Urban Homestead Wins Book Award

Our book, The Urban Homestead just won a gold medal in the Independent Publisher Awards. To celebrate we’ll throw in a back issue of Ripples magazine for the first twenty folks who buy a copy of our book off of this website. Ripples is, “A Revolutionary Journal of Seasonal Delight” published by the nice folks at www.dailyacts.org.

Now that’s enough tooting our own horn. We’ll get back to posting when the dust settles after Earth Day and talk about the hops vines that have just sprouted . . .

Homegrown Evolution on WAMC

Kelly and I will be on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio’s Roundtable show on Earth Day, April 22nd at 9:15 am EST. You can listen in online here.

Earth Day will be a busy one for us as Erik will also be on a panel for the National Conversation on Climate Action at 2 pm PST at MTA headquarters. More info here.

We’ll close the day with a book signing at an innovative new neighborhood market called Locali. We’ll be there at 7 pm PST and hope to see some locals.

Visit the Eco-Home

Julia Russell is Los Angeles’ original urban homesteader. If you haven’t visited her beautiful “Eco-Home”, now is the time. She’s a pioneer in edible landscaping, solar power, and many other things we all now take for granted. Best of all, you can take a tour:

“Since the 1970’s, April has been home to Earth Day. The theme for this year’s Earth Day is “the Green Generation,” and what better way to strengthen your role as part of this movement than by learning how to make your own life more earth-friendly and sustainable by joining us for an Eco-Home tour this April.

Visit Eco-Home for one of this April’s Eco-Home Tours on Sunday, April 12 and Sunday, April 26 from 2 P.M. to 4:30 P.M. In addition to learning how to begin or expand your personal urban garden, the tour will also display new technologies that will help turn any house into a green environment.

The Tour is conducted by Eco-Home Network, a non-profit dedicated to educating the public on how to make lifestyle choices that protect the environment and improve quality of life. The Eco-Home is located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Call 323-662-5207 for reservation and directions. Requested donation for the tour is $10 per person. Please make your reservations by the Friday before the tour.”

For more information, visit the website at ecohome.org.”

Homegrown San Francisco Events


Homegrown Evolution will be in San Francisco this week to speak at the Studio for Urban Projects. The talk will be on Sunday, April 5 at 2:00 pm. We’ll rap about what we’ve been up to and do a brief demo about self irrigating planters, the ideal way to grow food when you don’t have any dirt to call your own. The Studio for Urban Projects is located at 3579 17th St., San Francisco (between Dolores & Guerrero).

Also, in San Francisco this coming weekend make sure to catch the folks at How To Homestead on Saturday, April 4 at the Other Cinema at 8:30 PM for some brand new homesteading movies, homebrew tastings, and the “butt-shaking musical antics of the Goat Family.” The Other Cinema is located at ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia (@ 21st).

Denver and Los Angeles Experience Crowds Staring at Chicken Coops

Denver Urban Homesteaders looking at a chicken coop

Judging from the phone calls and emails coming into the Homegrown Evolution compound, America has discovered that it just might be a good idea to grow some vegetables and keep some chickens. There’s lots of motivating factors, no doubt. A bad economy and dissatisfaction with factory farming to start. But we also suspect that folks have discovered that it’s just plain fun to do all the old home arts with the handy networking tool known as the internet.

Above, the Denver Urban Homesteading meetup group. If you’re in the Denver area (where Mrs. Homegrown Evolution spent her formative years) get to know these fine folks at: http://www.meetup.com/Greater-Denver-Urban-Homesteaders/

LA Urban Homesteaders looking at a chicken coop. Photo by Elon Schoenholz

In a strikingly similar photo, our urban livestock workshop that we hosted yesterday featuring us talking about chickens, Leonardo Chalupawicz (from the Backwards Beekeepers) on bees and Joan Stevens introducing rabbits. We had to turn away quite a few folks, so watch this blog for news of more workshops soon.