Urban Homesteading and Homeowners Associations

October 4, 2013

...ne. I’m curious to hear from readers who live in an HOAs. Did you get into urban homesteading before or after moving to an HOA? Have you ever gotten in trouble? What did you do about it? Do the benefits of living in an HOA outweigh the restrictions? And there are less restrictive HOAs. I once met a couple who live in an HOA in Orange County, CA that allows chickens. Flagpole antenna. Source: The Doctor is In Some HOA residents take a stealth appro...

Read…

Your Urban Homesteading Vocabulary Word of the Day: Slumgum

Mr. Homegrown

May 22, 2017

Animals, Bees

6 Comments

...of slumgum. Don’t leave your slumgum outside like I did. It turns out that urban night critters such as skunks and raccoons also love slumgum. Some mammal dragged mine off and ate it! Side note: check your library’s online digital resources. The Los Angeles Public Library offers the Oxford English Dictionary, and many more online reference resources, for free to anyone with a LA library card. Stay tuned for a longer post on beeswax processing in t...

Read…

107 Urban Beekeeping with Terry Oxford

Mr. Homegrown

August 9, 2017

Animals, Bees, Podcasts

...systemic neonicotinoid pesticides such as Imidacloprid. Terry’s website is Urban Bee San Francisco. We get into a lot of topics including: Keeping bees on rooftops in San Francisco Ants and small hive beetles Natural beekeeping Splitting Natural beekeeper Michael Bush’s website Pesticide activism Treatment of nursery trees with neonicotinoids Senate bill 602 that would have required labeling of nursery plants treated with neonicotinoids How the Ca...

Read…

Book Review: The Blood of the Earth: An Essay on Magic and Peak Oil

Mrs. Homegrown

October 31, 2012

Reviews

5 Comments

...ders. Greer explores these ideas in more depth, but I think you’ll get the picture: Learn One Thing: Learn a practical skill, so that you have something trade in a barter economy. Give Up One Thing: Choose one material possession that you believe you depend on, and that you also know is quite dependent itself on our complex, petroleum-fueled industrial system. Go without it now, so you know it’s possible. And that really, it’s not that bad to go w...

Read…

Rain Barrels

Mr. Homegrown

January 9, 2007

rainwater harvesting

1 Comment

...want to discourage anyone from making an attempt at it, but for most urban homesteaders it won’t be economical or practical given the space requirements and weight of thousands of gallons of stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using that wate...

Read…