Urban Homestead - Path to Freedom

[DomusAlbion]

For all of you who seek some self-sufficiency and want to grow your own food but live either in a city or suburb I recommend the following website:

http://www.urbanhomestead.org/

See what can be done even on a small city lot!

[efarmer]

This is a piece of the mitigation I do agree. One of the huge exploits I can see as well
for individuals is to network and create a village structure within their suburban or urban
environment. While it needs to be adjacent, it does not have to be contiguous wherein
everyone is involved at all. Sharing child care, cooking, laundry processing, transportation
costs, among more than one household can become a huge financial advantage and enrich
everyone's life in the process. It takes more work and tolerance of course on everyone's
part.

We have been programmed by the rote of our American life that everyone gets a box to live in,
with their own appliances, vehicle, and day care contractor if needed and household food and clothing processing as a one each per personal box affair.

Overlaying the village approach on this wasteful scenario can be big for everyone involved,
but of course they have to be big people or willing to grow in order to play. Most Americans
cannot do tribal or village very well, and no they will not adopt it until they absolutely have
to because it is less comfortable and known to them. It is exactly what their immigrant
ancestors pulled off to establish a life in America, and then went on over the next few
generations to enable them to live a life where energy and resources are traded for personal
comfort and convenience as if they are unlimited.

[Pops]

Most Americans
cannot do tribal or village very well, and no they will not adopt it until they absolutely have
to because it is less comfortable and known to them. I

But the suburbs are catching up in the race to the bottom, and there are currently more suburban residents than city dwellers living below the poverty level. Per CNN Money’s story about the Brookings Institution’s analysis, there were 15.4 million suburbanites living in poverty in 2010, compared to 12.7 million living below the poverty level in cities. Whereas poverty levels rose 11.5% from 2009 to 2010 in the suburbs, they inched up 5% in cities.

Read more: http://moneyland.time.com/2011/09/26/su ... z1c5a2NwRu

[pup55]

Urban homesteading...

When I was a youngster, and we are talking about the mid 60's, everybody around us, plus us, had some little plot of land they grew tomatoes and cucumbers on, someone on the block had a chicken coop or rabbits, and the ambitious ones had enough of a surplus to do canning, or otherwise sell it.

We're talking about a bedroom type community, not rural in any sense. Most of those people are gone now... but if they were around they'd laugh at the urban homesteading thing because that is just how they lived, and did not think anything of it. They were children of the first depression and they did not know anything different.

Funny that it skipped a generation. Today's 20-somethings are really into this stuff.

[DomusAlbion]

Exactly pup. My parents came through the Great Depression. We grew up in a mid sized town and always had a nice garden in the back and my dad raised chickens for years. We were close to some of the best farmlands in Washington state and would go out to local orchards and farms to get fresh produce and my mom would can much of it for the winter months. This was a time when food was local and seasonal. No grapes from Chile or Australia. The big treats were oranges from California during the winter.

[highlander]

Urban homesteading...

When I was a youngster, and we are talking about the mid 60's, everybody around us, plus us, had some little plot of land they grew tomatoes and cucumbers on, someone on the block had a chicken coop or rabbits, and the ambitious ones had enough of a surplus to do canning, or otherwise sell it.

Are you sure it was tomatoes they were growing?

[pup55]

So I guess the question is, are they, I mean the millenials and those maybe slightly older doing this stuff because they want to, or because they have to? I think there is a certain segment of the population that is tuned into this stuff: Well educated, sees the big picture, and interested in things, and has an income, and they're the ones who have started up a lot of this. I think a lot of them are the same people that have fled the suburbs and moved downtown or near to it, and left the tract homes and the idiotic homeowners associations to the suburbanites.

I think there's also a certain segment of this population that is living in Mom's basement, playing video games and waiting to become a studio guitarist, if you know what I mean...maybe shades of gray in between. Those guys are not doing squat except sitting in their nest with their mouth open as 30-year olds hoping something will drop in. Am I right on this?

I think you can make the argument that in the depression generation, the people that were doing this stuff were on the bottom end.. of course, everybody was on the bottom end, they were all in the same boat, so to speak.

Here is a stat:

http://www.ilfb2.org/fff06/51.pdf

that says that in 1930, the average family was spending 25% of their income on food, and around 20% when I was born. but nowadays, we're spending less than 10%, a lot of it may be an artifact of the smaller family.... so I suppose in 1960, pup28 could have basically given himself a 10% raise by providing half of the family food on the cheap somehow... some economic justification for doing a little manual labor out in the little place we rented out by the tracks for this purpose, particularly if he made his five year old and his little brother go out and pick the tomato worms off of the plants while he did some light weeding.

pup83 lives in a little apartment downtown and does a few tomatoes right now but I can see her and some of her friends with a chicken or two if they lived someplace where there was land. I'm thinkin' she would be doing it just to get more in touch with where the food comes from and less out of necessity. If she managed to farm half of her caloric intake it would be scarcely a percent or two.

So I suppose that ironically, the people that are doing this stuff are quite likely to be the ones who need it the least, in a way...

[pup55]

[quote="highlander] Are you sure it was tomatoes they were growing?[/quote]

LOLOLOL oh, I can assure you that even in that era, it was not unheard of for one strain of hemp or another to appear in someone's backyard... It was not the cash crop it is now of course. Also, the local weed did not have the properties of todays' variety either.

There was some hops growing on the fence across our backyard too. I suppose some home brewer in the neighborhood had planted it at some point. pup31 was allergic as hell to it...

[PrestonSturges]

I got a couple hundred pieces of fruit this year, FWIW.

It's important to know what and how to propagate for your area, but it'll be a long time before people take it seriously.

[Crusty]

"Urban Homestead", put a Patent on it, Protect your intellectual Property, you can use it if we like you, BUT IT'S OURS DON'T FORGET AND YOU MUST PAY!!!....Jeez, this guy is part of the Problem, not the Solution. He's just growing vege's and raising Chooks like most people in the town I live in and half the posters of this site!!

Build or help out in your Community Garden, freely share your excess Produce, Barter, make friends, freely teach gardening techniques, share seeds, re-localize, change the system and build resilience in your local community but most importantly have fun

[jdmartin]

Most Americans
cannot do tribal or village very well, and no they will not adopt it until they absolutely have
to because it is less comfortable and known to them. I

But the suburbs are catching up in the race to the bottom, and there are currently more suburban residents than city dwellers living below the poverty level. Per CNN Money’s story about the Brookings Institution’s analysis, there were 15.4 million suburbanites living in poverty in 2010, compared to 12.7 million living below the poverty level in cities. Whereas poverty levels rose 11.5% from 2009 to 2010 in the suburbs, they inched up 5% in cities.

Read more: http://moneyland.time.com/2011/09/26/su ... z1c5a2NwRu

I've always said the suburbs would be the new slums. It only makes sense. As transportation costs climb, people that can afford to live closer to work will, and those that can't (or don't have jobs) will be pushed further to the periphery. This is the way it's been for millenia, with the exception being that the uber-wealthy have always had their country manors for summer vacation.

[DomusAlbion]

"Urban Homestead", put a Patent on it, Protect your intellectual Property, you can use it if we like you, BUT IT'S OURS DON'T FORGET AND YOU MUST PAY!!!....Jeez, this guy is part of the Problem, not the Solution. He's just growing vege's and raising Chooks like most people in the town I live in and half the posters of this site!!

Gee Crusty, a man is allowed to earn a living. His website is a self-promotion and it does sell items, however, there is a lot to learn there as well. And more importantly it shows those who live in cities and suburbs that they can take control of their lives and bring some measure of self-sustenance to their families.

[Pops]

I've always said the suburbs would be the new slums. It only makes sense. As transportation costs climb, people that can afford to live closer to work will, and those that can't (or don't have jobs) will be pushed further to the periphery. This is the way it's been for millenia, with the exception being that the uber-wealthy have always had their country manors for summer vacation.

Quite right, the flight to the 'burbs was all about excess energy; personal transportation, single family detached homes, distribution of goods instead of concentration of buyers, etc.

[DomusAlbion]

I've always said the suburbs would be the new slums. It only makes sense. As transportation costs climb, people that can afford to live closer to work will, and those that can't (or don't have jobs) will be pushed further to the periphery. This is the way it's been for millenia, with the exception being that the uber-wealthy have always had their country manors for summer vacation.

Quite right, the flight to the 'burbs was all about excess energy; personal transportation, single family detached homes, distribution of goods instead of concentration of buyers, etc.

I see a future where the foreclosed abandoned suburban houses are mined for their resources. Eventually the house will disappear and a vegetable garden will sprout in its place. Then clusters of houses (our current culdesacs?) will have a surrounding fence with gardens and paddocks beyond.

[jdmartin]

I could see that. But when we get to that we're talking wholesale devastation...

[ralfy]

Thanks! This and other means have been shared in various forums for some time. The general idea is localization and sustainability. One should also look up ideas like freecycling networks, gift economics, transition communities, permaculture, and so on.