An Introduction to the Green Street Tiny Cottage Homestead

Until 2019, my lifelong dream was to live in the country on 5-10 acres of fertile Midwest land with groups of trees and room for a big garden. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent supply chain delays changed my focus to the more practical: growing enough food to supplement what I could get from our twice-monthly grocery store deliveries and our twice-monthly community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription.

I started a vermiculture compost and a balcony bucket garden at our small city apartment, where my worms were thriving and creating an abundance of soil for the plants. I experimented with germinating seeds under grow lights and transplanting the seedlings to a container outside. I enjoyed modest success with our balcony bucket garden for two years.

This year—next month—I’m moving into a tiny cottage on a big city lot in USDA growing zone 5b. On this property, I intend to develop a permaculture system that will provide me with 100% of my produce needs in year three (3) with an abundance to sell at farmers’ markets. I plan to have five (5) laying hens, the maximum allowable by the municipality; I’ll re-establish vermicompost; and I’ll use water conservation practices including rain barrels, which I was pleasantly surprised to learn the city encourages.

The lot is just under one-quarter of an acre, but it feels bigger with the only building being a conventional cottage-style house with a footprint of 560 square feet, and no other outbuilding at this time.

In this blog, I plan to cover the development of the garden as well as tiny house living. I’ll start with the original “Before” photos and descriptions and will share photos and videos of projects. I’ll use the categories Tiny Cottage and Food Garden to differentiate between the two subjects, and I’ll use the category Homestead when the post is related to both the cottage and the garden, such as with this post.

I’m approaching my 59th birthday and aim to set myself up for a sustainable “retirement” and golden years. My grandparents lived into their 90s, so my goal is to develop and live on this homestead comfortably for the rest of my life or at least the next 20 years. If these topics are of interest to you, I hope you’ll join me on my homestead journey!

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Photo credit: Bruttos on Pixabay (This photo is not part of the Green Street Tiny Cottage Homestead.)

Here’s some background information on the homestead and this blog.

Here’s some background information on the homestead and this blog.