Root Simple is 10 Years Old

...g a chance on two first time authors. The book that they commissioned, The Urban Homestead, published in 2008, went through many printings and is still selling copies. After the success of the first book we got a lot of offers to write a sequel (or just another version of the same book for bigger publishers!). We ended up writing a how-to book for Rodale called Making It. Thank You! Root Simple is a group effort and there are many people to thank:...

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The Tiny House

...can find a vacant lot, such a small house could be the ideal start of your urban homestead, leaving plenty of yard space for growing your own food. And these small building literally sip utilities making them ideal for hooking up to solar power and very cheap to heat and cool. They are also expandable as your needs or family grows. And perhaps most importantly, they prevent expansion of all the things we don’t need, the giant plasma screens, the i...

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Come see us at the fair!

...on the San Vicente side of the park. 1:oo-2:00: We’ll be signing The Urban Homestead at the Feral House Booth/Sexy Groove Lounge with the Feral House Pixies. Other spectacular Feral House/Process authors will be signing throughout the day, too. Location: booths C8 & C9, in the “Imix” zone, which is sort of between the food court and the pool. 2:00-2:30: We’re doing a demo at the booth–making butter! Afterward we’ll just be hanging out for the rest...

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I Made an Enzo Mari Table and So Can You

...s fantasy plays out in the furniture I’ve build for the inside of the house. Such is the fate of attempts at revolutionary design within our post-modern age. Everything gets subsumed within a vast parade of styles and one can easily imagine this table on sale at Urban Outfitters at your local mall. Mari, who we lost to COVID in 2020, had the genius and grace to acknowledge the contradictions in his own work while not letting this discourse get in...

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Eight Things to Consider When Saving Vegetable Seeds

...be advantageous if you’re having trouble in your garden.] 2. Know how the vegetable is pollinated It’s much easier to save the seeds of self-pollinating vegetables such as beans, peas and tomatoes. Remember that bees can fly for miles–anything pollinated by insects have to be isolated or caged to prevent cross-pollination. And many vegetables have weedy cousins. Try to save the seeds of carrots without caging and you may get a carrot/Queen Anne’s...

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