Capparis spinosa – Capers

...lution to make it more national, as the publisher of our upcoming book the Urban Homestead requested, we had one big challenge. While Mrs. Homegrown Revolution hails from the snowy mountains of Colorado, Mr. Homegrown Revolution has never lived anywhere else other than sunny Southern California. And neither of us have tended plants outside of this Mediterranean climate, one of the rarest types of climatic zones on the planet. But if we’ve learned...

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Off to Baghdad by the Bay

...Homegrown Revolution is heading to San Francisco in our PPV on art business for a few days and to visit our comrades at Petaluma Urban Homestead. On our return we’ll post about our new illegal greywater strategy and our evolving thoughts on chicken housing. In the meantime check out our musings on guerrilla gardening over at Realty Sandwich....

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Biodynamic Composting Workshop

...Root Simple. Erik Knutzen is the author, with his wife Kelly Coyne, of The Urban Homestead and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post Consumer World. He blogs and produces a podcast at www.rootsimple.com. Cost: $20 per person. Space is limited to 20 attendees. Children are free and welcome to participate under the supervision of their parents. Register in advance here. What to bring: hat, gloves, sturdy shoes – be prepared to get your hands dirty!...

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Build a Rocket Stove

...echo Research Center, a non-profit organization devoted to improving conditions in third world countries through the development of low cost, simple cooking and heating technologies have developed a number of rocket stoves that you can build for your urban homestead. They have a simple model called the VITA Stove made with sheet metal (note the better soundtrack music on the video) and an institutional model made with a 50 gallon drum. We think we...

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TV Turnoff week April 23 – 30, 2008

We don’t come from the sackcloth and ashes wing of the urban homestead movement. There’s no forced austerity around the Homegrown Evolution compound, no sufferfests, no “more-meek-than-thou” contests. It’s about pleasure not denial, after all. But, to use the “d” word, one thing we denied ourselves for many years was television. And during this TV Turnoff week, we thought we’d share our struggles with the tube. Ten years ago, when we moved into o...

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