“Urban Homesteading” belongs to us all

November 9, 2015

...gistered trademark on both terms. Beyond that, some people found their web pages or social media sites removed when their hosting services responded to take-down notices issued by the Dervaes Institute, including Denver Urban Steading and Process Media/Feral House, the publisher of our book, The Urban Homestead. The good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) stepped forward to help. One of their interests is protecting the commons of l...

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Creating a Perpetual Garden Journal

Mr. Homegrown

October 5, 2021

Gardening

12 Comments

...just commit to the lines. I would recommend finding a journal with enough pages to devote a spread of two pages to each week. I have only one page per week and I think the results will be a little cramped. Are my drawings great? Nope. But I’ve decided to embrace my slightly wonky draftsmanship and just roll with it. It’s the act of seeing, after all, that’s more important. Lara Call Gastinger’s Instagram is a great introduction to the perpetual j...

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The Hugelkultur Question

Mr. Homegrown

November 17, 2014

Gardening, Permaculture

48 Comments

...out when writing a magazine article. A civil discussion ensued on that Facebook page, proving that Facebook is good for something other than angry political screeds and cat videos. A summary of some of the points made: There is no peer reviewed research on hugelkultur. The concept seems to date back only to 2007 or so, most likely to Sepp Holzer. Chalker-Scott suggested that you could get the same benefits with surface mulch with a lot less effort...

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Tolkien and Trees

Mrs. Homegrown

September 8, 2016

Nature Awareness, Thoughtstylings, Trees

6 Comments

...ut artists who can’t draw trees, and has many trees of significance in his books, which he mentions in passing, but the following are the more direct defenses of trees: #165 To the Houghton Mifflin Co. , 1955 : I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals. #83 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien, 6 October 1944: It i...

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The Future is Biomorphic

Mr. Homegrown

November 4, 2014

Design

4 Comments

...inds me of the wisdom of what Nassim Taleb calls, “non-predictive decision making.” Why? Futurists and prognosticators are as accurate as a dead clock. Twice a day they get it right and the rest of the time they end up looking foolish. We can be especially thankful that the washing machine for people on page 179 of The Futurist never caught on. That said, the point is not always to predict the future. Architects, artists and designers push the env...

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