You know the old saying – “You can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl.”

If you’re a country girl (or boy) at heart but find yourself doing time in the city, don’t despair. There are plenty of things you can do to make yourself feel more at home.

One of my favorite urban homesteading activities is windowsill gardening. If you have a sunny window (south is great but east or west light will work fine, too) you, too can have at least a taste of home-grown goodness. (And windowsill gardening isn’t just for urban homesteaders – even those with big gardens often keep a few indoor pots going for fresh salad during the winter.)

All you need to start are some seeds and a few pots or trays you can fill with soil. If you’re lucky enough to have a sliding glass door you can even set up a tiered wire shelf unit in front of it for a multi-level indoor window garden. (Or try hanging pots of cascading plants – they save space and are pretty, too.)

Here are some suggestions for plants to grow in your windowsill garden:

• Any kind of herb. Herbs are ideal windowsill plants because most grow well in pots, and having them close at hand is a boon to the hurried chef. Try chives, basil, thyme, mint, parsley, lavender, rosemary and scented geranium.
• Baby greens. You can grow baby greens in pots or in trays. Try to find trays that are 3-4” deep. Lettuce, arugula, corn salad, dandelion, and sunflower and buckwheat greens should all grow well in your windowsill garden.
• For hanging plants, try Alpine strawberries or determinate cherry tomatoes. (Look for tomato varieties bred for container gardening.)
• If you’re really ambitious and have the room, you can get some great big pots and try growing tropical fruit trees. Check your gardening catalogs for citrus, banana and fig varieties that do well as container plants.
• Tend your windowsill garden just as you would any houseplants. Don’t forget to feed them at least every two weeks. (For a free and very effective nitrogen-rich fertilizer, just drain the liquid from your meat packaging and add it to the water when you water your plants. Sounds gross but your windowsill plants will reward you for it!)

For just a little effort your windowsill garden will provide you with home-grown flavor throughout the year, even in the city.

Anne Michelsen is co-founder of Marathon Renewable Energy, Inc., specializing in solar hot water systems. You can read more of her work at YourGreenLifestyle.blogspot.com

When it comes to winter food storage without using up lots of electricity or other fuel, root vegetables are king.   After all, their whole purpose is to last until spring!  Storing your root vegetables doesn’t have to be complicated.  Just keep these few rules in mind·

• Keep them some place cool, but don’t let them freeze.  A root cellar or cool basement is ideal.  If your winters are mild, you can even leave them in the ground all winter.  Just cover with a thick layer of mulch to keep out the frost, and be sure to use them before it warms up and the plants start to sprout.
• Most root vegetables like high humidity.  Pack them in damp sand, newspaper or peat.
• Don’t wash your veggies before storing.  You want to handle them gently to avoid small nicks and bruises that could lead to rot.
• You know the saying, “One bad apple spoils the bunch.”  It goes for root veggies, too.  Be vigilant against rot.  Use any damaged roots as soon as possible after harvest.  Check every week or so and promptly remove any veggie showing any sign of going bad.
• Potatoes take slightly different handling.  Keep them dry, and don’t expose them to light.  Light will trigger the formation of toxic compounds.  Do not eat potato sprouts or any part of the potato that has turned green.

With proper handling, you should be able to store your root vegetables all the way through ‘till spring – if you don’t eat them all up first!

Being a Redneck is more a matter of where your heart lies than where you happen to be at the moment – as you well know if you’re still dreaming of your little piece of heaven.

Many of us have had to scrimp and save before we could afford to buy us a piece of land. If you’re still aspiring to the country life, here’s a savings plan that could help you get your homestead a little faster – and cut your carbon footprint, too.

You know all those little things you could – and should – be doing to save energy?

Well, get up off your donkey’s rear end and start doing them! But don’t just do it to feel superior. Actually track (as best you can) how much you save, and put that money in your homestead savings piggy bank. (Or put it on your mortgage payment – you’d be surprised how much faster you can pay off your loan by adding just a few extra dollars a month.)

Here are a few places to start:

Air sealing – according to Energy Star, air leaks can account for 25-40% of your energy bill. That’s a lot – and a lot of money that could go towards saving for your homestead. So break out the caulk and the weatherstripping!

Your commute – How much do you spend a week on gas? Figure it out. Then, if you live 3 miles or less from work, start walking or riding your bike as often as you can. Ditto goes for those little trips to the store. Plunk the difference into your homestead savings account. (Bonus: all the extra exercise will help prepare your body for country life.)

Hang your clothes to dry either outside or on lines strung in your basement or attic. Figure about 30 cents a load. It may not seem like much, but every bit counts and a year’s worth of dryer loads could add up to more than you think!

Insulate your hot water pipes and storage tank. Pipe insulation and an insulating jacket for your water heater are inexpensive and easy to install, and can cut your heat loss by up to 75%. Just don’t start using more hot water because it’s costing you less – that won’t help you save for your homestead!

How about it? Or have you already started? What are some energy-saving tips you can pass along that save money, too?

Go ahead and post. Who knows, you might just be helping out your future neighbor!

How’s your garden coming along?  Start any new beds this year?  Yes?

So how’s your back – ready for a nice hot Epsom salt soak?

It may be too late for this year, but there’s no reason ever to strain your back or arms starting a new garden bed again.

Lazy gardeners – Rejoice! Eco-gardeners, too!  With lazy gardening, you don’t ever have to go through the slow, hard, blister-raising labor of breaking sod again.  Nor do you have to use a smelly, noisy, gas-sucking tractor or plow.  All you have to do is spread stuff around.

The idea is to mulch the heck out of your new plot until it submits to cultivation.  Have you ever picked up an old board that’s been lying out in the field for a few months? You know how it kills all the grass, and the soil underneath gets all loose and friable from the worms tunneling through?  That’s what you’re going for.

Here’s how to do it:

Starting Your Lazy Garden Bed

1.    Measure out your plot.  The lazy gardening technique works best for home gardens.  If you’re thinking more along the lines of a cornfield, stick with the plow.
2.    Collect a bunch of cardboard boxes – the bigger the better.  Refrigerator boxes are ideal.  Cut them apart into sheets of cardboard.
3.    Get the cardboard really wet.  Like, saturated. If you haul water and want to conserve it the easy way to do this is to let them sit out in the rain.
4.    Get your garden plot really, really wet.  The rain does a great job with this, too.
5.    Lay the soaked cardboard pieces out so they cover your plot.  Make sure the edges overlap, or you’ll get little lines of grass growing up through the cracks.
6.    (You can also use newspapers, if you’re not concerned about the inks in your food plot.  Use lots of layers and make sure they’re soaked.)
7.    If you have it, spread the paper layer with compost.
8.    Now, pile on the mulch!  Anything you’ve got – moldy hay, grass clippings, sawdust, dead leaves, whatever.  If you have extra compost or manure and want to layer that in, so much the better.

Now you have your bed.  Ideally, you’ll want to let it sit for a while, the longer the better.  (I didn’t say this was going to be fast!)

The best time to start a lazy garden bed is in the fall after the harvest.  Usually you’ll have a lot of mulch available at that time, and you can just let it sit until spring.  Very early spring works well, too.

Planting Your Lazy Garden Bed

Don’t even think about direct-sowing the first year.  You’ll want transplants – and make sure they’re big enough that the mulch doesn’t shade them out.  Tomatoes and squash work fine.  Just take a trowel and dig right through the mulch.  Throw a little compost in the bottom of each hole and tuck ‘em in.

When we (sob) moved back to the city a couple years ago I was too busy at work to do much in the way of gardening – but I did take an hour and put in a 3’x 20’ lazy garden bed.  Last summer was the first season.  My tomatoes didn’t do too well (got them in late), but we enjoyed many bouquets of marigolds and zinnias.  This spring I raked back the mulch and the soil looks great – I’ll just dig in a few amendments and it’ll be ready to plant.  I’m looking forward to at least a few meals from our little urban homestead!

I’ve known people who swore they never would have gotten a garden started at all if they hadn’t found out about this method.  Whether you have a bad back, are short on time (but long on patience), or are just plain a Lazy Gardener, give it a try.

Anne Michelsen is co-founder of Marathon Renewable Energy, Inc., specializing in solar hot water systems. You can read more of her work at YourGreenLifestyle.blogspot.com

The first building we put up on the piece of land that was to become our homestead was an 8 x 12’ garden shed. It’s a funny-looking garden shed because my husband Dan was feeling lazy. Rather than cutting the plywood sheathing, he built the shed tall enough so that he could just screw the sheets on whole. The extra height and peaked roof made it look like a small house, and allowed just enough room on the inside to install a loft for extra storage.

Which was a very good thing, because we ended up living in that little house for almost two years.

Here’s what happened.

We had decided to build our own earth-sheltered home. We figured we had enough time that first summer to have the slab and poured-concrete walls done and at least the shell of a small house up by the time snow flew.

Ha.

Those of you who have ever built a home know about the Delay Factor. It’s always a good idea to take any project completion estimate and at least double it. You never know what’s going to come up.

In our case we had our share of contractor delays, equipment failures and stormy weather. But it was a health issue that brought the home building to a screeching halt. Dan came down with a bad case of tennis elbow – in both arms. He couldn’t even lift a glass of water without pain.

So…we moved into the garden shed. With two kids. And two dogs. Fortunately, we had foreseen the possibility of having to live there for a few weeks while building the house, so Dan had equipped it with siding, insulation and a south-facing window. An outhouse and solar lighting completed the picture. We soon began to call the tiny dwelling “the Microhouse.”

Yes, we’re crazy.

But you know what? It was an amazing experience. And it really opened our eyes to the advantages of living small.

Not that I’d recommend going quite that small for a family of four, but there’s a lot to say for making do with a small home.

• Small homes are easy to heat. The Microhouse only cost about 80 bucks worth of propane to heat through the winter. Of course the Microhouse was insanely small, but you get the picture – a small home will save you big bucks.

• Small houses are quick to clean. Less housework is a good thing in my book. How about yours?

• Living small is clutter protection. You get very protective of your space. If it’s not something you love and use, it has no place in your house. You’d be amazed how much time is freed up by not having to deal with all that STUFF.

• Small houses are more environmentally friendly. Because of the fuel you don’t burn. And the stuff you don’t buy.

• Small homes bring people together. Those two years in the Microhouse, and a third spent in the 800 sq. ft. house we eventually built, really bonded us as a family. We had no choice but to interact – and to figure out how to settle our differences.

Times change. We ended up moving to a different part of the state for business reasons. Today we live in an old five bedroom home in town. There’s plenty of space, but I tell you…

…sometimes I miss the Microhouse.

Anne Michelsen is co-founder of Marathon Renewable Energy, Inc., specializing in solar hot water systems. You can read more of her work at YourGreenLifestyle.blogspot.com