About Southern Homesteading

This place is dedicated to homesteading – the process of learning to become self-sufficient. In many ways I have much to learn about this process, but I can share some knowledge and experience, relating especially to growing fruit and vegetables, making reasonable family economic decisions and living frugally yet well. (This place also represents an evolution from Brazos RiverBlog, which used to occupy this space – see this for details. )

My hope is that readers will share some of their knowledge and experience so that I can learn new skills, or brush up on my poor skills, such as carpentry. My hope is that this might become a place to share knowledge, especially regional knowledge, such as how to grow things specific to the Deep South, since so many seed houses seem more North-centric. Or how to wean oneself off of the electric grid, if it’s possible to do so without taking a financial loss in the process. Or how to harvest and store rainwater. And on and on.

My interest seems to hover around food and energy issues a good bit of the time, because the two are related, I am fascinated at details of that relationship and believe fossil fuel prices inevitably will climb dramatically, possibly leading to the collapse or crippling of our current food distribution system. To me, it already doesn’t make sense to walk into a big grocery store and find their seafood market filled with fish that were caught in the Pacific, when we have superior tasting fish 75 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico. Increase diesel prices by a factor of three, and I think Texas consumers will have a hard time justifying the cost of Pacific “snapper,” red grapes from Chile or wine from Argentina.

Using techniques such as those employed in high-density home orchards, urban and suburban dwellers (especially in the South) can create a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for themselves – of a quality far surpassing what they can find in the groceries. My intent is to present information about such techniques and growing tips, and promote their use, because doing so can result in healthier families with more cash to spend on needs other than the obesity-inducing food-like products with which big grocery chains and agriculture conglomerates ply us. Throw in a small flock of backyard chickens, and you can really see how it would be possible to live off of the high-fructose-corn-syrup grid, if not the electric grid.

I’ve been a gardener for probably 30 years, now practicing that craft on something less than an acre of land bumping smack up against the Brazos River in little Richmond, Texas. However, our family has plans to find a few more acres in the hinterlands, in order to take this homesteading thing up a couple of notches. I shall endeavor to keep you apprised of our progress in that regard.

As for me, I’ve enjoyed past lives as a newspaper reporter/editor, a web development firm manager, a database company president and an online news publisher. I currently run my own little digital media consultancy, building database-driven web sites for selective clients and teaching them to use digital devices and software tools to further their communications goals and bottom line.

But as I careen toward my 60s, I’d rather be growing figs and tomatoes and corn, and smoking a few racks of ribs on the side. The catch is learning to make a living through such activities. Which brings us to just about now.