Urban Homestead Guide to Self-Sufficient Living

by | Nov 12, 2017 | 0 comments

The book “The Urban Homestead Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City” appears on just about every list of books on self reliance.

This celebrated, essential handbook for the urban homesteading movement shows how to grow and preserve your own food, clean your house without toxins, raise chickens, gain energy independence, and more. Step-by-step projects, tips, and anecdotes will help get you started homesteading immediately. The Urban Homestead is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.

Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this copiously illustrated, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. By growing our own food and harnessing natural energy, we are planting seeds for the future of our cities.

New projects include:

  • How to sterilize jars and bottles
  • How to make infused oil
  • Six ways to preserve a tomato
  • How to make soda bread
  • How to store grain with dry ice
  • How to make a tomato can stove
  • How to make a Viet Nam light
  • How to make a Euell Gibbon’s crock
  • How to make L’hamd markad, or preserved, salted lemons
  • How to make a bike light

Urban Homestead Guide to Self-Sufficient Living .....Continue Reading

The expanded, updated version of the best-selling classic, with a dozen new projects.

“A delightfully readable and very useful guide to front- and back-yard vegetable gardening, food foraging, food preserving, chicken keeping, and other useful skills for anyone interested in taking a more active role in growing and preparing the food they eat.”—BoingBoing.net

“…the contemporary bible on the subject.”—The New York Times

This celebrated, essential handbook shows how to grow and preserve your own food, clean your house without toxins, raise chickens, gain energy independence, and more. Step-by-step projects, tips, and anecdotes will help get you started homesteading immediately. The Urban Homestead is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.

Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this copiously illustrated, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. By growing our own food and harnessing natural energy, we are planting seeds for the future of our cities.

Learn how to:

  • Grow food on a patio or balcony
  • Preserve or ferment food and make yogurt and cheese
  • Compost with worms
  • Keep city chickens
  • Divert your grey water to your garden
  • Clean your house without toxins
  • Guerilla garden in public spaces
  • Create the modern homestead of your dreams
  •  Chapter One – Start Your Own Farm. Strategies For Growing Food In The Urban Setting. Permaculture. The Practicalities Of Growing Food.
  • Chapter Two – Essential Projects. Essential Projects A Treasure Chest of Garden Projects and Advice
  • Chapter Three – Urban Foraging – Feral Edibles. Invasive Edibles. Fruit Foraging. Tools For The Fruit Harvester. How To Eat Acorns. Dumpster Diving. Revive Day-Old Bread
  • Chapter Four – Keeping Livestock In The City – The Chicken is the New Pug. Chickens For Meat. Chicken Q & A. Ducks. Rabbits. Pigeons: A Modest Proposal. Quail. Bees.
  • Chapter Five – Revolutionary Home Economics. Preserving The Harvest. How To Can. Pickling via Lacto-Fermentation. Dehydration: Why Save It For Hangovers?. Three Methods For Drying Food. Preserving With Vinegar.
  • Preserving Fruit In Alcohol: Le Cherry Bounce (Cerises à l’eau-de-vie). Preserving Root Vegetables. Transforming Excess. How To Culture Milk. Cheese-making. Making Butter. How To Make Fruit Butter. Making Stock. Five Ways to Preserve a Tomato. The Homestead Speakeasy: From Mead To Moonshine. Baking On The Homestead. Cleaning The Urban Homestead. Our Cleaning Cupboard. Other Cleaning Aids You Might Want to Keep Around. “Green” Cleaners We Are Not Really Down With, But Others Use: All-Purpose Spray Cleaners. Less Toxic Ways To Deal With Unwelcome Critters. A Homestead Of Your Own. Location Location Location.
  • Chapter Six – Be Your Own Utility: Water And Power For The Homestead. Harvesting Water. Harvesting Rainwater. Rainwater Harvesting Technique 1. Rainwater Harvesting Technique 2. Rainwater Harvesting Technique 3. Rainwater Harvesting Technique 4. Rainwater Harvesting Technique 5. Rainwater Harvesting Technique 6. Non-Invasive Greywater Methodologies. Highly Invasive Greywater Strategies. Power To The People. Principles. Heating 49%. Cooling 49%. We’re Fans Of Fans. Water Heater 13%. Alternatives To The Gas-Heated Shower. Solar Water Heaters For General Household Hot Water. Lighting 10%. Stoves and Microwaves And Small Appliances (8%). Parabolic Cookers. The Built-In Solution: A Wall Cooker. Electronics 7%. Washer & Dryer 6%. Refrigerator 5%. Dishwashers 2%. Generating Your Own Power Electricity From Solar Power — The Components Solar Systems: Small, Medium And Large.
  • Chapter Seven – Transportation Transportation Principles: The Urban Homestead Transportation Triangle: Walking, Biking, Mass Transit. Conclusion: The Future