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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The Mystery of the Zero-Irrigation Squash

...uash (they’re so good at hiding) and ended up with a harvest of big, bland squash. Again. (The squash is a hybrid, by the way. They look like Tromboncino, but are bigger than the Tromboncinos we had last year. Squash cross-breed like crazy. Volunteers are rarely like their parents.) I bring this up mostly because I am amazed how well this squash did without irrigation. And to be clear, that means they’ve had no water for months. The chairs in the...

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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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My Big Fat Greek Squash

...umpkin, but tasted a lot better than most pumpkin I’ve had. We roasted one squash to make squash tortellini among other dishes. The best recipe, however, was for a savory winter squash pie (galette) out of Mark Bittman’s book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (thanks to Bruce of the Green Roof Growers for suggesting this book). Bittman’s spicy winter squash galette recipe is here on MSNBC along with a video of him making it. I’ll note that the onl...

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What Does Tromboncino Squash Taste Like?

...ew squashes in the Cucurbita moschata family that is harvested as a summer squash Tromboncino as winter squash. I think of tromboncino as the new zucchini. It has a sweeter flavor than zucchini and the long neck is always free of seeds. As a winter squash it’s passable, but somewhat bland. If you’ve got the room to let this thing sprawl (ours is over 25 feet long) you’ll find it more productive than zucchini. I planted seeds in April, transplanted...

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