Search Results for: label/food preservation/page/38/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/2011/04/making-it

807 results

New National Center for Home Food Preservation Blog: Preserving Food at Home

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
5 Comments
Pumpkin leather. Image from the blog of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. When I’ve got food preservation questions–about food safety or I need a reliable recipe–I go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation. The Center provides science based food preservation advice and is funded by the USDA. They launched a blog in November, Preserving Food at Home that is now in my blog reader. Recent holiday-centric...

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The Food and Flowers Freedom Act

Mr. Homegrown
Events
9 Comments
website: Problem: In 1946, a Los Angeles municipal code known as the Truck Gardening Ordinance was written to allow the growing of vegetables in a residential (R1) zone for sale off-site. What this means, however, is that it is prohibited for city dwellers in R1 zones to grow fruits, nuts, flowers or seedlings and sell them off-site – at local farmers’ markets for example. Furthermore, no one at City Hall can agree on what Truck Gardeni...

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2011 in Review: Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
As the year draws to a close I thought I’d review some of our posts from the previous year starting with an update on the trademark dispute over the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading”. In February of this year the Dervaes Institute (DI) sent a cease and desist letter to over a dozen different individuals and organizations including our publisher Feral House/Process Media, public radio station KCRW, De...

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What Mountaineering Accidents Can Teach Us About Food Preservation

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
13 Comments
Would you eat pickles made by these two? Each year the American Alpine Club publishes a book detailing all the mountaineering accidents in North America. The club’s goal is simple, as they put it, “to help you learn from the mistakes of others.” I’ve often thought that the same approach should be applied to many of the activities we love in the homesteading movement, especially food preservation. Now, I think t...

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How To Dry Food With the Sun

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to, Preparedness, Solar
5 Comments
. But there’s a catch to sun drying: humidity. Food dries best when temperatures are above 85º F and below 60% humidity. If you live in a desert, humidity isn’t a problem. But in most other places in North America it’s simply too moist to set food out under the sun. It will rot before it dries. In Los Angeles, due to the influence of the ocean, it’s slightly too humid most of the year for sun drying to work well. But there...

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Home Food Preservation Resources

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, Resources
10 Comments
I’m honored to have been included in this year’s class of the Los Angeles Master Food Preservers, a program offered by our local extension service to train volunteers to teach food preservation in under-served communities. I thought I would share the textbook resources from the class as they are an excellent set of reference books for your homesteading library. And many are available for free online. Like all information from the ex...

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Urban Homestead on Craigslist. Act Now!

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
I’ve always been uneasy with the moniker “urban homestead.” It’s the title of our book (what else could we have called it?), but it’ not really accurate. The activities we describe are also practiced by suburbanites and people in rural places. And “homestead” is not technically accurate–all the readers of our book, I’m fairly certain, either own or rent their property. The term is also load...

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Food Preservation Resources

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
2 Comments
Due to a popular post on making prickly pear jelly, we get a lot of emails asking for advice on canning. So I thought I’d list three favorite food preservation resources. I like to go to respected sources when canning for reasons of both safety and reliability. While botulism is fairly rare, it’s a highly unpleasant way to pass this vale of tears. But beyond the safety issue, if I’m going to go through the work of canning, I w...

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The Urban Homestead

Mrs. Homegrown
Publications
1 Comment
“The contemporary bible on the subject” — The New York Times The Urban Homestead (Expanded and Revised Edition): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series) by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen  (Process, 2010) ISBN: 978-1934170106 (The first edition, the one with the “American Gothic” cover, was released by Process on June 1, 2008) Buy it at:  Amazon • Abe Books • Barnes...

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Urban Homestead, Urban Homesteading: These Terms Belong to All of Us

Mrs. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings, Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute
27 Comments
Our attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm, Winston �38; Strawn, have filed a petition to cancel the bogus trademark registrations for the terms “Urban Homestead” and “Urban Homesteading.” You may read the EFF’s press release here, and the actual petition here. It is a thing of beauty. We are very fortunate to have access to the talents of some of the best people in this business. We ho...

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