Lets start this with I love history. I also completed my undergrad education in Urban Studies which covered the history of urban developments. From this I learned that there is no easily agreed upon definition for “urban.” I also learned that ancient densely populated cities were as urban as today’s Tokyo and in 1000 years, 21st century Tokyo might seem rustic.

It is fairly easy to build a case that many ancient cities have practiced growing food and built strong community interdependence through shared crafts and skills. No society likes to toil endlessly for kicks so they all have sought clever ways to be efficient, strive for ecological balance and even “profit.”

This is all to say that no matter what word combination you apply to the practices, urban homesteading as a subsistence system is a time honored practice that has proven effective for a very long time. My own attempt to practice urban homesteading as a subsistence system is in response to industrial urban systems (and the corporations that perpetuate them) that have run down resources, brought us food that is toxic and lacking in nutrition, and weakened the ultimate power of communities- the power to organize. I am an urban homesteader to bring healthy food to my family, reduce toxins in our daily lives, and as part of a lifestyle to reduce the need for money as a medium to live. This in turn frees up my time so I can do more meaningful things.

So you see, urban homesteading is a social and political practice for me but then so is my learning about and honoring my family and cultural history. They go hand in hand. I refuse to forget the values and knowledge that has informed my family’s journey for generations.

It is my belief that when we forget where we come from, we forget who we are and we become fodder to statisticians or worse- our culture gets misappropriated, cheapened and sold back to us.

I have got a major gripe with folks that claim to have invented urban farming or homesteading. This is because before there were hippies or hipsters, there were people surviving, and still are, on what they can grow on the land they inhabit. The tradition of raising animals for food and growing food in an urban setting is NOTHING NEW. Many of us are from families that have upheld this way of life for generations. Ethnic communities have practiced and still practice a great deal of “urban homesteading” but if you ask them what it is, they will give you a blank look. Its called living. My grandparents did not brag to their San Francisco neighbors because if the news fell on the wrong ears someone might complain to la policia. The grow/raise your own lifestyle is only recently cool.

That said, it seems arrogant, inappropriate and disrespectful to claim to have created it. I mention this all again because I recently read about an organization in Southern California, Path to Freedom, that has trademarked:

URBAN HOMESTEAD®

URBAN HOMESTEADING®

PATH TO FREEDOM®

GROW THE FUTURE®

HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION®

FREEDOM GARDENS®

LITTLE HOMESTEAD IN THE CITY® (pending) and also, THE TEN ELEMENTS OF URBAN HOMSTEADING [sic] copyright has been filed with the Library of Congress.

Apparently, in their race to make claim, they have forced Facebook pages of people using the term to shut down. This includes the Oakland based Institute of Urban Homesteading (this reminds me of when the U.S. attempted to patent the healing properties of tumeric in the 90′s, a root with properties that have been known to Indians for thousands of years).

Their website states that “If your use of one of these phrases is not to specifically identify products or services from the Dervaes Institute, then it would be proper to use generic terms to replace the registered trademark you are using. For example, when discussing general homesteading or other people’s projects, they should be referred to using terms such as ‘modern homesteading,’ ‘urban sustainability projects,’ or similar descriptions.”

What really gets me is their definition of an urban homesteader. What they call their 10 Elements:

YOU KNOW YOU ARE AN URBAN HOMESTEADER WHEN YOU …
1. Grow your own food on your city lot. (More than 50% of your diet, organically, with visually appealing landscaping.)

2. Use alternative energy sources (e.g., solar, wind) in conjunction with energy efficiency and conservation measures to reduce usage.

3. Use alternative fuels and transportation (bicycle, walk, public).

4. Keep farm animals for manure and food. Practice animal husbandry.

5. Practice waste reduction. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without, compost it, re-purpose it.

6. Reclaim greywater and collect rainwater. Practice water conservation and recovery.

7. Live simply. … in the manner of past eras. Develop back-to-basics homemaking skills, including food preservation and preparation.

8. Do the work yourself. Learn to do home and vehicle maintenance, repairs and basic construction.

9. Work at home. Earn a living from the land or hand work done at home. Develop a home-based economy.

10. Be a good neighbor. Offer a helping hand for free. Urban homesteading is a community-based way of life, not a business opportunity. Be a neighbor, not a business person.

Again, meet my grandparents Frank and Lupe, and their parents, and their parents. For that matter meet the family of my husband, The Pallanas from India. They waste nothing and my father-in-law was raised on homegrown food. Every time I implement an energy reducing tactic, optimize a harvest and preserve it, he tells me it reminds him of his mother.

For the record, the organization is based in Orange County. I’ve never gotten my own farming and homesteading information from Orange County sources. They only information I follow in Orange County is the writing of satirist Gustavo Arellano.

I am, to say the least, disappointed by their claim. Their path to freedom is an old story of making claims to what has been owned for a long time. I thought we had learned that lesson.

The San Francisco Urban Agricultural Alliance has been heading a initiative in San Francisco that enables the production and sale of crops in residential areas of the city. The SFUAA was started by a group of talented and motivated people that are serious about creating a new industry and a new food system. To read the proposal by downloading the full version pdf.

If you too support this work, sign this petition! Anyone can sign even if you are not in San Francisco.

If you are in the Bay Area, come show your support on February 17th at 1:30PM, City Hall, Room 400. The San Francisco Planning Commission will be hearing the proposal and the more people that show up, from SF or not, demonstrates the level of support of SFUAA! For non-SFers, this is important as it sets a precedent for change that you can bring to your city.

I’m always saying how much I love animals.  Turns out, like most sane people I quite despise parasites.

Its appears my American buck, Virgl, somehow acquired cheyletiella parasitivorax, a mighty mite. It is a mite that burrows under the skin much like scabies. This endearing trait makes it a tad harder to eradicate. It spreads easily and can also be transferred to human hosts. So its bad enough that he had severe flake of dandruff and tufts of hair coming out, but the thought that I could get these nasty critters was revolting. I thought bunnies were supposed to be cute and sweet not gross vectors of skin burrowing parasites. Blech!

The symptoms were very clear so that made it easy to diagnose. I asked around for treatments to this mite. Apparently a 1% ivermectin cream is reported to do the trick. I found some 1.8% cream used to treat horse orally. It can also be used topically which is what I did. Wearing gloves, I applied ~ 1tsp total to the affected area and in a v-shape behind his neck and a bit on his ears. These are the areas the mites tend towards. I rubbed it in to get passed the layers of fluffy hair and onto skin. I also removed Virgl from his hutch for a few hours while I cleaned it of any hair and sprayed it down with a permethrin spray. This was to kill anything that may have been on the hair in his hutch.

Ten days after one ivermectin treatment, which made a huge improvement (no more dandruff), I did one more smaller treatment to make sure any larvae that had hatched were also destroyed. He is looking great. No tufts of hair coming out and no dandruff. Luckily, none of the other rabbits have shown any signs of mites.

I finally got a newsletter together! Get on the mailing list now.

Anyone else find this odd? Cereals with rabbit mascots have a strange likeness to rabbit byproducts. Is there any link to the actual cereal material being a byproduct that has been compressed together into suspicious spherical shapes?