We see a lot of individuals & families who are contemplating work/life balance in the wake of the pandemic. It seems the mandatory nationwide break along with the financial, emotional, social, existential, insert-you-personal-struggle-here stressors of the last several years have caused a lot of people to reevaluate what they value.
We seem to all be waking up to how nothing in life is guaranteed. Especially since we are now all pretty much back into the full swing of things.
Everyone has a full schedule, so why would a homesteading life have such an appeal?
We at Metro Farm Tacoma, have seen both in our interactions with others & in our own family life:
Grounding ourselves through all this stress seems to be the draw of the homesteading lifestyle.
So we’ve asked ourselves, “What does the homesteading life & urban farm revolution have to do with work/life balance?”
Especially since on paper it seems like more responsibilities; which would mean more stress, right?
Ahead we explore what paradigm shifts, lifestyle changes, and other urban farm responsibilities do to help you manage your work life balance better.
Benefit 1: Literally Grounding Ourselves
There is plenty of research out there explaining & exemplifying why interacting with literal earth/the outdoors is great for your mental health.
If you are stuck in the city, seemingly unable to attain the homestead lifestyle because you’re career field keeps you here, we challenge you to think about how you could interact with Mother Nature daily on your current property!
A search through any articles on Google Scholar about the benefits of “nature bathing” or “garden therapy” will show you that most of these studies are done on us city folk!
We are the most commonly depressed, anxious, mentally overwhelmed, etc. which is why we are perfect candidates for these kinds of studies. City life is stressful, it takes intentional effort to slow down & destress.
Can you run your own mini-experiment to see what city gardening or animal husbandry you can do with your lifestyle to help you connect with earth & destress?
We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.
Benefit 2: Homestead Life, Forces Intention
There are plenty of great lifestyle changes that can help us all be more intentional with our lives. Lots of great programs are out there helping us to be more intentional & they show us how intentional behaviors help us be mentally healthy. It’s why we love routines as humans.
Routines help us create & feel security in our lives and environment. Urban farm life requires us to follow a routine, otherwise we can’t accomplish what we want to before or after our day job.
Planning our days, and establishing routines can help us accomplish a lot. However, it also has the added benefit of boosting our mental health because we see how much we accomplish & we know what to expect out of our days.
It takes balancing accomplishment with routine to help us all feel fulfilled & not stressed by our lives. That balancing act takes intention. Homesteading just facilitates being intentional in those natural human behaviors.
Benefit 3: Urban Farming Helps Us Be Self-Reliant
Every human being wants to feel in control of their life. Mental health issues illustrate what happens when we try to control things that aren’t actually ours to control. However, having an urban farm allows us to be more in charge of our environment.
There are so many benefits to urban farming and/or edible landscaping –which is where a landscape has edible plants right next to ornamental plants– but one of our favorite benefits is how it can help offset the family’s grocery bill.
We can easily fight community hunger if we all choose to have gardens, even “if only”on balconies! Such a small act can easily & simply help many families & individuals feel in control of their lives.
Another aspect of urban farming that can help us feel more self-reliant is the opportunity it gives to bring in more cash. Living in the city is expensive.
While we could all attempt a career change that could allow us to move away from it all & start a “real” homestead, maybe money concerns make that feel more daunting than using the resources you already have!
Self-reliance is much more attainable when we focus on what we already have & build from there.
So let’s talk about some examples of working with what you already have to build a side hustle urban farming:
Meet John*
John is a single man in the prime of his career, and he rents an apartment with a balcony. John uses his balcony to grow LOTS of herbs. He has applied for a cottage foods permit from the local Washington Department of Agriculture to create dried herb blends out of his own kitchen. This helps him have a fun hobby, & gets him out making friends on the weekend at his local farmers market.
Meet Avery & Mark*
Avery & Mark are a younger couple who own a condo. They’re also renting/borrowing a garden space from a friend who owns land in the area. Sadly the local community garden won’t allow them to sell their extra produce; so they asked amongst their friends to find a spare garden bed. When they first started their community garden bed, they just wanted to offset their groceries. However, then they had tomatillos & lettuce coming out of their ears. Mark shared with Avery a video he saw on social media about selling micro greens & baby greens. They decided to try their hand a running a farmer’s market stand.
Meet The Smith’s*
The Smiths are a young family with two kids under 5, they also own their own home. While they do live in an HOA, their rules & regulations allow for a limited number of poultry. Jane, mama Smith, has always wanted chickens so they decided to buy three layers from Wilco to start. They also have garden beds. They’ve started selling their eggs on social media & local classified apps. Now Henry, papa smith, has decided to try “renting a rooster” from a friend to see if they could incubate chicks.
*While these current scenarios are fictional, we hope we can include true stories from local families in this section of the article soon. Please email us if you’ve done anything similar & had it become successful for your family! We will happily include any local business info/links on our “resources” page as well as feature your brand & story here.*
We hope these scenarios help give you some ideas for how you can become self-reliant by homesteading in the city.
Benefit 4: Instilling Community Oriented Values in Your Kids
Everyone needs their village and most people have experienced the community of a small town. While sometimes small towns can suffer from small-minded solutions, city living can cause us to struggle with distrust and feeling insignificant. Either way, the values of communication and validation might be abandoned for self-preservation.
If we are all hoping to make the world a better place, especially for our children, it has to start with us.
What community are you willing to build for your kids?
Community starts with us, and we have to decide what kind of village, community, or farm we are willing to create.
Farmers have never, in all the history of human kind, been reclusive. They had to travel to markets to sell their goods and exchange for other goods they needed. Because of markets we have cities and they will always grow.
Markets were always a place to exchange ideas, meet people, and create community. It’s why supporting local businesses and farmers markets is such a great thing today!
Becoming an urban farmer, learning all we can about agriculture, and making farming friends can only bring great opportunities for our families & futures.
In short: Homestead Life in the City Can Help Realign Your Work Life Balance, If You Want It.
Life will always be crazy, stressful, and unpredictable. However, if we love animals, gardening, or craftsmanship there is no need to wait until city life has handed us more bonuses and raises.
If we feel like our lives could be more fulfilling, enjoyable, and meaningful by adding some homestead lifestyle to it, it could never hurt to try. There’s a reason we are each interested in following this #urbanfarmrevolution. We can’t discover why until we begin to act on our interest.
There’s no need to run from the city to enjoy farm life, and in all reality, it seems like the city could benefit from bringing the farms closer to home.
Please feel free to comment below what struck you the most, answer any of the questions posed, or tell us why you want to have a homestead in the city. We’d LOVE to hear from you!
Metro Farm Tacoma - Metro Farm Thurston 
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