Essential System #9 – Hydration

...hould be the least of your concerns if the shit comes down. In addition to stored water, your house or apartment contains three other sources of water – the pipes, the water heater and the tank of the toilet (not the bowl). To use the water in the water heater turn off the gas or electricity that heats the water. Shut off the main water supply and open a hot water faucet somewhere in the house. You should be able to drain the water out of the heat...

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Erik’s 2012 New Year’s Resolutions in Review

.... Improve writin’ skills. Celebrate the wonderful awesomeness that is Mrs. Homegrown each and every day. I’ve got the book but not the license. Fail: Get HAM technician’s license. Learn Morse code Attend CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) classes. Organize messy office so it doesn’t look like an episode of Hoarders. Organize supplies in garage into labeled boxes: still messy. Turn the garage into the ultimate man cave. Increase running dista...

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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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Be Idle

...ie de Vivre and Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life. Part of the Urban Homesteadin’ thing involves simplifying one’s life, but we just can’t get behind the all the deprivation and mortification that often goes with American’s puritanical approach to the new simplicity. A compelling speaker, Andrews echoed our wariness and used the Slow Food movement as an counter-example to the pitfalls of the simplicity movement. The Slow Food movement...

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We’ve taken the flowers out of our hair

...images from his slow-food related photo essay about Tuscany here. 5. While Homegrown Revolution promises never again to get into celebrity gossip, we’ll note that we spotted gravelly voiced alt-rock singer Tom Waits gassing up his Lexus SUV at a filling station in Berkeley. More exciting to us was discovering that our base of operations in the Mission was a mere block from the infamous Symbionese Liberation Army safe house where heiress Patty Hear...

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