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Out of all the trending lifestyle aesthetics, urban homesteading just might be the most valuable. Think of it as the results-driven cousin to cottagecore, but instead of emphasizing surface details (like donning a provincial-looking prairie dress to wander in a flower field), homesteaders want to get their hands dirty and really live the farm life. This often translates to homesteaders growing their own vegetables in a home garden, raising chickens in a coop, canning their own food, and tending to the land. For them, this lifestyle change has nothing to do with modern farmhouses or party barns.
Just a decade ago or so, urban homesteading was the providence of doomsday preppers and earlier versions of today’s controversial “trad wife.” But according to Homesteaders of America, 16% of homesteaders were doing so on three acres of land or less in 2022. Since then, many homesteaders have reported that they rent their homes. “The typical homesteader of today is quite different from those of years past. They come from various backgrounds, lifestyles, and motivations,” says Annette Thurmon, author of Simple Country Living and host of the Happy Farmily podcast.
Annette considers herself a homesteader and is quick to point out that anyone anywhere can do it. You just need the drive to give homesteading a try. “I think it’s people who are drawn towards a more self-sufficient lifestyle for a multitude of reasons, sustainability being high on the list,” she explains. Annette and her husband started dreaming about homesteading in reaction to the 2008 economic crash, when they began rethinking the rat race of consumerism and wanted “to debunk that notion” that we always need more things.
By 2016, Annette found an undeveloped plot of land with a preexisting barn on it, about an hour north of Atlanta, Georgia. The couple built their home and gardens and raised livestock. “We wanted to eat clean, grow organic produce, and know where [our] food comes from,” she says. Though not everything the couple grows always pans out, Annette wouldn’t trade any of the hard work. She hopes more people will take on the lifestyle, especially since homesteading is accessible to all. “You don’t need lots of land to homestead,” Annette adds. “Urban homesteading is a wonderful thing.”
Case in point, Kamaria Gray and Dakarai Carter of Detroit Hoodstead (a fun pun on the typical term) are revitalizing vacant lots in Detroit into raised bed gardens. In 2020, the couple purchased their home in the Osborn neighborhood and restored the old house, a transformation featured in the book Cheap Old Houses: An Unconventional Guide to Loving and Restoring a Forgotten Home.
But Dakarai and Kamaria’s real larger goal was to convert their acre of land into an urban farm of sorts. “For us, urban homesteading means attempting self-sustainability right where we are with what we have—a little bit of land and a lot of elbow grease,” Kamaria says. “It is doing your best to rely on your own skills and preparation when the systems in place [that are] meant to protect you fail.”
Think of DIY’ing for a cause, like when a city doesn’t provide people with easy access to fresh produce. According to Kamaria, it’s difficult finding quality produce in her community. “Detroit prioritizes certain areas of the city over others,” she explains. “From what we see, a lot of Black residents are starting hoodstead types of community projects to feed their neighbors.” Much of this disparity comes from areas of Detroit becoming more gentrified. “As people move into those areas, different businesses are taking opportunities to put in grocery stores, but in areas like our neighborhood it doesn’t feel like an urgent problem to the city,” Dakarai adds.
In recent years, Detroit has seen a rise in DIY Black home gardeners and farmers. Fennigan’s Farms, an agricultural design firm owned and operated by Black women, helped Kamaria and Dakarai install their raised garden beds. The Detroit-based organization views access to healthy foods as a human right. Theirs is just one of the latest developments in a long history of Black-led urban homesteading in Detroit. In 2006, Grown in Detroit, a collective of Detroit urban farmers, was founded to help urban homesteaders get their produce to the people who need it. Not long after, in 2008, the Detroit Black Food Security Network was created to help further combat food insecurity.
Since 2014, the Detroit Land Bank Authority has also enabled the urban homestead movement, allowing city residents to purchase adjacent side lots for just $100. It’s a blight-fighting initiative that many homeowners have turned into an opportunity for creating home gardens. It’s through this program that Dakari and Kamaria were able to add on to their property for growing food. “For the most part, we want to be a not-for-profit farm,” Kamaria explains. “Our plan is to distribute the produce at church to the neighborhood. Now, we’re just giving it away to friends and family since we’ve been teaching ourselves how to grow everything.” This past year was their greatest harvest yet, and the couple hopes to continually develop their land cultivation skills.
In the small town of Brazil, Indiana, a pair of homesteaders have learned how to create a cohesive home farming system. Kemp Harper, interior designer and digital creator, and his partner, Kevin Boling, a real-estate agent, showcase their homesteading ventures on their Instagram page, The Colonial on Park. There, they share their backyard coop, home to five hens and two turkeys, which they feed kitchen scraps: Kemp says that “this promotes our zero-food-waste kitchen.” “In return, they provide us with eggs and fertilizer,” he adds. The fertilizer is then transferred to their compost bin, along with pruned vegetation and leaves. “This compost enriches our soil in our flower and vegetable gardens making a very happy environment for our honeybee hive.” The couple collects the honey, and the bees pollinate their gardens.
Kevin and Kemp bought their home in 2016 and started their homesteading activities not long afterward. But since then, homesteading has slowly started to become more popular in their surrounding areas. “Lots of people have become interested in backyard hens,” Kemp says. “Our neighbors put in their own coop after seeing the success we had with ours.”
Everything they do is motivated by their desire to be more sustainable, something that wouldn’t be as easily in reach without homesteading. “In our opinion, homesteaders are the people who look to the future, working with their space to reduce dependence on the global food chain and also their carbon footprint,” Kemp says.
Admittedly, however, all the homesteaders do seem to bask in the aesthetic of homesteading. Annette’s Instagram page for Azure Farm looks like a secret garden oasis brimming with baby goats and chicks. Kevin and Kemp took inspiration from 1990s-era Martha Stewart and her legendary first home, Turkey Hill, which they then infused with design cues informed by Ralph Lauren. For her part, Kamaria enjoys slipping back into an old-timey aesthetic too. Through her use of decor and garb, she says she is able to reclaim an African American past.
“The ’40s and ’50s were a tumultuous time for Black Americans and so much of our beauty and contribution to the culture was either ignored or overshadowed by blatant racism,” she says. “So here I sit with my roller set and my circle skirt so everyone can see us and how we live, propped against our patterned wallpaper like a scene out of your favorite golden-age movie. Sans the ‘whites only’ propaganda.”
For this reason and all its sustainable advantages (including combating food insecurity), homesteading doesn’t feel like just another aesthetic movement. “There’s a difference between a lifestyle aesthetic and actually doing it,” Kamaria insists. “French country style and cottagecore go hand in hand with homesteading, because they’ve got that cutesy, ‘I’m at home in an apron baking pies feel.’ Don’t get me wrong, I like to bake from scratch too, but it isn’t homesteading, which requires much work, planning, [and] organization.”
