The Urban Homestead

...and your local indie bookstore This celebrated, essential handbook for the urban homesteading movement shows how to grow and preserve your own food, clean your house without toxins, raise chickens, gain energy independence, and more. Step-by-step projects, tips, and anecdotes will help get you started homesteading immediately. The Urban Homestead is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and internet resources...

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StoveTec’s Hot Rocket Stoves

StoveTec’s wood burning rocket stove on the left, charcoal and wood on the right. A reader comment alerted me to a very cool product, the StoveTec Rocket Stove, offered by the “not-just-for-profit” wing of the Aprovecho Research Center. Profits from sales of the stoves benefit the Center’s research. StoveTec sells two rocket stoves, one for wood and the other for both wood and charcoal. While I haven’t tested one, the $37 to $40 price is a bargai...

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Urban Homestead Book Signing and Lecture

...rban Eco-Villages and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition present THE URBAN HOMESTEAD Talk, Slide Show and Book-Signing with Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen Thursday June 26th 2008 7:30pm at Los Angeles Eco-Village 117 Bimini Place, LA 90004 Directions at www.laecovillage.org Suggested donation $5, no one turned away for lack of funds Books sold separately for $15 Come hear the authors of the Homegrown Evolution blog and get yourself a copy of t...

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How to Roast Coffee in a Whirley Pop Popcorn Maker

...rk on our O’Keefe and Merritt with a diffuser over the burner. An electric stove or a professional stove will work but will be different. I just tested this recipe on a portable butane burner and got better results with these slightly different directions from Sweet Maria’s. The caveat out the way, here’s how I roast coffee: Set a gas stove burner on low or your electric stove on medium and pre-heat the Whirley Pop for a minute or two. On our old...

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How To Fix a Broken Spring on an O’Keefe and Merritt Stove

...ou need to do is pull it out and find a replacement at a hardware store or stove repair shop. 2. My broken spring was on the side of the stove that does not have an access door. To get at this spring I had to remove the side panel of the stove, which is easy to do. The side panel is removed by taking out a set of screws you’ll find along the back of the stove. Once the screws are out, pull the panel off and you should see another access door on th...

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