Breaking News

...foreground of the picture above–laid her first egg–that is, our very first homestead egg. Go Stewpot! Of course this event would happen when Mr. Homestead is out of town & in possession of the camera. The lay site was a difficult to access cranny behind the coop. It may not have been photograph-able anyway, but I will report that the egg was deposited quite attractively in a shallow bowl of yellow and brown leaves. I got it while it was still warm...

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Rain Barrels

...want to discourage anyone from making an attempt at it, but for most urban homesteaders it won’t be economical or practical given the space requirements and weight of thousands of gallons of stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using that wate...

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How to Make a Hexagonal Raised Bed

...s of marauding mammals that nightly assault our backyard even in this very urban part of Los Angeles. You can see in the first picture that I ended up creating a sort of bamboo teepee to provide support for beans and tomatoes and on which to attach bird netting (which the marauding mammals easily breeched). I’ve posted about the pros and cons of raised beds in the past. Unless you have a compelling reason to build raised beds I think it’s always b...

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Zombies!

...evision viewing. What’s the cure? In short, we think it’s the exciting new urban homesteading lifestyle. What’s the strategy to overcome zombieism? We are no fan of the Unabomber, but he may be right about this one – just substitute the word “zombie” for “American” – which is perhaps redundant, anyways: . . . it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for the habits of consumption. Instead, the average American should be...

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010 Erica Strauss of Northwest Edible Life

...wide variety of topics: food preservation, gardening, keeping livestock in urban spaces, kitchen tips and home economic hacks. Some of the many topics we touch on in the interview include: How she got started homesteading Gardening in the Northwest United States Four season gardening Growing fruit in the Northwest Dave Wilson’s Backyard Orcharding Her viral blog post, The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater Meal planning for families Time manage...

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