedges, fruit trees as a privacy fence, and berry bushes for a border make use of valuable food-producing real estate in your backyard.
Don’t forget to think outside the (garden) box, too. Foraging what grows wild in your area alleviates a little growing pressure and makes use of the already existing natural resources (Dandelion wine, anyone?).
It’s also helpful to create a backyard homestead seasonal planner so that you know what things need to be accomplished by when so you don’t miss seasonal planting windows.
5. Learn To Preserve Food
Now it’s time to put the home in ‘homesteading skills’.
In the heat of summer, when everything is producing, blooming, fruiting and shooting, lettuce not forget most zoning requires a period of “rest” for the garden.
This means all the food in your overflowing backyard must be preserved, so it can support your family during this rest period.
Learning how to preserve food—whether through canning, picking, fermenting, curing, dehydrating, or blanching and freezing—requires a bit of kitchen know-how, some empty jaw, and a comprehensive guide (especially if pressure canning, where cook times matter).
Local thrift shops and used bookstores often have a dusty old gem with all our grandma’s canning secrets.
Invest in a large capacity pressure canner, as this will make the process more efficient and drastically increase the number of foods you can safely preserve—namely high acidic foods (i.e. tomato and pasta sauce, salsa, pie filling, jams, preserves) and meat, which can’t be canned safely using a standard water bath method.
Block out plenty of time for this in your backyard homestead seasonal planner, as it takes up much of your time initially but saves you plenty in the coming months.
6. Sustainable Soil Reigns Supreme
You know how sustainable beauty is skin deep?
Well, sustainable gardening is soil deep. Healthy, nutrient-rich soil is what makes all kinds of homesteading–whether classic off-grid or modern suburban homesteading—possible.
Regardless of the organic seeds, perfectly placed beds, and top-of-the-line watering systems, your backyard homesteading dreams will turn to dust without focusing on the soil.
Because potting soil is so readily available these days, understanding and managing soil microbes has become a complex and often overlooked portion of gardening.
However, proper soil health will play the biggest role in the success of your garden or organic farm as the soil (and all the microorganisms) within are responsible for growing and supporting healthy, nutritious plants.
Here are some small homesteading ideas for naturally nurturing your soil:
- Crop rotation: All plants consume different nutrients from the soil, which is why it’s a good idea to keep it balanced by avoiding planting the same crop in the same place consecutively.
- Worm farms: Worm farms, in cahoots with composting, are an unbelievably easy and beneficial additive to your soil microbiome. Brew worm tea, use soil for seedlings, or deposit mature wrigglers into your garden for beautiful blooms.
- Beneficial insects: Supporting your garden with beneficial insects (homegrown or purchased from your local garden shop) keeps the nasty pesticide chemicals and non-helpful bugs from your soil while supporting the growing plants. Not to mention, it helps increase biodiversity on your suburban homestead.
- Beneficial blooms: If beneficial insects need reinforcements, companion planting and trap cropping help to deter the bad bugs.
7. Save Seeds For A Sustainable Gardening Future
If you have a yearly compost heap, it’s common to find a rogue squash plant or tomato shooting for the sun in the spring.
Mimic nature’s seed-saving practices by penciling this practice into your backyard homestead seasonal planner. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Guaranteeing healthy, unaltered seeds from your own organic farm year after year is self-sufficient backyard homesteading 101.
Certain seeds—like beans, peas, lettuces, and tomatoes—are tucked into the “simple seed saving” category and only require clean, dry seeds to be stored in a temperature-controlled, dark area until the following season.
Other seeds from biennial crops like carrots and beets can be more difficult to obtain, as they require two growing seasons to set seed (which means proper over-wintering of the plant) and strategic replanting.
If you’re growing potatoes, set aside a healthy number from your final sustainable harvest, storing them in a dark and damp place over the winter to produce sprouts that will act as “seeds” for next year.
Knowing each seed’s storage requirements before the following season kicks off is necessary for seed starting the following year.
8. Water Cache To Save Cash
Speaking of saving, another important commodity to save is water.
Get your feet wet with rain catchment systems, gray water recycling, and diverting natural runoff to save money while saving the planet’s most precious resource.
Rainwater Catchment
There are tons of DIY rainwater harvesting systems, depending on your space and level of expertise.
A low-maintenance option is installing gutters to catch and trap rainwater into a catchment system that can be used later to water your garden.
Putting gravity to work on soaker hoses or drip irrigation systems is often enough to water a bed without any extra input from your water system, well (or wallet).
Using Gray Water
With upwards of 29 billion gallons of water used by US households daily, recycling greywater from your home to irrigate ornamental gardens, fruit trees, or root vegetables is an environmentally friendly option (but be sure to check you’re allowed in your state!).
If doing this, you’ll want to be extra careful what kinds of chemicals get washed down the drain, opting only for biodegradable and natural soaps—as if you needed more reason to switch to zero waste dish soap and organic body washes.
Tapping Naturally Occurring Water Sources
Larger acreages often come with water rights to streams, creeks, and ponds. Diverting this water (taking care not to disrupt naturally occurring environmental processes) can water your garden with untreated, clean H2O.
If you’re still in the homestead land shopping phase, consider a property’s irrigation rights before buying.
Aquaponics
Consider a closed-loop ecosystem like aquaponics for your backyard fishpond and surrounding plants.
Sustainable hydroponics is slightly more plant-growth-focused, but tends to worry less about creating a balanced ecosystem.
9. Small Animals Fit A Small Homestead
Flocks of wool-producing sheep and dairy cows padding around a pasture are rather idyllic, but not possible for those who are homesteading on a smaller plot of land.
Choosing animals or determining stocking density based on land size should be considered above all else. Returning briefly to soil health,, overstocking land will only foster problems in the future as your land becomes depleted and overrun.
Even if you have lots of land, raising large livestock requires a lot of expertise, equipment, and time, so it’s best not to go hog wild (literally) and get yourself in over your small homesteading head right away.
Worry not! These are the best animals for a small homestead:
Bees
Not technically an animal, but a very beneficial insect. Honey bees pollinate your garden and create antimicrobial and antioxidant-filled local honey to replace store-bought sugars for home goods and replace cough syrups as a natural cough remedy.
Honey bees require very little space; even your closest neighbors likely won’t mind pollinating their gardens (or a jar of sticky honey) to sweeten the deal.
Chickens or Quail
Chickens produce fresh eggs daily, and provide nutritious meat for the backyard homestead. If full-sized chickens are still too big to fit into your small homestead layout, consider a bantam breed or raising quail.
Quail provide eggs and meat as well, but in a much more compact package, making them an excellent choice for a backyard urban homestead—or an easy way to dip your toes into the world of poultry farming.
They require very little space per bird and, unlike chickens that take over six months to mature and begin producing eggs, quail begin laying eggs at only six weeks old.
Raising chickens or quail reduces trips to the store, all while recycling kitchen scrap and adding compost materials to the pile. As an added benefit, chickens in the garden can help eliminate some pesky garden bad guys (like aphids).
Chickens are relatively quiet farm animals, with quail slightly quieter by only offering a sing-songy tune. Homesteading in the suburbs just became a lock flocking easier!
Rabbits
Raising farm animals like rabbits is the ultimate balance between low-maintenance and high reward.
Rabbits create nutrient-dense pellets that can be applied directly to your garden for fertilizer. They also provide a high-protein option to complement your garden diet.
Raising rabbits means you only need compact cages, so even on just a quarter acre, you have your own fertilizer-making, meat machines.
Muscovy Ducks
Muscovies are ideal for small-scale homesteading.
Muscovy ducks make a low hissing sound to communicate, are rarely aggressive, and provide nutrient-dense eggs and meat for the farm-ily.
Ducks typically enjoy nesting on the ground in coops that don’t take up much space. They enjoy swimming in water, where they clean their nostrils (which can then be dumped into the garden!).
Pygmy Goats
Pygmy goats provide gallons of milk in a pint-sized package. Perfect for small-scale homesteading, the Pygmy is a friendly goat breed that requires little space (but adequate mental stimulation!).
If a family milk cow isn’t in the cards for you, consider a smaller goat (or two) for your milking needs. A milking goat will have you churning butter and making your own cheese or yogurt in no time.
They’re also excellent for helping your eco-friendly landscaping efforts by trimming down grass and weeds. But beware: goats eat almost anything and are nimble escape artists, so be sure their designated grazing area is secure.
10. Choose Backyard Homestead Animals That Fit Your Needs
The most important of all backyard farm ideas is to keep things manageable.
If you have a larger acreage where space isn’t an issue, the next step in choosing your backyard homestead animals is determining what the land needs to thrive and what your family will use the most.
If your land is filled with woody underbrush and immature tree sprouts, consider adding goats that’ll fertilize the soil while eating what most farm animals cannot.
Wet areas can suffer irreparable damage if heavy cattle are put on too early in the spring, whereas sheep are a lighter option with similar grazing habits.
Determining which animal will best support your land and soil is important for self-sufficient living.
11. Use Animals Over Machines
If raising farm animals, replace horsepower with, well, actual horse power.
When drawing up your backyard homestead design, you may find yourself needing to erect outbuildings, move fallen trees, and alter the landscape in certain ways.
As convenient as high-powered machines can be, using animals to do the same job may take a little longer, but will save money.
Not to mention, animals work to support the land and do not run on diesel, gas, or leak engine fluid, making them the most eco-friendly option for your backyard farm.
12. Learn To Lean On Others
Self-reliant doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
Relying on your neighbors for gardening tips, zoning information, and area-specific fruit trees helps to establish your own self-sufficient homestead.
Swap seedlings, soaps, homesteading guides, and other goods from your own backyard to benefit your neighbors and fill in the gaps of things you don’t produce yourself.
13. Backyard Homestead Projects To Expand Your Small Homesteading Horizons
The most important of all backyard farm ideas is to keep things manageable.
If you have a larger acreage where space isn’t an issue, the next step in choosing your backyard homestead animals is determining what the land needs to thrive and what your family will use the most.
If your land is filled with woody underbrush and immature tree sprouts, consider adding goats that’ll fertilize the soil while eating what most farm animals cannot.
Wet areas can suffer irreparable damage if heavy cattle are put on too early in the spring, whereas sheep are a lighter option with similar grazing habits.
Determining which animal will best support your land and soil is important for self-sufficient living.
Did you know we Have a Newsletter?
We cover the latest in sustainable living, fashion, zero waste, beauty, travel, finance and more…
Final Thoughts On Creating A Self Sufficient Backyard Homestead
If you enjoy gardening, raising animals, and supporting yourself, a backyard homestead is the place for you.
Combine off-grid ideas and modern homesteading techniques to achieve your farming goals. Growing your own hops to make sustainable beer, milking goats to make cheese, or planting maple trees to boil down the sugar water into maple syrup are all steps in the right direction toward sustainability.
But remember: slow and steady wins the self-sufficiency race.
Access to the world’s gardening and farming knowledge on the web (along with a non-internet-dependent backyard homestead guide) is helpful, but there’s a lot to learn by trial and error.
Starting slowly in one area—whether growing your own food, keeping honey bees, milking goats, or learning to raise animals—it’s important to slowly build your backyard homestead one “brick” at a time.
Share this backyard homestead guide with your friends next time they ask you, “How do you homestead on a small property?”… ideally over a dinner made using your backyard bounty!
Pin these:
