Kelly Update and a Great Podcast

...g focuses on do not get counted by economists. All that cooking, cleaning, gardening, child and elder care count not one bit towards the sorts of calculations economists obsess over such as gross domestic product and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This is particularly unfair to women who tend to be more responsible for what happens in the home. And let’s not even get into the ethical difficulties of placing a dollar value on human beings. It’s...

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Root Simple at Nature Fest March 18 and 19

...lesser known publications at a steep discount as well as answering random homesteading questions. We’d love to meet you in person! The Natural History Museum is one of my favorite places in LA. The event will feature: Over 30 exhibitor booths in partnership with local organizations Access to scientists and nature experts to answer all your questions Live animal presentations, stage performances and nature walks Expert tips on how to attract wildl...

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Nature Fest this Weekend!

...find booklets, done in collaboration with the Ecology Center, on container gardening, rainwater harvesting, bicycle basics, backyard chickens and food preservation. They’ll be priced to fly out of those boxes in my garage! I’ll also be doing a coffee demo at 1pm on both Saturday and Sunday and dispensing free advice in the booth for the entirety of the festival. Please drop by and hang out. And dig the book racks I built out of scrap plywood! See...

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RIP Michael Brooks

...now in. My writing beat, what has, for lack of a better term, been called “urban homesteading” is poisoned by that individualism which manifests in a concept of self sufficiency whose ultimate destination is a lonely existence in a doomstead bunker. I’ve always tried to point out that we’re all in this together, that we need to build up our households and our communities. It’s not one or the other. Michael was just beginning to formulate a strateg...

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Paleo Grift

...eisure before the toil of agriculture is an idea that pops up often in the urban homesteading and permaculture scene. While I’m sympathetic to complaints about modern agriculture, I’ve long thought that this Golden Age narrative sounds too simple, too much like the “noble savage” archetype, the idea that if we can somehow just get back to “nature” all will be okay. This notion of a idyllic distant past was the subject of an excellent episode of th...

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