Essential System #10 – Shelter

...ures into our policy of having a back-up system for every necessity at our urban homestead. We like things lightweight for our grab and go bags, so we purchased a three pound backpacking tent, the two person MSR “Missing Link”. This tent is spacious for its low weight and uses either hiking polls or trees to stake it out. On the down side, we’re not sure how this thing would hold up in high winds and it requires a lot of room to stake out. The “Mi...

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Dwelling Portably

...ctical advice in this publication should be a part of the library of every Urban Homestead. Holly and Bert Davis don’t have much nice to say about computers or the internet and as a result the only way to receive this fine periodical is by mail at $1 per issue 2 for $2, or 6 for $5, or 14 for $10 with back issues available. The P.O. box, which Bert and Holly check when they are away from the yurt is: Dwelling Portably POB 190 Philomath, OR 97370 D...

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Essential System #4 – Illumination

...o bags, 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...

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Homegrown REvolution

...d and creative Process Media, spotted us and asked us to write a book, The Urban Homestead, thus beginning an unexpected course, which has forced us to consider things such as branding and marketing. Like all children of the late 20th century we’re inescapably linked to a “mediated” culture, to a world of appearances defined by mass media in all its many forms. In the midst of having to figure out a new name for ourselves, along with the incredibl...

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Maggots!

Like a lot of the agricultural duties around our urban homestead, composting requires time and initiative. Unfortunately both our garden and our energy level are at a low point, both sapped by the record breaking heat – anyone see Al Gore’s movie? The result of this lack of effort has been the maggot party currently going on in our compost pile. The best compostin’ revolutionary I ever met, photographer Becky Cohen maintained a three pile system...

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