Visit HOMEGROWN.ORG

The folks behind Farm Aid have launched a new social networking site, HOMEGROWN.org that readers of this blog will definitely enjoy. From their press release:

“HOMEGROWN.org is now a place where we can learn from each other, share our questions, and show off how we dig in the dirt, grow our own food, work with our hands, and cook and share our meals – all things that we call HOMEGROWN.

• Did you cook a kick ass meal with stuff from the farmers market?
• Is there a mysterious veggie in your CSA box?
• What is the soundtrack for your potluck dinner?
• Are you thinking about growing okra?
• What’s in your fridge right now?
• Do you have a DIY tip to share?

That’s the spirit of HOMEGROWN.org. A spirit that will mean more visits to the farmers markets, more backyard BBQs, more dirt under nails…more talking, touching, smelling, tasting. It will mean a more fulfilling life that people everywhere will come to call HOMEGROWN.

Things you can now do on HOMEGROWN.org:

• Post photos
• Post videos
• Create groups
• Join groups
• Create discussions
• Join discussions
• Link to your own blog
• Create a new blog
• Make new friends
• Invite old friends
• Promote events
• Learn about events in your area
• Create playlists
• Post a member badge on your Facebook or MySpace page
• and more…”

We’ve joined up (become our HOMEGROWN.org friends here) and we hope all of you readers will join up as well. The important step beyond the DIY activities on this blog and in our book is developing healthy and happy communities and joining together to build a better world. We wish HOMEGROWN.org good luck in networking our urban homesteads.

I remember seeing the New York based planning and transportation website Streetsblog and wishing that we had something like it here in Los Angeles. Well we do thanks to the work of Damien Newton who we were honored to be interviewed by last month. Read his interview of Mr. Homegrown Evolution rambling about bike issues here on Streetsblog Los Angeles. Damien also interviewed us on the hot topic of growing food at home for the L.A. Times Emerald City blog. Thanks Damien!

Above, the backyard looking surprisingly decent for summer (of course I’ve framed out the area that the chickens made into a moonscape).

Imagine Martha Stewart as a gun-toting radical libertarian and you’ll have some idea what the always informative and entertaining Backwoods Home Magazine is like. Even though its primary emphasis is rural off-grid living, every issue has something to offer for the urban homesteader. The current January/February issue features a detailed article on how city dwellers can maximize their vegetable production in small spaces. Even the article on running a cattle ranch has the side benefit of letting us all know where our food comes from, and the challenges of running a family farm, “Jessica Troxel has donned a plastic sleeve, greased it with mineral oil, and reaches in through the cow’s anus to see if this one is pregnant.” reads the caption over a photo in that article.

While the mainstream media fawns over the latest gadgets and ignores the nefarious doings of our proto-fascist government, the folks at Backwoods Home are calling hydrogen cars bullshit and informing us of Halliburton’s contract for building domestic detention camps.

If that ain’t enough the magazine features long, rambling reader letters, recipes, fetishistic firearms advice, and endearingly naïve cover art! But what SurviveLA especially appreciates is the magazine’s emphasis on techniques and knowledge over technological gimmickry.

Six issues (one year) is $23.95, but most of the articles are available for free online.

Thanks to a tip from the Soapboxers, SurviveLA augmented our homesteading library with a copy of the extremely useful book, Country Wisdom & Know-How by the editors of Storey Books. Country Wisdom is a compendium of tips culled from the Country Wisdom Bulletin published in the 1970s and oriented to the “back to the land” movement of that time.

While geared to country living there is plenty in here for city dwellers such as ourselves. Divided into sections covering animals, cooking, crafts, gardening, health and wellbeing, and home repair/construction, Country Wisdom has straightforward advice with clear illustrations.

While we don’t anticipate having to skin and eat bear anytime soon, “Bear meat is dark and well flavored. The layer of fat should be trimmed off or it will give the meat a strong gamey taste” we did appreciate things such as the three pages of quick bread recipes (we’ll test some and let you know how they work) and the tips on using herbs. And lots of folks in our neighborhood could benefit from the dog training advice.

Who knows, someday we may find ourselves sitting down to a meal of backyard squirrel and possum . . .

Today’s Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) has an article on the Cuban equivalent of Martha Stewart, Margarita Gálvez Martinez who writes a column for the Pinar del Rio dioscecan bulletin Vitral and if tough times are coming, SurviveLA would rather have Margarita on our side than Martha. While Martha is out fretting over terry pillows and Halloween cupcakes, Margarita is surviving.

Cuba has faced some very tough years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the loss of trade (oil for sugar) from the former Soviet Union. Gálvez’s advice falls under what Cubans call la alternativa, or alternatives for the luxuries we in the US take for granted. As the Wall Street Journal article notes, Gálvez’s advice has included everything from salad dressing that doubles as hair conditioner, beauty treatments that consist of soaking in bread crumbs and warm milk, a flan made with fruit or vegetables rather than scarce corn starch and eggs, and laundry soap made from the jaboncillo tree. What we like most about Gálvez is that she is a strong proponent of urban gardening, maximizing every available space for food, a contrast to Martha Stewart’s useless pesticide and fertilizer drenched flower gardens. See the the film Power of Community How Cuba Survived Peak Oil for more on Cuba’s inventive urban gardening.

While we hope that the US does not face a Cuban style economic crisis, we at SurviveLA believe that it’s time for la alternativa for other reasons, namely reducing our environmental impact and rampant consumption.

If you speak Spanish, please enjoy Gálvez’s recipe for vinegar made from pineapple rinds or banana peels. There is an recipe in English (not quite the same) here.