Urban Homestead Trademarks Cancelled!

After six years of legal wrangling, “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” belong to us all. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has cancelled the trademarks thanks to the hard work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm of Winston & Strawn. Here’s the press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Urban Homesteaders Win Cancellation of Bogus Trademarks Global Community Had Faced Baseless Legal Claims and Content Remo...

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“Urban Homesteading” belongs to us all

...r Urban Homesteading, for winning the right for all of us to use the term “urban homesteading” freely from now on out. Longtime readers may remember that back in 2011, the Dervaes Institute sent notices to a dozen or so organizations, informing them that they could no longer use the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” unless speaking about the work of the Dervaes Institute, as they had registered trademark on both terms. Beyond that,...

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Loquat season is here!

...ed with hundreds upon hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of little yellow-orange fruits. These fruits seem to be nuisances to most homeowners–I rarely see a tree which looks as if it’s being harvested, or if it is, the harvesting does not make a dent in the bounty. After all, how many fresh loquats can you gobble down in a day? All of which is to say I feel no guilt about snagging loquats off of accessible trees as I walk around.* On-the-hoof snacking i...

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Prickly Pear Fruit Chips

...r fruit has a leather-like consistency, enjoy. You swallow the hard seeds, making prickly pear fruit somewhat an acquired taste for some. Chumacero also mentioned that the young pads, “nopalitos” in Spanish, can also be dried for later use. A note to the permaculturalists out there. It’s worth emphasizing that the prickly pear cactus, Opuntia ficus-indica, in my personal experience, is the single most productive plant in our small lot. It’s also t...

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Seed, nut and fruit energy bars

...r sweetness and their binding properties. If you want to use another dried fruit in the mix, I’d recommend you still use dates for at least half the fruit component, just because they are so much the foundation of this recipe. If you can’t find soft sticky Medjool dates, and have to use the lesser, drier kind, try soaking them in water first until they soften up. I’ve heard this works, but haven’t done it myself. Other fruits to consider would inc...

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