An Introduction
Our journey into urban homesteading is years in the making, yet we honestly feel novice on the regular. I’m sure you’re wondering, why in the world would a small family attempt to live sustainably on less than a 7,000 square foot lot? While we are Orange County natives (as are our families), let me take you back to a time we lived in San Francisco. Freshly married and starting our careers, we uprooted to a fast pace, dense population that pulled us from our comfort zone. People always ask; 1. How was it living there? and 2. What do you miss the most? I’m sure you’ve heard of the great restaurants the city boasts, and we had a new adventure to take on every weekend, but we did miss being able to park our own vehicles. Wine country was an hour away, the golden gate was twenty minutes and small shops were on every block. So, what do I miss the most? The availability of fresh, local, organic ingredients. The day we stepped foot into a local farmers market, our minds were opened to the possibilities of flavor and quality we never experienced in the suburban bubble of Orange County.
We quickly began to wonder how can we do this on our own. If all these local individuals could produce epic and adventurous foods right from the ground, so could we right? It felt like overnight that we went from fast food to whole food. Quick meals to feasts from scratch. And do you know what happened? Our health changed, our sleep improved, and overall we felt in charge of our lives again. We would end up pregnant with our first and hastily finding our way home to Orange County to be near family with the space to grow and landed on our current lot in Costa Mesa. The transition into urban farming happened one raised bed at a time, experimenting with seeds versus seedlings, handling extreme temperaments in weather to harvesting our very firsts crops.
Our first born came as soon as we unpacked our first boxes and little to our knowledge was about to change our lives even more. Learning through the course of his first two years that he had several food & environmental allergies kept us on point with our beliefs of making everything fresh from scratch. There is truly no better way to support the body than controlling what goes into it.
From that point on the rest was history. Our love for gardening grew so much we have expanded into having ten raised beds, ten wine barrel beds, one in ground bed and several other small spots for pollinators and trees. We have taught ourselves how to build many of our own wood work projects, a chicken coop and an arbor to enjoy our property with. Our dream is to share this love for growing produce with our kids so they will continue on with efforts of sustainability and share what they know with others to be inspired.
