Urban homesteading today is about doing things for yourself that can make you more self sufficient and less dependent on the systems we take for granted. What are some of these systems and why does it matter if we’re dependent on them or not?

Let’s look at something as simple as the grocery store. We have the convenience of purchasing food easily by pushing a cart around an air conditioned store to select what we want, and sliding a piece of plastic through a machine before walking out the door with our purchases. We take for granted the ability to do this, but what if just one of the systems that allowed us to do this broke down?

What happens if you lose your job and cannot find another one right away? This is currently happening to many more Americans than you may be aware. There may be plenty of food on the grocery store shelves, but it does you no good if you cannot purchase it.

What happens when there is a trucker strike and the food stops flowing onto the shelves at your local grocery store? Usually this has the potential to put at least a minimal crimp into your lifestyle, depending upon how wide spread and how long the strike lasted. You may or may not have enough food in your pantry to feel it.

But what if all the trucks stopped because they couldn’t get gas? This may not be as far fetched as it would seem considering the increased volatility over oil, and the dependence the United States has on other countries for our oil supply. We don’t produce enough oil to meet our own needs. We are a net importer of oil, and we have been for years. What if the supply got cut off? You say that’s not going to happen, we will always be able to get oil. Really?

There is a growing disdain for America in the world, especially in oil producing nations. We’ve seen this in the form of terrorism. Let’s assume the supply is never cut off, but the price gets more outrageous. That gets passed on to the trucking companies, which gets passed on to the grocery store, which gets passed on to you. When the price of gas went up so high this last time did your wages go up with it? What if the price had never dropped, but continued to go up and your wage did not go up with it? What foods could you be priced out of buying as a result of price increases?

This transitions into how does the economy effect the grocery store? Don’t be fooled into thinking that hyperinflation cannot happen. If you as an individual had the same debt load as the United States, on a proportional level, you would be bankrupt. The difference is they can print money. How long will this last?

The U.S. is also a net imported of food now. We do not produce enough food to feed ourselves. We rely on other countries to grow food and sell it to us. What happens when there is a drought in those countries and they don’t produce at the same level they had been. Will they feed the people of their own country before or after selling us food? What if there isn’t enough?

There are many other things that could be said here to communicate that blindly relying on our current systems of support could be a recipe for personal disaster, which in turn could escalate into national disaster. The purpose of these examples has been to cause you to stop and think. What would your life look like if any one of those examples happened? And if the answer to that question frightens you, good, if it causes you to begin to do something about it. What can you do to change that answer for yourself for the better?

That’s where urban homesteading today comes in. Getting back to the basics and applying self reliance to any and every area of your life that you can will not only help take care of you and your family in an event like any of those described, but it can also help to reduce some of the strain on the systems themselves.

This website is a journey into those things which can help you become more self reliant. A journey we can take together. All of the research put into this site can benefit many people instead of just a few. But the only people who will truly benefit are those who take the information and apply it for themselves.

Take the time to read and learn, to share your own knowledge and experiences, and apply those things that will make your life better. Who knows, maybe we can make a difference, even if it is only to those around us.