I wonder if Les Stroud is a bit jealous. Simon Dale and his father built this amazing house in under 4 months and for about $5,000. These pictures show a bit of the process and the final product. He estimates that it took him about 1000-1500 man hours. He took great care and regard for the natural environment enabling a life very close to nature. He chalks up this impressive accomplishment to simple self belief and perseverance.

Simon gives great insight into why he decided to build his home:

“This building is one part of a low-impact or permaculture approach to life. This sort of life is about living in harmony with both the natural world and ourselves, doing things simply and using appropriate levels of technology. These sort of low cost, natural buildings have a place not only in their own sustainability, but also in their potential to provide affordable housing which allows people access to land and the opportunity to lead more simple, sustainable lives. For example this house was made to house our family whilst we worked in the woodland surrounding the house doing ecological woodland management and setting up a forest garden, things that would have been impossible had we had to pay a regular rent or mortgage.”

Simon listed a few key points of his design and construction:
- Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
- Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
- Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
- Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
- Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
- Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
- Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
- Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
- Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
- Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
- Water by gravity from nearby spring
- Compost toilet
- Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

It is an impressive feat and worth highlighting in the context of urban farming. While Simon has obviously taken this to the extreme, there are a lot of great things to learn from his house and lifestyle.

Simon states that “the simplest, sustainable solutions involve small-scale permaculture type land management systems centred around individual or small groups of dwellings.” Urban Farming is about much more than growing a few tomatoes and a basil plant. Backyard farming is a powerful way to transform a patch of boring, foreign grass into a productive garden that creates a small ecosystem just outside of your home. Whether you have a couple square feet of garden or a sprawling backyard farm, urban farming is both an educational and fun way to live as well as a responsible decision for the environment.

See more of Simon Dale and his curious houses here: http://www.simondale.net/

Few things in life are as simple and enjoyable as having your four year-old son walk to the backyard every day to grab a couple fresh eggs just in time to fry them up for lunch. It still blows my mind that there is actually an animal that will produce an egg every day, like clockwork, and ask for nothing in return but scraps from your dinner plate. I see a not-to-distant future where the chicken claims the title as "the perfect pet." They are easy to care for, playful and productive ... a combination matched by no other animal I can think of. If you are not yet a Modern Farmer, it's time to get started.

I began my urban farming adventure by purchasing a chicken coop on Amazon. It turned out to be not quite secure enough to keep out the raccoons that prowl my neighborhood. Unfortunately, I lost my chickens and a couple hundred bucks on a coop that now just adds to the clutter in my garage. I was determined to continue, so I pooled resources with a neighbor (a coop co-op) to afford the nicest chicken coop kit I could find on Craigslist ... another mistake. The kit came with some cheap wood and a blank piece of paper, which I believe was intended by the Chinese manufacturer to be the instructions. With a little creativity, we got the coop set up in the backyard and the fresh eggs began coming in. That is, until the nesting box broke completely off of the coop. The wood couldn't support the weight of two chickens, even though it had been recommended for four.

As I was going through these difficult times, I kept wondering, "Why isn't there a legit chicken coop made for the typical urban farmer?" I found coops online that cost upward of a thousand dollars and could be towed by a tractor (neither of which I have) and coops that could double as bunny runs and dog houses, but I was not able to find a quality coop that would look good in my garden and provide the functionality I was looking for. Once I started sharing my concerns with like-minded backyard farms, I found that others were experiencing a similar dilemma. Luckily, one such friend happened to be a carpenter who jumped on the idea of building a coop from scratch and another was a web developer who could build a slick website to give us a presence online.

We landed on the idea of a chicken coop that resembles a little red barn, hence the name, RedBarnCoop.com. Our coops are everything that my first coops weren't.

- Handmade quality craftsmanship - Beautiful red and white frame - Doors that lock to keep chickens secure from predators - Roosting bar and ventilation for happy, healthy chickens - Perfect size for up to 4 chickens - Accessible eggs to allow children to help

Our goal is to get chickens into every backyard and fresh eggs into every fridge. Any urban farmers out there with chicken stories to warm the soul and help promote the backyard farming cause?

Just when I thought backyard chicken farming couldn’t get any more interesting, I started getting blue eggs from my favorite hen, Chewbacca.

Once she started a couple weeks ago, she hasn’t stopped laying them. I get one egg/day without fail, and if I am around for lunch that day, nothing taste better than a blue eggs and ham sandwich. Chewbacca is an amazing breed of chicken known as the Americana (actually spelled Ameraucana, but I don’t like that spelling). When I purchased her a few months back, I was told that when she starts laying, her eggs would be either brown, pink or blue. Half the fun is waiting for the first egg to arrive to see what color “egg gene” the chicken has. Because of the variety of color, these chickens are also known as Easter Egg chickens.

Now that she is laying, all three of my chickens are in production mode, which means we get 2-3 eggs/day. After the initial trials of broken chicken coops a nd raccoon/hawk/possum attacks, my little backyard experiment is beginning to pay off. Not that urban farming is a hobby that is meant to be a profitable venture; it is nice to know that I can now officially stop buying eggs. My quick profit-loss analysis looks like this:

Revenue (measured in savings) Eggs (18/week) - $3/week Eggs over the year - $150

Costs per year: Feed - $50 Water – Free (basically) Leftover dinner – Free

Profit: $100/year