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Podcasts for the Urban Homesteader

Mr. Homegrown
Resources
12 Comments
Let’s face it, mainstream radio programming, both talk and music, stinks. Podscasting democratizes the medium. Anyone with a microphone and laptop can make and distribute a podcast and, while quality varies, there’s a huge amount of excellent, highly specialized programming available. So should be on the iPods of urban homesteaders? I’ve got a few suggestions: Survival Podcast We just appeared on this podcast, which is hosted...

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Roundup

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
1 Comment
SurviveLA is embarrassed to admit that we used to have a bottle of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller around the compound. Embarrassed because one of Project Censored’s top 25 censored stories of 2006 includes this piece on the evils of this product: Third World Resurgence, No. 176, April 2005 Title: “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller” Author: Chee Yoke Heong New studies from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that Roundup, the...

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Summer 2010 Tomato Report

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
14 Comments
Tomato season began inauspiciously with unseasonably cold weather for Southern California. I simply couldn’t get any seeds to germinate. Thankfully, Craig of gardenedibles.com came to the rescue with a couple of seedlings for us. Here’s a recap of our tomato successes and failures: Red Pear. I’ve grown this one before. It’s a plump, ribbed, meaty tomato. It’s flavorful and amazing both fresh and made into sauce. Cr...

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Revolution: A New TV Series About Extreme Suburban Homesteading

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
35 Comments
adinnerjacket causes a big electro-magnetic pulse.2 Said EMP knocks out all the power, iPhones, cars and jumbo jets in the entire world. Fifteen years pass, civilization reverts to an approximation of our first book The Urban Homestead, and we pick up the story with the now grown-up daughter of the dude with the flash drive. One groovy HOA The daughter lives in a suburban development. All the home owner’s association rules have bee...

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A Sports Utility Bicycle

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes
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We recently did an experiment to see if we could go for a week in Los Angeles traveling only by bicycle. What made this car-free week a success was the ingenious Xtracycle, a cargo bike ideal for the challenges of urban American streets. The Xtracycle extends the back wheel of the bike and is essentially a huge pannier bag with a skateboard-like seat. We’ve managed to haul four bags of groceries, the same amount we used to carry in my car...

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Water Conservation

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
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ing hundreds of plastic tampon applicators afloat in a vast sea of poo. 8.7% Clothes Washer Wash only a full load. Run the waste water outside to irrigate your landscaping using either a surge tank, or directly. Adventurous homesteaders, willing to put in the extra labor, may wish to consider a James Washer, an electricity free hand washer, commonly found in off-grid households, where you put some hot water in and agitate the clothes for a few...

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It Quacks Like a Duck

Mr. Homegrown
Animals
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The Happy Ducks of the Petaluma Urban Homestead It seems a new lifestyle is taking shape, in part born of the ashes of the World Trade Center, the aftermath of Katrina, and the endless resource wars our country feels the need to fight. There’s a great desire out there to “do something” and a refreshing DIY spirit of self-sufficiency is beginning to emerge. Two of the indicators of this new lifestyle seem to be the mixture o...

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Resources

These are our favorite web resources on various topics, and books which you’ll find on our bookshelves: General Home Ec/Appropriate Tech/DIY Living Mother Earth News How to Homestead Backwoods Home Magazine  AfriGadget  The Urban Homestead Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World Radical Homemakers The Integral Urban House Made by Hand Farm City The Natural Kitchen Country Wisdom and Know-How Wendell Berry’s ess...

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Casting out the lawn

Mr. Homegrown
Lawns, Thoughtstylings
4 Comments
and our general unhappiness. But a consciousness shift is underway led by forward thinking folks like the parishioners of Holy Nativity Episcopal Church in West Los Angeles who have teamed up with the non-profit organization Urban Farming to rip up their entire 1,200 square foot south lawn to plant vegetables for the congregation and the LAX Food Pantry. From their press release: “Holy Nativity is a strong community center with focus on...

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