If you struggle with your mental health, you might have heard the advice to adopt an emotional support companion animal or to try caring for indoor plants.
There is actually quite a bit of research that suggests the great psychological benefits of having someone who depends on you. A search on Google Scholar of “benefits of emotional support animals” will yield hundreds of research articles about the topic; the same happens when searching “garden therapy”.
If there is plenty of research out there showing why caring for other living things is beneficial. However everyone experiences some hesitation when making a major life adjustment.
We are also strong advocates that you don’t have to leave the city to enjoy your homesteady life! Urban farming is a great opportunity to enjoy the benefits so often talked about with homestead living.
You might be convinced that homesteading would really help your family, and maybe you feel lost in how to make it happen.
Lots of people want that homestead life, but is something holding you or your family back?
We encourage you to ask yourself:
Why might you personally be worried about adding to your farm family?
In this article we’d like to highlight some of the common reasons us busy city folk might be hesitant to add caring for more living things to our lives. We will also discuss ways to over come these concerns if having an urban farm is your end goal for our homestead in the city!
Could we be experiencing caregiver burn out?
Most of the people we’ve met who aspire to have an urban farm are grounded people. They are involved in their families life, whether that’s with their own kids or extended family. It seems most of us on this path of urban agriculture value what a farm has to offer our family. No matter what stage of life our family is at.
However, if when we feel overwhelmed by the responsibilities of caring for others – like our family or if our 9-5 job requires us to care for others – then we might find the idea of adding more to our plate daunting.
We know what it feels like to be overwhelmed with caregiving. As we’ve been hatching & brooding our ducklings this year (2024) we’ve also have a toddler, 7mo, & two dogs!
It’s a challenge & there’s always a learning curve, however, we believe it’s been worth it.
Potential Solutions:
Asking ourselves questions like: What do we most value in life? How would adding more give our lives fulfillment? How will this change our lives for the positive?
If we can find the answers to these questions about what we value & how we want to spend our lives, we can confidently make decisions to add more.
Adding more to our lives is more often than not, exactly what we need to realize what our priorities are. When our priorities are out of alignment that’s when we get depressed.
So if we are wanting to homestead in the city because we feel like there’s something missing in our lives; that could be our priorities might need to realign. Adding meaningful farm animal family members to our home is a great way to help us be realign & held accountable to our priorities.
Like we mentioned before, juggling all of our farm family needs has been totally worth it!
Could we be afraid of failure?
Often when we are dealing with mental health challenges or burn-out; feelings of self doubt & defeat seem like reality.
However, most of the time, feelings of inadequacy are not reality. We as humans are very resilient. If we see a hatching duck and think “it’s so strong!” or rescued dog & think “wow look at how trusting it’s become after all these years!”
Humans are just as resilient as any other animal on planet earth. We are social & intellectual beings, so one of our downfalls is becoming blinded by fear.
It a completely normal response in the face of additional responsibility to fear failure. We all entertain the idea of being inadequate from time to time. Just because we think it though, doesn’t mean it’s true.
Perfectionism is a hard mentality to live with, but it doesn’t mean we can enjoy life as we change our view & expectations for life.
Know that we are all struggling to be ok with failure, even us at Metro Farm Tacoma. You’re not alone & are in good company!
Potential Solutions:
Being able to practice self-compassion as we try something new like bringing ducks onto our farm, or adding a goat, etc. will only help us in every aspect of our lives.
We can be healed from our feelings of inadequacy as we attempt to try new things & allow ourselves to fail at it!
Yes it is so much easier said than done. Are there days where we scream, cry, say “why did we think we could do this!”, or “Ducks are soooo disgusting!”
However, feeling that way is healthy. It’s healthy to feel the overwhelm & fear while trying something new, on our urban farm or in any other aspect of life.
When we don’t give up while we fear failure, we realize just how strong & resilient we actually are!
Don’t give up! You have a community here of likeminded families here in Tacoma, WA. Please follow us, join our journey, you don’t have to do it alone!
Could we be worried it’s not a good time, or that we don’t have enough funds to make it happen?
SPOILER ALERT:
It’s never a good time to do anything hard or worthwhile in life.
Consider this short list of things that never come at a convenient time:
• Starting a Business
• Someone else needing your help
• Injury
• Birth
• Raising Kids
• Death
Trying something new, will almost always be inconvenient. Especially if it involves other living things that have a mind of their own.
However, nothing is more fulfilling than living a life with others. Building our own urban farm will almost always help us feel apart of something bigger & meaningful. That alone makes the inconvenience worth all the hard work!
Potential Solutions:
Just a simple paradigm shift can help us realize that, while life is never convenient, it certainly is worth the hard work.
Also having a slower time frame might help us realize that the price tag can be manageable. You don’t need to overhaul your home in one year. It’s taken us several years to get to the point we are now in 2024. While this business didn’t exist until this year, our logo sports the year we bought our home. To us that marked the beginning of the transformation we hoped this house would undergo.
Like we said before, you don’t have to do this alone. Our goal at Metro Farm Tacoma is to connect like minded families & individuals who hope to bring some of that small town community to our gritty city!
We want to share with you resources so you can create you urban farm on your budget. On this website we have a Whole Page devoted to urban farming resources for our fellow Tacoma farmers.
The biggest help we want to give you, beyond knowledge, is community & connections for your homestead. Especially if you hope to turn your urban farm into a family side hustle. Again, the community we are creating is what’s most important to us!
There will always be concerns & reasons to avoid trying something new like turning our homes into urban farms.
However, if there’s anything we’ve learned as we keep on this journey: finding a why behind any concern will also help us find a way to address the problem.
Having our urban farm set up had taught us greater problem solving skills, and to let go of feeling like victims to our concerns & circumstances!
If you’re reading this article to decide if urban farming is what your family needs, or adding duckies/animals to your home life will help you; this is your sign!
You can do it, and we can do it together! Life will be changed forever, but regret doesn’t stick around our family much anymore. Farm life in the city has just helped us become more down to earth & grateful.
What are some of your concerns that are holding you back from following your dream to have a homestead?
Comment below, we’d love to see the discussion & feel empathy towards what our fellow Tacoma residents are concerned about for their urban farms.
Metro Farm Tacoma - Metro Farm Thurston 
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