Essential System #6 – Fire

August 29, 2006

On the crazy path of life you may someday find yourself needing to build a fire. When it’s wet and when kindling wood is lacking this can be a challenge. Which is why we always have fire starting implements on hand including a butane lighter and waterproof matches. Most importantly we carry something to really get the fire going – our homemade wax and dryer lint fire starters. To make a wax and lint fire starter, save up the ends of a few candles...

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The Urban Homestead

Mrs. Homegrown

June 1, 2010

Publications

4 Comments

...n): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series) by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (Process, 2010) ISBN: 978-1934170106 (The first edition, the one with the “American Gothic” cover, was released by Process on June 1, 2008) Buy it at: Amazon • Abe Books • Barnes & Nobel • Powell’s and your local indie bookstore This celebrated, essential handbook for the urban homesteading movement shows how to grow and...

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On why our vegetable garden is such a disaster this year . . .

Mr. Homegrown

January 15, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

37 Comments

...–forgetting that urban homesteading is not about self-sufficiency—to chase self-sufficiency is a fool’s errand. I should be happy just to have a few good salads and be thankful that I can buy good vegetables at a local farmer’s market. I don’t think self-sufficiency is a good goal even on a large piece of land. We humans are meant to work together, hang out in groups and share goods and knowledge. I’ve got some talented vegetable growing neighbors...

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The Practical Side of Philosophy

Mr. Homegrown

August 1, 2016

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...both weld and understand a logical or ethical argument. Attempting my own self-study program hasn’t been easy. There’s been a whole bunch of $50 words to learn and I can’t say that I’m anywhere near the point where I can explain key concepts. It would have been better to have started this program earlier in my life and integrated with all the other things I had to study in school. But as to how to get that self-study program going, I recently fou...

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My Morning Routine: Tarrying With the Negative

Mr. Homegrown

February 2, 2024

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...lize an inherently unstable system. If you take the brakes off, the system self destructs. My further two cents: because of ecological limits, even with government stabilization, the whole thing self destructs in the end, but I digress. Žižek explains ideological systems via the Lacanian concept of the Big Other, “a hypothetical observer watching our every action and conversation, whose demands we obey and for whom we perform.”(1) This book was wr...

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