Essential System #4 – Illumination

..., but we also are looking into a new generation of LED bulbs for our Urban Homestead’s interior lighting. As far as house lighting goes, while LED efficiency is rapidly advancing, compact fluorescents are still better from an economic perspective even though there are concerns about the trace amounts of mercury that compact fluorescents contain contaminating landfills. Still, compact fluorescents are far better than incandescents since they consum...

Read…

The Survivor

...ticles about rainwater harvesting for important breaking news at our urban homestead–the development of the SurviveLA signature cocktail–the Survivor. For a long time we’ve cursed the previous owners of our compound for their useless, inedible landscaping. One of the plants they left us that we’ve lived with for all these years is an ornamental pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) that, while attractive, we had previously assumed was useless due to...

Read…

073 Permaculture From the Inside Out with Rachel Kaplan

...nture are Kyra Auerbach, Delia Carroll and Cassandra Ferrera. Rachel wrote Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living (with K. Ruby Blume), and is currently working on a long-awaited book about community dance ritual with dance luminary Anna Halprin. Her website is: www.13mooncollaborative.com. Friend 13 Moon CoLab in Facebook here. During the show Rachel also mentions: Daily Acts, Starhawk and Mark Lakeman. If you want to leave a...

Read…

Gardening Classes at Silver Lake Farms

...Local gardening guru Tara Kolla, who we met in the course of writing our book the Urban Homestead, will be hosting a series of very reasonably priced classes at her beautiful urban farm in Silver Lake beginning in March. Topics include vermicomposting, organic gardening and more. Full information on the Silver Lake Farms website. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, we highly recommend taking a class or two, and sign up early as space is limited....

Read…

010 Erica Strauss of Northwest Edible Life

...wide variety of topics: food preservation, gardening, keeping livestock in urban spaces, kitchen tips and home economic hacks. Some of the many topics we touch on in the interview include: How she got started homesteading Gardening in the Northwest United States Four season gardening Growing fruit in the Northwest Dave Wilson’s Backyard Orcharding Her viral blog post, The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater Meal planning for families Time manage...

Read…