Urban Homestead Wins Book Award

Our book, The Urban Homestead just won a gold medal in the Independent Publisher Awards. To celebrate we’ll throw in a back issue of Ripples magazine for the first twenty folks who buy a copy of our book off of this website. Ripples is, “A Revolutionary Journal of Seasonal Delight” published by the nice folks at www.dailyacts.org. Now that’s enough tooting our own horn. We’ll get back to posting when the dust settles after Earth Day and talk abou...

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Our new front yard: history

...ers after our foundation work. We’d learned to love its young pads and its fruit, so we left it in place and planted the fruit trees all around it. Climate change? Bad soil? Incompetence? With the exception of the pomegranate we planted at the top of the slope, the front yard orchard never really thrived. We studied books about organic orcharding for clues, without results. The soil on the slope had been mulched since we’d done our first plantings...

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LA ecovillage: self-reliance in a car-free urban homestead

...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQGozSavz8 Johnny, who shot that nice video of us for faircompanies.com just made another video about our friends at the LA ecovillage. It’s well worth a view. Some of the most amazing folks in Los Angeles live there. And I like that fact that’s it’s an ecovillage smack dab in the middle of my beloved hometown. Make sure to also check out Johnny’s blog Granola Shotgun....

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The Original L.A. Urban Homestead

You know that band you saw play at your local dive bar back in the day that is totally popular now and playing in arenas? Well, the L.A. Eco-Home is kind of like that. Long before glossy magazines were doing “Green” issues, before hybrid cars and composting became hip, Julia Russell had been giving tours featuring the environmentally friendly aspects of her home and garden. Julia is pictured here in front of her Gordon apple tree which bore over...

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114 Will of The Weekend Homestead on Fire Safety

On the podcast this week I talk to Will of the The Weekend Homestead about fire safety and life on his rural Wisconsin getaway. Will is a former firefighter and avid YouTuber and reached out to me to respond to a post I did on open floor plans and fires. During the podcast we talk about: Christmas fire safety–keep that tree watered! Smoke detectors Fire extinguishers and how to use them Common causes of residential fires What it’s like to be a fi...

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