“Urban Homesteading” belongs to us all

November 9, 2015

...teading” freely from now on out. Longtime readers may remember that back in 2011, the Dervaes Institute sent notices to a dozen or so organizations, informing them that they could no longer use the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” unless speaking about the work of the Dervaes Institute, as they had registered trademark on both terms. Beyond that, some people found their web pages or social media sites removed when their hosting ser...

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What’s Your Everyday Carry?

Mr. Homegrown

May 9, 2017

Preparedness

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...ebsite. Consider this blog post as an update of the pocket dump I posted in 2011. Since that time my EDC has changed, mostly via subtractions. Here’s my current EDC: 1. Leatherman Rebar This is the central and, unquestionably, most useful cornerstone of my EDC. Not a day goes by when I don’t pull out the Rebar to fix something or slice off a piece of cheese with the dull (my fault) pocket knife. The Leatherman folks have tried to anticipate every...

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Lead in Backyard Eggs: Don’t Freak Out But Don’t Ignore the Issue

Mr. Homegrown

March 11, 2019

Animals, Bees, Lead

3 Comments

...elevated lead levels in our soil when we did a series of soil tests back in 2011. Thankfully our egg results came in at 1.02 ug, just under the average level in the study. You’d have to eat a lot of eggs as an adult to go beyond the Federal Drug Administration’s maximum recommended lead intake level, though you could bump up against it if a child ate more than three eggs a day. I’d suggest that if you live in an older urban location, next to a gas...

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DIY Portable Pizza Oven

Mr. Homegrown

May 15, 2015

Appropriate Technology, Food, Water and Power

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...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1QToDg3Ow0 I just spoke with Eric Rochow of GardenFork.TV .(He’ll be our guest on the next podcast.) If you don’t know Gardenfork, you should. Eric has put together a lot of cool videos and podcasts. One of my favorite is this portable pizza oven. I’m thinking of building one for local events. For more info on Eric’s pizza oven check out his pizza oven page....

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Sheltered

Mr. Homegrown

July 23, 2020

Design

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A page from Shelter. Maker, builder, publisher and author Lloyd Kahn left a great comment on my rambling review of the documentary Spaceship Earth. Lloyd said (in reference to the title of Buckminster Fuller’s 1969 book Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth), “In 1973, in our book Shelter, I wrote “Calling Earth a spaceship is like stepping out into a clear night in New Mexico and saying, “Wow, it looks just like the planetarium.” If you aren’t fa...

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