Revised and Expanded

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Events
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A revised and expanded version of our book, The Urban Homestead is now available everywhere books are sold and via this website. And we have a new cover thanks to our fantastic publisher Process Media. No longer does the woman stand behind the man!

As for the “expanded” part, new projects include:
• How to sterilize jars and bottles
• How to make infused oil
• Six ways to preserve a tomato
• How to make soda bread
• How to store grain with dry ice
• How to make a tomato can stove
• How to make a Viet Nam light
• How to make a Euell Gibbon’s crock
• How to make L’hamd markad, or preserved, salted lemons
• How to make a bike light

“The Urban Homestead… touches on vegetable gardening, poultry, DIY cleaning products and beer making — all outlined with a sense of play and fun. “—Whole Life Times

“… a delightfully readable and very useful guide to front and back-yard vegetable gardening, food foraging, food preserving, chicken keeping, and other useful skills for anyone interested in taking a more active role in growing and preparing the food they eat.”—Boingboing.net

Thanks to all of you who have already bought a copy of The Urban Homestead. If you don’t have a copy yet, consider purchasing the new edition directly from us via our paypal link on the right side of this page. While we can’t compete with Amazon, your direct purchases help fund our ongoing household experiments. And stay tuned for news of our next book Making It which will be out in November.

Made By Hand

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Thoughtstylings
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Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway WorldJungian analyst James Hollis speaks of two gremlins that meet us at the foot of the bed each day: fear and lethargy. As DIYers, gardeners, poultry keepers and fermentation fetishists, our worst enemy is a crippling fear of failure and the lethargy that results when we try to avoid challenges by surfing the Internet, watching TV, or just staring into space. To embrace failure is the only way to learn. Hollis quotes Rainer Maria Rilke, “our task is to be defeated by ever larger things.”

BoingBoing co-founder and Make Magazine editor in chief Mark Frauenfelder has a new book Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World that chronicles his quest to do the kinds of activities we cover on this blog: vegetable gardening, keeping chickens, fermentation, beekeeping and more. While Made by Hand is not a how-to book it is, paradoxically, the most practical DIY book I’ve read in a long time. Why? Because it’s all about facing that fear of failure, the single greatest obstacle to actually getting out there and doing things. In the book Frauenfelder quotes überDIYer Mister Jalopy,

“People are afraid that they’re going to screw something up, that they’re going to ruin something. And unfortunately, it’s valid–they will. You will screw up. Things will be broken. But that’s the one step to overcome to get on the path of living this richer life of engagement, of having meaningful connections to the objects around you. It’s that necessary step you have to take–the courage to screw things up.”

I picked up Made by Hand and couldn’t put it down. I’ve done most of the activities Frauenfelder writes about and made many of the same mistakes. In the past month I’ve had an especially frustrating series of DIY setbacks. I’ve also, directly because of reading this book, faced my fear of failure and had a series of creative breakthroughs.

The world does not need more “experts.” What we need are the brutally honest voices of  “practitioners” like Frauenfelder, people who do things and have the courage to fail. As Ulysses says in the Odyssey, “I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship, and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces, then I will swim.”

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world

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Events
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LA is the poster child for bad planning. While there are probably worse cities in the US, we’ve certainly got our work ahead of us here.Which is why I’m asking all of you for a favor. A local elementary school near our house on a ugly stretch of Sunset Blvd. is applying for a grant to create a garden and do some traffic calming. The grant is vote based and here’s the link:

http://www.justmeans.com/contestidea?ideaid=NTU5

The grant would provide $25,000 towards replacing a parking lot with a garden.

Why this is important

Yes, it’s a bit annoying to fill out the form, however I think that this particular project would be a shining example of how to turn what is essentially a traffic sewer into a place for PEOPLE. Even if you don’t live here, my hope is that this garden will inspire others across the country. If we can make it happen here we can make it happen everywhere. The deadline is June 14th, so act soon.

The Urban Homestead

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Publications
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“The contemporary bible on the subject” — The New York Times

The Urban Homestead (Expanded and Revised Edition): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series) by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen  (Process, 2010)

ISBN: 978-1934170106

(The first edition, the one with the “American Gothic” cover, was released by Process on June 1, 2008)

Buy it at:  Amazon • Abe Books • Barnes & Nobel • Powell’s 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 on self-sufficiency topics.

Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this copiously illustrated, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. By growing our own food and harnessing natural energy, we are planting seeds for the future of our cities.

Update: Women’s Land Army

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Resources
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Last December, we posted about The Women’s Land Army. Christina Habberjam just left a comment on that post, pointing us to the resource page she’s compiled on that topic. It’s too nice a thing to be buried in the comments, so we’re posting the link to that page here. Also, her grandmother, Veronica Rattray, who was a “Land Girl”, wrote a book about her experience called My Land Girl Years, 1939-1948.