Behold the Modern Urban Farmer

By Anna Soref, Editor in Chief

Dana Coffield is like many of us. She lives in a house with a big yard, enjoys traveling and works a very demanding job. Unlike most of us though, she has chickens, bees, fruit trees and a test garden. She is one of a growing number of urban dwellers taking sustainability into her own hands. Coffield approaches her novice homesteading with a self-effacing tone and humor that make you want to ask her a ton of questions about it and possibly get some chickens yourself.

In our new column, Modern Homesteading, Coffield will write about her urban homestead in Lafayette, Colorado. She’ll include how-tos, recipes, stories, and her own discoveries along the way.

I recently asked Coffield more about her homesteading habits as a way of introduction to our readers. Here’s what she had to say:

What’s up at your house right now?

I live in Colorado, which has a serious four-season climate. This means at the moment (January) I’m worrying about making sure the hens’ water isn’t frozen and whether they’ll start laying again when the days get longer, and occasionally putting an ear up to my beehive to make sure things are going OK in there. I’m also thinking about what to plant and how to change my yard to produce a little more food in the coming years.

When and how did you take the leap past dogs and a small garden?

I’ve always had homesteader tendencies—I like to know how to do things and where my food comes from. I attribute this to genes. My great grandmother’s brother, Ralph, came across the northern prairie in a covered wagon and homesteaded alone from a sod house on the South Dakota prairie. I don’t know that I ever got to meet him, but I like to think that I did. My garden still is relatively small—I don’t pretend to even come close to feeding myself; but now I have chickens for eggs, and I keep bees because it’s both interesting and a right thing to do in terms of the environment.

You work a demanding career job in downtown Denver; how do you feel at work each day knowing you have to come home and tend the “farm”?

The yard is a good recharge for me, both mentally and physically. I love the cheerful sounds my hens make and that some of them follow me around helping me weed. It’s also a good exercise for me to be involved in something that I can’t really control. Nature is an amazing partner, but it’s an independent operator; so I need to think creatively to work around things like too much rain, or too little.

What do your husband and neighbors think?

My husband is complicit—he’s the one who gave me my first chickens and is the creative designer and builder of their coop, which includes a planting bed on top. As for the neighbors, my best garden partner is my fearless neighbor Beth, who provides labor and good ideas around building soil fertility. We garden close to the street, so our messy experiment—we try different techniques every year—also has shaped up to be a casual meeting place. People often stop to see what we’re growing and how. I like to think that some of them are inspired to take chances in their own yards.

What are you going to write about for us?

I’m going to write about learning how to do things that make me feel a little self-sufficient in a world that has increasingly taken responsibility away from the individual. I’m not sure that I could survive a zombie apocalypse, but I’ve got some skills that increase my odds. Most of us will never squat-farm a vacant lot in Oakland and learn to butcher pigs we’ve raised, like Novella Carpenter; but I do think everyone is capable of learning to do a few low-risk but satisfying things, like bee- and hen keeping and canning.