Tour our urban homestead

by Aimee

One of my promises last June was to share more of my experiences as an urban homesteader and today I’d like to extend an invitation to take a virtual walk around our city lot.

Yes, we are indeed urban; we don’t own a ranch or sprawling acreage. We have neighbours on two sides, and a street in front of the house. We happen to border on a small maple forest that in itself, borders wetlands that will never be developed. We’re fortunate that it is so private, given that downtown Montreal is only 20 minutes away. It suits us just fine.

I was raised a country girl and Danny was a city boy. When we started a family it was important for us to blend our two backgrounds in a way that made sense for our family. In my upcoming book, I give the full story of how we began our homestead – it was an emotional journey right from the start and worth every grey hair.

You’ve already toured the kitchen, so let’s head outdoors today and meet the cats and hens. (Pst: For privacy reasons, I haven’t posted photos of the house facade from the street.)

We step into the back yard through a gate off the side of the house and onto our newly laid patio and brand new deck area. It’s usually a happening place and that was always the vision: build a gathering place for family and friends.

This long-saved-for project was under construction nearly ALL of the summer: weekends, evenings, and some early mornings, too. Perhaps we’ll write about the renovation in a separate post. Come to think of it, that sounds like a good topic for Danny.

Here we are looking out onto the back yard with my back against the house. Our main outdoor eating area is under the pergola, on a sturdy-as-heck cedar table that a friend built for us. My requisite? It needed to be strong enough to hold this food blogger with an affinity for tablescapes. He did an amazing job, and made us a few benches, too.

The plan is to grow grapes or climbing roses on the pergola and the deck definitely needs a collection of planters with flowers and herbs. All in good time; we’ve literally just swept up the sawdust from the renovation.

The paper decorations in the photo were temporary party decorations from Noah’s recent birthday. One of my winter DIY projects is to make this chandelier to hang over the table. I already have the canning rack and plenty of vintage jars.

To the left is my handy outdoor sink, a semi-DIY project that will have to be completed next summer. I snagged the vintage enamelware sink at a local flea market and a carpenter friend built the stand out of salvaged barn wood.

It needs plumbing, and a few other accessories, but already it is a mainstay for washing eggs and garden vegetables. During a recent backyard barbecue, I set a massive pot of boiled sweet corn in the sink, set out a pot of melted butter and it transformed into a party corn station. Take that, Pinterest! It’s a pretty great work area for flower arranging, too.

This is the view from center ice, so to speak. I’m in the middle of the lawn looking towards the back of the house. To my left is the shed and swing set; to my right are four raised garden beds and the compost. Directly behind me is the campfire, and beyond that, the forest.

I affectionately call our house ‘the Breadbox’ as it is rather stark and boring from an architectural perspective, but fortunately it is edged with plenty of tall maples and that helps distract from the flat white facade.

These two felines think they own the place. Coco (short for Coconut) has earned the title of ‘White Death” because she is a mighty hunter, fearing neither foxes or racoons. Cassis (French for ‘black currant’) is starting to get his first grey hairs, but he prowls the place so intensely, he’s earned the nickname “The Panther”.

They don’t give the chickens a minute of their time and they all roam wild and share the property together. Both are SPCA rescue cats and incredibly great pets.

When you house has no basement or garage, a shed –or cabane as it is called in Quebec– is a necessity. Ours is new as of this summer (yep, another project) which is why it has yet to be adorned with flower beds or herb window boxes. I’m scouring garage sales and collecting old farm tools to hang on the side (similar to this) – unless any of you have a better suggestion.

My plant potting has wrapped up for the year, but this bench gets plenty of use in the spring. It keeps our campfire wood dry and works as a rustic bar for large summer parties on the patio. I should probably paint it to complement the cedar siding of our shed….one more project!

Yep, we use a gravity-fed rain barrel to help out with watering the garden. Danny covered this DIY project in a post a few summers ago. It’s basically a giant olive container that has been repurposed. I like to imagine all those olives coming over from Italy…

This poor swing set needs to be retired. The way it moves and groans under the weight of our three children is somewhat terrifying. And one more project goes on the list for next spring.

On a positive note, those happy brown hens have been free range nearly every day over the summer and loving it.

All that scratching for worms and bugs, as well as unlimited clover and greens, has kept their egg production up. We sometimes see a dip during the hottest weeks, but these layers haven’t missed a beat. Little Clara has learned to be gentle with the eggs and is wholeheartedly dedicated to her morning egg collecting.

We’re still about a month out before our fall chicken harvest. I’m looking forward to re-filling my freezer with beautiful chicken stock for the winter.

The garden has peaked and is now on it’s way out. We’re still getting carrots, kale, and plenty of herbs, but the tomatoes have all but given up on ripening with the cooler weather.

However, I’ve got micro beets, baby radishes, and a whole new crop of lettuce coming up. I managed to make a little time to plant a fall garden and hope that it carries us a little further into the fall.

We started nearly all of our seeds from scratch this year and they all did so well, it’s inspired me to expand the project next March. Really, I can hand the job over to the boys; they are quite capable and love the whole ‘science project’.

You wanted to see everything, as per my Facebook query, so Ladies and Gentlemen, here we have the compost heap. Ta da! This was actually the very fist thing we built on our urban homestead – just 5 wooden pallets stacked together. The space between the slats allows the air to get to the waste and I can honestly say there is no odour whatsoever.

On the left, is the growing heap, nearly ready to be pitch-forked to the other side. On the right is a nearly empty bin, compost that enriched my garden over the summer.

Below the garden, compost and coop, we have a simple campfire pit, encircled with logs from the willow that fell last year. We make a lot of good memories around this fire, the least of which include marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers.

Things may not look like this for much longer around here. Temperatures have dropped, leaving us scrambling to remember where we stashed our sweaters and scarves. The wind is whipping the red-tinged leaves off of the trees and the tomatoes have forgotten all about turning red. In February I’m going to look back over this post and dream of spring.

Thanks for stopping by!

Questions? Comments? Leave them below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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