The Homestead Down the Street: Imagining a New Suburbia

“How do we live with integrity in the suburbs?”

Alexia Allen, founder of Hawthorn Farm in Woodinville, has been asking this question since 2003, and she’s found some good answers.

The federal government has no official definition for “suburban.” The U.S. Census only defines areas as either urban or rural.

Still, Americans share a common understanding of what suburbia looks like: sprawling rings of neighborhoods around cities, typified by single-family houses with yards and mid-sized commercial centers here and there. Living in the suburbs usually requires access to a car.

The 2017 American Housing Survey (AHS), which is conducted by the Census Bureau, asked people whether they believed they lived in an urban, suburban or rural area. About 52% replied suburban. With the concept so integrated in the American mind, this seems a trustworthy figure.

But 170 million Americans living in the suburbs—as we imagine them now—is not sustainable. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent runaway climate change may not be possible if we continue to heat so many single-family homes, transport so many people to and from the home in cars every day—live so far apart from one another.

These are difficult realities to adjust to.

At Hawthorn Farm, Allen has been working for almost 20 years to imagine a new suburbia. “There are a lot of aspects to what we do,” she said. “And the overarching theme is, how do humans connect to landscapes? That's kind of the microcosm in which those climate change conversations are happening.”

Allen believes that suburban homesteading, the practice of developing self-sufficiency in the home and local community, is one way to transform the suburban lifestyle into something less destructive. She offers nature and farm skills classes to children and adults, plus consulting services for prospective homesteaders in the maritime Northwest and throughout the country.

“Everybody is going to relate to their landscape in their own way,” she said. “I sometimes joke with people that I'm like a relationship counselor for people and their gardens.”

Allen suggests that everybody, wherever they live, should take five minutes outside each day to observe what is going on in their environment. “Just go look, listen, smell, feel,” she said. “The more we can pay attention to what the heck is actually happening, the more successful we're going to be relating to a landscape. Or to another person, for that matter.”

Decontextualized, homesteading runs the risk of becoming just another form of isolationism, detaching oneself and one’s tribe from any sense of a greater dependence or responsibility. But with an efficiency-minded and globally-conscious approach, Allen believes this practice can offer a vision for community resiliency and sustainability in an increasingly unstable climate.

One of the greatest threats posed by climate change is access to safe water. UNICEF estimates that half of the world’s population could live in areas facing water insecurity by 2025, and that 700 million people could be displaced by severe water scarcity by 2030.

Rainwater harvesting is one way to improve water security and the efficiency of water use. Hawthorn Farm has about 6,000 gallons in water totes throughout the homestead.

“Wherever it's landing on a roof, it flows into a barrel of one size or another,” Allen said. During a solid day of rain, hundreds of gallons of water can be collected.

But keep in mind that rainwater runoff picks up contaminants as it runs off the roof. It is not safe for consumption until it has undergone a strict treatment process.

Instead, Hawthorn Farm uses its stored water for the crops when rain is sparse. This same practice can be applied on a smaller scale to individual home gardens and landscapes, reducing the strain on public water systems that provide drinking water.

As the years have passed, Hawthorn Farm has steadily increased its food output. When Allen first began homesteading, she did not produce enough to feed herself. Now, the farm produces enough to feed its several occupants with food to spare. Along with the crops, ducks and hens provide eggs for the farm, while goats provide milk, cheese and meat.

“I see a need for more resilient food crops, and a more diversified and resilient agriculture,” she said. She explained how her corn crop thrived last year when the summer was abnormally hot. But with the summer temperatures abnormally low this year, the corn is hardly coming up at all.

“So, what do I have to fill in the gaps?” she said. “If I rely only on one crop for my diet in my landscape, I am out of luck if it’s not a good year for that crop.” Allen pointed out that perennial crops such as nuts and fruits, which grow back each year, are typically much more resilient to fluctuations in the climate. For people who don’t have the acreage to grow a variety of crops, perennials may be the way to go.

“That’s just something to think about for the future of agriculture,” she said. “If I am eating from a hazelnut tree, that hazelnut tree is probably going to produce a usable crop, whether it's a cold year or whether it's a warm year.”

When it comes to climate change, suburbanites are relatively insulated from the worst effects compared with most of the rest of the world. The challenge, then, is to figure out how to confront the severity of the crisis without panicking.

“I saw a lot of people at the start of the pandemic panic and try to grow all their own food in a really unsuitable space,” Allen said.  Instead, she implores first-time farmers to start small, perhaps with herbs in a window box. “They’re huge contributions to nutrition that can happen in a very small space."

Ultimately, the climate crisis can only be truly overcome at the level of policy. But policy is more achievable and effective when individuals recognize the urgent need for systemic change, and imagine how these changes will trickle down into their daily lives.

“What we're doing on a small scale is what we're trying to re-envision for the larger world as a whole. Like, how do humans actually benefit the landscapes that they're in?” Allen said. “When people are actually noticing trees dying, are actually noticing that frogs aren't coming back to the same pools, are actually noticing that the birds who used to come back every spring aren't coming back anymore, then the policies come from both the heart and the head, and have more impact.”