What does "Homesteading" mean to you?

This is a post that I have been wanting to do for sometime now. I have had some people tell me that I can not possibly homestead where I am. I beg to differ. So, what does homesteading mean to you?

The definition of a homestead is:

1. a house, especially a farmhouse, with adjoining buildings and land.
2. Law Property designated by a household as the householder's home and protected by law from forced sale to meet debts
3. Land claimed by a settler or squatter, especially under the Homestead Act
4. The place where one's home is 

I have a home and I do have a little land and one outbuilding (a storage shed). So, according to the first one, I have a homestead.

I live in a mobile home (a home is a home regardless of what it looks like and we own it outright, so no mortgage). I do live in a small mobile home park, but because it is small, each home here has a decent sized yard. Our park is just two streets. The side that I live on has nothing but a stream and a tree line behind it. Our park owner said that our lot is the biggest one in the park. He also doesn't care what we do as long as it is kept neat. 

This is the stream behind our house. This was taken in late spring before the stream was overrun with wildflowers and weeds. You can see a tree that fell in the upper left hand corner. That is the "bridge" that Matt uses to get to his fort.

This was part of the garden last year. You can see the tree line behind it at the edge of our yard. Matt has cleared out a little area in the "forest" to make a fort.

We are not allowed to have outdoor animals, so that limits us. We can not have the chickens or goats that I want. So no eggs and milk to make cheese. The hubby wants to get bee's but I am not to keen on that idea. I would love the honey, but not the risk of getting stung. A neighbor not that far from us (not in the park) has a few hives, so we saw lots of his bee's in our yard last year, just not as much as the year before.

Most of the blogs that I read here have what some people consider true homesteads. They have acres of land, animals, large garden, etc. This is why I think most people consider what I am doing is not homesteading, hence the name of my blog. 

So how do I define homesteading? To me, it is a way of life. I grow my own veggies and preserve them in a few ways (canning, dehydrating, freezing). I am frugal in the way I shop (I coupon, price match, use thrift stores, meal plan). I am also eco friendly (I use cloth bags when I shop, use a clothes line in the summer, use cloth pads for my period, rags and towels instead of paper towels, we recycle and compost). I also cook from scratch. Not many prepackaged things are found in my house. I think the only things that I have are some boxes of cake that I got cheap.

To me, this is homesteading in the 21st century. A life style of self sufficiency. Granted I will not be totally self sufficient, but I do what I can to lower our footprints.