Urban Homesteading
Urban Homesteading, by Rachel Kaplan with K.
Ruby Blume, is a breath of fresh air in the usually stuffy room of
gardening and homesteading literature. Don't get me wrong --- I
adore books by Paul Stamets, Steve Solomon, and others, but these texts
tend to be written by, for, and about middle class, white, straight
people. Urban
Homesteading
highlights ideas that are applicable to everyone, and the stunning
photos in the book back that theme up.
The case studies
sprinkled throughout Urban
Homesteading are
part of what gives this book such a rich flavor. For example, the
authors highlight Spiral Gardens, a non-profit that brings
gardening and fresh food into a low-income community in Berkeley where
lack of access to fruits and vegetables leads directly to shortened
lifespans. Reading Rachel Kaplan's book reminds me that there is
a social justice element to growing your own food that we often forget
in our middle class bubble. Can you imagine living in a place
where you can't get perishables without driving and can't afford to
drive? Of course growing your own is the answer!
I don't want you to think the
book is preachy or dense, though. Instead, Urban
Homesteading is
an easy to read introduction to dozens of topics that every beginning
homesteader is interested in, all told with an urban flare. And
the book is worth reading just for the artwork --- stunning photos of
dozens of urban homesteads and homesteaders interspersed between
original artwork by K. Ruby Blume. This is the perfect book for a
budding urban homesteader to pore over
for ideas, or for the established homesteader to put on her coffee
table (if she has one) to subtly influence more mainstream guests.
(In the interest of full
disclosure, I should tell you that Rachel Kaplan let me download a
pre-release version of the ebook to review, but I have to admit that I
didn't expect the book to be half as good as it is!)
| This post is part of our Urban Homesteading lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Have you guys ever tried keeping rabbits? I've been reading a few books (e.g. Farm City by Novella Carpenter) and watching videos (e.g. Backyard Food Production) where people keep rabbits for meat, and am getting ready to dip a toe in soon.
In Backyard Food Production, they reckon rabbits are better than chickens for meat. They mature faster, are much quicker to kill, clean and butcher, and can be fed from the garden for much of the year without the need for commercial feed. You can also harvest their manure for use on the garden.
Where I live we don't get snow or frosts, so I think I might be able to feed them from the garden year-round.
My only reservation is in keeping them in cages. My first reaction was that it was a bit cruel to keep the cooped up like that, but then people like Joel Salatin and Novella Carpenter are OK with it, and they're big on animal welfare. I read somewhere that rabbits are happy to stay cooped up in their burrows for long periods of time, and they don't see the cage as anything different, so it's not cruel to them.
Ruby here ( from the book). I raise rabbits and I can say, they totally rock! It is true that the killing part I never look forward to, but it is easier and quicker than chickens ( we describe how in the book) and rabbit is tasty (cooking one up right now!) I have created two pens where they get out of the hutches (gender separated) and run around. There are cubbies and tubes and such that bunnies just love. Plus places to stretch up and grab some alfalfa or hay. I am not sure that they love being in the hutches, but provide themwith a view of the garden, companionship of other rabbits and interesting tidbits of food all day long and they will be pretty happy bunnies. . I like them as well, because the best place for them in the garden is a shadt spot where nothing much will grow anyway. Happy Spring!