The view from our porch along the sidewalk I designed to the driveway.
A lot of what we do here on The Small House Homestead is about living the beliefs and values that we hold dear; Love of family, home, land, building and maintaining this small ecosystem for the birds, butterflies and other creatures, preserving the environment where we can and humane treatment of all people and animals. It is a purpose driven life.
A shallow bird bath used to provide water for butterflies and dragonflies.
In a very quiet way we live a near sustainable lifestyle as our small way of campaigning for health, justice, sustainability, peace, and democracy.
Catmint softens the cement walkway.
Many of the day-to-day choices we make are about protecting ourselves, our environment and conserving our limited natural resources.
An early view of what is now our vegetable garden and coop area.
On our 5-acres we have focused these past fifteen years on creating and protecting habitat, implementing organic gardening practices, building soil, capturing and reusing rainwater, recycling or repurposing what we can and buying less to keep them out of the waste stream. Each of these practices translates to using less energy to build them, less gasoline to transport them and less landfill land used for garbage when their useful life is done.
Butterfly weeds are for the butterflies!
We choose non-toxic cleaning products, buy goods wholesale that come with no or less packaging and make green building choices when we can. We are not truly sustainable but we grow some of our food and keep chickens for eggs. What we cannot grow we buy locally and from socially responsible growers because we want to support them in their mutual practices.
Sweet and curious chickens are fun to watch.
We can’t change the world but we can change our world.
Our water containment system gathers water off the pole barn.
I’m sure that I won’t be the first to point out to you that money comes seriously into play in green building materials and green vehicles and on a limited income we haven’t always been able to make as many green choices as we wish we could. We know that while we strive for socially responsible actions and low impact living and we just do the best we can.
Welcome to our homestead!
Nontoxic paints are doable; a “green” linoleum floor throughout our home was possible and low-flow shower heads are in. We capture the rain water off of our pole barn roof and use it to water our shrubs and flowers. Vintage furniture has been refinished and painted with nontoxic paints, real river rock stone cover out hallway and three season porch. We use a lot of repurposed wood and gifted corrugated roofing materials in our various chicken coop projects.
Our mostly repurposed chicken coop.
Almost all of our landscaping shrubs was dug up hauled over in my garden cart and replanted on our property; no fossil fuels for shipping involved. Field stones and mulch were hauled in our truck from roadside and farmer field as we traveled to and from town, no middleman needed.
Bird baths for the birds!
We made a conscious decision to keep many of the original materials in our home when we purchased it in 2000. We still use the living room drapes, the family room blinds and our bedroom shades. Yes, I would have loved to replace them but they still do their job and I would not put them in the landfill, so they remain. Old appliances were sold to a young family just starting out, old but serviceable carpet was taken by a man who keeps snakes and uses it for their bedding.
The 150-year-old White Oak Trees that shelter and cool our home.
Every spring we gather and use the rich horse manure from a friends nearby farms and bring home the rich maple leaves from my sons yard to use as mulch in our garden. He saves a transfer fee and the leaves do not end up clogging a landfill. I have committed to using just one tank of gas per month…you get the picture.
Our herb bed in the foreground and art studio in the background.
This is what a sustainable lifestyle looks like. I can’t live off grid but I do the best I can. That all anyone can do.
Additional Resources:
Great Green Projects www.lowimpactliving.com
Green Home Improvement; 65 Projects That Will Cut Utility Bills, Protect Your Health & Help the Environment a book by Daniel. D. Chiras
US Green Building Council http://www.usgbc.org
A happy day to thee!
Small House Homesteader, Donna
Small House Big Sky Homestead 