Events

Raw Milk Talk by Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Saturday August 28th

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Events
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Mark McAfee, founder and CEO of raw milk dairy Organic Pastures, will speak Saturday August 28th at 2 pm at the Altadena Community Center, located at 730 E. Altadena Drive in Altadena. McAfee is a compelling and lively speaker and the owner of the first raw dairy in California with certified organic pasture land. I heard him speak before and some of the stories he tells of raids by overzealous government agents are right out of a Western. This talk is simply not to be missed. The event is open to the public, free and Organic Pastures milk will be availiable for tasting. For more information contact [email protected].

To read more about McAfee and his dairy, see this article by the Rodale Institute, “Simple, complex and raw: the amazing success of Organic Pastures Dairy.”

Rooftop Garden Classes

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Events, Rooftop Gardening, Self Watering Containers
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Homegrown Neighbor here:

Los Angeles has sprouted a very cool rooftop garden. Here where January temperatures are often in the 70’s, buildings aren’t designed to hold snow, meaning that our roofs usually can’t hold much weight. So rooftop gardens are rare.

But on the border of Little Tokyo, skid row, and a warehouse district, an old seafood warehouse rooftop has been turned into a gourmet garden atop the home of artisan food purveyor Cube Marketplace.

Full disclosure: I’m the lucky gardener. And this weekend I’ll be teaching a Fall Gardening Class and a class on new ways to use common garden herbs. For more information or to sign up for the classes click here.

The classes are part of a quarterly pop-up marketplace. Even if you don’t want to take the classes, this is an opportunity to come and check out the garden. I love watching the bees pollinate the flowers and then looking out at the view of Downtown Los Angeles and the industrial sprawl down below. It is delightfully incongruous.

Revised and Expanded

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Events
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A revised and expanded version of our book, The Urban Homestead is now available everywhere books are sold and via this website. And we have a new cover thanks to our fantastic publisher Process Media. No longer does the woman stand behind the man!

As for the “expanded” part, new projects include:
• How to sterilize jars and bottles
• How to make infused oil
• Six ways to preserve a tomato
• How to make soda bread
• How to store grain with dry ice
• How to make a tomato can stove
• How to make a Viet Nam light
• How to make a Euell Gibbon’s crock
• How to make L’hamd markad, or preserved, salted lemons
• How to make a bike light

“The Urban Homestead… touches on vegetable gardening, poultry, DIY cleaning products and beer making — all outlined with a sense of play and fun. “—Whole Life Times

“… a delightfully readable and very useful guide to front and back-yard vegetable gardening, food foraging, food preserving, chicken keeping, and other useful skills for anyone interested in taking a more active role in growing and preparing the food they eat.”—Boingboing.net

Thanks to all of you who have already bought a copy of The Urban Homestead. If you don’t have a copy yet, consider purchasing the new edition directly from us via our paypal link on the right side of this page. While we can’t compete with Amazon, your direct purchases help fund our ongoing household experiments. And stay tuned for news of our next book Making It which will be out in November.

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world

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LA is the poster child for bad planning. While there are probably worse cities in the US, we’ve certainly got our work ahead of us here.Which is why I’m asking all of you for a favor. A local elementary school near our house on a ugly stretch of Sunset Blvd. is applying for a grant to create a garden and do some traffic calming. The grant is vote based and here’s the link:

http://www.justmeans.com/contestidea?ideaid=NTU5

The grant would provide $25,000 towards replacing a parking lot with a garden.

Why this is important

Yes, it’s a bit annoying to fill out the form, however I think that this particular project would be a shining example of how to turn what is essentially a traffic sewer into a place for PEOPLE. Even if you don’t live here, my hope is that this garden will inspire others across the country. If we can make it happen here we can make it happen everywhere. The deadline is June 14th, so act soon.